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"Filthy Jew." "'They are calling me a [expletive] Jew, and that I am responsible for killing Christ.'" But so what if at a private Christian school the "official academy newspaper runs a Christmas ad every year praising Jesus and declaring him the only savior, [signed by nearly] 200 academy staff members, including some department heads," and "[t]he academy commandant... a born-again Christian, said in a statement to cadets in June 2003 that their first responsibility is to their God"?

But it's not a private Christian school. It's a school run by the United States of America, a school where all the students swear to defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies. It's the United States Air Force Academy, training the nation's future military leaders. [more inside]
comment posted at 8:01 PM on Apr-20-05

Big Oil fosters skepticism about climate change, years after the vast majority of scientists agree that it's happening. From 2000 to 2003, ExxonMobil spent more than eight million dollars funding some forty think tanks and organizations, whose pundits dutifully propagate the idea that today's man-made C02-emissions aren't really a threat to the future.
comment posted at 8:26 PM on Apr-20-05
comment posted at 8:37 PM on Apr-20-05

Bread is dangerous Research on bread indicates that: More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days. (More research inside)
comment posted at 8:46 PM on Apr-20-05

(all links safe for work) Some once hypothesized that as pornography became more accessible and more mainstream, men in turn would become uncontrollable, ravenous sexual beasts. I always thought this myself: a man will see something in porn that a real woman won't give him—Internet porn now caters in a click to every fetish you can imagine—and he will find a way to get it.
 
My ex-girlfriend, observant and intelligent beyond her years, always used to tell me the opposite: it wouldn't turn men into beasts, having their way with every woman they saw. No, it would turn them away from women completely, libidos and their ability to connect with real females weakened by the hardcore acts and impossible bodies that only porn stars could give them. The porn would crave some intrinsic desire, but leave both people in the couple lonelier and less fulfulled.
 
Now I think she was absolutely right.
comment posted at 11:53 AM on Apr-18-05

Poop is the one experience all human beings have in common. Did you "take some time to think when you take your time to stink" on Poop for Peace Day? Well, if not, the day after is a perfect time to properly honor this noble holiday. Sure is hard to argue with this: "We all poop, which means we're all human, which means we're all brothers and sisters." [via skimble]
comment posted at 6:30 AM on Apr-16-05

Teen steals corpse head for use as bong ? : "Police at first could not believe what they had heard" - some reporters just have a gift for understatement.
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comment posted at 5:39 PM on Apr-16-05

Dissent against police tactics and possible corruption leads to a raid and confiscation of a Calgary man's computer. IP's of former officers who may of accessed the site and passed along complaints of racist and sexist behavior about the current management are also being tracked. Is free speech still alive in Canada?
comment posted at 8:59 PM on Apr-15-05

The best of the worst of the week on television. The Parents Television Council, a U.S.-based watchdog organization trying to stamp out indecency on the airwaves, is doing their part in the war against moral turpitude. How? By creating a website where they host videos of the most offensive scenes on television... inadvertently creating some of the most amusing content on the internet!
comment posted at 8:38 PM on Apr-15-05
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comment posted at 5:44 PM on Apr-16-05

Research suggests parents give unattractive children less attention, so I’m packing up my Minority Report computer interface (in development for US Military) and that Bomb-sniffing polymer, and Aye-Aye’m outta here.
comment posted at 9:08 PM on Apr-15-05

Robot planes may make phone towers obsolete "...it's a "Stratellite", and its makers believe it will revolutionise the broadband and wireless industry; if it ever gets off the ground.

Wisconsin communications company Sanswire on Tuesday unveiled its almost-finished prototype of a hard-framed, unmanned airship designed to fly in the stratosphere 21km above the earth and send broadband and cellphone signals to an area the size of Texas."

This in my opinion is an example of truly innovative technology.
comment posted at 1:31 AM on Apr-14-05

NASA scientists say that a large gamma ray explosion within our own galaxy may have triggered a mass extinction hundreds of millions of years ago.
comment posted at 1:33 AM on Apr-14-05

Lions and tigers and Reconstructionists, oh my! The big scary religious right, in my own Massachusetts backyward....run away! I cower and tremble as David Barton, like Godzilla, looms near.
comment posted at 6:46 AM on Apr-12-05

How do you make a “trusted system”? A planning and organisational system which can be relied upon to contain your events, tasks, projects and thoughts?... One of the biggest obstacles for many people is how to create a system that is always there, at the ready, and worthy of your trust.
comment posted at 6:35 AM on Apr-12-05

Jeffords' Theory: "U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords, the Vermont Independent, may face a clear field right now in a 2006 re-election bid, but his March 22 performance on Vermont Public Radio's Switchboard program raised a few eyebrows. I think it was all done to get oil, Jeffords said of invading Iraq. And the loss of life that we had, and the cost of it, was to me just a re-election move, and they're going to try to live off it. Probably start another war, wouldn't be surprised, next year. Probably in Iran, said Jeffords, echoing Seymour Hersch's words from January.
comment posted at 8:02 PM on Apr-11-05

"In the Name of Politics" (NYT) Rev. John C. Danforth, the outgoing US ambassador to the UN, Republican Senator for 18 years, native Missouran and Episcopal minister worries that the Republican Party is turning very literally theocratic. In this short editorial he states "the only explanation ... is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law."
(Just as a side note, we're taking applications.)
comment posted at 6:33 AM on Apr-11-05
comment posted at 7:54 PM on Apr-11-05

Why can't I pay attention anymore? Maybe I have ADT or NADD. Did we already discuss this? I can't remember. I need to be more mindful.
comment posted at 8:11 PM on Apr-10-05

High school kids. Doing drugs! A 23-year-old female undercover agent posed as a student at Milford High School. The investigation culminated Friday with the arrest of 16 students on drug-trafficking charges. Twelve are juveniles. Public opinion is running 20 - 1 in favor of the sting.
Sandy Howdyshell, a 34-year-old Milford graduate who has an elementary school student in the district, said she was undecided on the school district's $108.6 million bond issue that will appear on ballots May 3 - until she heard about the undercover investigation... "I think it was a brilliant idea to put an undercover cop in the high school," Howdyshell said. "This event certainly has made an impact in my eyes. Now I know I'll be voting to support Milford schools."
comment posted at 8:32 PM on Apr-8-05

A Pro-Evil Mutual Fund? For centuries, the argument in favor of laissez-faire capitalism has been simple. If you step back and let businesses pursue profit without restraint, legitimate needs and desires will be taken care of in an efficient manner. Moral concerns, the argument goes, are better handled by consumers and investors voting with dollars than governments coercing with legislation. Now, Cato Institute scholar and Fox News columnist Steven Milloy is worried ideologically motivated investors might be putting business profits in danger. He's forming a new mutual fund to fight their leftist influence.
comment posted at 8:35 PM on Apr-8-05

In Warburton, a town not too far from Melbourne, Australia, there's allegedly something not quite right swimming around in a humble trout farmer's catchment. Is this Australia's Nessie? Some selected quotes from the linked articles.

A giant eel, believed to be around 13ft-long with a head the size of a football has been spotted at the trout farm at Warburton.

It is believed the eel washed into the farm's ponds during this month's record breaking storms.

"We hope to catch him alive and take him to the Melbourne Aquarium."

I reckon it's true. Might even go and throw a line in myself, hey. It's just a shame that there are no pictures or film evidence thus far. Oh, this is my first front page post on MeFi. Hello world!
comment posted at 10:44 PM on Apr-7-05

The Garbage House is a bizarre but all-too-common phenomenon. Garbage houses often seem to be a product of a particular type of obsessive-compulsive disorder called compulsive hoarding. The hoarding [wmv, direct] may be of garbage, animals, (the neighborhood "cat lady") or perhaps even "collectibles" from eBay. The most compulsive hoarders seem to be the Collyer Brothers[*], even prompting a book.
comment posted at 10:51 PM on Apr-7-05

Senator's aide admits to writing "Schiavo Memo". Hoping for another "memogate" story, bloggers have been pushing accusations for the last few weeks that the highly-criticized GOP memo indicating the "political advantage" of the Terri Schiavo situation was a forgery or "dirty tricks" from Democrats. Today, the legal counsel to Florida Sen. Mel Martinez admitted to writing and distributing the memo (and promptly resigned.) Many bloggers who pushed the accusation are, shall we say, not exactly jumping at the opportunity to print mea culpas. Considering the growing debate about bloggers being treated as journalistic equals, what obligations does the blogosphere have to simply admit it was completely wrong on a story?
comment posted at 11:11 PM on Apr-7-05

By a weird coincidence, after reading this interview in New Scientist with three of the engineers who made electronic music possible, I walked by a poster for a documentary film about Bob Moog. One of my earliest memories of electronic music in the 1970s was an elementary school music teacher who was really into Wendy Carlos' and Isao Tomita's early arrangements of classical works for synthesizer. Of course, electronic music history goes back to the 1920s with the theremin developed as a classical instrument. It has its own web portal filled with lots of good stuff. And now for something slightly different, Conlon Nancarrow wrote piano compositions that could not be performed by human hands, demanding the use of a player piano.
comment posted at 8:22 PM on Apr-4-05

Help Save P2P! The United States Supreme Court is currently considering the legality of peer-to-peer file sharing programs in a case called MGM v. Grokster. Rumor has it that the Justices have set up a computer, in the court, with Grokster on it. If you have legal P2P files to share, blogger Death in the Afternoon suggests that you move them to Grokster immediately, as this might help convince the Justices that P2P is good for more than just illegal filesharing. (If you doubt that, think Diebold). If you don't have any legal files, you can get some here. (More inside).
comment posted at 8:25 PM on Apr-4-05

The babbling of baby birds "Hear a baby wren and the author"s own daughter babble as each learns its local dialect. Listen to the mockingbird by night and by day and count how many different songs he can sing. Marvel at the exquisite harmony in the duet of a wood thrush as he uses his two voice boxes to accompany himself." The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong, by Donald Kroodsma, with accompanying audio CD.
comment posted at 8:33 PM on Apr-4-05

Knives (and their X-rays) the FBI doesn’t like (PDF, .htm here). Some plastic, some not; Some widely manufactured, others handmade. None of them seem likely to go the way of the "non-existent" all-plastic gun.
comment posted at 10:05 PM on Apr-3-05

Thomas L. Friedman, award winning NY Times columnist and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Longitudes and Attitudes, and From Beirut to Jerusalem, will publish his fourth book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, this week. An article adopted from the book, "It’s a Flat World After All", was printed in the NY Times Magazine today:

In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail for India, going west. He had the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. He never did find India, but he called the people he met 'Indians' and came home and reported to his king and queen: 'The world is round.' I set off for India 512 years later. I knew just which direction I was going. I went east. I had Lufthansa business class, and I came home and reported only to my wife and only in a whisper: 'The world is flat.'
comment posted at 7:53 PM on Apr-3-05
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comment posted at 6:38 AM on Apr-26-05

Fake name. Fake reporter. Fake news agency. Fake Marine. And now this... Fake Nonprofit ! Need I say more ? Probably not except for this nasty tidbit : Jeff Guckert's ( AKA "Mr. Fake" ) fake nonprofit seems to have been set up to defend "ProBush.com" against a $5 million libel lawsuit filed for that site's publishing of a notorious "traitor's list". This whole story reminds me of a meatloaf slowly rotting in the hot August sun.
comment posted at 8:09 AM on Mar-31-05

Sanchez Perjury Proof ? That depends on the meaning of "never" Mainstream media once again caught with pants down as blogger citizen-journalist notes apparent perjury by Gen. Sanchez during testimony before the US Congress concerning whether he authorized torture or not. The Globe and Mail noticed the ACLU release of a FOIA-obtained memo showing that Sanchez did in fact authorize torture, but the implication of perjury seems to have escaped MSM notice, to be pointed out by a blogger Metafilter's own citizen journalist Mark Kraft, who declares : "Sanchez is clearly guilty of perjury, and should face the wrath of Congress... and the Senate should determine the guilt of his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, while they're at it."

The case all hinges on the meaning of the word "never" which - rumor holds - is much more flexible in Sanchez' native "Never-never Land" where - as with the rumored numerous Eskimo terms for different kinds of snow - denizens of that realm have many different meanings for "never", some of which in fact mean "sometimes" or "occasionally" !
comment posted at 5:54 AM on Mar-30-05

Imbedded backdoor reporter - I like it below the fold! AMERICAblog is soliciting suggestions for protest signs to commemorate the national Press Club's panel on blogging and journalism. Dirty cracks abound. Surely some of our resident wits can add to the ribaldry. (NSFW)
comment posted at 11:32 PM on Mar-29-05
comment posted at 11:34 PM on Mar-29-05

Does the right to life trump the right to die? In an increasingly hysterical debate surrounding Terry Schiavo, Garret Keizer provides a thought-provoking analysis of who should decide when and how a person dies: "The alarms raised in America’s ongoing right-to-die debate have always been characterized by a curious selectivity. You will notice, for example, how the fear of playing God operates exclusively on one side of the medical playground. Thus to help a patient end his or her life “prematurely” is playing God, while extending it in ways and under conditions that no God lacking horns and a cloven hoof could ever have intended is the mandate of “our Judeo-Christian heritage” and the Hippocratic oath."
comment posted at 4:58 AM on Mar-29-05

A good reason to hate cats. However if that is not enough, this guy has 32 other reasons to hate cats.
comment posted at 4:42 AM on Mar-29-05

Sails to harness Vox Populi winds : "Technology is changing politics" [ not to mention journalism ] intones the well connected Personal Democracy Forum, and everybody's leaping into the "Blogging vs. Journalism" fray. Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media, has quit his job after receiving seed money from Mitch Kapor and from Omidyar Networks, to found the for-profit "Grassroots Media Inc." : Gillmor's got a hand, as well, in the noble and name studded OurMedia.org : "We'll host your media forever — for free.....Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads"

Meanwhile, SusanG - in her most recent recently released investigative piece into the Jeff Gannon/fake journalism scandal notes her research group's effort "now encompasses so much more than Gannon" and announces future stories will post under the organizational name of ePluribus Media

"We're the People ! No you're not, we're the People ! No way ! We're the...."
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