MetaFilter

Blogging behind bars. "Before he sent me to the hole, the administrator looked at me and said, "You should have thought about this before you started playing games." I didn't start this journal to play any games, but now that we're playing, I'm determined to win."
posted by obiwanwasabi at 11:49 PM PST - 9 comments

Bush and bin's brother linked - Toronto Sun Headline: Bin Laden's Brother was Bush's Biz Partner, Pair started texas oil firm. There is no story online however, just the front page. Anybody else hear about this? Field's Dangerous places says in its bio of bin Laden that a brother, Salim, was killed in a hang glider accident in Texas in 1989.
posted by PMcCann at 9:54 PM PST - 23 comments

James Woods Reported Suspicious Passengers to FBI "On a flight from Boston to Los Angeles about a month ago, Woods observed four men of apparent Middle Eastern origin acting so oddly that he reported them to the flight attendants and authorities on the ground when he landed."
posted by saturn5 at 9:33 PM PST - 10 comments

Air pistols cause security alert. "TWO Norwegian schoolchildren caused a security alert at a Scottish airport after boarding a flight home with an air pistol in their luggage, police said. Passengers on board the Norwegian-based Braathens Airways flight were evacuated from the aircraft minutes before take off, an airport spokesman said." I remember getting a simple plastic water pistol (one of the hollow-squeeze things) at a carnival in the UK when I went there on holiday and I had to unpack my hand luggage after it showed up as a six-shooter on the Xray. I don't recall that event making it to the international news feeds.
posted by krisjohn at 8:18 PM PST - 5 comments

More tragicomic WTC news. Apparently, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had a pending trademark patent on the official logo for the WTC commercial district. The logo was Published for Opposition, in which third parties could oppose the patent filing. If gone unopposed, the logo would then be granted the patent. ...Note the status date.
posted by Down10 at 7:24 PM PST - 9 comments

Taliban Magic Trick: $43m...now you see it, now you don't! "Afghan farmers are ready to swamp world markets with heroin amid signs that the Taleban has dropped its ban on opium growing."

Okay...can we please end the War on Plants now?
posted by tpoh.org at 6:57 PM PST - 11 comments

The Clash of Civilizations? An extraordinarily prescient and compelling 1993 essay, with some chilling predictions that in the last two weeks begin to seem dead on target. [more inside]
posted by dhartung at 5:08 PM PST - 28 comments

Describing disaster ¶ Gregory Rosmaita posts links to a couple of pages of described photographs of the WTC attack (by Stephen Cope and Lisa Seeman). Could have used the longdesc tag, but there you go. (Hat tip: Jesse the K)
posted by joeclark at 4:34 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Little Osama Check out the Brady Family photo of young Osama Bin Laden and his 22 brothers and sisters, published in The Sun... Full story here.
posted by crunchybird at 4:16 PM PST - 30 comments

W32/Vote@MM - -is being called "low risk" according to McAfee
posted by scotty at 3:20 PM PST - 8 comments

Local radio commentary on WTC I know we have heard it all so many times in so many different ways, but I like this one.
posted by Oxydude at 2:19 PM PST - 6 comments

Publishers of this excellent book (+film) on electronica were trying to raise awareness of afghanistan's problems before WTC. Their subsequent statement impressed me and I'm planning to buy some music. Buying from decent people is a painless way to change the world - where else for more slightly-more-ethical-than-normal retail therapy? (clunky frames site, but you can suffer a little)
posted by andrew cooke at 1:29 PM PST - 7 comments

Simple pleasures. The beginning of fall means pumpkin carving to me. Try something new. Pull a prank. Roast some seeds. Visit the Mecca of pumpkins. Carve a pumpkin underwater. But for god's sake, please don't forward me this picture again in email. Be a kid again and share your favorite jack o' lantern story.
posted by machaus at 12:33 PM PST - 20 comments

Tiny windows games are diversions designed specifically to meet the needs of today's bored office worker. Check out the actual-size screenshots to see how easy it would be to conceal these on the desktop (try saying "it's a server monitor" if you get caught). [via fark]
posted by mathowie at 12:11 PM PST - 20 comments

Maybe people will finally see "Glitter" after all. More than 200 movie theatre companies will donate all ticket sales and concession revenues to the United Way and the Red Cross for all films shown Tuesday. After two weeks of dreadful box-office grosses and sour moods, maybe this will prime the pump.
posted by tsarfan at 12:05 PM PST - 9 comments

Variety reports (subscription temporarily not required due to the attacks) on changes in upcoming television programming due to perceived (and probably real) audience sensitivity. While we've seen some of this before (like concern over the plane exploding in the premiere of "24"), I see at least one change I'd feared: "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson," (episode 4F22, originally aired four years ago today as the season premiere) where Homer's car is booted at One World Trade Plaza and Homer climbs both towers looking for a bathroom, has been pulled from syndication and, unless Twentieth Television changes its mind, will not be aired again.

Also, Showtime has indefinitely postponed its airing of the well-received indie film "The Believer," about a "self-hating Jew who becomes an anti-semitic skinhead." Overly-senstive reactions or justified changes for a mourning nation?
posted by mdeatherage at 11:33 AM PST - 29 comments

Al Qaeda to cut at least 5,000 jobs -- Citing worldwide reaction to last week's terrorist attacks, multi-national terror network Al Qaeda announced Thursday that it would lay off 5,000 or more holy warriors.
posted by andrewraff at 10:13 AM PST - 16 comments

The Greens and Social Democrats in Germany just lost big in local elections in Hamburg this weekend. Is this the first political fallout from the "War on Terror"? (Here's an English link too, from the Sydney Morning Herald. Couldn't find anything in the U.S. press--thank heaven for Australians.)
posted by gimonca at 9:47 AM PST - 15 comments

Bush or Chimp closes shop. Another stalwart anti-Bush site has folded in light of recent events. The irreverent bushorchimp.com, dedicated to visual comparisons of the President and various look-alike primates has closed down. I understand that we're in the midst of a crisis, but is Bush now beyond criticism? Ok, maybe pictures that compare Bush to monkeys aren't exactly thoughtful criticism... Still, NOW where am I going to get novelty t-shirts for friends and family this Xmas?
posted by mattpusateri at 9:36 AM PST - 48 comments

Thanks to FoodTV and online recipe sources, it seems like more of us are cooking (and more of those who do cook are even cooking well)...
Inspired by that (and the popularity of the beer and liquor threads) I thought we ought to move on to food:
What's your favorite recipe?
(My ceviche inside)
posted by Jako at 9:30 AM PST - 73 comments

Daily comic strips have started to react to the attacks. The only two I noticed in today's paper were Fox Trot and The Boondocks. Their tones are, predictably, somber. The one comic I'd expect to have something to say, Doonesbury, is still stuck on an older storyline. Have other strips referenced September 11?
posted by sandor at 8:05 AM PST - 26 comments

Sources say that Giuliani will seek to extend his term. It was unclear whether the mayor would try to amend those laws so voters could elect him for a third term or whether he would try to extend his current term. Do these circumstances warrant a term extension? Or should Giuliani retire at the end of the year and head up the clean-up efforts?
posted by phooey at 6:53 AM PST - 22 comments

A Hermaphrodite Moose was just shot by a hunter. Hermaphrodite animal rights activists around the world feel its pain.
posted by kingmissile at 6:08 AM PST - 18 comments

Isolationist information and international ignorance -- Whenever I visited my sister in Hong Kong over the past five years, I was always impressed with how much I didn't know about what was going on in the world. This link is a commentary on the feedback to an interview with a CNN Afganistan correspondent who said something similar, and got lambasted for it. Maybe if something good comes out of 9/11, it'll be a shift from celebrity news to real news. Ignorance can be dangerous.
posted by fpatrick at 5:38 AM PST - 13 comments