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Many of us learned about Rick Gleason, the Canadian badly injured in the Bali explosion, through the efforts of his friend, known to us on MetaFilter as stavrosthewonderchicken, who published regular updates on Rick's condition on his blog (see also this thread). Sadly, Rick has died in a Melbourne hospital (CBC, Canadian Press).
comment posted at 6:10 PM on Oct-23-02

Woman injured by obese passenger offered $20,000 by Virgin Atlantic With two-thirds of US citizens overweight, and one-third classified as obese, some airlines are charging one person for two seats (previous discussion). But who's responsible when a large passenger injures someone — the passenger or the airline?
comment posted at 9:22 PM on Oct-22-02
comment posted at 12:04 AM on Oct-23-02

The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores and Morrissey is the most enchanting of them all. After years of dithering, mitigating, litigating and downright procrastination, it seems another comeback is in the works. Of the five new songs recently performed in Arizona, at least two of them (The Last Of The Gang To Die and I Like You) are as good as anything he's ever done. I'd say he's all keyed up for a cracking, newly miserable, yet peppy and poetic middle age. Perhaps every day is not like Sunday, after all... [Quicktime for the main link; MP3 for the songs. For the lastest information on The Moz, check out the Mrs Shankly website; Morrissey Solo; Morrissey Tour and Ambitious Outsiders.]
comment posted at 7:00 PM on Oct-20-02

Arsonists try to burn down a mosque in Melbourne, Australia I was going to title this link 'Another terrorist attack', but I was concerned that would unduly alarm people: Deputy Victorian Police Commissioner Bill Kelly said police had no evidence to suggest the Doncaster attack was a response to the Bali bombing. "It's not being looked at as a retaliation attack, it's just being looked at as an arson attack on a building," he said. "But obviously given what has happened last Saturday that puts another dimension into the investigation to follow-up on to make sure it either is or isn't politically or religiously motivated." Terrorists or arsonists? I suppose it depends upon whether you're Muslim or not. Sounds like terrorism to me. But like us easy-going Aussies like to say: 'No worries. She'll be right, mate.' Damn them all.
comment posted at 1:45 AM on Oct-17-02

An Awkward Situation Flirting strangers suddenly find themselves a little closer than they wanted to be. Have you ever been in an awkward situation with a not-quite-stranger?
comment posted at 8:37 PM on Oct-16-02

Hail Mary, full of.... um.... what was that, again? The only Pope many of us have known, John Paul II, has decided that a millenium is long enough to change a prayer. Odd that two millenia are not enough to revisit female and married priests.
comment posted at 8:21 PM on Oct-14-02

Bomb blast in Bali Indonesia In what is believed to be a terrorist attack, a destroyed two crowded clubs in Bali. 150 people are confirmed dead, including an unknown number of Australians, Britons, French and Canadians, and authorities say the death toll is likely to rise.
comment posted at 8:12 PM on Oct-13-02
comment posted at 8:36 PM on Oct-14-02
comment posted at 10:09 PM on Oct-14-02

The Journey to the West is one of China's most popular literary classics. This site illustrates one section of this important story, the birth of the Monkey King, with 100 beautiful images. You can also take the time to read selections from several other Chinese classics, notably The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Tale of the Water Margin and one of my all time favorites, The Romance of the Western Chamber. These works, and others on the site, are important in their own right, but are also significant because they are source material for Chinese film, TV and especially for Jingju, which Westerners call Beijing opera.
comment posted at 11:37 PM on Oct-9-02

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 8:41 PM on Oct-2-02

And now, from the news of the weird..
It appears some weird pranks have been played on some people in Kansas City

The items used in these pranks:
A TV, A bag of trash, A Tire.

And, the link between all these:
They were all painted white and the Elvis song "Return to Sender" was playing on a recorder from all these items.

Weeeeeeeird...
comment posted at 12:16 AM on Sep-27-02

Caroline Myss, Ph.D., is a wildly popular best-selling self-help author, loved by Oprah and PBS stations. She has her own show on Oxygen. But in what did she earn her cherished and paraded Ph.D.? Intuition and Energy Medicine. Where did she earn it? From a non-accredited correspondence school. Who founded the department from whence she graduated? She did. She maked it up. I'm always a bit skeptical of the intelligence and merit of anyone who so prominently adorns their pop writing with academic credentials. Here, my skepticism seems vindicated. Any other gurus out there with bogus credentials?
comment posted at 7:23 AM on Sep-23-02

"I'm not a monster." Remember the woman caught on film hitting her daughter? She's now in custody. "It's clear here the young lady lost her temper.." Well, yeah.
comment posted at 11:31 PM on Sep-22-02

The Ultimatum has been delivered to the UN... This conflict, simmering for over ten years is about to erupt. "In strict accordance with international law," unilatteral military action is imminent unless demands are met. Animosity has been mounting steadily for months, and Russia is ready to invade Georgia. "No one can deny today, and for ourselves we are certain, that Georgian territory is sheltering both those who are implicated in the attacks on the United States and a direct operative involved in the attacks on housing units in Russia," Mr. Putin said on Russian television, echoing the logic U.S. President George W. Bush has used to rally international support for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. The United States said it would not support Mr. Putin if he carried out his threat to attack Chechen rebel bases in Georgia, and slammed him for suggesting he might. "The United States strongly supports Georgia's territorial integrity and would oppose any unilateral military action by Russia inside Georgia," a U.S. State Department spokesman said. This all seems rather hypocritical, business as usual new world order politics: Is the price of getting UN Security Council approval on Iraq going to be public and secret deals, and is this really about the Chechens, or about breakaway republics and Caspian Sea oil? And what about China? Will we rubberstamp their ambitions re: Taiwan, Spratley Islands, Mongolia? And finally, why Georgia? I know they put up a two-bit Olympics and never caught that one terrorist bomber, but really, Georgia?
comment posted at 5:34 AM on Sep-13-02

David Gonterman is "the Ed Wood of internet cartooning", according to some. He is a frustrated but relentless artist whose "passion far exceeds his aptitude", and who seems destined for mediocrity and ridicule everywhere but in the panels of his own comics, where he treads the earth like a living god -- a misogynistic, racist, and ultimately unintelligible god, yes, but man, he sure can dance.
comment posted at 10:46 PM on Sep-4-02

Kill Willy? The headline of this CNN story is a bit of hyperbole, since it's just one guy advocating euthenasia. But it's depressing enough that Keiko, the orca from the "Free Willy" films who was later released into the wild, has recently appeared on the Norwegian coast, apparently looking for human contact after getting dissed by his killer-whale brethren. God ...
comment posted at 6:47 PM on Sep-3-02

Profits 1, human dignity 0. Work at the Jim Beam bourbon plant? Need to go to the bathroom? Too bad. Six unexcused pees and you're fired, says management.
comment posted at 9:58 PM on Aug-27-02

Bodies found in Soham enquiry...unconfirmed reports say it is the bodies of the two missing girls...
Looks like the worst nightmares of the families involved have come to pass. And it looks like the prime suspects may have known their victims.
comment posted at 8:25 AM on Aug-17-02
comment posted at 8:31 AM on Aug-17-02

900 now dead in flooding, and 25 million are trapped or homeless. Ha! Gotcha. It's just India.
comment posted at 7:45 AM on Aug-16-02

Brown Cloud threatens SE Asia Having flown into Mumbai a couple of times over the past years, and to Singapore once, I thought I saw this, but passed it up to gunk on the windows. Turned out it was gunk in the sky.
comment posted at 4:59 AM on Aug-12-02

Charton Heston has symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's But he plans to continue to hold the position of NRA President, at least until the dementia means he can no long aim effectively.
comment posted at 3:41 AM on Aug-10-02

Right. Let me get this straight. A security guard found a handbag unattended in a night club. He then searched the bag, supposedly looking for ID, and found a small packet containing a white powdery substance, which he handed over to the Central Narcotics Bureau. A woman, Ms. Low, later says the handbag belongs to her. The Judge notes that "There was no denial that this was her handbag. She claimed it was hers." Ms. Low's friend, after being offered immunity from prosecution, then says they both snorted cocaine earlier on in the evening. On the basis of the evidence presented, Ms. Low is sentenced to 18 months in prison.
comment posted at 7:50 PM on Aug-6-02

Remember the little fiasco of those child/preteen "model" sites? Well, finally the husband and wife of one of the children have been sent to jail. Two more site operators have cases pending against them. Nude videotapes of the girl found in the couples home is what they were finally convicted for, not the web site itself.
comment posted at 12:29 AM on Aug-6-02
comment posted at 3:06 AM on Aug-6-02

sick sad world: what if beetle bailey were at the world trade center when it was attacked. . . (i saw the link at pop culture junk mail, scroll down to july 23)
comment posted at 8:32 AM on Aug-3-02

Dan Savage and sixty nine other (mostly) men want to know who looks best in their tighty whities. [background info]
comment posted at 9:09 AM on Jul-28-02

Princeton admissions officers broke into Yale's admissions system using prospective students' birth dates and Social Security numbers. They "viewed Yale admissions decisions" of 11 students; Princeton's dean of admissions says "[i]t was really an innocent way for us to check out the security." The FBI is "assessing the information to see if there is a federal violation."
comment posted at 9:17 PM on Jul-25-02

The big fat lie? "The classic [misconception is that] 95 percent of all dieters never lose weight, and 95 percent of those who do will not keep it off. This will be correctly attributed to the University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Albert Stunkard, but it will go unmentioned that this statement is based on 100 patients who passed through Stunkard's obesity clinic during the Eisenhower administration."
comment posted at 4:39 AM on Jul-24-02

Buffy the Terrorism Slayer (PDF link) The Center For Strategic & International Studies, which appears to be, like, a bunch of grown-up ex-senators and accused war criminals and former top spooks and such, released this white paper late last September.

Any structured intellectual approach to describing this situation — and planning for it — is so uncertain that a valid structure can only be developed as an exercise in complexity or "chaos" theory. I, however, would like you to think about the biological threat in more mundane terms. I am going to suggest that you think about biological warfare in terms of a TV show called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," that you think about the world of biological weapons in terms of the "Buffy Paradigm," and that you think about many of the problems in the proposed solutions as part of the "Buffy Syndrome."

I am one vindicated overgrown Buffy fan. (Via Need To Know.)
comment posted at 10:22 PM on Jul-5-02

Pork Chop Shoes? Just one question, what kind of place gives pork chops as a raffle prize?
comment posted at 9:22 AM on Jun-27-02

Southwest Airlines to charge larger fliers extra fare. Is this a legitimate charge, discrimination, or are seats simply built too small in airplanes these days? Being a tall fellow, I can attest to never having enough legroom, but what about width-room? Remember to be nice with your discussion kids, as things got a bit ugly the last time something like this was posted...
comment posted at 7:39 PM on Jun-20-02

Billy Jean's not my lover. Should non-fathers pay child support to someone else's children? More states are saying "no."
comment posted at 9:01 AM on Jun-18-02
comment posted at 9:15 AM on Jun-18-02
comment posted at 10:22 PM on Jun-19-02
comment posted at 10:22 PM on Jun-19-02

"Relax, this is your captain speaking." (Chicago Tribune link, use metafilter/metafilter to view) A United Airlines captain made a refreshingly honest, down to earth statement, in the cabin rather than the cockpit, at the beginning of Chicago - DC flight recently. A Chicago Trib reporter transcribed the pilot's remarks, and they seem to be just the kind of no-nonsense reassurance that the flying public could use more of right about now. Would you like to hear something like this the next time you have to fly?
comment posted at 2:53 AM on Jun-18-02

Spare the rod and spoil the (1st grade) child... U.S. school violence gets really outta hand! Twenty first-grade students went to a hospital yesterday after their substitute teacher went berserk in their Washington Heights classroom, smacking them with a broomstick, pulling their hair and twisting their ears, police said. To paraphrase David Letterman, "what was he thinking of??"
comment posted at 9:24 PM on Jun-15-02

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 8:55 AM 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 12:54 AM on Jun-6-02
comment posted at 2:47 AM on Jun-6-02
comment posted at 4:40 AM on Jun-6-02
comment posted at 4:41 AM on Jun-6-02

Welcome to the world, Adam Pearl.
comment posted at 9:12 PM on May-30-02

People don't watch adverts - or at least they try not to. I tend to flip, or press the mute button. Given this research, plus the fact that certain stations think it's our duty to watch .. do you think they'll find another way to slip them in when we're not expecting it ?. (previous discussion about tv commercials)
comment posted at 11:42 PM on May-27-02
comment posted at 1:02 AM on May-28-02
comment posted at 8:41 AM on May-28-02

No More Malaria? The first step has been taken to making mosquitoes incapable of passing on malaria. But, should we?
comment posted at 6:54 PM on May-23-02