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The USDA has announced the first 'presumptive positive' result of a test of a cow for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, in Washington state. CNN hasn't caught up yet, but USDA themselves have a page on the issue, as do the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the EU, and the World Health Organization. My advice? Buy Chik-fil-A; sell Burger King. :-)
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comment posted at 3:08 PM on Dec-24-03

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.
comment posted at 9:36 AM on Nov-21-03

"Although this letter will come to you as a surprise..." Fed up with having their inboxes clogged with emails from Nigerian fraudsters promising untold riches, the victims are finally hitting back in what has been described as the Internet's first blood sport.
comment posted at 9:40 AM on Nov-21-03
comment posted at 9:44 AM on Nov-21-03

Metafilter: Fair & Balanced[tm] - reclaim free speech tomorrow! This Friday, August 15, is Fair And Balanced day on the Internet... according to Neal Pollack, Atrios and others. Development to this thread
comment posted at 4:59 PM on Aug-14-03

Massive New York power outage? Boing Boing is among the first to report that a massive power outage just hit much of the Northeast, including New York, Cleveland and Detroit. CNN's breaking news just confirmed it.
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comment posted at 6:25 PM on Aug-14-03

Jeff Bezos has patented the idea for "A method and system for conducting an electronic discussion relating to a topic." Clearly, an idea way ahead of its time... (via somebodydial911)
comment posted at 3:00 PM on Feb-27-03

Houston we have a problem! At 9:00am EST communication was lost with space shuttle Columbia. The touch down should have been occurred at 9:16am.
comment posted at 8:29 AM on Feb-1-03

State Coalition Approves Internet Sales Tax Plan Ignoring, it seems, both Bush and Clinton, the states, greedy for money in these tight times, have a source of revenue from Net sales. And this will help retail stores on pricing (they must pay taxes), but how will it impact on the Net--or will Net sales manage to skirt a tax somehow? Are you for or against taxing net sales?
comment posted at 7:25 PM on Nov-12-02

Mmmmm. Pancakes. Called by many names - Blintz, Palascinta, Flensjes, Pannkuchen, Po-Ping - yes, you know they're yummy, but what do you know about their history or their religious significance? For instance, Shrove Tuesday is also known as Pancake Day and for the past 53 years, women in Olney, England and Liberal, Kansas race down the streets of their towns flipping pancakes, continuing an English tradition that goes back more than 500 years. (Melbourne, Australia has a Pancake Day race, too! ) The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Shrovetide with a type of pancake called Blini, and I think most of us know that Latkes (potato pancakes) are a traditional part of the Hanukah feast. (Although apparently there is some debate on the virtues of Latkes over Hamentashen.) On a more secular note, we've just missed the 2002 Fall Flapjack Festival, held every year in Land O'Lakes, Florida. Glenn, Michigan has an annual Pancake Festival, too (since 1938). Hey! I'm getting hungry ... somebody pass the Maple Syrup!
comment posted at 4:35 PM on Nov-12-02

Heavens to mergatroid! Who, what, or where is mergatroid? (Or is it murgatroid?) In what way does it relate to Heaven? Maybe it's an angelic sound.
comment posted at 10:40 AM on Nov-8-02

A quick HIV test is about to hit the US market. An HIV test that is easy to administer and provides results in 20 minutes has just been approved by the FDA. This is a big deal partly because almost 250,000 Americans are infected and don't know it. The ease of this fast-response test will help identify some of them.
comment posted at 10:42 AM on Nov-8-02

Dave Winer's not happy about the fact that people are tweaking the orange XML icon used to link RSS/RDF feeds. You've seen that orange button saying XML at various sites, including MeFi. Milo just put up one saying RSS instead of XML, which was based on a point brought up by xiffix, "In hindsight, appropriating the global acronym XML for this narrow use was a mistake. The button should say RSS. Hopefully, people will take Dave’s suggestion to do something completely different to heart and abandon the Userland attempt at a standard icon"
comment posted at 1:16 PM on Oct-30-02

Boy Scouts tell Atheist Eagle Scout he has one week to declare his belief or get out. On membership applications, Boy Scouts and adult leaders must say they recognize some higher power, not necessarily religious. "Mother Nature would be acceptable," said Brad Farmer, the Scout executive of the Chief Seattle Council of the Boy Scouts. Hmmmm...
comment posted at 1:26 PM on Oct-30-02

Nature versus Nurture. A London teenager who had a bit of history and had been excluded from school was placed in public school by a television programme. He appears to have excelled, though how he is top of a class of 15 year olds at Latin is beyond me, unless he was a surreptitious Latin reader throughout his early childhood. I think there may be some ethical issues around this, but it does suggest that thousands of children are being systematically failed by the education system. Long live Rousseau. As it were.
comment posted at 11:36 AM on Oct-13-02

The Street Harassment Project sounds like a pretty good thing. Street harassment has been a crusade for my girlfriend for some time now, and it looks like she's not alone.
comment posted at 9:16 PM on Oct-3-02

Osama bin Laden hasn't been mentioned in a presidential speech in seven months.
comment posted at 9:27 PM on Oct-3-02

omg we're all going to die, which means the hurricanes, the war against terrorism, high school free speech... it's all a big nothing!
comment posted at 9:33 PM on Oct-3-02

You know, it just heartens me to know that the user interface to Google is available is so many different languages...
comment posted at 9:42 PM on Sep-18-02

Campaign for Freedom. The Ad Council does some good work. This campaign has been running for a bit, but until yesterday I'd only seen the spot Main Street USA. The others in the series, like this and this are probably my favorites-- all the more so because we're heading in exactly that direction.
comment posted at 9:21 PM on Sep-11-02

Help yourself to an exploit. No biting social commentary here, just spreading the word on an ooky Win XP exploit in the form of a malicious Help Center request. The patch has been silently rolled into SP1, and is otherwise unavailable. Of course, if you want to install SP1, you'll have to agree to that nasty Trojan EULA.
comment posted at 9:29 PM on Sep-11-02

Now here's guy who'll be pretty popular with the ladies: Italian man refuses to stop shtupping woman -- whom he'd just met -- in pool, until she has an orgasm.
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comment posted at 11:45 AM on Aug-22-02

You have become a nation of monsters, America. Hypocrites. Murderers. Fools. A letter by a Canadian published in the Baltimore Chronicle to all Americans. Is this merely displaced anger; a worthless rant, or does this feeling come from a more real problem?
comment posted at 7:24 PM on Aug-17-02

The link between geekiness and Aspergers Syndrome (a mild form of autism) is fairly well known, if not scientifically proven. But now, a study reported in tbe BBC says that there's a wildly high incidence of childhood autism where geeks are mostly mating with other geeks...
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comment posted at 7:18 PM on Aug-19-02

Wow your friends [google] and learn a little history behind the best card trick. [pdf]
comment posted at 12:40 PM on Aug-17-02

The September 11th 'Ground And Freeze' order which halted air travel for 4 days didn't come from the president, nor SecTrans... not even the Adminstrator of the FAA. Nope, it came from Ben Sliney. [ Actual journalism in McPaper. Whoulda? ]
comment posted at 2:57 PM on Aug-12-02
comment posted at 9:17 AM on Aug-16-02

Follow-up on this thread: the city council of Moscow, Idaho has banned bare breasted women in response to three roommates who staged a roving topless car wash to raise rent money. A sign declaring, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but breasts will never hurt me," reflected the view of most residents who packed the council chambers. Two women pulled off their shirts after the council approved the ordinance. I'm thinking a mass protest is in order - thousands of women should converge on Moscow, Idaho and pull their shirts off. Fight the power!
comment posted at 6:33 PM on Jul-19-02

Ancient OS may be the best weapon against hackers. I thought this was great, aging Operating Systems such as Solaris and older versions of Mac Os are becoming valuable tools against electronic attacks, simply because they *are* older. (Anyone got the full set of floppies for System 7?) Link from RobotWisdom
comment posted at 8:39 AM on Jun-7-02

Subtleties of American Satire Lost on the Chinese. Bejing's most popular newspaper runs an article from The Onion as fact.
comment posted at 8:47 AM on Jun-7-02

Wonder Twin powers, activate! Form of...an upcoming live-action Wonder Twins movie. Shape of...my disbelief. Does no one get that even "SuperFriends" fans hate these space losers, and their little Gleek, too?
comment posted at 5:21 PM on Jun-6-02
comment posted at 8:56 PM on Jun-7-02

For all those Asian fetishists out there.. Want to learn to pick up Asian women? Understand us better? Then take our class! Just when you thought you saw it all...
comment posted at 5:39 PM on Jun-6-02

How to Flirt. "Flirting is much more than just a bit of fun: it is a universal and essential aspect of human interaction." What social science can tell you about flirting and how to do it.
comment posted at 1:37 PM on Jun-3-02

Back in the day . . . Remembering a time when the BBS was king.
comment posted at 1:49 PM on Jun-3-02

The odd phenomenon of tribute bands. Heartfelt homage and harmless fun? Creepy obsession and pale imitation? Whatever you see it as, their numbers are swelling. Some that you'd expect, a few that'll surprise you, at least one that vaguely frightens me and one to which I say 'it's about time!'. Sincerest form of flattery or mild insanity? Your call.
comment posted at 1:55 PM on Jun-3-02