skip to main content
October 2000 Archives
October 31
Mr. Compassion.
This man sickens me.
"When did you graduate?" Bush asked her, as she recalls. She told him. That's when Bush told her that Yale "went downhill since they admitted women."
Your president, America?
posted by owillis at 11:45 PM PST - 12 comments
Bill clinton hangs out with Esquire
The cover of the new Esquire had all the right-wing goofballs up in arms on Politically Incorrect tonight. Personally I don't see anything wrong with it, but then I am not want to spend $60 million looking for something dirty in everything the President does.
Where can I get this as a poster?
posted by DragonBoy at 11:25 PM PST - 33 comments
Athlon + DDR:
Bert McComas is a
very highly respected analyst of the CPU and memory industry, and I always read his articles with great interest.
Intel has announced that they don't expect the P4 to be a significant part of their business until late 2001. According to McComas, if they don't change that plan, AMD is going to eat them for lunch, because the P3 is no longer competitive. The performance/price ratio for the new AMD stuff has to be seen to be believed. I think Intel is in major trouble, because informal reports are that a 1.5GHz P4 is about the same power as a 900 MHz P3.[more>
posted by Steven Den Beste at 6:30 PM PST - 4 comments
Anti-holidays
I found a nice little category on
dmoz.org called "Anti-Holidays" while looking up some Halloween info online. Right now there's only three listed holidays that get people up in arms enough to make & publicize wesites -
Valentine's Day,
Christmas, and of course
Halloween. "Boo!" to all you spoilsports.
posted by kokogiak at 2:31 PM PST - 1 comments
Nader's new television ad
parodies those hilarious monster.com ads with the little kids hoping they'll grow up to have crappy jobs. In the Nader ad, the kids hope they'll grow up to have the same crappy politicians, sold out to corporations, with no real change.
posted by daveadams at 2:12 PM PST - 6 comments
You've seen that video of the man who's trying to brand a horse but instead gets a kick in the gut, right? Or the one of the woman being prematurely pulled off the pier by a speedboat? Apparently, so has Southwest Airlines, and they've decided to incorporate them into their
new ad campaign. It seems they've overlayed new audio tracks and more current time stamps and then found actors to play the part of the videos' victims. The connection to airline savings is tenuous at best.
posted by sandor at 1:43 PM PST - 2 comments
This is the true story of what happens... when seven strangers... are picked to live in a house and have their lives taped... to see what happens when people stop being polite fat and start being real skinny. America's obsession with weight loss
continues on ABC. It's the anti-
Fat Project.
posted by hijinx at 6:50 AM PST - 7 comments
The redesign blitzkrieg continues:
Webvan is getting a new look, complete with light influences from Aqua and - yes -
amazonesque tabs. As an added bonus, it won't work with Macs. I'm interested to see how this plays out.
posted by hijinx at 6:23 AM PST - 8 comments
October 30
These Posters were an Artbomb
that went off across the street from my apartment last night. The posters were plastered over a bus shelter ad and over several other public objects nearby. I was taken aback, as I had last seen those images hanging in an exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. San Jose has a fairly bad graffiti/tagging problem, but I'm OK with this type of thing. Apparently, the SJPD are too (quoted from the Mercury News): "The poster-pasting could be considered a violation of municipal statutes on vandalism, but San Jose Police Department spokesman Steve Dickson seemed more amused than concerned. "It's not something that we would get involved in unless someone makes a complaint," Dickson said. "Then we'd ask them to take them down. People have a right to political speech."
In fact, Dickson broke into laughter at a description of the two posters.
"Hey," he said apologetically, "we have a sense of humor like
anyone else."
posted by JDC8 at 10:29 PM PST - 8 comments
election results canada
will provide real-time results of the Canadian 2000 general election on Nov. 27th from across the nation, as the polls report their results. In B.C., where I live, the eastern polls close at 5p.m. our time, but results are blacked out on t.v. until 8p.m. "The Canada Elections Act has certain provisions, which attempt to make the transmission of factual information to the public a crime, imposing a hefty penalty on those who do not obey it. This election gag law will harm numerous responsible, law-abiding Canadians. It is unconstitutional, and must be challenged on that basis. The citizens of Canada deserve timely access to public information. This site will provide it to them." Is there such a site for the U.S. election?
posted by riley370 at 8:55 PM PST - 3 comments
Now while these guys
are not exactly the most unbiased source for an
evaluation of the PlayStation 2, they have nonetheless backed up their evaluation with a lot of convincing hard information on the
performance and in particular about the
financing. If these guys have got it right, Sony's going to take a bath on this; they'll never come close to recouping their costs of production, let alone all the research they did. If these guys have it right, Sony will lose money on the PS2 as long as they sell it. This Is Not Good. (Unless you hate Rambus, like I do, because this means both of their markets will collapse.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:27 PM PST - 19 comments
Eric is fat!
After a month of gorgeing himself for The Fat Project, Eric has finally achieved his goal of 30 lbs. in 30 days. Nicole, on the other hand, isn't faring so well. Updates every few hours today.
posted by isildur at 3:03 PM PST - 7 comments
Ninga?
Nintendo and Sega to form joint company. With Sony and M$ to contend with, it doesn't come as much of a surprise.
posted by john at 1:35 PM PST - 28 comments
Not exactly "Green".
"The trouble is, Nader seems uneasy being Green. He refuses to join the party (never has joined one, and swears he never will). And while he matches the Greens in anticorporate fervorour current government is "of the Exxons, by the General Motors, and for the DuPonts," he saysthe environment seems rather low on his policy agenda. Last year he devoted just three of his weekly syndicated newspaper columns to the subject. "
posted by owillis at 11:58 AM PST - 8 comments
Unsafe in any state.
Salon trashes the Nader campaign big time, mainly claiming that his run for the Presidency is "reckless" and "dangerous". In an alleged democracy, doesn't any candidate who passes muster with the entry requirements have the right to run for the office?
posted by ethmar at 8:24 AM PST - 38 comments
U2's site
gets a redesign, losing the befuddling wireframe "studio" concept for something a little more familiar: a timeline-cum-blog, taking elements of
Classic Motown and
U2log.
posted by hijinx at 7:00 AM PST - 13 comments
The Hereford Mappa Mundi (Map the World) is a remarkably beautiful and rare glimpse into the medieval view the world. It is the largest map its kind (54 x 64 inches) to have survived and dates from around 1295. It still resides at Hereford Cathedral in England just as it has done for the last 700 years.
The map depicts the world as a flat disk with east at the top. It shows all the features the then known world including Africa, India and China. Paradise is depicted somewhere east India. The Holy Land and its important sites expand to fill the middle the map. Jerusalem is placed at the centre the world.
It is a work of cosmology as much as a cartography. That is, it seeks to explain the world as well as merely depict its features. This was a time when the population was uneducated and provincial. In the Hereford map, people could revel in this vision of the outside world, which taught natural history, classical legends, explained the winds and reinforced their religious beliefs.
Here is a
simplified sketch which makes the details and country names easier to identify. Here is the
original and a very good
written description.
posted by lagado at 3:29 AM PST - 10 comments
Q: What tastes like
lemon but
isn't?
A: Design theft at its most brazen and appalling.
posted by jjg at 12:31 AM PST - 10 comments
October 29
An
Australian Man who sent millions of e-mails around the world falsely stating shares in an American company would rise 900 per cent was today sentenced to two years in jail. The charges filed are believed among the first of their type made against anyone in the world.
Mr Hourmouzis had pleaded guilty to two charges of making a false statement on the Internet.
posted by murray_kester at 8:40 PM PST - 4 comments
More than you wanted to know
about the "Tomb Raider" movie. What's weird about it all is that the timing sucks. The game has gone through five successive versions and they've used the same basic engine for all of them. These days it's looking significantly dated, and the last couple of games have gotten really poor reviews. Of course, it probably still sells well to frustrated teenage boys, but I think the last couple of games haven't sold anything like the previous ones did because it's the same old same old.
By the time the movie finally comes out, the game may already be history.
Has there
ever been a movie made from a computer game which was either a commercial or critical success?
"Mortal Combat" and
"Super Mario Brothers" spring to mind as counter-examples.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 3:44 PM PST - 39 comments
How Corporations Operate Tax Free
Senator Byron Dorgan on corporations getting away with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. One of the reasons: they negotiate their taxes behind closed doors with the IRS. Wouldnt
you like that access?
posted by capt.crackpipe at 2:32 PM PST - 17 comments
The Mind Reading Markup Language (MRML)
MRML tags can be embedded into any regular HTML document. They are completely invisible to all browsers. No one will ever know you are using them. For example: Thoughtsuck performs a deeper scan of the client's thoughts which may included details of significant events within the past 24 hours.
posted by riley370 at 9:47 AM PST - 3 comments
Tiny little Nader on a magcard.
According to a poster at my site, he and his wife stumbled over a mysterious mag-stripe card at the mall. On this card, the number "4" and a small dot. When examined with a jeweler's loupe, it proved to be a microscopic holographic image of Ralph Nader
posted by dhartung at 9:24 AM PST - 4 comments
The New York Times endorses Al Gore
The Philadelphia Inquirer and Denver Post also endorsed Gore, while rival George W. Bush picked up endorsements from Chicagos two daily newspapers and Denvers Rocky Mountain News.
posted by brian at 8:58 AM PST - 9 comments
On October 15th
The Guardian had for its editorial
"If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led by the United States. Its development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-dministered 'bantustans', with 'whites' monopolising the supply of water and electricity. And just as the black population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully under-resourced townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly discriminating against them in housing and education spending - would be recognised as scandalous too.
Expanding on this description,
Noam Chomsky gives an account of Israel's shift from coercive diplomacy to using direct force in implementing its "final status map". That is, the cantonization, containment and control of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
posted by lagado at 4:52 AM PST - 23 comments
October 28
Gore's Connection to Occidental Petroleum
goes much deeper than an investment in a mutual fund. From the article: "...the Clinton Administration has been quietly helping the company--a generous donor to the Democrats in recent years--to win support in Colombia for its drilling plans."
posted by snakey at 10:04 AM PST - 34 comments
nader's stock portfolio
"In the financial disclosure form Nader filed on June 14, the Green Party presidential candidate revealed that he owns between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of shares in the Fidelity Magellan Fund. The fund controls 4,321,400 shares of Occidental Petroleum stock."
Read on for more...
posted by saralovering at 6:38 AM PST - 28 comments
October 27
The Meatball Ad
is mostly being run in California by the
Buchanan Campaign. Today was the first time I saw it running in New York. I have not seen any of the other presidential candidates are running any TV ads here. The ad shows a man passing out while waiting for the 911 voice choice menu after choking from eating a meatball as the TV news in the background declares that English is no longer America's official language. (The link is to a quicktime file.)
posted by tamim at 8:57 PM PST - 23 comments
While I originally thought that
this was a joke, in the 11/14 print version of
Business2.com mentions that they will be shipping and receiving "the goods" via WAP enabled phones. Aww jeah!
posted by thc at 3:16 PM PST - 1 comments
Why haven't I seen reports of
this anywhere else? This is a pretty serious spill.
posted by aflakete at 12:59 PM PST - 3 comments
AOL's walled garden.
Anyone who doesnt think that AOL will only link to AOL/Time Warner properties in the broadband future is fooling themselves.
posted by owillis at 10:45 AM PST - 3 comments
Cube Co-lo
I have no idea how I came across this but, does anyone else find this as amusing as I do? I am just imagining rows of racked cubes.
posted by brian at 8:20 AM PST - 1 comments
"Fastest f*** ever"
according to F***edCompany.com. "Scout Electromedia, the maker of the Modo lifestyle pager, will hold a launch party tonight at Les Deux Caf in Los Angeles, despite the fact that the company ceased operations Tuesday after less than two months of selling the device."
posted by highindustrial at 6:40 AM PST - 10 comments
A better way to select party candidates.
Instead of holding silly primaries that end up picking the
worst possible candidates from each party, why not have party leaders pick the best 3-4 candidates and then have registered party members vote (by mail or at the convention) and announce the winner in August? [more inside]
posted by daveadams at 6:40 AM PST - 6 comments
October 26
Joe Frank:
When endowed with profound religious feeling, your skin becomes transparent and your blood begins to turn a thin watery hue until the light of the sun streaming in the window passes entirely through you. At last, having evolved into pure spiritual energy, nothing remains of your existence but a small pile of dirty underwear, damp socks, rumpled garments, a driver's license, credit cards and perhaps a small nail clipper.
posted by subpixel at 4:20 PM PST - 5 comments
Are taxonomai copyrightable?
This topic isn't new; West Publishing stole their legal referencing system from the government, then copyrighted it and successfully sued a couple people out of business. But should it be possible? [Hint: Hell, no!]
posted by baylink at 7:49 AM PST - 7 comments
How could Sony be low on cash when
Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Circuit City all have lines of people around the corner who have been waiting since yesterday morning? All waiting to get their very own PX2.
Think about this - approximately 500,000 of the units will sell today, at $300 a pop, plus numerous purchases of games in addition to the console. Let's estimate that each lucky customer will spend $400 (1 PX2, and 2 games per customer - a modest estimate). That's a one-day gross of $200,000,000.
My bet? Sony will not only turn itself around by the end of the day today, cause a major boom in US currency flow, but also cause a sharp decline in spending for the next month - people will be at home playing their new games, and will have little interest in going out to buy anything else!
posted by tatochip at 5:38 AM PST - 31 comments
October 25
Am I Hot or Not?
Beware of this link. If you click on it you will be sucked in for hours. The idea, rate people's looks on a scale of 1 to 10. The people? Anyone who uploads their picture to the site, both men and women.
I have never found a site more habit forming in my life. Like Dack (who I got the link from) I skipped food, drink and missed my bus.
posted by DragonBoy at 11:38 PM PST - 47 comments
Has there been a negative
Nader thread here yet?
"According to his former editor David Sanford, Nader is a hypochondriac who refuses dinner invitations from anyone with pets, because he thinks cats cause leukemia, and simply hates dogs."
There are even crazy quotes.
posted by thirteen at 11:17 PM PST - 32 comments
THE AMIGA IS BACK!
Why, oh why, did i throw out all my Amiga games. And it wasn't that long ago, that i did that either. Aaaaarrgh.
posted by Zool at 10:48 PM PST - 11 comments
Sanctions Born Of Indifference
The United Nations' sanctions against Iraq - which would have been lifted long ago, if not for America - have been killing 4,500 children a month for nearly 10 years now. A million people in all so far, half of them kids.
The Iraqis die because America insists the sanctions continue - despite their illegality under the principles of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, the United Nations Convention Against Genocide Convention and particularly the Geneva Convention: (Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions - 1977 Part IV, Section 1, Chapter III, Article 54)
1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
posted by lagado at 6:20 PM PST - 31 comments
Looking Out Across Dao, Niger, and Harmakhis Valles
on Mars. Okay, boring subject. The Martian Global Surveyor has been in orbit around Mars for three years. Sometimes you just have to take some time to look at what's been coming back and admire the raw beauty of the landscape.
This is a mid-autumn view of three major valley systems east of the Hellas plains. From left to right, the first major valley, Dao Vallis, runs diagonally from the upper left to just past the lower center of the image. Niger Vallis joins Dao Vallis just above the center of the frame. Harmakhis Vallis extends diagonally across the right half of the picture, toward the lower right. These valleys are believed by some to have been formed--at least in part--by large outbursts of liquid water some time far back in the martian past. The picture is a composite of red and blue wide angle images obtained by MOC on September 13, 2000.
posted by lagado at 5:54 PM PST - 10 comments
Internet To Be Bigger Than TV - UCLA Report
"For the first time in the history of television, TV usage by children under 14 declined," recalled Cole. "Kids finally found something that was more interesting than TV. It was an epiphany moment for me." Download the report
here.
posted by owillis at 3:02 PM PST - 5 comments
Hi Jack!
HIJACK!! Hehe... You'd think they'd have addressed this problem a long time ago with pilots being named Jack...
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 12:43 PM PST - 8 comments
October 24
Too Much Information?
Heavy information overload: the world's total yearly production of print, film, optical, and magnetic content would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage. This is the equivalent of 250 megabytes per person for each man, woman, and child on earth.
posted by faithnomore at 11:59 PM PST - 15 comments
Is the Revolution really over?
According to Wired it is,
one day, the digital revolution was over. The big media companies wrested control of the Internet from the kids in the horned-rimmed glasses.
Derek has his comments on this but to add my own, nothing new and exciting happens anymore.
The Internet has become synonymous for pink slips, mergers, and legal battles.
I know there was a previous link to this article but I was inspired by Derek to bring a different matter to the table.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 6:55 PM PST - 11 comments
I challenge you to help me learn Tok Pisin
Mi laik i harim Tok Pisin. Olgeta manmeri i tokim long Tok Pisin long Papua Niugini. Mi laik i lukim na stap long PNG!
That was some poor Tok Pisin. Tok Pisin is a Melanesia pidgin language extensively used in Papua New Guinea. Help me learn more! Post links for Tok Pisin language learning here!
posted by rschram at 1:36 PM PST - 2 comments
The Mideast's forgotten people,
Bedouins cling to ancient tradition - and Israel's bottom rung. With strong historical ties to the land that go back 2,500 years, they feel left out of the who-gets-what debate in the Holy Land.
posted by jhiggy at 1:10 PM PST - 4 comments
Beam me up, Scotty!
They are one step closer to making the Holodeck a reality. Now I can really ditch the world and live in my very own bubble.
posted by schlomo at 9:28 AM PST - 7 comments
Hey, kids!
Statistics is cool! (Amazing introduction to the concept of estimation, and error computing.)
posted by rschram at 9:19 AM PST - 2 comments
The
OPE Campus Security Statistics Website allows you to research criminal offenses that were reported at over 6000 colleges nation wide, (United States). University participation is compulsory.
Of course, what they don't mention is lots of schools, including my
alma mater, refer certain complaints (commonly those dealing with sexual assault) directly to local law enforcement, and keep no official record of the incident with the school itself. I was semi-involved with my school's Women's Resource Center in '98, and I can tell you there were a lot more incidents of sexual assault than
listed on the OPE site.
posted by alan at 9:17 AM PST - 2 comments
The War on... education?
It's estimated that 7000 US college students will lose their entitlement to at least some financial aid because of previous drug convictions. Which is nice. Now, the follies of the "war on drugs" are well-documented, but this takes the cake. I thought that punishment was for the criminal justice system to dispense...
posted by holgate at 4:55 AM PST - 20 comments
The Complete Bushisms - Bush Quotables
Lets get the daily Bush Bash started with a bang today. Some of these are just too much. "We want to promote families in America. Families is where our nation takes hope, where wings take dream."
posted by brian at 4:30 AM PST - 18 comments
Okay, we know that web polls are nonsense, but I'm sure some people here on MeFi will be interested in the Time.com
virtual voter booth.
posted by lagado at 4:10 AM PST - 7 comments
October 23
Amazon dead by Mar 19, 2001
Just thought you like to know the exact time of death of Amazon.com That's according to Downside's Deathwatch is a cash-flow analysis. The death date is simply the day the company will run out of cash, based on their reported liquid assets and loss rate. When the cash runs out, something bad for stockholders has to happen.
posted by lagado at 8:58 PM PST - 31 comments
Life after death,
interesting though short reading. Scientific materialism takes a slight beating? Maybe. Nice that somebody finally tested the low oxygen theory that's been flying around since the 70's.
posted by skallas at 6:15 PM PST - 7 comments
GWB on Letterman
"As executive producer Maria Pope leans over Dave's desk shouting something of importance to Dave, see Governor George W. Bush reaching over and grabbing the end of Maria's shawl. His glasses needed cleaning and everyone knows the shawl of a TV producer makes for a great cleaning cloth. So the Governor cleaned his glasses on Maria's shawl, as if she were a kleenex."
posted by owillis at 6:13 PM PST - 20 comments
More and more American girls are
hitting puberty at 7 or 8 and nobody seems to know why. Some say pesticides are to blame; Dr. Drew points the finger at MTV.
posted by jjg at 3:52 PM PST - 19 comments
"e-mail" vs. "email" - Wired declares style guidelines (again)
- so in today's Wired News (lycos.wired.com, not wired magazine), there's a long explanatory article about a change in Wired News' style standards. A) do declarations from Wired News matter much anymore? B) is "e-mail" really 'more proper' than "email". To me, the hyphen looks amateurish and silly, but I'm too close to this to be objective.
posted by kokogiak at 10:46 AM PST - 43 comments
October 22
"I wasn't doing anything wrong..."
So says Jonathan Lebed, the 16-year-old who paid out $285,000 to the SEC to settle his pump-and-dump case. His father agrees: "He earned it. He did a lot of work. He didn't sit behind a garage smoking pot, or stealing wheels off a car." Yeah, right: after all, he bought his parents a Mercedes with the profits of his stock manipulation.
posted by holgate at 8:27 PM PST - 17 comments
I just got polled for the presidential election
. . .and they didn't even mention Nader's name as a choice for president! I had to tell them 'I am voting for Ralph Nader." Ralph is pulling 6% in recent national polls. This really gets me steamed that they don't include his name in the %#@*!!
polls.
posted by snakey at 7:02 PM PST - 14 comments
In an attempt to preempt Arafat's declaration of an independent state, Israel is threatening to
unilaterally declare its own borders. "In its most absolute form, Israel would separate by creating its own borders, thereby carving out a Palestinian state as well, although in a form unlikely to be acceptable to Palestinians.
" Okay, now imagine trying to draw lines on
a map like this!.
posted by lagado at 3:54 PM PST - 8 comments
Female kicker's chilling effect.
"Instead, the $2 million Mercer was awarded has given them two million reasons to question the risk of giving
any woman a chance, especially at smaller schools where female players would otherwise be most likely to succeed."
posted by owillis at 9:05 AM PST - 5 comments
A Complete Map of What?
Buchanan International claims to have created a complete page-level map of the Internet. I think (the article's not really clear on that). Am I the only one who finds this ridiculous? And their motives are so pure: "the completion of the map is prob-ably (sic) the first big step in the quest to control internet anarchy." Does the Financial Times usually publish such drivel? (via
Brian Carnell)
posted by mrmorgan at 4:53 AM PST - 8 comments
Lots of posts lately about the election, about other strange things, (and especially about my favorite subject to not read: Nader) and we haven't had a knock-down drag-out argument about ethics for a while. So I thought I'd start one about
this. Using up humans to collect medical data is unquestionably immoral and those who do it should be hung, if not put to death by torture. The question is whether those of us who had nothing to do with the collection of that data and have not done anything immoral
become immoral by using data collected that way in order to save lives. I'm going to make three posts below, so be patient.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:48 AM PST - 30 comments
New evidence of
madness in the halls of power in the Chinese Empire. An excellent example of how water issues will dominate in the 21st century.
posted by aflakete at 12:27 AM PST - 8 comments
October 21
Bankruptcy without style:
living.com posted their employee (and customer) data on their web site when they "made their documents public." It included salaries and addresses of employees. "Privacy advocates said it appeared to be the first bankruptcy filing posted on a retail Web site and a cautionary tale about the posting of private information that is contained in a public document."
posted by bison at 8:25 AM PST - 11 comments
Hey Bay Area Nader fans --
get your tickets! (if you haven't already) -- 6:30 PM today at the Kaiser Arena in Oakland: the
only California Super Rally, featuring Cornel West, Medea Benjamin, Danny Glover, Jello Biafra, Patti Smith, Tom Tomorrow, and other surprise guests! For those who can't make it there will be a
Live Webcast available at
votenader.org.
posted by johnb at 2:41 AM PST - 3 comments
eve.com
is no more, which is a shame they had more than a few sexy photographs on there and decent design.
posted by skallas at 1:50 AM PST - 4 comments
October 20
That Warm Toasty Feeling
Here is a guilty pleasure that I can no longer keep to myself. Toasy is a new
blogspot blog written by a friend's younger brother. Along with his vivid accounts of dreams (well written and never boring) toasty has a fantastic essay on
Ralph Nader that should inspire all to think a little harder about who they are voting for.
posted by DragonBoy at 11:06 PM PST - 6 comments
"Nader's Raiders"
ask Nader to reconsider. "It is now clear that you might well give the White House to Bush. As a result, you would set back significantly the social progress to which you have devoted your entire, astonishing career''
posted by owillis at 6:11 PM PST - 26 comments
U.S. mean temperature (January-September) warmest on record.
That's in 105 years. Something to be alarmed about? Maybe, maybe not, but call me concerned, folks. Given the fact that we don't seem to have winter around here anymore, I guess our grandkids will be asking us, "Hey, tell us about the time it was cold!".
Pardon me for posting links in rapid succession; the NCDC website is obscenely slow, if you can get to it at all.
posted by Mr. skullhead at 5:26 PM PST - 4 comments
Pennsylvania's new license plates
featuring the state's web address are just plain Sick and Wrong, somehow. Please tell me that other states aren't going to follow suit. I saw my first one yesterday, in Austin, TX, of all places.
posted by beth at 2:47 PM PST - 14 comments
The battle for .web has been well underway,
and this open letter brings light to the issue. Small time contenders are busy spending what resources they have on producing a proposal that will launch the success of .web as well as promote competition while big boys like NSI are scrambling to simply snatch the hot commodities any way they can.
posted by tomorama at 2:03 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
The Real Gore/Bush Debate Transcript
-- "The candidates have agreed on these rules: I will ask a question. The candidate will ignore the question and
deliver rehearsed remarks designed to appeal to undecided women voters. The opponent will then have one minute to respond by trying to frighten
senior citizens into voting for him."
posted by rcade at 10:37 AM PST - 9 comments
Oldest liveing organism
found in salt cave in New Mexico. 250 million and counting. What gets me is this quote: ``If something can survive 250 million years, what's the difference .. another 250 or longer,'' wonder if digital data can be stored in bacterium.
posted by stbalbach at 12:10 AM PST - 7 comments
October 19
The rock-critic "community"
Jack Saturn and Jack Saturn manqués, ahoy! A young fella runs an entire site,
Popped, dedicated to the art of rock criticism. And despite being from Toronto, he's not so prissy as to pretend he isn't a fan. Because those are the
worst rock critics. If rock even matters anymore.
posted by joeclark at 10:02 PM PST - 8 comments
The Strong Colo(u)r Classic
One keeps running across coverage of the cult of the Macintosh Color Classic. Imagine stuffing a G3 parentboard and a CD-ROM into one of those wee chunks o' sculpture. Or stop imagining and
go do it. (
Second article.) Note: Some Strong Color Classic fan sites crash every browser I have, even iCab. Too strong for the Web, perhaps.
posted by joeclark at 10:00 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
A movie-quote page that avoids the obvious
Harry Knowles wishes he were this good. (And so do his readers. Gah!) Anyway, Andrew de la Rosa's Movie Quote Page epitomizes the Wildean dictum that there is no high or low art, only good and bad. You want quotes from
Serial Mom?
Alphaville? Everyone's welcome. (But why no mention of
the infamous exchange between Diana Christensen and Loreen Hobbs in
Network?
posted by joeclark at 6:46 PM PST - 5 comments
Dark Angel is a rip-off of Heinlein's Friday,
which I completely agree with. Cameron has been successfully sued by Harlon Ellison before for blatantly ripping off his ideas. Then again the sci-fi word is a static world of either super-humans/machines/aliens/time-trave/alternate dimensions.
posted by skallas at 5:04 PM PST - 13 comments
Tired of stepping in some dog's crap???
Behavior modification starts at your poperty line! This doesn't only work for people that don't have dogs. It can also work for those of us who do, and are tired of our trusted companions going into the neighbor's yard to do their doodi.
Though I could care less that they do, I like my neighbors, so I am gonna give this a shot.
posted by da5id at 2:16 PM PST - 6 comments
Deja.com is putting its archive of Usenet news, covering a period from 1995 to the present,
up for sale. As you might have noticed, for some months now Deja's archive of older (pre-1999) news has been unavailable. They had claimed the situation was temporary, but now it appears to be permanent.
This leaves me with something of a sick feeling. While much of late-1990s Usenet is junk, it has both practical and historical significance. The notion that archiving Usenet is not commercially viable does not bode well for saving other parts of the Internet's history.
posted by tranquileye at 9:47 AM PST - 12 comments
Gore and horses have something in common...big feet.
Al Gore has endured criticism for years that he's constantly giving his image a makeover. Now Inside.com reports that Rolling Stone magazine airbrushed some of Gore's assets in its latest issue. Apparently, a certain bulge in the vice president's pants had to be "brought down a bit" in the photo adorning the rock magazine's cover.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 8:40 AM PST - 3 comments
Am I the only one who finds
this disturbing? It's the "official britney spears website" and the intro flash is quite illuminating. Different parts of Ms. Spears' body get highlighted during the opening flash animation while areas of the site are displayed. When her breasts get illuminated, "Your Stuff" is the area that gets shown. (Her breasts are also used to showcase the "tour info", which may say more about the flash designers than anything else.)
posted by bison at 7:50 AM PST - 39 comments
October 18
What is a likely voter
This morning, while listening to Democracy Now, I heard something very interesting. it seems that the Republicans lobbied Gallup to redefine a 'likely voter' for this election season's polling. It seems Gallup is now defining a 'likely voter' as someone who voted in the last three presidential elections ('88, '92, '96). This leads to voters who are older (at least 30) and to people who participated in the last election to elect a Republican. Furthermore this polling method would have shown Bob Dole winning the 1996 election. No wonder Shrub is in the lead.
Savannah Now describes the pool of likely voters "tend to lean Republican."
posted by DragonBoy at 11:30 PM PST - 2 comments
Deconstructing the walls of Jericho
Old article, but an interesting one. Archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University has said that
"Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it." Also the
BBC Article.
posted by lagado at 9:09 PM PST - 4 comments
Poetictech
has some pretty nice workstation desks (dang cool). I want the one that rotates 120 degrees every 8 hours. (warning: slow site)
posted by jamescblack at 2:06 PM PST - 13 comments
Are Undecided Voters Stupid?
Undecided voters "don't come across as terribly swift..."
"If you're undecided at this point, you're an idiot."
"These soft voters do not have a coherent set of beliefs."
More inside...
posted by Tubes at 11:18 AM PST - 27 comments
In last night's debate, Bush reassured the American people that he has absolutely no idea what affirmative action is. If you think it's got anything to do with quotas or with hiring less-than-qualified applicants then neither do you. Someone ought to send this info on pertinent
Supreme Court decisions along to the Bush campaign for the governor's edification. Yesterday's New York Times carried an op-ed which examines a critical review of
200 scientific studies of affirmative action and concludes that the facts vindicate such policies. In fact, a
Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded last week to an economist who developed methods of analysis which, among other things, demonstrated the effectiveness of affirmative action in integrating the textile industry. Little-known fact: the greatest beneficiary of affirmative action has been
white women.
posted by sudama at 10:05 AM PST - 42 comments
October 17
