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What happens when an ignoramus reads the Good Book? Slate's David Plotz reads the Bible for the first time as an adult. "My goal is pretty simple. I want to find out what happens when an ignorant person actually reads the book on which his religion is based." The first two installments.
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Save the 76 Ball. "ConocoPhillips is removing the iconic 76 Balls and replacing them with boring rectangular signs that aren't even orange!" Related story in the Los Angeles Times. Will you help rescue the balls from their sad fate?
comment posted at 10:14 AM on May-17-06

Tony Snow doesn't want to hug the 'tar baby' of commitment. [WMV] [QT]
comment posted at 8:03 PM on May-16-06

It's going to be as fake as the moon landings! The BBC reports that the US defense department is to release a video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 11 September. We've touched on this before, but will this close the conspiracy case for Flight 77?
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Bush out of favor in 47 out of 50 states. The SurveyUSA 50-state-poll shows some interesting details on Bush's approval rating, which has fallen to just 35% in North (and South) Carolina, 29% in Missouri, and 42% in Texas. He remains popular in only three states: Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Could the Democrats have a shot even in Utah in the not-too-distant future? A lot of Utahns think so.
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Followup : The IT expert cabby driver isn't a cabby driver, he is a business study graduate from Congo specialized in data cleansing. More confusion ensues !
comment posted at 11:40 AM on May-15-06

Radial engined motorcycles are insane, but not unprecedented.
comment posted at 3:51 PM on May-12-06

The Case of the Disappearing Affirmative Action Letters In August 2005, letters written by future Chief Justice John Roberts, dealing with the Reagan Administration's policies on affirmative action, disappeared from the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. The National Archives and Record Administration was so concerned they conducted their own investigation, but their report on the investigation has so many redactions it raises more new questions than it answers about White House lawyers who had unguarded access to the papers.
comment posted at 8:32 PM on May-12-06

It's possible. The team's board has resigned on the heels of a possible match-fixing scandal (or at least a ref-fixing scandal) during the 2004-2005 season. Other Serie A teams are implicated, as well. Juve is also being probed for bookeeping irregularities (well, it IS an Italian team... that sort of thing is expected).
comment posted at 8:39 AM on May-12-06

When a runaway train crashed through the floor in Washington, DC's Union Station back in January 1953, the Pennsylvania Railroad immediately started to cover it up. But this coverup was in all the newspapers: the railroad just built a temporary floor over a locomotive and two railroad cars, because of all the traffic for Eisenhower's inauguration. A few weeks later, the locomotive was retrieved, repaired, and running again, like nothing had ever happened. Another page includes some pictures (scroll down).
comment posted at 5:31 PM on May-11-06

Is Stephen Merritt a racist? Sasha Frere-Jones, the New Yorker's Pop Critic and maybe the finest music critic writing today, has long been an activist against rockism. Stephen Merritt, the gay, white auteur behind such postmodern pop experiments as 69 Love Songs, and sometime target of S/FJ's ire, recently got into hot water with Jessica Hopper, among others, for allegedly racist comments made at the EMP Pop Music Conference, which is Christmas and Halloween all rolled into one for music crits and their fellow nerds. Slate's John Cook defends Merritt, claiming that disliking rap doesn't necessarily make one a racist, and S/FJ responds with some further thoughts. But was Frere-Jones accusing Merritt of racism, specifically, or simply of wack unexamined biases? And is that a fair criticism? Slate's readers don't seem to think so.
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A huge, steaming hot slab of rock has been growing out of Mount St Helens by over one meter a day since last November. Here's a time-lapse movie of the slab growing.
comment posted at 10:52 AM on May-9-06

"What has our world come to if we cannot join nature by climbing one of nature's most beautiful features?" asks Dean Potter after he free-climbs Utah's Delicate Arch and pisses off the Park Service. Again.
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Diamonds in the sky [newsfilter] Your tax dollars at work: $6.1 billion on a new fleet of Sea King helicopters for the President. "The fold-down stair spares the president from ducking during photogenic entrances and exits."
comment posted at 3:44 PM on May-8-06

Arthur Magazine interviews the lead singer of Godsmack. In 2003, the US Navy used a song by rock band Godsmack as a part of an updated and more TOTALLY ROCKIN' recruitment campaign. Arthur Magazine asks how the band feels about this, in light of recent events war. Not very Wiccan of them indeed. via.
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Hoth Hell Freezes Over. The madness of King George subsides.
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Al-Zarqawi can't shoot. Lynch said the images he showed indicate that al-Zarqawi "tends to have a problem" with mastering his own weapons system and with finding capable and competent aides. "Why he's their leader, I don't know."
comment posted at 11:45 AM on May-4-06

Advances in traffic management are slowly being recognized as superior to stoplights. (java, video, video)
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Steering Them Wrong: How Schools Push Kids to Accept Pro-Gay Dogma.
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Somos Americanos Part of the current immigration discussion is a lot of arguing about the proper lyrics to an old English drinking song [mp3] U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced a resolution saying the national anthem should be sung in English. President Bush was for singing the anthem in Spanish; now he's against it. The US Bureau of Education commissioned a Spanish-language version in 1919 and the State Department has otras versiones en español on its web site. "The Star-Spangled Banner" became the US national anthem in 1931.
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Do you ever get the calling to witness to atheists but don't respond because you don't know how to start? Have you ever tried, but got pulled around from one point to the next spending hours getting nowhere? Are you just too chicken to do it? Well fret no more - help is here! The Chat-O-Matic is specifically designed to get you started on the right foot when debating skeptics on the Christian faith. It will also help you obey Jesus' command in not throwing your pearls before swine. (An Atheist Witnessing Tool for the rest of us)
comment posted at 2:46 PM on May-1-06