MetaFilter

"These people in Congress are walking all over my personal and private life... I'm telling you, the United States citizens, you better start speaking up, because these people are going to trample into your personal, private affairs."
comment posted at 9:50 AM on Mar-19-05
comment posted at 10:51 AM on Mar-19-05

An Objective Legal Look (and more) on Schiavo-- As a Florida law blogger, I have created this page to help people understand the legal circumstances surrounding the Terri Schiavo saga. In my view, there continues to be a need for an objective look at the matter. There is an unbelievable amount of misinformation being circulated. Links to all court decisions, timelines, questions and answers (some shocking)...you name it. All the info available on this tragic situation.
comment posted at 11:08 AM on Mar-19-05
comment posted at 12:32 PM on Mar-19-05

How To Hypnotize a Man
(NSFW and may be offensive to some, nude female backside)
Friday Fun. I couldn't stop playing with this one.
I dare you to bounce it once and then stop. I double dog dare you.
comment posted at 1:58 PM on Mar-18-05

Six degrees of Nirvana, see how bands are connected to each other.
comment posted at 6:07 AM on Mar-17-05

The die is cast. The United States Senate votes for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil drilling.
comment posted at 4:38 PM on Mar-16-05

Ramadi Madness. Unfiltered video of the Bush war in Iraq, shot by a soldier with a digital minicam.
comment posted at 2:53 PM on Mar-15-05
comment posted at 3:11 PM on Mar-15-05
comment posted at 4:28 PM on Mar-15-05
comment posted at 4:37 PM on Mar-15-05

"I felt like hurting someone before, now I feel like hugging people". Only weeks after professing his belief in Jesus Christ, former Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch was baptized in the Jordan River last Saturday. With “Jesus” tattooed across his knuckles and “Matthew 11:28” along his neck, Welch received full immersion in the historic river, along with 20 other white-robed Christians from a Bakersfield, CA church. Welch said the ritual baptism, “washed away his anger.” "My songs are God saying things to me, him talking to people. He's going to use me to heal people and people are going to be drawn to it, just watch, they will be.” For the latest information (and a free mp3) go to Welch's personal website, http://www.headtochrist.com/
comment posted at 2:18 PM on Mar-10-05
comment posted at 2:20 PM on Mar-10-05

Alnwick Castle , used in various films including Harry Potter and Robin Hood, has started planting the Poison Garden as part of its most recent additions (pdf). The Poison Garden includes belladonna and other examples of the worlds most deadly plants. Some specimens are kept behind bars for security purposes. Both the castle and the extensive garden seem like wonderful places to visit.
comment posted at 1:26 PM on Mar-9-05

Oh Say Can You Seethe • The Board of Education in Brick, NJ "may toughen its policy on use of wireless telephones in schools, after a videotape showing a Brick Township High School teacher screaming at his students to show respect for the national anthem — and then pulling the chair from underneath one student who refused to stand — was posted on several independent Web sites (.wmv)." Some have come to the teacher's defense, and three students connected to the incident have been arrested for separate charges of prior vandalism--which they also taped.
comment posted at 1:54 PM on Mar-9-05

What Bush got Right.
Recent events: Syrian withdrawl. Palestinian reform. Egyptian Elections. Libyan disarmament. Iraqi elections. The Domino Theory in action.
comment posted at 3:21 PM on Mar-7-05
comment posted at 3:35 PM on Mar-7-05
comment posted at 4:09 PM on Mar-7-05
comment posted at 5:31 PM on Mar-7-05

Former University of Pennsylvania professor and head of Penn's Head Injury Research Center Tracy McIntosh, a Fulbright scholar, and renowned researcher plead no contest in December to possession of a controlled substance and the sexual assault of a 25 year-old Penn student. Judge Rayford Means sentenced him to a year of house arrest and 12 years' probation, as the Judge had "factored in McIntosh's important work with stroke victims and brain injuries."

Tracy McIntosh is too important for prison.
comment posted at 12:55 PM on Mar-6-05
comment posted at 1:26 PM on Mar-6-05

The Vindication of Eason Jordan. This, coupled with previous incidents, should make it clear that the right wing blogosphere "took down" someone who was telling the truth.
comment posted at 1:16 PM on Mar-5-05
comment posted at 5:15 PM on Mar-5-05

What You Are. I'm a slam-dancing sausage link who loves to suck toilets. What are you?
comment posted at 2:48 PM on Mar-3-05

Frank Luntz GOP Playbook Now Online: No Downloads, Searchable Text I can't stress enough the importance of reading this document. It is absolutely amazing how politicos co-opted so much of our language and led us down the path to THEIR agenda.

Unfortunately, the monstrous PDF file previously available for download made that a 'challenging' endeavor. Thus, I thought it was very important to bring to everybody's attention the existence of an online, readable, searchable, text version of Frank Luntz’s Playbook. It is a masterpiece of manipulation and an historic political document.
comment posted at 1:22 PM on Mar-3-05
comment posted at 1:31 PM on Mar-3-05
comment posted at 4:46 PM on Mar-3-05
comment posted at 4:58 PM on Mar-3-05

Early Modern Texts. Versions of some classics of early modern philosophy, prepared with a view to making them easier to read while leaving the main arguments, doctrines, and lines of thought intact. Recently added: John Locke's Second Treatise of Government. Via Crooked Timber.
comment posted at 2:11 PM on Feb-28-05

"... Giordano Bruno might have been a pantheist. A pantheist believes that God is everywhere, even in that speck of a fly you see there. You can imagine how satisfying that is—being everywhere is like being nowhere. Well, for Hegel it wasn’t God but the State that had to be everywhere; therefore, he was a Fascist.”
“But didn’t he live more than a hundred years ago?”
“So? Joan of Arc, also a Fascist of the highest order. Fascists have always existed. Since the age of . . . since the age of God. Take God—a Fascist.”
Umberto Eco in the New Yorker
comment posted at 1:54 PM on Feb-28-05
comment posted at 1:55 PM on Feb-28-05

Vikings with ... issues. And for complete amusement, check the google ads on the right. Big swords, baby, big, really big.
comment posted at 5:10 PM on Feb-25-05

With a Hush and a Whisper, Bush Drops Town Hall Meeting with Germans During his trip to Germany on Wednesday, the main highlight of George W. Bush's trip was meant to be a "town hall"-style meeting with average Germans. But with the German government unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance, the White House has quietly put the event on ice. Was Bush afraid the event might focus on prickly questions about Iraq and Iran rather than the rosy future he's been touting in Europe this week?
comment posted at 2:43 PM on Feb-25-05
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comment posted at 4:31 PM on Feb-25-05
comment posted at 4:32 PM on Feb-25-05

Biggest Hair in Sports. Ever. Australia and New Zealand recently played a Twenty20 cricket match in Auckland - the first time this shortened version of the game (it only take four hours to play) has been played in New Zealand. To celebrate the occasion, the New Zealand team (for some unknown reason) spent the weeks before the game going retro: growing 70s style moustaches and sideburns, and wore their much-maligned beige uniforms that the one day team used to wear in the 80s. When the team took to the pitch in front of a capacity stadium, the crowd was suitably rapturous in their appreciation of the efforts made. Has a bigger mop of hair ever taken to a field or court in a professional sport, anywhere, ever?
comment posted at 5:07 PM on Feb-24-05

He looked so angry. And he wouldn't look directly at me. Michael Smerconish pens an article detailing the memories of a airline ticket clerk's encounter with Mohammed Atta on Sept. 11, 2001. Others react, pointing out that you should act on your gut instinct, and completely attack/defend against those who creep you out. Write your congresspersons, and put a stop to angry looking people, today!
comment posted at 5:33 PM on Feb-24-05

EveryVideogame.com ... many retro videogames (arcade, nintendo, gameboy, sega) available for online play via a java applet.
comment posted at 2:46 PM on Feb-24-05

Words and images from the Belgian Front.
comment posted at 5:16 PM on Feb-21-05
comment posted at 5:20 PM on Feb-21-05
comment posted at 8:20 PM on Feb-21-05

Bunny paintings.
comment posted at 11:25 PM on Feb-18-05

Treason: Hurting America's Feelings --from fafblog: Now you may think "oh well Fafnir America's a big country it can take care a itself" but in fact it is very sensitive. When you say its mom's ugly or criticize its foreign policy or kick sand on its face at the beach it is just as hurt as if you'd sold its state secrets.
comment posted at 10:28 PM on Feb-18-05
comment posted at 11:46 PM on Feb-18-05
comment posted at 11:51 PM on Feb-18-05

"The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," (NYT link) The Pentagon is spending $127 billion on a new project called Future Combat Systems, and armed, decision-making robots represent a significant part of that project (though such a drone may not be available until 2035). They're also looking at the possibility of nanotechnological "smart dust." Though the concept of grey goo has been all but debunked by the man who coined the phrase, the more immediate future may hold robots who, according to the Times article, are faced with choices like whether to destroy a tank or a school bus (One of the main contractors involved, the somewhat ominously named iRobot, is best known for making vacuum-cleaner-bots). Is the general movement toward a fleshless army a good idea?
comment posted at 12:52 PM on Feb-17-05

A wrong made right. Female genital mutilation has been discussed on Metafilter before, sometimes with awful derails. Well here's the good news, Folks. A French surgeon has found a way to reverse this disfiguring crime against women. And he doesn't charge for it because "he considers his patients to be victims of one of the biggest crimes against humanity".
comment posted at 8:15 PM on Feb-15-05