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Ban on Camera Phones in Iraq Q: What do you do if your troops take pictures of physical and sexual abuse in American-run prisons in Iraq? A: Ban cameras, of course. What the people can't see don't happen.
comment posted at 8:55 PM on May-23-04
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comment posted at 12:24 PM on May-24-04

Father and 12 year old daughter camp undiscovered for four years in city park. A heartwarming story of love, generosity, and happy endings.
comment posted at 2:09 AM on May-22-04

Scandinavia has had gay marriage for years, and surprise surprise, the institution has not collapsed. It's amazing how rarely Americans take advantage of these sorts of international comparisons...
comment posted at 4:21 PM on May-20-04
comment posted at 1:45 AM on May-21-04

Feline medical curiosities. Polydactyly, conjoined-kitty-fu, "freaks of face," cleft palates, and plain old huge. (Not safe for after lunch).
comment posted at 2:14 AM on May-20-04

Renewable energy: thinking outside the (clamshell) box. The US Dept. of Agriculture has given notice that funds are available for "developing renewable energy systems from the use of diseased livestock as a process raw material for the energy source." As in, all the cattle killed during December's Mad Cow Disease scare. Because "traditional rendering processes were determined not to effectively deactivate the infectivity of prions."
comment posted at 7:24 AM on May-18-04
comment posted at 7:25 AM on May-18-04

And you thought that guy from Police Academy was good. As a five-year-old child, Dokaka hummed along with melodies on television, but one day plugged headphones into the TV, discovering that the sounds in his head matched those piping through the headphones. He quickly realized that songs consist of many parts like bass, drums, etc. Within a year, he began to record himself humming. (Via http://linkfilter.net/) Smells like teen spirit indeed!
comment posted at 5:24 AM on May-18-04
comment posted at 5:41 AM on May-18-04

Having half of your skull missing isn't a disability. Here, take this hockey helmet, and have a nice day.
comment posted at 3:31 PM on May-14-04

Going Poston! - This is a Flash parody about the NFL's most notorious player agents, the Postons, Carl and Kevin. This article from a month ago, pretty much sums up why they're becoming so infamous.
comment posted at 12:06 PM on May-13-04
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comment posted at 4:14 PM on May-13-04

Scientists know that being fat reduces your lifespan, making you more susceptible to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a host of other bad things. However they are only beginning to understand why. "Fat tissue is now recognized to be the body's biggest endocrine organ," producing 25 known signaling compounds and a variety of proteins.
comment posted at 12:27 PM on May-12-04

Zogby calls the election for Kerry
John Zogby goes out on a limb and predicts John Kerry will be the next POTUS.
comment posted at 10:26 AM on May-11-04

The Wrong Morons. (from the Army Times) "Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war...But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons."
comment posted at 10:22 AM on May-11-04

International Terrorism at a 35 year low, says U.S. Department of State. So - does that mean that the war on terror is being won? (via Anxiety Culture)
comment posted at 12:53 PM on May-10-04

Bobby Fuller was a Texas based rock and roll singer best known for the immortal rebel anthem "I Fought The Law,". Considered by many to be the heir to Buddy Holly as the king of Texas Rock, he built on Holly's style with songs like the aforementioned "...Law," "Jenny Lee," "Love's Made A Fool Of You," and the 2 1/2 minute masterpiece "Let Her Dance." And then it ended, at age 22, in very weird circumstances. Over the years, interest in Fuller and his work has ebbed and flowed, and plenty of archival material surfaced, but the mystery of his death remains unsolved, although many have speculated. Ann odd end for a footnote character in rick history, but who was bound for more
comment posted at 11:54 PM on May-7-04

The Brood is Back. No, not that Brood. This brood.
comment posted at 11:35 AM on May-7-04
comment posted at 11:42 AM on May-7-04

Pakistani council aproves rape to avenge honour. "A village council in Pakistan permitted a landlord to rape the sister and sister-in-law of a man he accused of an illicit relationship with his daughter, police said Thursday. (...) The council members, all of them landlords themselves, ruled that Ghaffar, who uses only one name, could avenge his honour by having sex with the farmer's daughter, who is 16, and daughter-in-law, who is 22." (BBC version here). "An estimated 80 percent of women prisoners in Pakistan are in jail because they failed to prove rape charges".
comment posted at 5:43 PM on May-6-04

Camilo Mejia is the first US soldier serving in Iraq to run away and proclaim himself a conscientious objector. The Pentagon says another 600 people have done the same, and for the same reasons: they find this war immoral and illegal.
comment posted at 8:40 AM on May-5-04
comment posted at 10:21 AM on May-5-04

How Kerry Earned His Decorations For all the loud mouths who shout out that Kerry is a traitor, a guy who did not earn his medals, read this and then compare your medals with his! Did he turn against the war? Sure. Many soldiers did too. The nation also turned against the war and, finally, some responsible for getting us into the war admitted their mistake. "Kerry is one of the Senate's most decorated veterans — though he has far fewer medals than friend John McCain — and his record is impressive for an officer who spent just 10 months in Vietnam. Each of the medals below came with a matching ribbon. Kerry wore his ribbons when he testified before a Senate committee in 1971; the next day, joining hundreds of other vets, he lobbed them at the Capitol. "
comment posted at 6:39 PM on May-4-04

50 moments that shaped popular musical history in the last 50 years --from Elvis walking into Sun Studios 50 years ago to last fall's entirely non-white Billboard Top Ten for the first time ever. Anything missing?
comment posted at 12:16 AM on May-4-04

Time to blow the whistle. Is the "obesity epidemic" a medical emergency, or a big fat lie? Paul Campos says it's time to tell the truth.
comment posted at 12:23 PM on Apr-28-04

Veith v. Jubelirer affirmed by the US Supreme Court
In a 5-4 opinion, the US Supreme Court upheld that gerrymandered Congressional districts are legal and overruled Davis v. Bandemer. Full opinions available. For a background on why this is a structural constitutional problem and why we should be worried about it, read Gerrymandering - "The Great Contradiction".
comment posted at 12:07 PM on Apr-28-04

jeff goldblum is watching you poop... - NSFW.
comment posted at 10:07 AM on Apr-28-04

Buy Douglas Adams' tent What I really want is his towel.
comment posted at 6:54 PM on Apr-27-04

You Like Fish? Why Not English? A musical tribute to the Japanese people by George W. Bush.
(Warning: 500Kbps Windows Media stream. Also available: 500K bpsQuicktime, 80Kbps Windows Media, and 45Kbps Quicktime) [via VeryBigBlog]
comment posted at 4:28 PM on Apr-27-04

"The Patriot Act defends our liberty, is what it does, under the Constitution of the United States" A saudi national is being prosecuted for maintaining web sites that advocated violent jihad. [nytimes, reg. req.]
comment posted at 9:30 AM on Apr-27-04

The Iraqi Governing Council has unveiled Iraq's new flag design to almost universal disapproval. Not only is the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council increasingly unpopular, but to some Iraqis the flag looks uncomfortably similar to Israel's. And, as Chris Allbritton points out, "damn, that's an ugly flag."
comment posted at 11:55 PM on Apr-26-04

Fake Photos from Iraq. Or, do it yourself: Fun with Lcpl. Boudreaux.
comment posted at 5:17 PM on Apr-26-04

This is what we do to looters (3Mb windows media video) This clip comes from Frontline, showing a US tank crew confronting some Iraqis taking some wood. I'll give a quick preview: it's probably not the best way for Americans to build US-Iraq relations. [via rc3]
comment posted at 9:18 PM on Apr-25-04
comment posted at 9:55 PM on Apr-25-04

What happens when 7 disposable cameras are released into the wild, passed from stranger to stranger, and mailed back home? Starting with "Emily", and continuing for several Tuesdays to come, Kevin Fox finds out. [slightly more inside]
comment posted at 7:18 AM on Apr-25-04
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comment posted at 11:58 PM on Apr-26-04

Yesterday, Iraq. Today, homeless in the Bronx. Welcome back, soldier, and god bless America.
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comment posted at 8:33 PM on Apr-25-04

The truth that MeFites don't want you to know. As a follow-up to this post on "the Coffins GWB doesn't want you to see," it is revealed that many of the photographs that ran rampant over the Internet and wire services weren't of fallen American soldiers, but were of the crew of the Columbia.
comment posted at 7:44 AM on Apr-24-04