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What is it about hybrid cars that brings out such ignorance and bile?? Some Massachusetts columnist named David Baumann has some fresh new disinformation about hybrid cars. He states that hybrids are just too dang complicated for an American driver, that they actually get 25 mpg, and people are either being tricked into buying them, or buying them as some kind of political statement. I wonder which party I got enrolled in when I bought mine? I should check on that, I might want to vote in the primaries. I don't mind that he doesn't like them, he's not required to. I do mind that such a bizarre mashup of rumor, misinformation, and dark fantasy can be presented to the public under the guise of being news.
comment posted at 10:11 AM on Mar-15-06
comment posted at 10:17 AM on Mar-15-06

Eighty years ago, William Mulholland completed his final project: the St. Francis Dam, which converted San Francisquito Canyon--about 5 miles northeast of what is now Santa Clarita, California--into a 38,000 acre-foot reservoir for Los Angeles/Owens River aqueduct water. You're probably familiar with Mulholland's name --he designed and built the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the beginning of the system with which Los Angeles is supplied water from the Central Valley--and as a gesture of gratitude, the city named its most scenic highway in his honor. Mulholland, the California Water Wars, the aqueduct, and the dam were also referenced and alluded to extensively in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. But the man who helped build an immense metropolis by bringing water to the desert has only a small fountain as a memorial to his legacy. Three minutes before midnight, on March 12, 1928...
comment posted at 5:41 PM on Mar-13-06

Debating the Moral Status of the Embryo. A favorite scenario of some bioethicists in this debate is often a variation of "if a fertility clinic were on fire and you had only enough time to run in once to effect a rescue, which would you grab—the unconscious clinic worker/or a tank full of hundreds of frozen embryos?" Sometimes the debate degenerates...
comment posted at 8:19 AM on Mar-8-06

Q. What was the worst program to ever air on U.S. network television that George Lucas has been trying to silence since its first airing?

A. The Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978 can be viewed HERE.

Random highlights of this truly horrible program can be found here. (.mov, ~5 min.)
comment posted at 5:20 PM on Mar-7-06

50% of all product returns are due to poor design. Well color me surprised, kids. It seems as though we always take for granted the products we use on a regular basis. But most things I use just plain suck due to the design and resultant user experience. How often do you find yourself fighting with your mobile phone, DVD player, 80-button AV receiver and 15 component TV systems? Which products are paragons of good design, and which should be thrown away with the dishwater? What's the most infuriating product you've ever used? My choices for bad design: BMW's iDrive. Good design: iPod.
comment posted at 1:14 PM on Mar-7-06
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Prof. Daniel Dennett's (New York University, Philosophy) new book Breaking the Spell appears to have frightened its NYT book reviewer, Leon Wieseltier (The New Republic, Literary Editor). Wieselter claims "The question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question", and promptly proceeds to demonstrate that he himself knows nothing about philosophy. Dennett responds.
Prof. Brian Leiter (University of Texas, Philosophy) responds that "'The view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical' is not a 'superstition' but a reasonable methodological posture to adopt based on the actual evidence, that is, based on the actual expanding success of the sciences . . . during the last hundred years."
b l o g s s and serious reviews.
comment posted at 12:15 PM on Mar-7-06
comment posted at 12:17 PM on Mar-7-06

From Foreign Policy, Patriarchy's Big Comeback. Maybe you didn't believe it had been away. But Societies that are today the most secular and the most generous with their underfunded welfare states will be the most prone to religious revivals and a rebirth of the patriarchal family. The absolute population of Europe and Japan may fall dramatically, but the remaining population will, by a process similar to survival of the fittest, be adapted to a new environment in which no one can rely on government to replace the family, and in which a patriarchal God commands family members to suppress their individualism and submit to father.
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comment posted at 9:27 PM on Mar-2-06

"In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage."
comment posted at 11:55 AM on Mar-2-06
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comment posted at 7:34 AM on Mar-3-06

via BBC Ground-based astronomy could be impossible in 40 years because of pollution from aircraft exhaust trails and climate change, an expert says.
comment posted at 10:35 AM on Mar-2-06
comment posted at 3:56 PM on Mar-2-06

Prisons Often Shackle Pregnant Inmates in Labor. Sometimes human rights abuses are committed right in our backyard [the U.S.]. Shackling females to beds while they give birth is a practice that has been investigated by Amnesty International. A woman in labor writhes in pain on a hospital bed, and as she does, a shackle secures one of her ankles to the bed rail. It sounds like something out of a medieval chamber of horrors. But believe it or not, that's what happens when a female prisoner in California -- and in 20 other states -- gives birth. More here, and on prisoners' rights in general.
comment posted at 10:44 AM on Mar-2-06
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comment posted at 3:07 PM on Mar-2-06

An act of civil obedience. Kids with cameras drive the speed limit en masse, thereby blocking traffic and raising questions not only about the difference between de facto and de jure speed limits, but also about how incredibly pissed I'd be had I been behind them. [via]
comment posted at 1:27 PM on Mar-1-06
comment posted at 5:18 PM on Mar-1-06

Random Rules , a new[ish] feature of the Onion: A.V. Club. They ask a rocker/writer/comedian/whatever to set their MP3 player to "shuffle" and comment on the first few tracks that come up. This probably could have been very boring, but it actually ended up kind of interesting. See Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse call Belle and Sebastian a “one-fuckin'-trick pony”. Enjoy David Cross waxing poetic about R.E.M.’s Murmur. From the main link, read the description of the raw sexual chemistry that existed between David Berman of the Silver Jews and the actress that played Ginger on Gilligan's Island.
comment posted at 8:08 AM on Mar-1-06
comment posted at 9:17 AM on Mar-1-06

Say what you want about Tom Monaghan, he thinks big. He built a big company, he's got a big agenda , he wanted to build a big Jesus, and now he's building a whole new town. That would be the town of Ave Maria, Florida, -- home to Ave Maria University, , but that's not all - welcome to America's newest mini-theocracy: "You won't be able to buy a Playboy or Hustler magazine in Ave Maria Town. We're going to control the cable television that comes in the area. There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town. If you go to the drug store and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception, you won't be able to get that in Ave Maria Town." aturally, this has run him afoul of Florida's ACLU.
comment posted at 4:37 PM on Feb-28-06
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comment posted at 5:32 PM on Feb-28-06

So if you run the CD in your personal computer, by the end of it, the Minnesota GOP will not only know what you think on particular issues, but also who you are. --a cd being sent out to home by the Minnesota GOP is polling people who use the cd, sending their personal info, including name, address, and phone, among other info, back to party headquarters. No privacy policy or statement identifying what the cd does is visible anywhere: ...As far as I could tell, nothing tells you that the answers are about to be e-mailed or otherwise transmitted to the Minnesota GOP. So you finish, and then the phone rings. "Hello, Mr/Mrs. Voters, it's Joe and I notice you support gun control and the marriage amendment, would you like to donate some money to us?" That might startle the person who may have thought he/she was viewing the presentation in the privacy of the computer room. ...
comment posted at 3:58 PM on Feb-28-06
comment posted at 4:12 PM on Feb-28-06

The Hype Machine tracks MP3 blogs so you don't have to.
comment posted at 4:56 PM on Feb-24-06

Marcus McKinney was arrested Wednesday for the gang-related shooting of Michael Jacola at Orange Park High School in Jacksonville. Florida. Marcus was caught because left his photo on his Myspace.com profile alongside various comments about belonging to a gang.
comment posted at 1:52 PM on Feb-24-06

What if the South had won the war? Professor and director, Kevin Wilmott, brings you his vision of a Confederate victory with C.S.A. The Confederate States of America. Not quite Harry Turtledove, NPR examined Wilmott's satirical look at a not quite so possible future and offered their opinion of it. Trailer, anyone?
comment posted at 8:14 AM on Feb-24-06
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Morrissey Investigated by the F.B.I. The former Smiths lead singer was interviewed and taped. The FBI was apparently trying to determine if he was a threat to the government.
comment posted at 3:54 PM on Feb-23-06
comment posted at 4:36 PM on Feb-23-06

So you want to hear the new Guns N Roses tracks.
comment posted at 2:43 PM on Feb-23-06
comment posted at 3:31 PM on Feb-23-06

Bush's "pepperoni" defence of outsourcing. "India's middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE and Whirlpool and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States. Younger Indians are acquiring a taste for pizzas from Domino's, Pizza Hut..."
comment posted at 11:58 AM on Feb-23-06

Newsfilter: On Wednesday, the South Dakota state Senate voted, 23 to 12, to criminalize abortion. The new law makes it a felony for doctors to perform the procedure, except to save the life of a woman. "'The momentum for a change in the national policy on abortion is going to come in the not-too-distant future,' said Rep. Roger W. Hunt, a Republican who sponsored the bill. To his delight, abortion opponents succeeded in defeating all amendments designed to mitigate the ban, including exceptions in the case of rape or incest or the health of the woman. Hunt said that such "special circumstances" would have diluted the bill and its impact on the national scene."
comment posted at 1:34 PM on Feb-23-06