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Michael Savage fired from MSNBC for hateful remarks I know, I know, newsfilter, newsfilter, but I thought you'd want to know (they don't, yet). Hopefully this will be the fourth and final installment ( 1, 2, 3) in this series.
comment posted at 1:54 AM on Jul-8-03
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comment posted at 7:53 PM on Jul-9-03

How to photograph fireworks. Courtesy of the New York Institute of Photography.
comment posted at 9:32 AM on Jul-4-03

The world's weather is going haywire. So says the World Meteorological Organisation. "The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality." Where is the Kyoto Protocol when you need it?
comment posted at 6:05 AM on Jul-3-03
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comment posted at 11:26 PM on Jul-3-03

"[T]he whole Marvel Universe is starting to occur 500 years early ...

Sir Nicholas Fury is head of the Queen's Intelligence, Dr Stephen Strange is her court physician (and magician), the Inquisition is torturing "witchbreed" ... and now a mysterious treasure -- which may be a weapon of some kind -- is being sent from Jerusalem to England by the last of the Templars. Something that may save the world, or destroy it, which has already attracted the attention of such people as Count Otto Von Doom (known as "The Handsome")... [so] Nicholas Fury sends his top agent, a blind Irish ballad singer named Matthew Murdock, off to bring it back safely."

What does it all mean? Just that Neil Gaiman is taking Marvel back to 1602.
comment posted at 11:58 AM on Jun-30-03

Katharine Hepburn dies
comment posted at 6:39 PM on Jun-29-03

Google Toolbar 2.0 I can't live without my Google toolbar for IE on the PC (Safari's built-in Google-search, while less functional, takes care of me on the Mac). This new version of the Google toolbar features popup blocking, autofill, and a "blog this" button. What other browser toolbars/gizmos make life easier for Joe Websurfer?
comment posted at 8:50 PM on Jun-25-03

It's Summer Camp Time!
Looking at summer camps to send your brats beloved children to for a week personal sanity at home? Look no further! Here it is!
Students will discover the deception of evolution, the importance of purity and morals in a free society, and the pagan connection to the radical environmental movement. Your teen will learn the importance of prayer and action. Most importantly, students will learn that in order to restore America, we must return America to Christ.
Now get out of here and go sign your little tykes up today! It's the patriotic and Christian thing to do. And don't forget the camp needs volunteers.
comment posted at 2:36 PM on Jun-25-03
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comment posted at 7:32 PM on Jun-25-03

When humans faced extinction: A new study suggests that around 70,000 years ago there may have been as few as 2,000 individual humans, meaning that we could have been wiped out before we even got started. Related article here.
comment posted at 11:38 AM on Jun-18-03

Freedom from annoyance vs. freedom of religious expression A municipal bylaw restricting when Jehovah's Witnesses can go door-to-door protects residents' right to privacy and does not violate the group's right to religious freedom and expression, a lawyer argued Tuesday. The City of Blainville, which believes many of its residents don't want Jehovah's Witnesses at their door on weekends and in the evening, is appealing a lower-court ruling that declared its bylaw unconstitutional. But the three justices cautioned Mr. Paquin that it's dangerous to distinguish between someone's right to religious freedom and their right to express their religious beliefs.
comment posted at 3:14 PM on Jun-17-03

For those concerned about loss of Liberty in the United States: a look toward China. Four young friends who met on Bejing University campuses to discuss their progressive politics and posted occasional essays on the Internet have been sentenced to long prison terms, accused of "subverting state power."
comment posted at 9:02 AM on May-30-03

Why a ban on spitting is catching in the throats of Chinese. Apparently, spitting in public is very common in China. "They consider phlegm excrement," explained a coworker of mine who recently visited Shanghai. With SARS spreading in airborne saliva and mucous particles (aka respiratory secretions, China has had to tackle the challenge of outlawing a practice as "common as breathing."
comment posted at 9:28 PM on May-27-03

Emma Peel could eat Buffy Summers for breakfast. An online encyclopedia dedicated to one of the best shows to come out of Britain, The Avengers. It's also the best TV fansite I've ever seen, I think--comprehensive, well-designed, smart without being "inside" or academic, and free of fanboy attitude. Even if you've never watched the show, take some time to look around. [more inside]
comment posted at 5:43 PM on May-23-03

The Soulmate Calculator tells you how many men or women you'll have to meet to find your soulmate, based on U.S. census figures and some weird theories. That's a lot of frogs to kiss...(via Salon)
comment posted at 2:38 PM on May-14-03

Deco Orient: Chinese posters from the 1920s and 1930s, and, L'affiche Chinoise.
comment posted at 7:39 AM on May-14-03

Weaving a web of support around the globe. This site matches web designer volunteers with non-profits around the world. Seems like a good way to bulk up a portfolio while making a difference.
comment posted at 6:27 PM on May-13-03

In an infinite universe there's a copy of you reading this post - in Latin. The Scientific American updates current cosmological thinking on Parallel Universes - The key question is not whether the multiverse exists but rather how many levels it has - and reaches some startling conclusions.
comment posted at 9:00 AM on May-12-03
comment posted at 11:36 AM on May-12-03

Fleecing The Family. According to the article, the Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act. It could mean the end of overtime pay. Sure hope you don't rely on overtime to pay that mortgage. "Everybody gets screwed on this one, except the bosses. Isn't it lovely?"
comment posted at 5:08 PM on May-2-03
comment posted at 5:11 PM on May-2-03

Welcome to 2003. A quiet Southern high school south of Atlanta once again holds seperate white and black proms. "I cried," said McCrary, who is black. "The black juniors said, 'Our prom is open to everyone. If you want to come, come.'"
comment posted at 7:09 PM on May-1-03

'Virgin birth' method promises ethical stem cells. The technique, parthenogenesis, manipulates unfertilized eggs to produce short-lived embryos from which stem cells can be obtained. As the article states: "it produces embryos that could never become human beings. So destroying these embryos to obtain stem cells would avoid the ethical concerns that have led to restrictions or bans on embryonic stem cell research in many countries."
comment posted at 11:29 AM on Apr-29-03

An Insider's Look
at the Southern Baptist wing of the Republican party. How religion and politics became so entwined and how fundamentalists took control of a major American denomination.

The Southern Baptist fundamentalists conquered their denomination; they have every reason to hope the Bush administration will make over the world in their image.
...
The separation of church and state, long central to Baptists, is of little interest to the fundamentalists: In 1998, Richard Land, at a strategy meeting with Republicans and members of the religious right, told the Republicans, "No more engagement. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage."
comment posted at 8:20 AM on Apr-19-03
comment posted at 9:28 PM on Apr-19-03

Prayers for peace. I'm agnostic and my feelings on the current Iraq crisis are confused. However, one thing is almost certain: many innocent people will die in the following weeks (months, years), most of them relegated to statistics. The future is uncertain.
comment posted at 10:17 PM on Mar-17-03

The Senate bans "partial birth" abortions, but a similar law was struck down in Stenberg v. Carhart . Memo to Mr. Bush: there are other branches of the U.S. Federal Government.
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comment posted at 8:18 PM on Mar-14-03

Is hypocrisy essential to the New World Order?
Whilst I appreciate the seductive insights and plausible analysis offered by Lee Harris in this lengthy and generally intelligent essay, I worry that the linking of themes in the intellectual form here merely provides, if not more ammo to the hawks in GWB's Cabinet, the justification for his unending 'war on terror'. There's thinly veiled xenophobia, I'm sure; but also some self-limiting principles compatible with a new kind of 'liberal hegemony' - called 'neo-sovereignty', viz., "It (neo-sovereignty) will only be viable if the U.S. scrupulously refuses to intervene in the self-determination of any state except for the purposes of maintaining the double standards in respect of nuclear weapons... At the heart of the dialectically emergent concept of neo-sovereignty is precisely the double standard that Mr. (Richard, the Chief Arms Inspector of the United Nations) Butler denounced - a double standard imposed by the U.S. on the rest of the world, whereby the U.S. can unilaterally decide to act, if need be, to override and even to cancel the existence of any state regime that proposes to develop WMD, especially in those cases where the state regime in question has demonstrated its dangerous lack of a sense of the realistic." [More inside]
comment posted at 6:15 AM on Mar-12-03
comment posted at 6:19 AM on Mar-12-03

Against Their Will: Forced Sterilization of the "Feeble-Minded." Rich, beautifully designed site from the Winston-Salem Journal about forced sterilization in North Carolina, which continued far later than most other states due to the influence of a small group of elitist businessmen and the complicity of newspapers, politicians and doctors. Heart-wrenching Flash interviews, an interactive timeline and original documents like poems, pamphlets and charts provide hours of fascinating reading. The state has been refusing access to these records for decades.
comment posted at 4:23 AM on Jan-4-03
comment posted at 4:35 AM on Jan-4-03

UN head sees no reason for war with Iraq. The BBC is reporting that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that he sees no basis at present for the use of force against Iraq.

Fun's over, now put away your toys and go home.
comment posted at 4:19 AM on Jan-3-03

Evolution is a process that hasn't stopped just because humans now rule the planet. What will animals look like in 200,000 years? The Discovery Channel's Animal Planet asks experts to predict the future of life on Earth.
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