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The entire 50 years of Peanuts are to be reprinted in chronological hardback volumes by Fantagraphics in a project that will take 12 and a half years to complete.
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:24 PM PST - 49 comments

SpeechEasy - a true fluency device to alleviate stuttering.
Janus Development Group, Inc. fluency products are therapeutic devices designed to dramatically reduce stuttering. They employ altered auditory feedback in the form of auditory delays and frequency shifts to provide maximum benefit to individuals who stutter.
posted by starscream at 8:54 PM PST - 8 comments

SkyHigh Airlines is one of the funniest, most well done and fleshed out parody sites I've seen on the web. Try everything, plan a trip (notice the luxurious ports of call they fly into), track your lost luggage - oh hell, just click everything, you'll be glad you did. Even the Chairman's letter is funny.
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 5:09 PM PST - 22 comments

How bad is it really in Iraq? The majority of the media stories have covered the attacks on American troops and the unrest among Iraqi citizens. But is that the full story? An Iraqi Catholic bishop thinks the media is lying about the postwar state of the country. An Iraqi journalist writes that Basrah is moving towards religious stability. There are other stories of the renewed economic opportunities in Iraq. An American federal judge visited the country and found overwhelming support for Americans. Even a Democratic Congressman thinks the negative media coverage is dangerous. More coverage from in-country and polls (NY Times) that show Iraqi optimism.
posted by marcusb at 4:03 PM PST - 73 comments

Welcome to Maskon.com. Your one-stop resource for female latex masks on the Internet. [via Cup of Chicha]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:59 PM PST - 9 comments

Before there were videogames... an archive of old penny arcade machines.
posted by crunchland at 2:36 PM PST - 7 comments

WiFi Speed Spray "It's an amazing product, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who has a computer or would like to have a computer." [via Michael's So-Called Life]
posted by DBAPaul at 1:29 PM PST - 15 comments

A little Iraqi girl -- no more than eight years old -- squatted beside the road with tears of humiliation streaming down her cheeks. Twenty feet away, three American soldiers had their rifles aimed at her as she was forced to relieve herself in full view of a long line of parked cars. From inside their vehicles, the Iraqi onlookers screamed their rage at the U.S. troops. Whenever one of the Iraqis ventured to step out of his vehicle, an American officer bellowed, "Get back in the car, a--hole!" and the .50-calibre machinegun mounted on the U.S. Hummer would swing menacingly toward the protester.
posted by tpoh.org at 1:18 PM PST - 116 comments

Theodore Roosevelt 'Hound Dog' Taylor
posted by wobh at 12:24 PM PST - 8 comments

Freeland's We Want Your Soul video is a cynical look at the american dream and keeping up with the joneses. Whether you agree with the point of view, it's still a pretty cool and amusing use of camera effects. (note: large quicktime on that page) [via randomfoo]
posted by mathowie at 12:00 PM PST - 14 comments

The Blur Building. Now you can spend your day in a literal fog.
posted by srboisvert at 11:20 AM PST - 5 comments

Rupert Murdoch, The Guardian Newspaper Group, magazine group IPC (and others) have formed an unlikely coalition, the British Internet Providers Association, in order to do one thing: decimate the BBC Online website, and protect their own online ventures. They demand that "BBC Online should be scaled back to being a 'news portal' and...should release its internet source code to commercial organisations." Spin-off projects such as iCan, the grassroots political site which the BBC is set to launch in October, would be trashed, and the BBC's use of its website to promote programmes, magazines and services would be restricted. In addition the BBC would face a cost ceiling on its online budget and be forced to "provide links to the news services of its competitors."
The Governement's closing date for submissions to the BBC Online review is November 17th, 2003.
posted by Blue Stone at 10:41 AM PST - 32 comments

The 24 Hour Hitch. Howell Parry, a student at Manchester in the early 90s, undertook three fund-raising 24-Hr Hitchhikes with the aim of getting as far as possible. Parry kept logs of his second and third trips (the first hadn't been too successful, getting only as far as London). Nomadic Simes, a wandering web designer, presents hitchhiking tips. See also history's hitchhiking record holders.
posted by nthdegx at 10:37 AM PST - 6 comments

Yes, We're The Mini*Pops! For a few brief, shining years in the 80s the Mini*Pops were the ne plus ultra of every pre-adolescent's rock star fantasies. From the classic Mini*Pops, to the haunting Mini*Pops Let's Dance, to everyone's seasonal favourite Mini*Pops Christmas, the Mini*Pops embodied the hopes and dreams of pedophiles children everywhere. Of course, no retrospective of the Mini*Pops would be complete without listening to their bastardization of tribute to Abba.
posted by filmgoerjuan at 10:26 AM PST - 12 comments

The British find WMDs, evidence of gruesome experiments on human guinea pigs. This, plus recent shipments of the chemical precursors needed to produce sarin and other chemical weapons to countries such as Libya, Iran, Syria, and Sudan should pretty much wrap things up, no?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:40 AM PST - 18 comments

How to hack an election 1.12: Diebold tries to silence incriminating evidence : Diebold, maker of proven-to-be hackable voting systems, plays global whack-a-mole, in effort to scare ISP's into taking down websites with incriminating material. They used the DCMA to shut down BlackBoxVoting.org.

But the incriminating data just keeps popping back up on the Net, and Gun-and-Voting rights activist Jim March calls the bluff and challenges Diebold “Diebold: You are cordially invited to bite me. Bring it on. Make my day.". March has created a legal strategy/toolkit for voting rights activists who want to fight Diebold, a company which has knowingly - for 10 years - sold security-compromised voting technology, and whose CEO, an aggressive Republican fundraiser, has said he is "he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." In internal memos published by Scoop, Diebold's officials admit that their voting records database is (and has been for a long time) hackable ( [anyone can] "access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log without entering a password" ) but that this isn't necessarily a problem because "It has a lot to do with perception. Of course everyone knows perception is reality." For background to this story, see my summary of Mefi posts on the Voting Fraud story, from this thread. Diebold's funky voting systems are in the process of being "Certified", in Maryland and elsewhere, by SAIC, a company convicted of major frauds within the last decade and which has extensive ties to the Bush Administration, the CIA, and which "proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients.", and owns Network Solutions, Inc. SAIC has not, it seems, noticed the GEMS database story (see main link). If Diebold systems win certification, we can expect an awful lot of This sort of thing. Computer security expert Dr. Rebecca Mercuri has some pointed analysis on the subject.

You can join the effort to demand truly secure voting systems at VerifiedVoting.Org by David L. Dill, a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. Go team.
posted by troutfishing at 8:26 AM PST - 35 comments

Medical histories of American Presidents - Washington "exuded such masculine power as frightens young women just wakening to the opposite sex." Jefferson had all his teeth when he died at 84. Wilson's handshake was described as "a ten-cent pickled mackerel in brown paper." Taft was once laid up for a few days after a bug flew into his eye. Facts & trivia about presidential health.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:12 AM PST - 15 comments

I'm starting to think I was only one to ever buy a Rubik's Clock. The hours I spent trying to work it out, the effort I put in, whilst all along there's a simple solution to the infernal thing. While we're on Rubik's games, this man with an audiacious mullet has lots of tips on solving them, and another man can solve the Rubik's Cube in 16 seconds (.mpg file). Impressive, although his social life must have suffered...
posted by wibbler at 4:06 AM PST - 16 comments