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I love Karl Rove -- an "erotomaniacal diary” : Few things get my Blubblenumpkin's whities tighter than the texture of a musty Vellux blanket on his bare tushie while he's gripping a Gideon bible in one paw, and a moist lump of mushed-up vending machine Nutter Butters in the other. Especially if the TV is wired for basic cable so I can tweezer-tend his lower back tufts to the background dulcet tones of Lou Dobbs. Ahhhh…heaven. created by Kat Kinsman (more about her and the Secret Service here
comment posted at 7:15 PM on Jan-17-04

Books I Did Not Read This Year: For novelty or perhaps for gleeful one-downmanship, Kieran at Crooked Timber shares a list of books he did not read in 2003. Literary guilt is hardly new, but some argue our neuroses about unread books grows as our distractions multiply. Of course, this attitude (besides bordering on criticism of the glib, "pop lite" type) usually comes part and parcel with the common complaint that paper culture is dead. And one could easily make a distinction between neurotic englit-geek Guilt and the casual reader's mere missed opportunity. Without rehashing either of those discussions, what are the (presumably) best books (or any pieces of art) you didn't consume in 2003?
comment posted at 7:27 PM on Jan-17-04

State of the Union scorecard. The president will deliver his State of the Union address on Monday night. Tompaine.com makes it easy to keep score at home. (via TPM)
comment posted at 7:31 PM on Jan-17-04

Cyborgs in Canada? When you first meet Steve Mann, it seems as if you've interrupted him appraising diamonds or doing some sort of specialized welding. Because the first thing you notice is the plastic frame that comes around his right ear and holds a lens over his right eye.
comment posted at 3:55 PM on Jan-12-04

Who wants to own an aircraft carrier? Possibly the best geek gift ever, if you're Bill Gates or someone. Note especially the *category*...
comment posted at 1:17 AM on Dec-30-03

AP: "FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers" I know this is kind of a case of the media distorting the facts, but still...isn't it kind of nincompoopish of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the FBI fer crissakes!) to name almanacs and maps as part of a possible preponderance of evidence? And in other news--because nobody ever said you can't crosspost in your own initial post--in the future, tragically hip film grad students will write thesis papers about this Stepford Wives trailer.
comment posted at 1:27 AM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 1:29 AM on Dec-30-03

FUH2! Flipping the bird at Hummers. Collaborative web photography just doesn't get much better than that. (With the possible exception of the Mirror Project, which, by the way, just hit 20,000. Congratulations!)
comment posted at 6:55 AM on Dec-17-03

Woman claims she's Strom Thurmond's mixed-race daughter Everyone's favorite segregationist dixiecrat had an out-of-wedlock, mixed-race daughter that he "provided financial support" to from 1941 on. The mind boggles how, at any moment in the last 60 years, this news could have deep-sixed Strom's political career -- but somehow didn't.
comment posted at 12:28 AM on Dec-15-03

26 year old student finds largest known prime number. The number is 6,320,430 digits long and would need 1,400 to 1,500 pages to write out. It is more than 2 million digits larger than the previous largest known prime number. Why? What use is it? How can knowing the next highest prime number be of any benefit?

One word: Cryptography.
Prime numbers are essential in producing keys for cryptography.
comment posted at 1:05 AM on Dec-11-03

Chess Boxing. "The basic idea in chessboxing is to combine the #1 thinking sport and the #1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors – both mentally and physically, yet which can be performed by easiest means. In a chessboxing fight two opponents play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The contest starts with a round of chess, followed by a boxing round, followed by another round of chess and so on." Radio Netherlands recently did a show about it. (RealAudio, 29m30s)
comment posted at 12:07 AM on Dec-10-03

Gore is set to endorse Howard Dean tomorrow. Does that mean it's already over for the other Democratic candidates? (Will you even get the opportunity to vote for a candidate in your state's primary? Heck, should we consider limiting the campaign period?)
comment posted at 7:30 AM on Dec-9-03

It's the end of an era. On Dec. 31, the Jennicam shuts down for good.
comment posted at 10:40 PM on Dec-7-03
comment posted at 2:38 AM on Dec-8-03

Got Lesbians? Every once in awhile I think "gee, self. I don't have enough lesbians in my life." Now there's a service just for me: LesbianPhoneCall. To quote their site they "deliver[s] you a phone call from a genuine lesbian!" You get to choose from Choose from a variety of lesbians, from militant bulldyke to on-the-fence lesbian (VERY popular). It even details what each type of lesbian is liable to talk about. Super! (via MonkeyFilter/UncoolCentral)
comment posted at 10:56 PM on Dec-7-03

'Just Bring 'em In From Space' • An interview with Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro, co-creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and former writers for Space Ghost. "If talking food is a tool, it's one typically seized by a businessman/evangelist desperately grasping for 'funny' — and using the first inoffensive, seemingly comic concept he can find. But Adult Swim mainstay Aqua Teen Hunger Force may be enough to singlehandedly rehabilitate the genre."
comment posted at 11:34 PM on Dec-7-03

Free Flight (Flash, via Blue's News)
comment posted at 11:57 PM on Dec-7-03

This Super Bowl halftime, make it to the Lingere Bowl. American TV hits a new low by inventing another sport along the lines of Foxy Boxing and Hot Oil Wrestling. The gridiron action features Team Dream vs. Team Euphoria (featuring washed-up former NFL players as coaches) in full contact football while wearing skimpy clothing. Even weirder, but there will be cheerleaders to cheerlead the players that are already dolled up to look like cheerleaders in some sort of subtle hot lesbian action. It's all pay-per-view, but this "Girls Gone Football" seems more like a new low than a step forward for real women's sports.
comment posted at 1:15 PM on Dec-3-03

One Nation Under God(s): George W.Bush unwittingly restarted an old theological debate. Is the God that the Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Or to be more accurate; notwithstanding the different forms of worship and beliefs, is it the same God in different guises? Fundamentalists in all three monotheistic faiths tend to disagree. For other believers - to ruthlessly simplify - God is necessarily one. Either way it's still a fascinating question (possibly not only for religious folk) and has important consequences in an increasingly divided and antagonistic world. What's it be? One God or one's God?
comment posted at 4:48 PM on Dec-2-03

Heres an intresting entry from the Wikipedia The link points to a short article on the AIDS "patient Zero" Gaëtan Dugas. hopefully this should serve as a good starting point for research or discussion. Although in the new millennium I wonder what sort of civil liberty issues this type of of research might have.
comment posted at 8:14 AM on Dec-1-03

Fight AIDS @home is a valuable resource for your "wasted" computer cycles. Instead of search the universe for extraterrestrial life, shouldn't we be searching our world for cures to our own diseases?
comment posted at 8:30 AM on Dec-1-03

Bush in Baghdad, Behind the Scenes. Drudge has posted Washington Post reporter Mike Allen's raw notes from the 2-day secret whirlwind trip to Iraq. It reads like a script from "The West Wing." (The stripped-down finished article appears in Friday's Post.) Meanwhile, some in the journalism field are pissed, says Howard Kurtz. Says one: "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."
comment posted at 1:14 AM on Nov-29-03

1.26 million people killed every year on the road or from subsequent injuries... ..Four Qld road deaths in 5 hours. 42,815 people died in 2002 in automobile crashes in the United States. Shouldn't these facts give us the resolve to explore a better solution to our transportation needs? I do not see the national debate that these deaths would evoke if the cause was different. Why are we numb to this?
comment posted at 9:48 PM on Nov-24-03

There was no conspiracy in the assassination of JFK, according to a new BBC documentary broadcast tonight. Offering a CG reconstruction of the plaza based on the Zapruder film and interviews with people who knew people, convincing evidence was offered that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman acting on his own. Essentially that all these people are misguided. It also carefully worked through some of the other theories, Cuban and Mob and had very few nice things to say about Oliver Stone. For example, there wasn't a magic bullet because the diagram in the film is wrong -- Texas Governor John Connally wasn't sitting directly in front of the president, but below and just off the side, so the round just went in a straight line. This was tragedy effecting millions perpetrated by one man. How often have we heard that story?
comment posted at 4:40 PM on Nov-23-03

"DEAR MR PRESIDENT, WE WE THINK YOUR WAR IS STUPID, AND WE SAY NO WAY!" Thus the Radical Cheerleaders arrive on the protest scene, taking the outfits and chants usually found on the football field to protests and demonstrations all over the world. Some chants here, and more coverage here. hey, it beats giant puppets!
comment posted at 9:01 PM on Nov-15-03

Celebrity Death Match: Bush v Soros
comment posted at 8:24 PM on Nov-11-03

What can you do with all those plastic bags? I use mine for scooping cat litter, but some people get really crafty with them. And really clever.
comment posted at 12:35 PM on Nov-9-03

megaman vs. metroid [Note: Flash]
comment posted at 9:28 PM on Sep-29-03

Italy-wide blackout ongoing I'm right in the middle of a nation wide blackout. 2 hours without electricity so far, luckly sunrise is near. Guess now I know what they guys in U.S. East coast has felt. Link goes to italian language realtime news on event, for interested italians abroad.
comment posted at 11:24 PM on Sep-27-03

The Paris Review Editor in Chief George Plimpton dead at 76.
comment posted at 11:18 AM on Sep-26-03

Charlie Russell and Maureen Enns - authors of a popular book and the subject of a fascinating and well-recieved documentary - have been living for months at a time with bears in Kamchatka, demonstrating that man and grizzly can, in fact, inhabit the same landscape without violence - at least, no violence on the part of the bears... Their work has been brought to a tragic and all too human end... (Via Rafe Colburn, who notes, appropriately, "People suck.")
comment posted at 8:57 PM on Aug-27-03

who to kill?
jimmy carter or donald rumsfeld?
michael flatley, or downtown julie brown?
hello kitty or bug-eyed earl?
they line up, you decide.
comment posted at 10:59 PM on Aug-19-03

Squirrel Fishing turned out to be taken The link you entered (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~yaz/en/squirrel_fishing.html) was found in 1 previous thread.

( I was looking for a reference, to aid me in drawing something , looked up fishing )

Even Harvard students get bored. [via TheMaxx] posted on July 5, 2001 Go to the detail view for this result

Please make sure it's not a duplicate of something posted before.

OK I wonder if the next thing I've seen has been taken....as I search for things I need... I see some things and wonder are they MetaMaterial?

(NOT ENTIRELY SURPRISED)

It is not! I happen to be a fan of shadow puppetry.

That screen that you get that hints you in regard to your link is both wonderful and a bummer. Has anyone here experienced a SERIES of such letdowns, with each link having been posted at some past time in MeFi history?


I cannot imagine the let down.


My query: How does each poster go about their epiphany... their find... and how do they deal with the letdown factor?
comment posted at 9:49 PM on Aug-9-03
comment posted at 10:27 PM on Aug-9-03

It's official Arnold Schwarzenegger is running for governor of CA
comment posted at 6:49 PM on Aug-6-03

I'm not precisely sure what's going on here, but it's pretty, and it tinkles. [note: flash]
comment posted at 9:44 PM on Jul-4-03

The First, The Last, The Everything. Barry White, soul legend, dies at 56.
comment posted at 7:18 PM on Jul-4-03

Box-Bots are robot-like collages made only from product packaging and labels. My favorite: Strawberry Pop Tarts.
comment posted at 7:27 PM on Jul-4-03

Sweatshop-free T-shirts "We are not about "made in USA". We are about American values. We believe in the American dream and want to do more for our customers and employees. We are pro-workers rights— whether in Los Angeles or anywhere in the world. We manufacture in the United States not because we are crazy flag fanatics but because it is the most vibrant T-shirt market in the world and therefore the most efficient place to manufacture our T-shirts." In the middle of one of the worst economic climates in decades, with (actual) unemployment near 9 percent, an American company with the courage to compete against the Global Sweatshop economy. Is Politically-driven consumer markets the future? Or do you really need that Nike logo? Could "Sweatshop-free IT Services" be far behind?
comment posted at 7:59 PM on Jul-4-03
comment posted at 5:13 PM on Jul-5-03

A Lifestyle Phenomenon An interview with TiVo's Michael Ramsay where he talks about free celebrity promotion, drop in price, competition, and viewing habits (previously discussed). An interesting read on an American phenomenon.
comment posted at 12:44 AM on Jul-5-03

Dinosaur says what? A spokesman for the company that manages the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica and other acts said that his clients "would rather not contribute to the demise of the album format." As if the years of filler-crammed CDs (from nearly every band) hadn't killed it off already.
comment posted at 10:08 AM on Jul-3-03

Something to think about while you plan your weekend . . . Mmmmmm, Canadian beer: Sleeman - Annoying Flash site, great music. Labatt - annoying pop up ad with a fantastic idea. Molson - another annoying pop-up, but it's The Stone's! Click on Don Cherry for some fashion. And who can forget about The Rant? Then there's the mother of beer sites, Beer.com, featuring beer, sex, music, fun and free. Admit it, nothing compares to beer, especially Canadian beer.
comment posted at 12:34 PM on Jun-28-03

The Matrix 2 leaves Harry Knowles... "underwhelmed."
comment posted at 10:40 PM on May-13-03

Texas Rangers are facing a unique task. They have been sent to arrest over 50 Democrats and drag them back to Austin, TX. The problem: They've fled Texas to 'hide' in Oklahoma. The reason why they left the state? To stop a quorum on Congressional Redistricting.
comment posted at 12:46 AM on May-14-03

William Bennett former Bush Sr Drug Czar (1990) and author of The Book of Virtues (1994) 38 weeks on the NYT best-seller list is known in the industry as a looser.
comment posted at 6:23 PM on May-6-03

School's out 17 days early in Hillsboro. Oregon isn't alone in their state budget crunch. Will this solution be seen elsewhere? Meanwhile, defense industry CEOs -- "just 37 men have made enough money in the last three years to, for instance, pay for two years of running the Boston public schools."
comment posted at 9:31 AM on May-2-03

"Select guests have gathered at a top Paris restaurant to sample the one millionth duck to be snatched from grassy marshland, carefully strangled and ritually cooked with its own blood." The Tour d'Argent seems pretty proud about its baby-duck strangling, even going so far as to use duck images as the navigation icons on its [ridiculously pretentious] website, and gloating about its own hideous brutality within: "On the Eve, in spite of its youth ­or rather because of its very youth (from six to ten weeks) --, the poor bird was unfeelingly smothered then plucked by its assassins." Can we really trust a country capable of such evil with a new military alliance?
comment posted at 5:44 PM on Apr-29-03

Lynne Stewart, a New York human-rights lawyer was arrested and had her files searched, on charges relating to her work as defence counsel for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman who is serving a life sentence in connection with the bombing of the WTC in 1993. A law school's graduate students seeking to honour her with an award at their graduating ceremony has been stopped from doing so by the dean afraid of bad publicity.
comment posted at 3:19 PM on Apr-29-03

E-voting could counter apathy amongst the young on May 1st. Research published by HEDRA indicates that over half of young people would be more likely to vote if they could do so via the Internet. But is it secure and verifiable? They seem to have covered most of the bases. But the question remains, will voters trust such a system? Unfortunately, the discussion seems to have been prematurely terminated. Warning: pdfs!
comment posted at 2:11 AM on Apr-29-03