MetaFilter

Did America Walk Into A Trap? In stories reported by Newsweek and Fox News it appears possible that the armed resistance now being encountered by US/British forces was part of Saddam Hussein's plan all along. The documents that have been found essentially say that should Baghdad fall, the Baath party loyalists should fade into society and extract vengeance on the occupying soldiers bit by bit. The nightmare scenario before the war was urban combat, Mogadishu style. But now it appears that Hussein may have upped the ante with this "guerrilla-type campaign".
posted by owillis at 8:59 PM PST - 65 comments

The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World provides beautiful detailed topographical maps of the ancient world. A mammoth undertaking in production over 12 years with 160 scholars and cartographers (with help from MapQuest) and estimated to cost over $5 million it is the largest and most accurate Ancient World Atlas ever. Composed of 99 maps (examples) the Atlas is easily available to the layperson. "If you're gripped by Hannibal and want to sort out which way you think he went through the Alps, you'll have enough of a clear landscape to do it. If you want to follow St. Paul around the eastern Mediterranean, you can."
posted by stbalbach at 5:30 PM PST - 15 comments

Dave Barry posts a letter in his weblog encouraging users to submit poems to poetry.com containing the phrase "the dog ate mother's toes" under the penname of Freemont. Hilarity Ensues.
posted by woil at 4:40 PM PST - 40 comments

escaped robo balloon will we be seeing more of this in coming years? this story is amusing - and perhaps a caution? via the always good yewnkee.com
posted by specialk420 at 4:39 PM PST - 5 comments

The Bush/Cheney campaign lets you look up campaign donors on their web page. With its help, we can now answer the burning question "Forget about me...who does the incredibly popular, beloved-by-millions television personality Wink Martindale support?" Now we know.
posted by Vidiot at 2:33 PM PST - 19 comments

General Thinking "began in early 2001 as a collaboration between Remo Giuffré, Geoffrey Gifford, along with a shared intuitive desire to gather together a global Network of Thinkers who shared certain Beliefs." Their "roster" includes Erik "MetaDesign" Spiekermann and a variety of interesting folks. Friendster for the digerati? Always interesting to read what the elite think of their peers...
posted by shoepal at 2:09 PM PST - 4 comments

NASA laboratory enhancement of the surveillance tape used to nab suspect in West Virginia Target sexual assault. It's nice to know NASA can use image enhancement technology to catch child molesters, but can't use it to find holes in space shuttles.
posted by dayvin at 1:57 PM PST - 12 comments

Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten you lower your chance of getting prostate cancer. Won't somebody think of the kittens?
posted by yhbc at 1:40 PM PST - 64 comments

Improve your profanity with the aid of the guides and dictionaries in this Guardian compendium. As item 10 notes, the term zuffle is too crude to be described up front (and possibly NSFW, if your boss is looking over your shoulder), but it's a fascinating concept nonetheless.
posted by SealWyf at 1:04 PM PST - 17 comments

"The Day The Clown Cried." Even unfinished, the breathtaking scope of it's...awfulness has for thirty years both attracted and repelled would-be producers and distributors. (script, zipped Word doc) Just the concept is startling, like some kind of hellish Sad Lib -- Jerry Lewis plays a clown in Auschwitz who leads children to the gas chambers. Harry Shearer, one of the few to see the film: "You are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. 'Oh my God!' -- that's all you can say." Can this movie ever be made?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:18 PM PST - 39 comments

Web Project Seeks to Digitize Religious Images for Theological Libraries The American Theological Library Association's Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative aims to create a large database of religious images to spare research librarians the expense of digitizing documents that other institutions have already scanned
posted by turbanhead at 11:57 AM PST - 4 comments

Bob Cringely thinks the government's information gathering capability is a disaster waiting to happen. Does our government have too much faith in computers as a solution to our problems? Just as electronic voting is looked at skeptically by the computer-savvy among us, so should the use of computers to gather information.
posted by TedW at 10:27 AM PST - 13 comments

Copyright to the Revolution (translation): "On Wednesday, 9 July 2003, the superior court of Paris banned a poster campaign launched by the group Reporters Without Borders to protest the totalitarian policies of Cuba. This campaign, designed by the agency Rampazzo & Associates, was built around an iconic image of Ernesto Che Guevara, inspired by the original image by the Cuban photographer [Alberto] Korda. The decision came in a suit brought by Diane Diaz Lopez, the late photographer's daughter, accusing the organization of misappropriating the original image taken by her father." The poster reads: "Welcome to Cuba, the world's largest prison for journalists." Korda had sued in 2000 to prevent use of the image in an Absolut vodka campaign. An article at Uzine (French) shows how the image in question was composited.
posted by hairyeyeball at 9:23 AM PST - 25 comments

The annual Bulwer-Lytton contest recognizes and awards the very worst opening sentences found in novels. The 2003 results are in (2002 results, 2001 results) and the winning entry begins "They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese..." [via girlhacker]
posted by mathowie at 9:19 AM PST - 11 comments

Got $100? Then you can pay FOX Sports Net to let you be their NASCAR columnist!
posted by sassone at 8:38 AM PST - 10 comments

Put The Star Wars Kid in Episode III Finally, a petition worth signing.
posted by oissubke at 8:36 AM PST - 33 comments

Hubble Heritage Image Gallery. (Be sure to also check out the Index Listing for links to higher resolution versions of each of the images.)
posted by crunchland at 8:36 AM PST - 6 comments

Man sentenced to read "To Kill A Mockingbird." For spitting at a cop and disorderly conduct, a PA man is jailed and required to read and write a report on Harper Lee's classic. What other books might be fit punishment for certain crimes? (via Obscurestore)
posted by serafinapekkala at 8:04 AM PST - 52 comments

First Documented Case of HIV hybridization in a human being was presented at the International AIDS Society conference in Paris. In this case, genetic tests on a superinfected woman showed that the two strains she was infected with swapped genetic material, creating a new hybrid strain of HIV. The actual effects are not yet clear, but this could pose a serious problem for researchers trying to create a vaccine.
posted by Irontom at 5:15 AM PST - 8 comments

The Elliot Avedon Museum and Archive of Games. Board games from a thirteenth-century 'Book of Games', Inuit games, card games, row games, puzzles, ethnographical papers on games, etc.
A different kind of game at Streetplay - stickball, hopscotch, galleries, and street games worldwide.
posted by plep at 12:34 AM PST - 2 comments