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It's big, it's bad, and it's coming your way. Beware Bonnie! No, no, wait. Hide from Hanna! Hmm, nope. Run from Rene! Geez, this naming thing isn't easy. How do you name a tropical storm? Should the name be masculine or feminine? Should it roll off the tongue with ease or be a mouthful? Are there some names you can't use? If a tropical storm was closing in on your neighborhood, what would you call it?
posted by debralee at 11:12 PM PST - 10 comments

Search Engines come into fashion and search engines go out of fashion, but only one Search Engine will be there for you when Great Cthulhu rises slowly from the Pacific waters, his slumber of a million years finally at an end!
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!
link via the diary of Farq Q. Fenderson at K5.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:30 PM PST - 14 comments

A Blast from the Past. In 1998, George Bush, Sr. explains why Saddam was not removed in the Gulf War: "Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome."
posted by owillis at 9:43 PM PST - 19 comments

Can't we just get George Bush and Saddam Hussein take E together? Two weeks ago a friend of mine and I were hypothesizing that we could avoid a war with Iraq if these two leaders would just hangout together, take MDMA, and talk to each other. From related experiences I can say that it would certainly help them work through their disagreements. What about you? Has ecstasy use helped or harmed your mental health? (And does anyone read Salon anymore?)
posted by popvulture at 9:42 PM PST - 34 comments

.i la lojban mo
Lojban is in many ways like any other language. There's an English-Lojban dictionary. There's a Lojban grammar. You can even get your news at Nuzban, a Lojban-only news site.

Lojban, however, is a completely constructed language. Why Lojban? Well, Lojban came from Loglan, an invented language from the 1950's (Loglan was created as an experiment to study the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: succinctly, the idea that language and culture are hopelessly intertwined) Today, there are hundreds of invented languages and a thriving language construction community. Alongside well-known constructs such as Tolkien's elven languages and Klingon, there's also d'ni - the language of Myst, a language of flowers, opus-2 - a language that shuns word order and Teonat - a language of the imaginary inhabitants of Teon.
With the help of online language construction kits, you too can create your own language.
posted by vacapinta at 8:44 PM PST - 34 comments

Remember Bullet Time? Remember how it got damn annoying from overuse really quickly? When was the last time you saw something neat done with it?
Take a look at Lumasol.
posted by Su at 6:26 PM PST - 20 comments

Play with your food. Or rather, play it. The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra creates a unique sound using instruments made from vegetables. Then, they make soup.
posted by frykitty at 2:09 PM PST - 14 comments

The new national divide... In my high school town of Davis CA. it was "Coke". In the rest of California it seemed to be "Soda". Until I moved to the Northwest I always had an extreme hick-ish image of folks who say "Pop" and to a certain extent still do.

Where do you live and what do you say?
posted by aaronscool at 1:34 PM PST - 317 comments

"Why terrorism works." In an interview plugging his new book, Alan Dershowitz makes some interesting points and suggests some intriguing solutions vis-a-vis various Current Situations.
posted by donkeyschlong at 1:30 PM PST - 24 comments

Here's a transcript of the president's speech to the UN General Assembly this morning, for those who missed it. The White House has also provided a 21 page document [pdf link] detailing Iraq's history of defiance and disorder over the past decade.
posted by jammer at 1:03 PM PST - 84 comments

WOD hits new low in ridiculosity. From the Shameless Scare 'Em for Ratings files: Flush from the 911 hyper-commemoration news frenzy, but just a little disappointed that the evil-doers didn't do any (as hyped), the news media finds itself on 912 with too much time on their hands. What to do? Break out the tried-and-true emerging drug menace story you keep on hand for just such a news lull!
Khat, (briefly) touted as a new drug menace back when our boys were (briefly) in Somalia, was then shilled as the drug that made somalis into raving homicidal maniacs. IT'S BACK!! According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, chronic use can cause violence and suicidal depression similar to amphetamine addiction, though the agency said it was unaware of any examples(emphasis mine). no laughing now, they want you to take this threat seriously Some say its harmless, others like to compare it to Methedrine
posted by BentPenguin at 12:49 PM PST - 18 comments

Jeb Bush delivers Florida ... to Janet Reno's opponent in the primary. Not a repost of the trouble-at-the-polls brouhaha. Carl Hiaasen looks at the Bush team's "stupendous" backfire in targeting a second-tier candidate, eventual winner Bill McBride, in an apparently incessant string of TV ads that moved McBride from anonymity to a fearsome candidate. "Why else would the GOP buy so much TV time to slam him?" asks Hiaasen, and indeed, McBride's follow-up ads capitalized on this notoriety. By carrying the primary, the race against Bush gets more interesting: "Reno is a known quantity about whom most voters already feel strongly one way or the other," notes Hiaasen. "McBride is a fresh face with no Clinton baggage and a Bronze Star from the Vietnam War."
posted by blueshammer at 12:37 PM PST - 11 comments

An Anti-War Movement of One. by Philip Gold, senior national security analyst for Seattle's conservative Discovery Institute. "...of late, I've taken to constituting myself as an anti-war movement of one--a man of impeccable conservative credentials and long experience in the national-security field, a grumpy old Marine, who has grown infuriated with and appalled by both the conservative embrace of disaster and the enormity of the smallness of what passes for the anti-war movement today."
posted by Ty Webb at 12:21 PM PST - 15 comments

Fruit flies take death lying down. Some scientist somewhere noticed an interesting death habit, if you will, in fruit flies. One day they flop over upside down, and stay there, until they die - almost always ~14 days later. The live approximately 60 days. The point? They believe that something naturally triggers the onset of death and dying. Interesting.
posted by JessicaRose at 11:56 AM PST - 12 comments

Very bad news for Warren Zevon. AP reports that he has untreatable lung cancer. His quote: "I'm OK with it, but it'll be a drag if I don't make it till the next James Bond movie comes out." Damn. Damn.
posted by maudlin at 11:42 AM PST - 18 comments

Remembering the crazy dot-com boom. In November of 1998, a small California Internet provider named AvTel Communications announced they were providing local ADSL service to the community via a typical (and innocent, at least so it was thought) corporate press release. Business wires spin completely mis-interpret the release, CNBC talks about it on air, then clueless investors hoping to get rich quick start throwing money at the stock causing the stock price to rise an amazing 1284% in one day before trading is suspended. After several class-action suits, and a company re-name, the company managed to survive the hoopla, but only barely. Now they're being de-listed like yesterday's trash. Did something like this ever happen to a company for whom you worked? Let's share! (Yeah, I worked there then.)
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:17 AM PST - 10 comments

OK, no I guess I was the only one that thought this toy was cool (I have since bought one and enjoy it), but it would be hard to deny that the Zero Blaster is a very cool toy. See it in action.
posted by Sal Amander at 11:16 AM PST - 20 comments

I guess the media does have some good qualities after all. Yesterday was 9/11. Much of the media spend the day remembering what took place a year ago. A local pop radio station here in Pittsburgh B94 did something a little different. Yes they did the remembering but they also did something that went along the lines of "going about our business". They organized a little something called Operation Jumpstart Pittsburgh. They collected faxed and emailed resumes and hooked people up with companies that were hiring on the spot. It's nice to see the media doing something constructive for a change. I just wonder if anyone else might have some information about things that media outlets in other cities might have done like this.
posted by whirlwind29 at 11:12 AM PST - 5 comments

The Voice of the Prophet. Rick Rescorla was Head of Security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in New York. A vet of three wars and a survivor of the 1993 WTC bombing. He saved many lives that day, but lost his own on Nine Eleven, no doubt again attempting to save lives as he had eight years before. If this is what Shrub means by a Patriot, he should listen to patriots instead of try to name Nine Eleven after them. Rescorla's words echo now in a startling matter-of-fact yet poignant way. I'll copypaste a partial transcript into the body of the thread for those who can't stream video.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:56 AM PST - 3 comments

Two-headed turtle found in Florida
Probably not all that interesting as a single link, but it turns out there are many animals out there with 2 heads. There's a Two-headed moose fetus, The Full Range of animals with 2 heads, Two Headed Snakes, and here's A Nice Bibliography on the double head topic.
As for the turtle, they let it go, "We didn't want it to become a freak in a freak show," they said.
posted by Blake at 10:13 AM PST - 17 comments

Ship searched for nuclear material after it was diverted from New York harbor, reports MS-NBC. Apparently a Department of Energy Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) was involved. Initial report states that elevated gamma and neutron emissions were detected.

Aside from this report--which is unconfirmed--how likely is such an attack? How do we deal with thousands of container ships, each holding hundreds of anonymous containers? This kind of attack scares me much more than airplanes dropping out of the sky.
posted by mooncrow at 10:10 AM PST - 17 comments

"You know, you cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for others. That is what the Western world -- not only the Americans, the Western world -- has to realize. Because they (the have-nots) are human beings too. There are long-term consequences if you don't look hard at the reality in 10 or 20 [or] 30 years from now... I do think that the Western world is getting too rich in relations to the poor world. And necessarily, we're looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. And the 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more." Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien reflects on September 11th, and not all Canadians agree with him.
posted by tranquileye at 10:10 AM PST - 65 comments

Finger Weights You you read that right. I think people are taking "whole-body" work outs a BIT far. As Comic Book Guy would say, "Worst product ever!"
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 9:20 AM PST - 16 comments

Viral Marketing Wants You! Do you want to hype the new season of your tv show? Recruit fans to post what you want them to post in the places you tell them to. Courtesy of the Hype Council. Sure to hit Metafilter soon!
posted by danhon at 8:57 AM PST - 18 comments

Another election debacle in Florida. One year and $30m in technology later, the Reno/McBride primary is marred by late openings and other assorted and sundry glitches. I know, it's a CNN link, but I can't resist anything that includes someone delivering the grade "F-minus-minus-minus" (later determined to be merely an "F-minus-minus" and some Drambuie). Any personal voting horror stories from our Florida contingent? Will the state become a case study in how "throwing money at the problem" never works?
posted by mkultra at 8:24 AM PST - 27 comments

Finally, a Fair Fight with Big Music From a Business Week Online column..."Telecom giant Verizon is battling the industry's bid to make it name a file-sharing subscriber. It's also defending your right to privacy. On July 24, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) made an unprecedented request of Verizon Communications (VZ). The music industry's trade association served the telecom with a subpoena, seeking the identity of a Verizon subscriber who had allegedly illegally traded digital songs by artists including Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and "boy band" N'Sync. The RIAA didn't specify why it wanted to know who the user was or what it would do with the information."
posted by fpatrick at 8:17 AM PST - 22 comments

Coudal Partners site is back. The website is for an advertising agency, but the quality of content is top-notch. With features such as the The museum of Online Museums and Photoshop Tennis to peruse, you won't even notice that you're on a business-related website. Any other websites with content that transcend the commercial nature of the website?
posted by monkeyman at 8:03 AM PST - 4 comments

When patriotism wasn't religious (nytimes) Last night in front of the Texas Capitol in Austin, the 9/11 memorial vigil featured singing of The Lord's Prayer; a Baptist reverend who talked mostly of caution against the "Islamic government of Sudan" and "Islamic mobs" who attacked Christians and Jews in Pakistan; and a Catholic bishop who addressed "our God" over 100 times. Am I wrong to think this amount of religiosity was inappropriate in front of a mixed public crowd at the statehouse? How can we be free when church and state are so intertwined?
posted by skyboy at 7:44 AM PST - 122 comments

Is RNAi the future therapeutic approach for tackling everything from AIDS to cancer. Already it is being touted as a molecular biological panacea. A lot of research has been carried out in vitro , just those crucial human trials to go.
posted by johnnyboy at 6:01 AM PST - 8 comments

Spectacular atmospheric optics.
Beautiful pictures of atmospheric phenomena, common and rare. You can also run your own halo simulations if you like... (Found in New Scientist's Weblinks, an extensive, annotated collection of all kinds of science links from all over the web.)
posted by talos at 5:23 AM PST - 13 comments

HE answers some queries A short list ( though more than 10 ) of modern commandments (via boing boing)
posted by johnny7 at 2:30 AM PST - 33 comments