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Screw nature - It's baseball that we have to save! He gets to be President and manage a baseball team. Truly, America is the land of dreams.
comment posted at 9:57 PM on Mar-31-01

View this ad or we shoot this dog: Forget CNET's poster-size adverts. The latest trend is a user agreement that requires visitors to view your banners.

What other websites will attempt to adopt this trend? And what will the backlash be? I for one won't go to sites that "require" me to view advertising.

Story towards bottom of the page
comment posted at 9:41 AM on Mar-31-01

Aurora Borealis... in Santa Fe, NM i'm up late writing a paper and chanced to look out the window, only to see red gaseous-looking clouds in the sky... I know it seems absurd to see the northern lights in the southwest, but this map almost makes it appear possible, probably because of the altitude... if i see four horsemen though, i'm running like hell.
comment posted at 11:34 AM on Mar-31-01

Honkies no longer in the majority in California, according to recent census. How long until the government makeup and laws reflect that? (would something like prop 187 ever pass again?)
comment posted at 11:16 AM on Mar-30-01

Psycho ex-girlfriend is a hoax! Looking at the code, I could see that it would sleep for a while, then start popping ad windows. Because of the delay, people would not associate the advertising with PsychoEx - the countdown starts only when you leave the page. and registered at anystreet, Dallas TX phone number 214.555.1212
comment posted at 11:22 AM on Mar-30-01

Emo. ...Metal. Grunge. Alt. Rock. Pop. Folk. Rap. Blues. Rhythm & Blues. Country & Western. Gaze & Veg. Goth. Trance. Edge. Old School. New School. East Coast. West Coast. Pre-Punk. Post-Punk. Punk. Indie. Core. Emocore. Hardcore Emo. Post-Emo Indie Rock. Post-Emocore Pre-Punk Apocolyptic Pop Jizz Softcore Jesusfreak Liquid Splatter Metal. Guitar-Driven Jazz-Infused Lite-Oasis Serial Death Addictive Jump Swing Rap Twang-Blues... [Insert a very long blood curdling scream here.]
comment posted at 4:19 PM on Mar-30-01

This is the Land of the Beaver? The Canadian government, determined to spare its citizens the horror of having to think for themselves, decides hard-core porn channels are no-nos for their satellite systems.
comment posted at 8:53 AM on Mar-30-01
comment posted at 10:18 AM on Mar-31-01

Only one navel left to gaze at? Rumors are flying—Brill's Content and Powerful Media may just be announcing a merger soon ...
comment posted at 9:23 PM on Mar-29-01
comment posted at 3:24 PM on Apr-2-01

Anti-abortion site wins appeal. In a ringing defense of the First Amendment, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote that "political speech may not be punished just because it makes it more likely that someone will be harmed at some unknown time in the future by an unrelated third party.

Courtney Love can sue when her cell phone # is released on a website, and yet doctors have their personal information posted online specifically so they can be tracked and killed. Scary.
comment posted at 3:13 PM on Mar-29-01
comment posted at 5:05 PM on Mar-29-01

Spare the rod? Heck no! God says beat and pimp your child! "House of Prayer" cult encourages group beatings of children in church. "Reverend" encourages marriages of 14-year-olds to "prevent potential whores." He also discusses genitalia and hikes up skirts during services. He's not the unaspanker, he's much worse.
comment posted at 3:04 PM on Mar-29-01

Memo to Jeff, Howard and Bill from a Seattle local rag. Just to add a little fuel to the fire. If you're reading after Wednesday of next week, you'll need to find the article in the archives.
comment posted at 2:59 PM on Mar-29-01

MetaFilter is a hosting company now?
comment posted at 11:43 AM on Mar-30-01

DC Police email scandal. The District of Columbia put computers in patrol cars and encouraged email use to help keep lengthy communication off the radio waves. Instead, a recent audit of department emails showed that many officers used it to send "racist, vulgar and homophobic messages" to each other. Further complicating matters, it appears this might create legal problems for the police -- defense lawyers can undermine officer credibility, convictions may be reviewed for civil rights violations, and the department may be subject to "hostile work environment" lawsuits. Is this a privacy violation, or just another case of employees being too dense to realize that email sent on their employer's system should never be considered private?
comment posted at 8:56 AM on Mar-29-01

yourgoingtohell.com -- three cheers for ungrammatical religious intolerance! (check out the links on the sidebars)
comment posted at 6:22 AM on Mar-29-01

Starbucks lays claim to 20% of all American cafes. Does anybody in this lately conservatized land of ours care on who's backs our wealth rests upon? Virtually every vegetable, piece of fruit, bottled soda, cup of coffee we ingest is produced at rock bottom prices for the corporations that exploit our neighbors to the south. Our way of life in the States is directly tied to how miserable the living/working conditions of laborers in "developing" countries are. Developing countries--what a misnomer. The only thing developing are profits for select Americans and/or fear that the threat of recession will negate the purchase of that little luxury car I've had my eye on.
comment posted at 9:32 PM on Mar-28-01

Bush will apparently stop holding formal press conferences , instead opting for "informal conversations" with reporters. He promises to be "accessible," but I for one wouldn't be surprised if "informal" began to translate as "ceases to tell the country what he's up to"...
comment posted at 8:42 AM on Mar-29-01

WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, COULD YOU REPEAL THE GENEVA CONVENTION? Bush's EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman said yesterday that the Kyoto treaty on climate change was dead. She said, "No, we have no interest in implementing that treaty." Under the treaty, the U.S. would have to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Earlier this month, Whitman signed a formal declaration with environmental ministers from other industrialized nations pledging to move forward on the treaty.
comment posted at 10:17 AM on Mar-29-01

Two words: Bad Taste The Washington Post today is running an article on Alcatels new pitchman, Martin Luther King, Jr! Yes! MLK joins the likes of John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock as undead spokespeople.
comment posted at 11:29 AM on Mar-28-01

Farewell to another free lunch... Streamed baseball radio is an interesting microcosm of the web's development. It started with a few forward-looking local stations taking the initiative and unilaterally offering a live stream; then it went under the auspices of Broadcast.com; now RealNetworks and MLB Inc. have tied up the subscription deal. A touchstone for other online content?
comment posted at 8:28 PM on Mar-27-01

Sending Texans a message -- more than one million Texans can look forward to receiving a "video version of the New Testament account of Luke" in their mailboxes. The group's goal is to send the video to every Texas home -- eight million. The video was made 22 years ago and is 83-minutes long.

Will the message fall on deaf ears? Isn't there a better way?
comment posted at 2:37 PM on Mar-27-01

A giant loophole in McCain-Feingold will give oil companies a total exemption from all its propsed spending restrictions. This is levelling the playing field?
comment posted at 1:52 PM on Mar-27-01
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comment posted at 2:55 PM on Mar-27-01
comment posted at 10:33 PM on Apr-1-01

Free Market Failure?
The pharmaceutical companies profits have been rising faster than the S&P Industrials as a whole, mainly due to huge profits from drug patents. Not only are the drug companies milking American consumers, but their stranglehold on IP rights to new drugs prevents much-needed medicines from being affordable in many third-world countries. But, we can't take away patent rights or investors would flee the drug scene and new drugs wouldn't be developed at all. How do we solve this problem? The only institutions with the financial resources to do the same research as drug companies are national governments. And they have the obligation to protect the social welfare. Should we turn over pharmaceutical research and development to government?
comment posted at 1:28 PM on Mar-27-01
comment posted at 1:43 PM on Mar-27-01
comment posted at 2:13 PM on Mar-27-01

A new kind of child porn? Teenage girls set up webcams, ostensibly to extend their social network through interactive technology. Sick bastard male voyeurs create Web site so they can spy on all their "hotties" simultaneously. Thank heavens for little girls? Some of these girls are only 14, and look nothing like what a 14 year old should look like!
comment posted at 12:09 PM on Mar-27-01
comment posted at 12:23 PM on Mar-27-01

Bush seeks support from Silicon Valley leaders for tax plan. "I haven't seen the list of attendees yet, but it's for the purpose of building support for the President's budget and tax plan, for the vital group of the economy that's kept our economy strong. If there's any group that has its finger on the pulse of the economy, it's the high tech community, and the President wants to hear their thoughts about the strength of the economy and to share with them his ideas for how to improve it."

Yeah, but what about the PEOPLE? Shouldn't WE be asked about the tax plan?
comment posted at 9:58 AM on Mar-27-01

Scientists say there was a 96.3 percent chance that there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll. Wired reports that a new scientific analysis of the audio recordings of the Kennedy assassination disproves the lone gunman theory.
comment posted at 9:08 AM on Mar-27-01

You Are The Weakest Link, Goodbye! Yes, the "Rudest Person on Television" is about to hit American airwaves as NBC desperately tries to catch up to "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and "Survivor". This little BBC profile of Anne Robinson explains it all for us unsuspecting Yanks. Is "YATWLG" about to be the next hot meme?
comment posted at 9:32 AM on Mar-27-01
comment posted at 2:22 PM on Mar-27-01

Bush Tries to Change Advisor's Mind on pollution policy. That does not work. President Bush does what he wants. EPA leaks Witman's Private Memo.
comment posted at 9:43 AM on Mar-27-01

A brand new way to harass misfits at school. First, accuse them of being terrorists. Then hide behind a proposed California law (see last paragraph of article) that protects you from being sued by the accused for defamation. What happened to the Tapia family, whose daughter Kristina made just such an accusation (apparently in good faith) and who have since run up $40,000 in legal bills defending her from a suit from the family of the kid she reported (who was arrested and expelled), is of course a travesty, but is a "shield" law the right solution when it's all too easy to imagine it just making the whole "zero tolerance" environment of U.S. public schools even more sick and twisted?
comment posted at 9:53 AM on Mar-27-01
comment posted at 3:10 PM on Mar-27-01

Well, congratulations; you won your TiVo. So, now, are you wondering what they're doing to you with it?
comment posted at 7:57 PM on Mar-27-01

California's Energy Crisis, minute by minute. Interesting to watch, even when you feel that we're all over-reacting a bit.
comment posted at 10:11 AM on Mar-27-01

one, two, three. considering this is the same bunch that put our current resident in the whitehouse, why do i have a bad feeling about this?
comment posted at 12:34 PM on Mar-26-01

"Ah, the vibrant interaction of electronic conversation. Isn't it beautiful? In a word: No." A pessimistic take on "community."
comment posted at 12:19 PM on Mar-26-01

Ladies and gentlemen, your moment of Oscar zen.
comment posted at 10:20 PM on Mar-25-01
comment posted at 12:30 AM on Mar-26-01

Mr. Showbiz is doing live coverage of the Oscars. I'm breaking a handful of MF rules by posting this, I realize, but I think it's really cool, and it hasn't gotten nearly enough press. (The Big D decided to put all its press behind Oscars.com, whose live coverage isn't nearly as fun.)
comment posted at 10:28 PM on Mar-25-01

Lisl will spend the rest of her life in prison for a crime she didn't commit This site outlines Lisl Auman's case. Her case is being supported by Hunter S Thompson. She will be appealing the ruling this spring. There are links to Thompson's articles on espn.com, as well as Lisl's site.
comment posted at 10:43 PM on Mar-25-01
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comment posted at 11:16 PM on Mar-25-01