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Hubble harvests 100 new planets during a 7-day sweep of the bulge of the Milky Way.. If confirmed it would almost double the number of known planets to about 230. "I think this work has the potential to be the most significant advance in discovering extra-solar planetary systems since the first planets were discovered in the mid-1990s."
posted by stbalbach at 10:31 PM PST - 17 comments

"I enjoy life most when I have a boner." Lowbrow.com is back after a brief period of downtime. The format is extremely simple -- read one randomly selected Lowbrow Moment, hit reload, read the next one. What's Lowbrow about? It's about hard-earned street wisdom and raunchy sex; it's about drunken violence and heroic feats of masturbation. If your life is particularly Lowbrow, feel free to share, but beware of imitators.
posted by neckro23 at 10:02 PM PST - 12 comments

"Stop beating up your women because you can't find a job." Strong words from a paragon of the African American community.
posted by the fire you left me at 9:18 PM PST - 67 comments

The Original Tom Swift Series Public Domain Texts. Twenty-five of 'em for your perusal. In piles of formats, some including page scans, and with color cover images (mostly from here, where they also have larger images). Not that kind of Tom Swift, mind you.

I must admit, the domain name gave me pause. So far, no teleportation has transpired.
posted by mwhybark at 5:52 PM PST - 13 comments

Medicines 'killing 10,000 people'. A year. Only in Great Britain. "According to the researchers, 70% of these reactions could have been avoided". BBC reports.
posted by nandop at 5:36 PM PST - 33 comments

Permanent Makeup. Look like yourself, only better!

Many of Nancy Ruth's clients are tired of applying eyebrow pencil day after day. Or they don't want their eyeliner to smear every time they cry at a movie or rub their eyes.
posted by fizz-ed at 3:10 PM PST - 33 comments

america's heart and soul - so, they wouldn't release fahrenheit 9/11, but this, this is okay. are they making efforts to distance themselves from any involvement with fh9/11, or do they want to make sure that washington keeps listening?

From the chronicle:
Disney officials insist their 88-minute film, "America's Heart and Soul" -- stitching simple, positive vignettes of everyday Americans with sweeping vistas and up-tempo music -- is neither a response to Moore's politically charged hit nor any type of political statement itself.

more coverage here, and a review.
posted by christy at 2:57 PM PST - 35 comments

"Standard orbit, aye, sir." Following a nail-biting ring-plane crossing and 96-minute engine burn, Cassini has arrived, and is now in orbit around Saturn, 84 light-minutes away, sending in the first closeup pictures of the planet's rings. Also see the Planetary Society's details on the Orbit Insertion, Spaceflight Now's mission updates in weblog-like format, and raw images from the spacecraft as they come. Kudos, JPL! (Aside: the press has yet to tire of Lord of the Rings references.)
posted by brownpau at 2:47 PM PST - 14 comments

What the heck? Now even Slate is saying that you should ditch IE and switch to Firefox. But, as they say in the article, Slate is owned by Microsoft...
posted by reklaw at 1:55 PM PST - 62 comments

The CDC recently issued new HIV prevention guidelines that would mandate all organizations that get any federal funding to submit all surveys, curricula, web materials, posters, ads, brochures, etc. to new community-based Policy Review Panels. Politically appointed censors rather than health officials will now decide what's acceptable in terms of HIV prevention and education. Materials must promote abstinence and include a message about the ineffectiveness of condom use in preventing the spread of HIV and STDs. There is a period of public comment on the new regulations until August 16. - more inside -
posted by madamjujujive at 1:49 PM PST - 39 comments

Churchgoers get direction from Bush Campaign: The instruction sheet circulated by the Bush-Cheney campaign to religious volunteers lists 22 "duties" to be performed by specific dates. By July 31, for example, volunteers are to "send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney '04 Headquarters or give [it] to a BC04 Field Rep" and "Talk to your Pastor about holding a Citizenship Sunday and Voter Registration Drive." Isn't this blatantly illegal?
posted by widdershins at 1:18 PM PST - 43 comments

Mr. Roh, tear down this firewall! South Korea's previous efforts to censor the beheading video of Kim Sun-Il have escalated considerably. They are now blocking most major weblog services, including Blogger/Blogspot, TypePad, and LiveJournal -- a degree of censorship for weblogs even greater than that of China. The rallying cry of opposition seems to be centering around this letter :
"I am writing this letter not primarily to criticize all Koreans .... No, my purpose is more specific: to cause the South Korean government as much embarrassment as possible, and perhaps to motivate Korean citizens to engage in some much-needed introspection. To this end, I need the blogosphere's help .... The best and quickest way to persuade the South Korean government to back down from its current position is to make it lose face in the eyes of the world." If you are interested in giving the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture a piece of your mind, please email them at: webmaster@mic.go.kr.
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:28 PM PST - 16 comments

How long can he go? Jeopardy streak hits $697760 for 21 consecutive days.

This guys is simply amazing to watch. He's had more airtime than some tv stars. Any bets to how long he can go?
posted by blahblah at 12:17 PM PST - 56 comments

MEMRI adds a TV monitoring project. MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) has added hundreds of clips from various Middle Eastern television stations (list of sources here). The archive of clips can be found here. There are amazing primary sources available, like "Saudi Sheik Sa'd Al-Breik on Human Rights in Islam and in the West", "Sheik Youssef Al-Qaradhawi in Favor of Democratic Elections in the Arab World", and "Former Dean of Humanities at Cairo's Ein Shams University: 9/11 was 100% American".
posted by loquax at 11:39 AM PST - 40 comments

What would you do if your opponent's elderly constituents needed a ride to vote? Jam their phone lines of course.
posted by LinemanBear at 11:30 AM PST - 17 comments

Ben's Game. A young cancer patient, Ben Duskin, designed a video game, a LucasArts developer built it for him. The game follows a young protagonist as he searches for protection from the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy.
posted by o2b at 11:01 AM PST - 19 comments

Outsourcing comes to Iraq. Interesting article from the WP (login req'd, get one here) about workers from countries such as India and South Korea, subcontracted by American companies, notably the ever-infamous Halliburtun. Effectively turned into indentured servants, these workers not only endure work conditions that American workers would never tolerate, but they do it in a war zone. "Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said contractors' use of multiple layers of subcontracts makes it difficult for the U.S. government to ensure the fair treatment of the workers it effectively employs."
posted by mkultra at 10:52 AM PST - 2 comments

Stasi, meet Highway Watch: The Department of Homeland Security this year gave $19.3 million to the American Trucking Associations, which is based So far, 10,000 truckers have signed on to become amateur sleuths. Over the next year, the goal is to add tollbooth workers, rest-stop employees and construction crews, creating a corps of 400,000 people drawn from every state. A child of Operation TIPS, of course.
posted by amberglow at 10:30 AM PST - 20 comments

AskTheTechGirl.com : Because not everyone gets off on calling India for tech support
via something positive, who also has a funny comic thread on this
posted by qDot at 10:20 AM PST - 6 comments

Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1970s (dis|cuss|discuss).
posted by LinusMines at 8:50 AM PST - 117 comments

The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies.
posted by hama7 at 7:10 AM PST - 4 comments

Meet the new Walkman. 20GB HD, 25 minutes of cache for skip-free playing. Works with Sony's Connect music service. Sharp-looking little player.
posted by jpoulos at 7:02 AM PST - 48 comments

How Fox News Gets Ratings

Move over Janet Jackson and CBS, here comes Fox News with the "full plow!" Descending to the depths and pushing the envelope for what constitutes "news," Rupert should be in for much larger fines than the little Super Bowl fiasco. Its good to see the mouthpiece for the Morality Party being bold enough to do what it takes to attract their demographic audience. (NSFW, but fine for broadcast television)
posted by nofundy at 6:59 AM PST - 37 comments

The Barney Fun Page was one of the first things I found online, along with The Jihad to Destroy Barney on the Worldwide Web. Back when nobody knew what a jihad was.
posted by angry modem at 6:20 AM PST - 8 comments

Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog' (BBC) "While it is unclear how this could have happened, the [Iranian] paper carries quotes from medical experts who say there are human characteristics to the animal....Medical history recounts stories of people who believed they had frogs - or even lizards or snakes - living and growing in their bodies....One of the most famous was the 17th Century case of Catharina Geisslerin, known as "the toad-vomiting woman" of Germany. " Could this be connected to that 20 pound carp's apocalyptic warnings spouted in Hebrew, last year, as a fish cutter tried to club it to death with a rubber hammer to make it into gefilte fish? Or, maybe it was those new tomatoes? Or an Old Testament thing, maybe a prophecy?
posted by troutfishing at 5:32 AM PST - 16 comments

'I am Mahabir Pun. I would like to take you on a tour of my village (Nangi), and my country (Nepal and the Himalayas). I would like you to learn about our High School in Nangi Village, Nepal. Some people from abroad have visited and worked in Nangi and have interesting stories to tell you of their time here. '
posted by plep at 5:19 AM PST - 11 comments

Top 100 British...Intellectuals? Rock bands, schmock bands. Who are currently the cream of British Intelligentsia? Prospect names 100 of (supposedly) the UK's finest and asks you to vote for your top 5, plus a write-in. The list is discussed further here. Some entrants may make you wonder, some may make you gasp, most you just won't have a clue about!
posted by biffa at 4:17 AM PST - 22 comments

On 1 July 2002 at 21:35:32 hrs a collision between a Tupolev TU154M, which was on a flight from Moscow/Russia to Barcelona/ Spain, and a Boeing B757-200, on a flight from Bergamo/Italy to Brussels/ Belgium, occurred north of the city of Ueberlingen (Lake of Constance). Investigation Report as of May 2004, PDF. Very detailed, intelligibly written.

71 people were killed in one of Europe's worst peacetime air accidents. The report comes the the conclusion that human error was the main cause. The TCAS system (PDF) which should have prevented the collision worked, but the Tupolew crew followed the ATC instructions. It turned out that the air traffic controller missed a key warning on his radar screen in one of a chain of errors. ATCs from nearby airports realized what was going on but weren't able to contact the responsible Skyguide controller because the telephone network did not work: the main telephone line was switched off because of work being done on the telephone network, and the collision warning system was temporarily shut down for maintenance.
The ATC in charge was stabbed to death in February 2004 by a Russian man who lost his wife, son and daughter in the plane crash.
posted by tcp at 2:15 AM PST - 9 comments

noctilucent clouds
It's that time of year again. Look to the skies after sunset.
posted by y2karl at 12:20 AM PST - 18 comments