MetaFilter

Kissing is terrorist behavior now? From the article: 'Shortly after takeoff, Varnier nodded off, leaning his head on Tsikhiseli. A stewardess came over to their row. “The purser wants you to stop that,” she said...The captain told Tsikhiseli that if they didn’t stop arguing with the crew he would divert the plane.'
comment posted at 1:31 PM on Sep-20-06

Meet our new Special Envoy to Darfur, where genocide is taking place-- Andrew Natsios--he did a heckuva job at the Big Dig in Boston, and in misunderestimating the costs of Iraq, and --while head of USAid--at refusing funding AIDS drugs in Africa because many Africans 'don't know what Western time is.
comment posted at 8:46 PM on Sep-20-06

After two months of sifting the information, Hegland had her answer. 'The data was really clear,' she says. 'It was mind-boggling.' It showed that most of the detainees hadn’t been caught 'on the battlefield' but rather mostly in Pakistan; fewer than half were accused of fighting against the U.S., and there was scant evidence to confirm that they were even combatants. In other words, most of the detainees probably were entirely innocent. Just a few days after Hegland published a three-part series on her findings in early February, a law professor at Seton Hall University... and his son, ...who together have represented Guantanamo detainees, published a study that also used the Defense Department’s own data... Only 8 percent of detainees at Guantanamo were labeled by the Defense Department as 'al Qaeda fighters,' they found, and just 11 percent had been captured 'on the battlefield' by coalition forces.

Who are the Prisoners at Gitmo?
comment posted at 3:26 PM on Sep-19-06
comment posted at 3:44 PM on Sep-19-06
comment posted at 9:13 PM on Sep-19-06

Here's what happens when Popular Mechanics sends their lead fact checker to an AZ talk radio station to debate the 911 'inside job' theory. Lots of speculation, stammering and "I'll get back to you on that" ensues. [23 min. mp3]
comment posted at 11:13 AM on Sep-19-06

Noah Takes a Photo of Himself Every Day for Six Years (YouTube)
comment posted at 3:32 PM on Sep-18-06

God Save Our Queen.
comment posted at 11:05 AM on Sep-17-06

Here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please
Come together right now over me...
As the last link reports, as America mourns those lost on September 11, 2001, President Bush has used the event to ask the American public to come together and support him in his policy on Iraq.
comment posted at 9:20 AM on Sep-12-06

The State Of Scottish Football
comment posted at 5:12 PM on Sep-11-06

Metafilter: Unhelpful link text. Extra links added for padding that have little to do with the main topic of the entry. Are extremely loaded rhetorical questions the only thing that can save us now?

comment posted at 9:43 AM on Sep-11-06

ABC agrees to take the lies out of their 9/11 miniseries. previously discussed here
comment posted at 8:41 AM on Sep-8-06

FROM SECRET PRISONS TO GUANTANAMO President Bush announces the transfer of 14 al-Qaeda terrorist suspects previously held by the CIA in a secret detention program to the Guantanamo Bay naval base. This is the 1st public acknowledgement of such a program (though in November of 2005 the Post broke the story of its existence). Bush calls CIA interrogations "tough" but fully legal, and that they staved off new terrorist plots.
comment posted at 7:58 PM on Sep-6-06

Subliminal Spam. It's rather crude, but I wonder if we'll start seeing more of this, and done more subtly.
comment posted at 9:14 AM on Sep-6-06

Pat Buchanan blogs. Let the name-calling begin.
comment posted at 10:01 PM on Sep-4-06

"The ewok population is effectively extinguished. Most were killed in a mass-extinction event affecting life on their homeworld, due to unavoidable fallout and debris from the destruction of the Death Star II. The Rebel Alliance is culpable but perhaps innocent. All ewoks would have been better off if the tribe which made contact with the rebels continued with their original plan of killing and eating the commando team's leaders." (Rebuttal [PDF]).
comment posted at 6:55 AM on Sep-5-06

A self-portrait every day: Sven and Tobias Staude, Ahree Lee, Noah Kalina.
comment posted at 9:48 AM on Sep-3-06

I don't want to get all fanboy about the upcoming Transformers movie. Even if they did get Peter Cullen to reprise his role as the vox of semi-truck-autobot-leader Optimus Prime. I mean Michael Bay is directing it, people. However, perhaps it's possible Stan Bush could revamp his famous 'You Got the Touch' anthem. Couldn't be as bad as Mark Wahlberg's version (or John C. Reilly's dancing).
comment posted at 1:10 PM on Aug-31-06

Musicast turns your iTunes (mac only) into a music sharing server that conveniently spits out a podcast feed for your friends to subscribe and download all your mp3s from. Download this quick before the RIAA kills the server something might happen to this wonderful app.
comment posted at 7:17 PM on Aug-30-06

First they came for the atheists - Arkansas state constitution says: "Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness:- No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court" Link to pdf, pg 74 in pdf(via reddit).
comment posted at 9:42 AM on Aug-18-06
comment posted at 9:45 AM on Aug-18-06

Jason Toney at Negro Please says, "This is officially the whitest thing I have ever posted." I didn't know what Metal School was, and I still don't know.
comment posted at 6:58 PM on Aug-17-06

Sprinkle Brigade is brilliant, gross, and kinda NSFW. A comparable project was previously mentioned on MeFi. It would be too funny if certain comments had spurred this new development.
comment posted at 9:46 AM on Aug-16-06

Auroras have had many explanations throughout history. Now, science has answered many questions, thanks to spending a lot of time in Antarctica taking time-lapse films.
comment posted at 7:53 PM on Aug-15-06

Moomins! The Moomins, created in 1945 by artist and writer Tove Jansson in this story, went on to become a series of books beloved by children in the 60s and 70s and then a British TV show in the early 80s. The Moomins’ fame is so all pervading in Finland that they have their own amusement park and museum but they somehow have never gained as much of a foothold in the US. Why are the Moomins so popular? Some of the books are surprisingly philosophical and even dark and some of the characters are downright seditious; the Moomins, for all their humor and love, are often a little bleak. Tove Jansson, who modeled many of her characters on people in her life, was as talented an artist as she was a writer; here, for your delectation, are her illustrations for The Hobbit. Previously on Metafilter.
comment posted at 11:27 AM on Aug-13-06

It's called The Wilhelm Scream. And I bet you've heard it a hundred times. At least. I've heard it in SO many action movies I began to think I was nuts! Lucas seems to have used it as a sound geek in-joke... and evidentally so has everyone else since. Now I can live knowing I'm not the only one who's noticed, and not as crazy as I thought.
comment posted at 11:16 PM on Aug-11-06

They'll never piggyback on your wireless again Your router makes the computer look funny. (via MeTa)
comment posted at 4:03 PM on Aug-10-06

[newsfilter] 30% of Americans don't know the year of the 9/11 attack. Fortunately 95% do know the month and day.
comment posted at 7:11 AM on Aug-10-06

"The K-Metal from Krypton" is one of the most important "lost" stories by the original creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Written and drawn in 1940, but never published, the story would have vastly altered much of the Superman mythos for the next 65 years. Aside from the early introduction of Kryptonite, the issue would have disclosed Superman's secret identity to Lois Lane, leading to a completely different relationship in which the two worked together as a team. Thanks to the work of readers and fans, including writer Mark Waid and artist Alex Ross, original art and scripts are slowly being recovered, and the entire issue is being reproduced online, with full color treatment and missing pages being replicated in Shuster's original drawing style.
comment posted at 8:09 AM on Aug-9-06
comment posted at 8:17 AM on Aug-9-06
comment posted at 8:52 AM on Aug-9-06

"Soon there would be no space left. But the cats kept coming. What could she do with them all? The solution turned out to be right outside Henriette's front door. If people could live on the houseboats which lined the canals, why not cats? And so came the idea to buy one for them." De Poezenboot.
comment posted at 3:32 PM on Aug-7-06

"The real story is actually better than the one we told." A Vanity Fair recounting of NORAD's response to the September 11 attacks, based on "30 hours of never-before-released tapes from the control room," isn't quite the same as what the Pentagon told the 9/11 Commission. Commission staffers "thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission."
comment posted at 10:57 AM on Aug-2-06

"ok, you're over 21 but ..."
comment posted at 9:31 AM on Aug-1-06

Qana 1996. Qana 2006.
comment posted at 12:33 PM on Jul-30-06

U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.
comment posted at 12:01 PM on Jul-29-06
comment posted at 2:33 PM on Jul-29-06

Photosynth is a new image processing technology from Microsoft that takes a collection of images (say, of a famous location), analyzes them for similarities & rebuilds the location in virtual space for the user to fly though, zooming in on details, panning around like a 3D Hockney piece. Video of how it works here.
comment posted at 10:20 AM on Jul-29-06

Charlotte Observer photographer Patrick Schneider has been fired. After a 2003 incident in which the North Carolina Press Association stripped him of his awards for three pictures (before and after can be seen here) the Observer has fired Schneider over the alteration of this image. The question remains among photojournalists: is it unethical to alter a photo in such a way that it more closely resembles what the eye saw and the camera is unable to capture, or is this a deceptive practice that damages the public's trust?
comment posted at 4:26 PM on Jul-28-06

"we recognize a divine plan that stands above all human plans and continue to seek His will." So says George W. Bush in a proclamation affirming a Senate resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's decision to establish In God We Trust as the national motto of the United States. Coincidentally, George's brother Jeb has recently approved In God We Trust as Florida's official state motto.
comment posted at 2:36 PM on Jul-28-06
comment posted at 3:20 PM on Jul-28-06

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Part One. Part Two. [YouTube videos] [more inside]
comment posted at 2:10 PM on Jul-28-06

Newsfilter: According to a new research from the United States, increasing numbers of Americans are becoming too fat to fit into X-ray machines. Whoa. Heavy...
comment posted at 8:17 PM on Jul-27-06

Conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby asks "Are You a 'Chicken Hawk'?" Liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald responds.
comment posted at 9:03 PM on Jul-25-06

The Amazon rainforest becomes "a desert" after three consecutive years without rain - the trees die. Next year would be the third year of an ongoing drought. The forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon (or about 45 years of stored human emmisions at current rates) - 3/4's of the carbon is released within a year of dieing. The Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction".
comment posted at 10:03 AM on Jul-25-06

On September 9th 2006, 112 of the world's writers, artists, activists, and social entrepeneurs (nominees here) will gather for a Table of Free Voices in Berlin, Germany, discussing questions about the important issues of today. Who provides those questions? You.
comment posted at 8:52 PM on Jul-24-06

Marvin, the neglected Bush We hear about the Bush family a good deal but seldom do we learn much about the "other brother," that is, "Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother, [...] a principal in a company called Securacom that provided security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles International Airport. The company, Burns noted, was backed by KuwAm, a Kuwaiti-American investment firm on whose board Marvin Burns also served. [Utne] According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down." But then, Marvin has led a rather odd life, and more can be learned about him here Wikipedia sums up this Bush in a short bio, and notes the rather odd accident befalling his baby sitter This accident had been reported by The Washington Post but largely ignored by other papers. Is Marvin another possible heir to the Bush crown?
comment posted at 3:02 PM on Jul-24-06

youtubefilter: The Human League - The Lebanon
comment posted at 4:20 PM on Jul-23-06
comment posted at 4:25 PM on Jul-23-06

The New Islamic Mafia - An introduction to Albanian organized crime
comment posted at 3:28 PM on Jul-22-06