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Profits 1, human dignity 0. Work at the Jim Beam bourbon plant? Need to go to the bathroom? Too bad. Six unexcused pees and you're fired, says management.
posted by PrinceValium at 9:11 PM PST - 81 comments

Howard Dean Get to know that name because you will likely be hearing it often in the coming months. The Governor of Vermont is currently the only Democratic presidential contender who has officially declared his candidacy. He is gaining press nationally and internationally as a potential breath of fresh air on the American political landscape. An interesting mix of liberal populism and traditional conservative fiscal responsibility, he is known to rub colleges from both sides of the ideological spectrum the wrong way. Regardless of your opinion on his politics, do you think this man have a shot? Do the proverbial square pegs in the Democratic and GOP round holes ever stand a chance? Will the Bush and Gore juggernauts forever push differing ideas into the realm of third parties or is there room for descent from within?
posted by EmoChild at 8:27 PM PST - 41 comments

Is Dave Sim going mad? Speculation has been running rampant in the Interweb comic book community that Dave Sim, writer and artist of Cerebus, arguably one of the greatest comic book series of all time, has lost his mind. Granted, many of Sim's essays have been misogynist, and he has publicly challenged Bone creator Jeff Smith to a fist fight for a somewhat trivial slight, but that is hardly evidence of insanity. Has he crossed the line from extremist to madman? Is his writing a Swiftian satire or, as one critic called it, the Mein Kampf of misogyny?
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:27 PM PST - 39 comments

Did you know "88" means "Heil Hitler"? Neither did a buyer at Target. "August 27, 2002 -- Target, the nationwide department-store chain, said today it will pull shorts and baseball caps emblazoned with neo-Nazi hate symbols from its shelves." After dithering for a few weeks, Target responded to tolerance.org's campaign, but is now shooting themselves in the foot again by being less than accomodating of returns of the offending (and I do mean offending!) product. The link above is to the original story, the Aug. 27 update is linked at the bottom of that page. Howcum I never saw this on CNN? 8
posted by BGM at 7:15 PM PST - 105 comments

FuckedCompany knocked offline for two days due to headlines that sounded like Ford's advertising slogans. While FC is no stranger to cease and desist orders, Ford threatened the web host directly, who ended up pulling the plug. Was Ford in the right, or did they overstep their bounds? Personally, it sounds a lot like suing a newspaper when a headline plays on your advertising.
posted by mathowie at 5:00 PM PST - 30 comments

Like Tintin, Asterix, or even the Smurfs? Step right this way, to the dark, spooky side of French cartooning. Jacques Tardi, relatively obscure in this country, brings you many lovely lonely images of cityscapes and small horrors, mostly within the amazing stories of Adele Blanc-Sec, writer and adventurer. At least one of his books is still in print in English, and most can be ordered from overseas, and are well worth it.
posted by interrobang at 4:22 PM PST - 23 comments

The book, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge by Alan M. Dershowitz, (the one who accused five justices of the Supreme Court of outright corruption in siding with Bush in Bush v. Gore) is reviewed by his old nemesis Judge Richard A. Posner, known best for his Cost-benefit analysis in legal issues. It's your call.
posted by semmi at 3:13 PM PST - 7 comments

More good mp3 news. Thomson Multimedia is now requiring patent payments for MP3 decoders as well as encoders.
posted by alana at 2:56 PM PST - 23 comments

PlayStation 2 launches online service - Hard-core gamers looking for new challengers will now have an Internet full of them. Sony on Tuesday released adapters that make PlayStation 2 the first console player to go online. Playstation 2 players who purchase the $39.99 connector can link to Sony's network through a number of new games, including the military shoot-em-up "SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs" and the football simulator "Madden NFL 2003."
posted by DailyBread at 2:23 PM PST - 25 comments

Betamax RIP? And I barely even knew you.
posted by Rattmouth at 1:47 PM PST - 27 comments

Interesting article about ways in which telecom companies can take what they have and make it more profitable as opposed to pie in the sky broadband/lifestyle schemes. Some cool ideas.
posted by zeoslap at 1:44 PM PST - 7 comments

Civic Responsibility at its Finest: If your city contained dozens of stylish and beautiful fiberglass statues of moose that were repeatedly being vandalized, what would you do?
posted by 314/ at 12:57 PM PST - 23 comments

Wild goose chase - "British wildlife experts are mourning the loss of Kerry the goose after tracking him by satellite all the way from Ireland to an Eskimo's kitchen in Arctic Canada." No, seriously.
posted by paladin at 12:55 PM PST - 10 comments

A robot called Pyramid Rover will explore two 8 inch wide mysterious passages in the Great Pyramid at Giza. A previous robot exploration by the Upuaut Project found the passage blocked by a slab with copper fittings which looked suspiciously like a door. The Pyramid Rove will carry ground penetrating radar and fiber optic cameras to explore what lies beyond the "door."
posted by caddis at 12:35 PM PST - 21 comments

The Bush administration announces the slogan for the campaign to combat adolescent obesity: "Verb: It's what you do." I am totally confused. The website suggests I make a paper airplane (PDF) to get started on burning off those fat rolls. (via Slate)
posted by ao4047 at 12:27 PM PST - 40 comments

SatireWire is closing up shop. Andrew Marlatt, the multi-trick pony behind the site, is citing "creative differences" with himself and is opting to walk away from one of the better-known bastions of Web humor, as well as one of those rare free content sites that, according to Marlatt, is profitable:

The site actually makes money — through advertising, through the book "Economy of Errors," and (primarily) through selling pieces from the site to publications like, say, the Washington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or the National Post in Canada. Nice little setup, actually. I've been very lucky. But the bottom line is, it has ceased to be fun. My heart is not in it. My head is not in it.

But just because Marlatt has chosen a different route to the dead pool that those sites that gave up the ghost because they were broke doesn't make this story much more discussion-worthy than any other croaked dotcom. In proper obit style, let's instead remember the great stuff we got from the site; if you've never been, you'll find all sorts of treasures.
posted by blueshammer at 11:43 AM PST - 15 comments

"... virtually unique in their ability to attain dry stickiness." geckos are talented little buggers, that's for certain. effective pitchmen, as well. but what about those toes? just how does a gecko manage to shimmy up the slippery side of your aquarium with the greatest of ease? well, according to researchers at lewis and clark university, it all comes down to hair....
posted by grabbingsand at 11:25 AM PST - 12 comments

Here Comes The Rain Again Virginia Gov. Mark Warner has decided to prove that he's a tough-on-acts-of-god kind of governor. He's no wimp when it comes to weather, our governor. Nosireebob. He's gonna show that weather who's boss! He's appointed a drought czar. "Drought czar?" What's next? An education czar? A jaywalking czar? A stop-breathing-through-your-nose-on-the-elevator-please-goddammit czar? Talk about your linguistic inflation.
posted by NedKoppel at 11:11 AM PST - 19 comments

Remember the Beast? Will there be something like it again? Did you have a crush on Laia, suddenly discover a use for your knowledge of lute tablature, or vote for the Mann act? This is basically an excuse to indulge in nostalgia (how many MeFites were Cloudmakers?), but it'd be interesting to see if anyone is still interested in fan-based interactive fiction gaming, or if it was basically a one-shot movie promotion that could only be supported by the resources of a big company. Is "the AI route" a dead end? What is the line between a movie-supported online game and inspired Web marketing? -- Or hell, just tell some Red King stories.
posted by redshoes3 at 9:20 AM PST - 15 comments

Illusionist Criss Angel emerges from his 24-hour sojourn in a Chinese water torture cabinet in NYC's Times Square. Should an endurance contest really be considered magic? Where are you, David Copperfield?
posted by dr_dank at 9:00 AM PST - 18 comments

Please Mr. Postman look and see
Is there a letter in your bag for me
I been waiting a long long time
For me to hear from that nameless pal of mine.
posted by pedantic at 7:41 AM PST - 15 comments

New Bog Snorkeling World Champion Crowned
People have such odd hobbies and collections.
I'm not talking about things like CrossStiching, or Air Guitar, or Naming Your Pens, but really strange ones.
Air Sickness Bags are art to some, so are Wal-Mart Purchase Receipts, and Nobs, always fun at parties there's collecting navel fluff, I'm not Sure What To Call This, there's Squirrel Fishing , collecting Odd Rod Cards, heck, Books Have Been Written, even The USAToday collects them.
I dunno, is Mefi a strange hobby?
posted by Blake at 7:36 AM PST - 14 comments

Thai company employs Spider-man to deliver cooking gas. Marvel sez: "use monkey suits because monkeys don't have intellectual property rights." 'Nuff Said?
posted by mikrophon at 7:28 AM PST - 12 comments

55,000 angry emails, all because someone decided to forge an email from "pro-palestinian agitator" Francis Boyle. The best part? "the FBI didn't find anything illegal". The guy "spent nearly four days sifting through the messages, writing personal apologies to the offended".

It really is too easy...
posted by mrgavins at 7:24 AM PST - 8 comments

"I don't care what anyone but a court of law thinks," says Wilmington Mayor James M. Baker "Until a court says otherwise, if I say it's constitutional, it's constitutional." Sure, we've talked before about how Delaware is a cesspool of evil, but that was before it was reported that the cops in Wilmington were compiling a database of future suspects, before crimes were actually comitted.
posted by ph00dz at 6:35 AM PST - 78 comments

Australian government refuses to recognize Jedi as an official religion, despite the fact that 70,000 people listed it on their census forms.
posted by swift at 6:30 AM PST - 33 comments

Is Current Israeli Policy Incompatible With Judaism? Jonathan Sacks, Britain's Chief Rabbi and arguably the outstanding Jewish intellectual of his generation, has apparently broken away from the established stance of Orthodox Judaism and made public a series of worries and reservations that rabbis have been making privately ever since Sharon took power. It's not so much politics (though everything is) that is at stake but the dissonance between the highly peaceful (indeed anti-military) and human character of Judaism and the hard, secular realism of present-day Israeli politics. Are they becoming irreconcilable? Were they always so?[Jonathan Freedland, who interviewed Professor Sacks, had this to say about the bigger picture.]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:58 AM PST - 103 comments