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Subtleties of American Satire Lost on the Chinese. Bejing's most popular newspaper runs an article from The Onion as fact.
comment posted at 7:26 AM on Jun-7-02
comment posted at 8:21 AM on Jun-7-02
comment posted at 8:21 AM on Jun-7-02

A Boob in the Hall of Justice
Poet Claire Braz-Valentine's hilarious reading of her open letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft. (Text here for the QuickTime impaired.)
comment posted at 7:45 AM on Jun-7-02

Dee Dee Ramone dead at 50. First Joey, now Dee Dee. I wanted to be a punk rocker, too, just like Sheena, but I wasn't cool enough back in my rock and roll highschool days. If a punker dies, do we wear white to mourn him/her?
comment posted at 12:50 PM on Jun-6-02

While generally not a fan of news links, this story about entertainers speaking on Capitol Hill was too good to resist. Hmmm...The Backstreet Boys as lobbyists. That's even scarier that what we have now. Although entertainers have long championed political causes, it seems as though the legitimacy of this practice is growing. Is this part of the ongoing merger between politics and entertainment?
comment posted at 12:55 PM on Jun-6-02

the boston phoenix -- best described as the hub's answer to the village voice -- has decided to post the daniel pearl snuff video on their website because "people need to know this". personally i am torn about this (and repulsed that they printed some gruesome screen shots in their print edition) though their intentions are probably more aboveboard than ogrish's in running said same. what do you think?
comment posted at 1:04 PM on Jun-6-02
comment posted at 1:42 PM on Jun-6-02

Immersive Online Content. The first in a series on digital storytelling techniques, from the Poynter Institute. Examples include stories on baggage inspection, water conservation, the Florida 2000 election and touch screen voting.
comment posted at 9:20 AM on Jun-6-02

This ad was banned in the UK. Did anyone see it? Sounds cool to me. In a time when advertisers are struggling to capture people's attention and dull advertising reigns supreme, why haven't we gotten over this fear of offending those with 'delicate' sensibilities?
comment posted at 8:39 AM on Jun-6-02
comment posted at 9:03 AM on Jun-6-02
comment posted at 9:09 AM on Jun-6-02

Leaving through the window. "Is music no longer about self-expression (with an emphasis on "self")?" and "A lot of the newer fans aren’t interested in the history or the people who were involved, it's a shame because there are so many great people to learn about and so many great bands that sadly, will never be emulated."
comment posted at 1:25 PM on Jun-6-02

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 8:55 AM on Jun-6-02

McDonald's to donate $10 mil over fry mislabeling ...to vegetarian and Hindu groups over the fact that the "natural ingredients" in the supposedly vegetarian fries included some beef. They have also posted an apology on the corporate website, and created a Vegetarian Advisory Panel. Can the McVeggie going national be far behind?
comment posted at 11:19 AM on Jun-5-02
comment posted at 6:51 AM on Jun-6-02
comment posted at 8:57 AM on Jun-6-02

Coming soon to a theater near you: Occupation 101.
comment posted at 11:11 AM on Jun-5-02

Notice something missing from today's Washington Post? In a creative protest of management's latest contract offer, Post union members withhold bylines from news stories and columns in the June 5 edition. Most articles are written "By A Washington Post Staff Writer" and pictures are taken "By A Washington Post Staff Photographer." What other unique forms of labor protest have you seen where the union gets its point across without striking or compromising the quality of the product?
comment posted at 7:22 AM on Jun-5-02

How two perfect moments in time brought such tremendous joy and pride to a nation. To me, this truly is the world's most beautiful game, if just for moments like these. I wish everyone could feel this kind of passion for something, whether it be football or not. Sadly, we may never experience this kind of a reaction to anything here in the US.
comment posted at 6:50 AM on Jun-5-02
comment posted at 7:29 AM on Jun-5-02

Supplies of oil may be inexhaustible. (via Plastic)
comment posted at 6:45 AM on Jun-5-02

These People are not actors - they are actual people waiting to see a movie.
comment posted at 1:37 PM on Jun-4-02

What do a 17th-century Swedish warship, an opulent Chicago theater and a Kansas City hotel "skyway" have in common? All met catastrophic ends—and they have important lessons to teach today's innovators.
comment posted at 12:03 PM on Jun-4-02
comment posted at 1:36 PM on Jun-4-02

The New Frontier- Preparing the law for settling on Mars. "Like the abandoned launch fields [at Cape Canveral], the Outer Space Treaty [of 1967] needs to have its valuable parts salvaged, and the dangerous ones demolished."
comment posted at 11:40 AM on Jun-4-02
comment posted at 1:22 PM on Jun-4-02

The pain! The pain!
comment posted at 11:15 AM on Jun-3-02

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 10:56 AM on Jun-3-02

The Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies: Ready to do some 9/11 conspiracy debunking? Read this and lets get some old time MeFi discussion going. It's all there, from the (s)election of Bush as president to the "pre-planning" of the American Patriot Act. As Weiner describes the culprits as:

. . .the HardRight began serious planning for a 2000 electoral victory -- and then implementation of a HardRight agenda, and the destruction of a liberal opposition -- a year or two after Clinton's 1996 victory. (The impeachment of Clinton was a key ingredient to sully Democrat opposition.) The GOP HardRight leaders decided early to select George W. Bush, a none-too-bright and easily malleable young man with the right name and pedigree. They ran into a speed-bump when John McCain began to take off in the public imagination, and so with dirty tricks they wrecked his campaign in the South and elsewhere, and continued on their merry course.
comment posted at 11:02 AM on Jun-3-02

Study Shows Building Prisons Did Not Prevent Repeat Crimes
(New York Times link--you know the drill)
The rate at which inmates released from state prisons commit new crimes rose from 1983 to 1994, a time when the number of people behind bars doubled, according to a Justice Department study released yesterday.
The report found that 67 percent of inmates released from state prisons in 1994 committed at least one serious new crime within three years. That is 5 percent higher than among inmates released in 1983.
Criminologists generally agree that the prison-building binge of the last 25 years, in which the number of Americans incarcerated quadrupled to almost two million, has helped reduce the crime rate simply by keeping criminals off the streets. There has been more debate about whether longer sentences and the increase in the number of prisoners have also helped to deter people from committing crimes. The new report, some crime experts say, suggests that the answer is no. (More inside)
comment posted at 6:44 AM on Jun-3-02
comment posted at 7:51 AM on Jun-3-02
comment posted at 8:51 AM on Jun-3-02
comment posted at 10:03 AM on Jun-3-02

The Popcorn Fork ^TM
comment posted at 11:28 AM on May-31-02

The Movement for an Appropriate 9/11 Memorial
    What is sacred space? The influence of spiritual leaders, philosophers, ethicists, psychologists, anthropologists and other scholars is notably absent in discussions about what to do with the former WTC site.
    Among advocates for a large WTC memorial, there is consensus that the site is "sacred." September's Mission wants victims families to take part in a process of determining what will serve the function of connecting people to sacredness. They want public money to be spent in this direction too. But how can people's feelings, behaviors and attitudes be planned? Can popular beliefs be incorporated into large-scale government decisions? (1, 2)
comment posted at 11:00 AM on May-31-02

Medical professionals are supposed to tell the truth. But why do they always lie?

I had an exam yesterday and they lied to me again as they always do.

Every time they do the glaucoma test, I have been told that they will get "close" to the eye. I correct them and tell them, no, you're going to touch it. They'll deny it 3 or 4 times before finally conceding that they'll "barely touch it" or something like that.

"The most common way to currently measure pressure inside the eye is tonometry. In air tonometry, a short burst of air hits the cornea. In applanation tonometry, a doctor anesthetizes the eye, then presses against it with a tiny instrument and measures the depth of the indentation." (sorry-- this is where I got the quote-- it's mostly about something else-- even web pages are reluctant to admit they'll touch your eyeball).

I have never recieved air tonometry, it's rarely used and considerred inaccurate.

This only bugs me because years ago a doctor told me he was going to get close to my eye, I could feel him on the surface through the aneshthetic and pulled back. This happened repeatedly. Eventually he told me he had to touch the eye. If he had told me that in the first place, I wouldn't have thought he was screwing up and I wouldn't have pulled back.

Well ok, it also bugs me that a doctor would utter such an obvious lie (you can feel them on the eye and see the cornea distort when it's pressed). What else are they lying about? What are their motives? (I have contacts, I touch my eyeballs all the time, surely they don't think I have an eyeball touching phobia...)
comment posted at 11:24 AM on May-31-02

The "duh" in Fundamentalism: Jaime Wright's "The Philosophy Of The Bomb". Please scroll down to Essays, Rants, Etc...
comment posted at 6:52 AM on May-31-02

Cities with water to burn. "While some drought-stricken cities elsewhere in the nation threaten to jail people who waste water, Cleveland wants people to open their spigots... 'Don't be afraid of it. . . . We have trillions of gallons of water here.'" So why do Clevelanders still have to use low-flush toilets and low-output shower heads?
comment posted at 4:47 PM on May-30-02

In Philadelphia, the ratio of students to librarians has increased dramatically. Schools are not only cutting the jobs of librarians, but they are failing to hire those who are qualified to perform the task. Some people, including principals, seem to have the notion that school libraries are a nonessential facet of high school education or are adopting idiosynchratic measures to keep school libraries in existence. The Toronto District School Board, for example, has decided that it will only offer a full-time librarian to schools with more than 710 pupils, leaving school libraries that are closed half the time or that remain substantially inaccessible to students. Laura Bush's Foundation for America's Libraries is an admirable idea, but will merely talking about the importance of libraries hammer the point home? What does it take to convince administrative types of the importance of school libraries? Where did the idea of the school library go astray? And what can we do to ensure that a reasonably accessible school library is there for any student who needs it?
comment posted at 8:03 AM on May-30-02

Cadence engineer fired for activism: So, an engineer for Cadence Design Systems, on his own time and dime went to Bethlehem to do humanitarian work with the International Solidarity Movement, a group of pro-Palestinian activists who believe in non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. When he returned, he was immediately terminated due to "inappropriate politics in an area where Cadence does business (Israel)". Should corporations have the right to mandate the political views of their employees, contractors and subsidiary workers? Would there be more outrage if he was fired for supporting the Israeli occupation? When a Christian's beliefs run contrary to Jewish interests, is it automatically fair to fire the Christian?
comment posted at 10:31 AM on May-29-02
comment posted at 10:45 AM on May-29-02
comment posted at 11:06 AM on May-29-02

Polygyny vs. polyandry. Are we mildly polygynous? Rebecca considers the evidence. Although some feel polygyny is a divine right, wouldn't polyandry be the solution to overpopulation?
comment posted at 10:55 AM on May-29-02

Of GM food, the PR industry and Tony Blair. George Monbiot exposes the questionable methods (fake public interest groups) of the PR industry in defense of big Agribusiness.
comment posted at 8:11 AM on May-29-02

Punk was rubbish , so says Nigel Williamson. Tuneless noise of no merit whatsoever which sought to destroy anything that was good. Nothing good came of it and it has left no credible legacy. Well, what would you expect from a guy called Nigel?
comment posted at 7:51 AM on May-29-02

Extreme Hi-Fi Buff. "...A further modification to loudspeakers that I found well worthwhile is to fill the cabinet with sulphur hexafluoride gas, SF6, in place of the air..."
comment posted at 7:45 AM on May-28-02
comment posted at 8:20 AM on May-28-02

Geeky Kids With Garage Band #4,767 Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, Vince Furnier, Neal Smith and Michael Bruce are not exactly household names. Little more than typical high school rock geeks in the early seventies, they went on to become one of the most influential rock acts ever. At the peak of popularity, the band members went thier own ways and left Vince to milk the fat cow on his own for another 25 years, yet the survivors remain good friends today.
comment posted at 7:54 AM on May-28-02

Fighting to Live as the Towers Died : the NYT continues its fine reporting, reconstructing the final moments of temporary survivors on the upper floors, through over 150 e-mail and telephone contacts used to reach friends and relatives (as well as videotapes and recordings of 911 calls and emergency radio bands). Since I briefly worked in the trade center, I have often wondered what this experience must have been like. You may want to take a moment to prepare, and expect to need breaks.
comment posted at 2:27 PM on May-26-02