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March 2001 Archives
March 31
William Gibson
talks about the Japanese as the Ultimate Early Adaptors, mobile phones and schoolgirls. As usual he is obsessed with wrist watches.
posted by laukf at 5:39 PM PST - 18 comments
What more evidence could one ask for?
Sorry to continue with the 123cheaphosting incident, but I found their site back up and their images folder un-indexed (if you know what I mean). There's also a stolen image from Corbis in there somewhere.
posted by cheesebot at 3:46 PM PST - 17 comments
Marijuana is illegal,
and you can get into serious trouble if caught with it. You can even go to jail for it longer than if you were to kill your own wife. So, just ignore the study in this link.
posted by SexyParapalegic at 1:42 PM PST - 12 comments
A prophet speaks online...
A link for the religiously inclined: General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). I'll give a little background in the thread.
posted by silusGROK at 9:35 AM PST - 30 comments
View this ad or we shoot this dog:
Forget CNET's poster-size adverts. The latest trend is a user agreement that requires visitors to view your banners.
What other websites will attempt to adopt this trend? And what will the backlash be? I for one won't go to sites that "require" me to view advertising.
Story towards bottom of the page
posted by da5id at 8:09 AM PST - 6 comments
Just two months after the Sydney teenager Jessica Michalik was crushed to death in the mosh pit at a Limp Bizkit concert, the American rock/rap band is promoting an Internet game in which concert-goers try to avoid a violent death.
More
posted by murray_kester at 5:04 AM PST - 6 comments
Bush laughs at himself
A new approach: join the others in laughing at you and maybe they will come to think of you as "just plain good folks." My problem is not what he says or how it is said but what his policies portend. But I could be wrong.
posted by Postroad at 4:42 AM PST - 9 comments
March 30
Aurora Borealis... in Santa Fe, NM
i'm up late writing a paper and chanced to look out the window, only to see red gaseous-looking clouds in the sky... I know it seems absurd to see the northern lights in the southwest, but this map almost makes it appear possible, probably because of the altitude... if i see four horsemen though, i'm running like hell.
posted by clockwork at 10:59 PM PST - 12 comments
I can't believe this!
they actually have the nerve to associate themselves with http://www.godhatesdfags.com....
The Human Beings ability for incessant bigotry and ignorance is astonishing!
I know this was posted back a few years ago, but it just had to be shown again..... ugh.
posted by SexyParapalegic at 8:07 PM PST - 18 comments
Monsanto wins case against Canadian farmer.
Percy Schmeiser, who has attained folk-hero status, was held liable for growing genetically modified canola without paying the royalty. The decision in a federal court in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was a significant setback for farmers who fear they will be held liable if pollen from neighboring farms blows onto their fields, transmitting patented genes to their crops without their knowledge or consent.
posted by gimli at 3:19 PM PST - 6 comments
Bush's bumbling last press conference
You'll have to scroll down, but when asked by "Major" (I don't know who he reports for) what the president's thoughts were on the division within Bush's own party about oil exploration and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Bush rambled around with his typical ignorance and "just-so" explanations. Also head on over to
Cspan and watch it for yourself (The portion starts about 16:50). Thing that got me was his skirting of actually calling it The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, instead choosing numerous times to call it the benign and popularly meaningless "ANWR".
posted by crasspastor at 2:13 PM PST - 25 comments
Look!
This guy will create "trick banners" for you, no silly graphic designer needed...
posted by owillis at 11:50 AM PST - 14 comments
I-jacking!
Sippey encourages you 'to inject chaos and anarchy into the post button by hijacking the identities and namesakes of your favorite web "icons."'
Who do you want to be today?
posted by peterme at 11:44 AM PST - 50 comments
Flying Windmills and
Whirlygigs.
As the windy month comes to a close, these two stories seem appropriate. Two men on opposite sides of the globe, each a bit of a cross between Edison and Quixote.
posted by gimli at 11:20 AM PST - 2 comments
The death of hockey in Canada?
Ask a Canadian, and they'll tell you it's the death of Hockey [with a capital H], period.
"We may still call it our national game, but like nearly everything else in this country we have sold it to the Americans."
An interesting article about a national pastime flying south, and becoming merely another example of "American show business."
posted by legibility at 10:56 AM PST - 9 comments
Dot-Com Deaths = Black Plague?
Toronto Star Internet columnist K.K. Campbell takes a look at the startling simularities of the dot-com deaths and the black plague.
"The Dot-Com Death resulted primarily from a little parasite (Internet hypesters, Bombasticus bullroaricus) carried on the body of another parasite (Wall Street IPO underwriters, Securitus scammus maximus) on corporate stocks moving along business capital routes."
posted by bkdelong at 8:10 AM PST - 4 comments
Psycho ex-girlfriend is a hoax!
Looking at the code, I could see that it would sleep for a while, then start popping ad windows. Because of the delay, people would not associate the advertising with PsychoEx - the countdown starts only when you leave the page. and registered at anystreet, Dallas TX phone number 214.555.1212
posted by igloo at 7:39 AM PST - 14 comments
Critical review of the U.S. military.
As someone with an interest in the military (my brother is a fire-controlman on the guided missile cruiser
Vella Gulf), I like to see someone taking a serious look at what the future will bring on the warfare front. Maybe it'll help us avoid things like
this(1) and
this(1).
(1): Mogadishu, Somalia
(2): Sinking of H.M.S. Prince of Wales and Repulse
posted by CRS at 7:18 AM PST - 2 comments
A sad story about Tim McVeigh's dad.
I read
this hoping to find some mistake the mass murder's dad made in raising him. Instead, I came away feeling profoundly sad for this man who can't understand why his son grew up to become such a hate-filled devil.
posted by darren at 6:29 AM PST - 2 comments
Emo.
...Metal. Grunge. Alt. Rock. Pop. Folk. Rap. Blues. Rhythm & Blues. Country & Western. Gaze & Veg. Goth. Trance. Edge. Old School. New School. East Coast. West Coast. Pre-Punk. Post-Punk. Punk. Indie. Core. Emocore. Hardcore Emo. Post-Emo Indie Rock. Post-Emocore Pre-Punk Apocolyptic Pop Jizz Softcore Jesusfreak Liquid Splatter Metal. Guitar-Driven Jazz-Infused Lite-Oasis Serial Death Addictive Jump Swing Rap Twang-Blues...
[Insert a very long blood curdling scream here.]
posted by ZachsMind at 5:43 AM PST - 28 comments
The Scholars and the Godess
In "The scholars and the Godess" Charlotte Allen writes of the now debunked history of Wicca.
"Diotima Mantineia," age forty-eight, is the associate editor of
The Witches' Voice summed up her feelings on the debunking of the official Wiccan narrative this way: "It doesn't matter to me how old Wicca is, because when I connect with Deity as Lady and Lord, I know that I am connecting with something much larger and vaster than I can fully comprehend. The Creator of this universe has been manifesting to us for all time, in the forms of gods and goddesses that we can relate to. This personal connection with Deity is what is meaningful. For me, Wicca works to facilitate that connection, and that is what really matters."
I agree. Simply that it works for the individual is all that matters. What works for you?
posted by revbrian at 5:32 AM PST - 38 comments
Roofle!
The SomethingAwful goons are on a GWB photoshopping spree. Oh man, I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.
posted by Potsy at 1:47 AM PST - 8 comments
March 29
F u cn rd ths, u rnt vry kreatv.
The Guardian launches what may be the world's first text messaging poetry competition. Can you stir another's soul in 160 characters or less? Top prize is £1000. You don't have to be a UK citizen to enter. Why not post your entries here before your send them out?
posted by aaron at 10:36 PM PST - 2 comments
Confidentiality.
A lot of people would probably expect such a conversation to be confidential, although that is neither
promised by the web site nor apparently
required of their operators.
The TV news here in Melbourne covered the story this morning and skirted the subject of confidentiality, but Wired has an interesting piece. The New Zealand Herald has an edited transcript in the first of it's articles.
There's an uproar if a doctor or a priest breaks a confidence, even if it leads to a murder being solved. Why so little fuss here?
posted by southisup at 7:15 PM PST - 6 comments
"Stop AT&T!"
As
expected, former Northpoint customers are losing or have already lost their DSL services, due to AT&T's decision to simply interrupt service. If you are one of the over 121,000 customers affected, sign this petition to let them know how how many people this has angered.
posted by valerie at 3:27 PM PST - 8 comments
Anti-abortion site wins appeal.
In a ringing defense of the First Amendment, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote that "political speech may not be punished just because it makes it more likely that someone will be harmed at some unknown time in the future by an unrelated third party.
Courtney Love can sue when her cell phone # is released on a website, and yet doctors have their personal information posted online specifically so they can be tracked and killed. Scary.
posted by jragon at 2:33 PM PST - 35 comments
The unkindest cut.
"Standard medical practice dictates that intersex births like Carl's are emergencies that must be 'assigned' male or female and 'corrected' immediately to spare the parents the anguish of uncertainty, with no thought as to what the children would want." Er, wouldn't it be better to wait and see to which sex the child is attracted before slicing him/her to pieces?
posted by frykitty at 10:01 AM PST - 34 comments
DC Police email scandal.
The District of Columbia put computers in patrol cars and encouraged email use to help keep lengthy communication off the radio waves. Instead, a recent audit of department emails showed that many officers used it to send "racist, vulgar and homophobic messages" to each other. Further complicating matters, it appears this might
create legal problems for the police -- defense lawyers can undermine officer credibility, convictions may be reviewed for civil rights violations, and the department may be subject to "hostile work environment" lawsuits. Is this a privacy violation, or just another case of employees being too dense to realize that email sent on their employer's system should never be considered private?
posted by monkey-mind at 6:59 AM PST - 15 comments
1337 h4X0r or idiot savant?
USA Today quotes noted animal behaviorist
Temple Grandin observing that uber-hacker Kevin Mitnick exhibits many of the symptoms of Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autisim from which Grandin herself suffers. Mitnick doesn't seem to disagree, in fact he noticed it himself. Grandin, Mitnick and others speculate as to whether many "hackers" are, in fact, autistic.
posted by briank at 6:16 AM PST - 11 comments
Jesse's Mistress Writing A Tell-All.
The mother of Jesse Jackson's love child is penning a tell-all book alleging she received a secret payoff of $450,000 from the civil-rights leader, that to prove Jackson was the father of her 22-month-old daughter, she froze a condom containing his sperm, that before giving birth to their child, Karin was pregnant by Jesse a previous time, but had an abortion at his request, and that after learning of the affair, Jackson's wife, Jackie, was so angry that she pointed a gun at him in their Chicago home and had to be restrained by a guest.
posted by frednorman at 12:49 AM PST - 10 comments
March 28
Starbucks lays claim to 20% of all American cafes.
Does anybody in this lately conservatized land of ours care on who's backs our wealth rests upon? Virtually every vegetable, piece of fruit, bottled soda, cup of coffee we ingest is produced at rock bottom prices for the corporations that exploit our neighbors to the south. Our way of life in the States is directly tied to how miserable the living/working conditions of laborers in "developing" countries are. Developing countries--what a misnomer. The only thing developing are profits for select Americans and/or fear that the threat of recession will negate the purchase of that little luxury car I've had my eye on.
posted by crasspastor at 9:20 PM PST - 61 comments
Your phone is you
Before we let cellphones handle everything from opening our medical records to buying a house, we'll need to make sure people can't steal our identities.
posted by semmi at 8:07 PM PST - 5 comments
Up Yours!
Accused of one of the most bizarre charges in the history of Rugby League, or sport in general, a player has been found guilty of poking his fingers up the anuses of three North Queensland players.
posted by aki at 5:42 PM PST - 8 comments
WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, COULD YOU REPEAL THE GENEVA CONVENTION?
Bush's EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman said yesterday that the Kyoto treaty on climate change was dead. She said, "No, we have no interest in implementing that treaty."
Under the treaty, the U.S. would have to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Earlier this month, Whitman signed a formal declaration with
environmental ministers from other industrialized nations pledging to move forward on the treaty.
posted by semmi at 4:17 PM PST - 14 comments
Cool eyeball science
Quick summary of interesting research on the output of the eyeball. 3 really cool things: 1, we know much more about the output of the eyeball now than a few years ago; 2, they've got a neural network doing visual processing like the eye; 3, most of what you see your brain makes up!
posted by daver at 3:37 PM PST - 8 comments
The Winux virus
is reported to affect both Windows and Linux boxes/applications. The article says it's "written in a primitive computer language called 'assembly language'." On a side note, who do they get to write these articles? Certainly they are uncomfortable with technology...
posted by fooljay at 2:41 PM PST - 5 comments
Can you buy pot online legally?
That is the claim of this company. According to their site, it's against US law for customs to open any box marked as being human remains. They say they'll ship doobage from the Netherlands with a prominent "euthanized human remains" sticker on it and deliver the goods to your door. Also, if you sign up by April 20, they'll toss in a free joint.
posted by norm at 2:10 PM PST - 12 comments
Best RIAA-vs-mp3 quote so far? Here's my candidate. I think it'll take five aces to beat it but don't hesitate to try!
As Eben Moglen, professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, puts it, "Is the RIAA and its friends doing some kind of technology surveillance? Yes. Is it going to work? No. It's really dumb. It's another serious mistake by an industry going out of business in the stupidest way, bumping its head on the steps on the way down, because the record industry was always a bunch of thugs and that's what they still are."
posted by jfuller at 1:44 PM PST - 24 comments
The Planet of the Apes
remake is slated for Summer 2001, and they now have a site with a teaser trailer. At first I was disappointed that there even was a remake in the works, since the original is a great classic, but when I heard that Tim Burton is directing (with a score by Danny Elfman) I thought maybe it's worth a second look.
posted by Sal Amander at 1:41 PM PST - 16 comments
Every*
day, lately, I see more news showing
a tightening grasp** on the peoples of the world by agents of power and knowledge. Domestic affairs are more about foreignness than ever, it seems.
* Story about an expedition by Brazilian anthropologists to collect information on the size and number of uncontacted indigenous groups in the Amazon (without actually contacting them).
** Story about tensions between indigenes and commercial fisheries in the Torres Straits Islands. Australia gives broad protection of indigenous rights to land, but courts have not yet ruled on rights to the sea.
posted by rschram at 12:59 PM PST - 2 comments
Two words: Bad Taste
The Washington Post today is running an article on Alcatels new pitchman, Martin Luther King, Jr! Yes! MLK joins the likes of John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock as undead spokespeople.
posted by cornbread at 8:51 AM PST - 47 comments
"Companies could run into roadblocks if
they have to treat data from European customers differently from those in the United States"
I have an idea! Don't! We need
EU-level privacy here in the U.S. Why can't we have it? Can anyone tell me why our laws are better?
posted by fooljay at 8:48 AM PST - 2 comments
Head of National Forest Service resigns.
Mike Dombeck was actually "protected" from replacement by the Bush administration but chose to step down and retire when it was obvious Dubya aims to open thousands of acres of national forest to logging as well as new oil, gas and mining operations. What's next? Will Bush lift regulations on how toxic and nuclear waste are disposed of? His new policy appears to be an environmental nightmare.
posted by bkdelong at 6:28 AM PST - 39 comments
"An American Tragedy"
The University of Michigan Law School's use of race in the admission process is declared unconstitutional. In making his decision, Judge Friedman found that the law school relied on an unwritten policy to maintain a "critical mass" of minority students of between 11 percent and 17 percent -- in essence, a quota. His 90-page opinion also said the policy was too vague and "places a very heavy emphasis on an applicant's race in deciding whether to accept or reject."
posted by JFunk2800 at 2:04 AM PST - 35 comments
Napster proof CDs?
(Salon link, so shoot me) A new scheme for copy-protected CDs that uses errors and false data to confuse your CD-ROM drive. (more inside)
posted by smeat at 12:00 AM PST - 22 comments
March 27
When Headlines Go (Nearly) Right
The world's most unfortunately named cleric makes a cameo appearance in a row over sex scenes in a film. Can someone persuade me that the Pope didn't make Bishop Sin a cardinal just for these moments?
posted by holgate at 5:38 PM PST - 7 comments
Farewell to another free lunch...
Streamed baseball radio is an interesting microcosm of the web's development. It started with a few forward-looking local stations taking the initiative and unilaterally offering a live stream; then it went under the auspices of Broadcast.com; now RealNetworks and MLB Inc. have tied up the subscription deal. A touchstone for other online content?
posted by holgate at 4:50 PM PST - 14 comments
Survivor: Monster Island
Destroy All Monsters takes on Survivor with a cast of monsters from Japanese films. This looks much more exciting than CBS's show, and the quotes are better to:
Ghidorah has aspirations beyond mindless destruction. "You know what I always wanted to do? Musicals. West Side Story. This 'harass the human race' stuff gets old after a while, ya know?"
posted by DragonBoy at 3:13 PM PST - 10 comments
Sending Texans a message
-- more than one million Texans can look forward to receiving a "video version of the New Testament account of Luke" in their mailboxes. The group's goal is to send the video to every Texas home -- eight million. The video was made 22 years ago and is 83-minutes long.
Will the message fall on deaf ears? Isn't there a better way?
posted by 7sharp11 at 1:59 PM PST - 50 comments
Wizards of the Coast
was quite a strange place to work for in the early days. A gamer paradise of freebies, fun, and sex. A game or Truth of Swill changes everything. Now WOTC is owned by Hasbro and the February closing of the Seattle Gamecenter is the final nail in the coffin of gamer paradise.
posted by john at 12:56 PM PST - 8 comments
Free Market Failure?
The pharmaceutical companies profits have been rising faster than the S&P Industrials as a whole, mainly due to huge profits from drug patents. Not only are the drug companies milking American consumers, but their stranglehold on IP rights to new drugs prevents much-needed medicines from being affordable in many third-world countries.
But, we can't take away patent rights or investors would flee the drug scene and new drugs wouldn't be developed at all. How do we solve this problem? The only institutions with the financial resources to do the same research as drug companies are national governments. And they have the obligation to protect the social welfare. Should we turn over pharmaceutical research and development to government?
posted by daveadams at 12:33 PM PST - 17 comments
Bush seeks support from Silicon Valley leaders for tax plan.
"I haven't seen the list of attendees yet, but it's for the purpose of building support for the President's budget and tax plan, for the vital group of the economy that's kept our economy strong. If there's any group that has its finger on the pulse of the economy, it's the high tech community, and the President wants to hear their thoughts about the strength of the economy and to share with them his ideas for how to improve it."
Yeah, but what about the PEOPLE? Shouldn't WE be asked about the tax plan?
posted by bkdelong at 9:11 AM PST - 10 comments
Nike full of hot air.
So you thought that those sneakers were going to make you jump higher. All you needed was the new Nike Airs. Ok, we were smart enough to know they don't help, but how come we didn't know that they actually caused injuries.
posted by dancu at 8:32 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
You Are The Weakest Link, Goodbye!
Yes, the "Rudest Person on Television" is about to hit American airwaves as NBC desperately tries to catch up to "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and "Survivor". This little BBC profile of Anne Robinson explains it all for us unsuspecting Yanks. Is "YATWLG" about to be the next hot meme?
posted by briank at 6:46 AM PST - 38 comments
Screen your thoughts for $35
"About 8 thought screens were made in early 1999 using a metalized plastic which is used in static shielding bags. Six users reported success but two users were overcome by telepathic commands, removed the helmets and were taken.
"In late 1999 and early 2000, nine new thought screens were made using Velostat shielding. All abductees wearing this helmet have not been taken while they were wearing it."
posted by lagado at 3:58 AM PST - 14 comments
A brand new way to harass misfits at school.
First, accuse them of being terrorists. Then hide behind a proposed California law (see last paragraph of article) that protects you from being sued by the accused for defamation. What happened to the Tapia family, whose daughter Kristina made just such an accusation (apparently in good faith) and who have since run up $40,000 in legal bills defending her from a suit from the family of the kid she reported (who was arrested and expelled), is of course a travesty, but is a "shield" law the right solution when it's all too easy to imagine it just making the whole "zero tolerance" environment of U.S. public schools even more sick and twisted?
posted by kindall at 1:16 AM PST - 13 comments
March 26
The Ship of Fools.
What an odd tale... and a well-researched bag of symbolic plates to accompany it. Laid out very much like a book (hover in a bottom corner to 'turn' a page) and plenty of side notes to go with the illustrations.
posted by salsamander at 8:44 PM PST - 1 comments
The Anti-Chagnon: Tobias Schneebaum reminisces
Schneebaum falls squarely into the romantic camp. "I'm not an anthropologist, and I didn't go to Peru to gather information
," he says with mild distaste. "I wanted to meet people and have a good time. I never thought about if I was exploiting anybody. I was doing something that thrilled me, and that was the only thing on my mind." Ugh, I can't tell which is worse...
posted by rschram at 3:18 PM PST - 4 comments
Virgin to offer Internet access from every seat
Is anyone else blown away by the possibility of this? For sheer entertainment value, or for work purposes, this would be incredible. Even just to let someone know you're running late, etc., this would completely alter my perception of air-travel ...
posted by pupper at 2:08 PM PST - 18 comments
adobe has a new product
it looks like they're trying to do a 3d environment cause you have to download a browser, too. (or a browser extension). anyway, it's a free beta download.
posted by bliss322 at 12:38 PM PST - 10 comments
Want to avoid sweatshop shoes? Buy Nike.
So says
Peter Singer. Same applies to the other favourite targets of the "No Logo" activists. Which raises a curious irony: what happens when a corporation you've habitually demonised starts listening to to its critics? Is it possible to rehabilitate a Big Bad Brand?
posted by holgate at 11:05 AM PST - 22 comments
Is this the Face of Christ?
'The BBC used a combination of 2,000-year-old Jewish skulls and ancient religious images to generate what it claims is the first "true-to-life" picture of Jesus Christ.'
posted by LMG at 10:52 AM PST - 28 comments
one,
two,
three. considering this is the same bunch that put our current resident in the whitehouse, why do i have a bad feeling about this?
posted by bliss322 at 10:19 AM PST - 35 comments
when do web-cams stop being fun?
So when is a web-cam inappropriate? I mean, we've all seen the coffee-pot cam, the jenni-cam, etc. But when do you cross the line with web-cams? Is it reasonable for your work to setup a web-cam? How about a school? A funeral home?
Basically, when does the web-cam stop being fun? I think I have a candidate.
crime.com is the first site on the net to have a web-cam in a working jail. Please discuss.
posted by cornbread at 7:52 AM PST - 24 comments
Kids' bad habits blamed on movies
I too sneered and thought this was going to be another attack on media as the root cause of all problems. But the stats suggest a correlation that should be given some serious thought. Not talking about guns and school shootings but rather smoking and drinking. But then what of dope?
posted by Postroad at 7:24 AM PST - 16 comments
The Euro.
I have a question for all of the Euro-zone mefi members. Do regular folks in Europe think the varied governments will come together for the economic benefit of the whole or will regional differences doom the new currency?
posted by CRS at 7:21 AM PST - 9 comments
Slow Dance.
Saw this "Poem to the Editor" in the paper version of this community rag. Supposed to be written by "a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital."
posted by kcchip at 2:14 AM PST - 5 comments
March 25
"Suspected thief
hides in mall overnight to steal cellphones."
He took drugs to stay awake the whole night, and would've gotten away with the loot had he taken his time and not rushed out immediately after the mall opened. Mom was right -- patience really
is a virtue!
posted by lia at 8:56 PM PST - 1 comments
Up to 20% of the internet vulnerable
to a virus. There is a new Linux worm virus. Apparently, it steals passwords, installs and hides other hacking tools on infected systems, and then uses those systems to seek other servers to attack. Sys admins are advised to run a check on their servers and upgrade their BIND version.
posted by borgle at 5:27 PM PST - 5 comments
the wit and wisom of Imelda Marcos
Often regarded as merely a woman with enough wealth to own a huge collection of shoes, Imelda, it seems, has the wit of a Gore Vidal, the incisevness of a Paglia, and the ability to refer to essentials that can be found in Pascal. Click on her nose to find the path to her brain...a trip worth the taking.
posted by Postroad at 2:43 PM PST - 1 comments
Bozo to hang up his nose.
After 40 years on the air in Chicago, the final episode of
The Bozo Show will air in August. One of the personalities ingrained into the head of every Chicago kid is going away.
posted by hijinx at 8:07 AM PST - 14 comments
Third-grader suspended for drawing soldier, kniufe, gun
The teacher said that the students were scared of the drawings....perhaps they should read the article in the current issue of the Guardian which goes into specifics of our new military budget and suggests that the total cost of our military budget is 1/3 of that spent by all of the nations in the world combined.
posted by Postroad at 7:30 AM PST - 36 comments
"The marbles belong to the British Museum ...
which does not intend to return any part of the collection to its country of origin," PM Tony Blair ruling out the return to Greece of the so-called "Elgin" marbles, the stone carvings that were
unceremoniously hacked off the Parthenon by the
Earl of Elgin and carted back to Britain. Nearly 200 years later and despite years of Greek protest, the British Museum is not budging and has maintained thoughout that it has been protecting these antiquities from almost certain destruction (although their own record in this regard
has not been great). Should museums today be returning treasures that have were obtained though such looting?
posted by lagado at 4:32 AM PST - 29 comments
March 24
Is there a perfect weblogging software? Here's my wish list: a database back-end, static pages, searching, HTML, easy templating, syndication through RSS, and, most of all, the ability to back-date my entries.
PHP-Nuke is amazing, but isn't quite right for what I want to do. I like
Blogger, but I worry about its future; will new features ever be added? The talented
Noah Grey isn't updating his elegant
Greymatter except for bug fixes, so asking him for features wouldn't be cool. One possibility is a Perl script called
Newspro: very, very flexible, with
interesting add-ons.
posted by tranquileye at 7:23 PM PST - 29 comments
When I was a kid I built tree
forts. One had 17 different platforms, in a giant willow tree. Another one was only reachable by boat. Only one actually had a roof. But now I want a real
treehouse. And I guess
I'm not the only one.
posted by rodii at 9:03 AM PST - 27 comments
March 23
If you're lucky, it's not too late to sign up with a Community Supported Agriculture (
?) program in your area. Imagine getting more
fresh, often organic, locally-grown produce (of sorts familiar and un-) each week from late spring through fall than you probably eat in a month! Some friends did this in college and I was thrilled to find a farm near me this year. Is there one
near you?
posted by sudama at 9:49 PM PST - 15 comments
Learn how to dance, part II.
A fine tutorial, with helpful descriptions:
Smackin That Ass: "... the dancer imagines a huge behind and begins to smack it, at first playfully, then perhaps even fearfully."
posted by Dirjy at 9:46 AM PST - 13 comments
Did you sneeze before breakfast this morning? Well, expect some exciting news... this according to a
page of sneezing folklore. (I might add that sneezing feels mighty nice.)
posted by hijinx at 9:22 AM PST - 7 comments
A taste of Nostalgia...
while it's not really an informative MeFi posted link, the list of commercials brings back memories. It's too bad there aren't any clips. Are any of these familiar to you?
posted by Cavatica at 9:08 AM PST - 11 comments
Following "The Rules"?
One of the co-authors of "
The Rules" is getting divorced, even as the third book in the series -- Rules III: Time-Tested Secrets for Making Your Marriage Work-- goes to press.
posted by darren at 8:12 AM PST - 16 comments
Mir falls to earth
in a blaze of fireworks and sickle-hammered glory following its "
triumphant mission". And damn, it looks like I'm going to have to
pay for my lunch. Thanks to Taco Bell for "
capturing the imagination of people around the globe".
posted by sixfoot6 at 6:18 AM PST - 6 comments
Be careful what you say online.
At least if you're in the UK, where an anonymous poster to 2 message boards now faces charges of defamation after the courts ordered the disclosure of their identity. ISP
Totalise used existing law to force Motley Fool to disclose the details of an anonymous poster to their
message boards alleged to have made defamatory comments. Landmark case or storm in a teacup?
posted by Markb at 4:43 AM PST - 3 comments
Covergent irony,
perhaps, maybe intentional commentary. So the New York Times writes an article about the relationship between globalization and commercial messages, particularly the insertion of globalization itself into the commercials and advertisements. The headline: "Globalization on Film: Message in a Coca-Cola Can." Guess what was in the advertisement to the right of the story. Right: a Diet Coke advert. The ad rotates on re-load, so
here's a screenshot, 36k.
posted by Mo Nickels at 3:22 AM PST - 2 comments
Mp3.com to charge artists to get paid.
Though only a handful of artists have made a lot of money from this exposure, it was a good place to start out and the model was intriguing. But this smells like record company tactics, and probably spells the end of an era.
Some kind of file-sharing forum for new artists will spring up I guess. Where the money/remuneration fits in , I don't know.
posted by aflakete at 1:40 AM PST - 3 comments
March 22
A $21 Trillion Tax Cut
And you thought the Democrats hated President Bush's tiny $1.6 trillion tax cut. James Ostrowski offers a $21 trillion tax cut and thinks the government could be fund through voluntary donations. I'm a small-government guy, but even I don't think you can fund the government via
PayPal or
Amazon.
posted by shackbar at 11:02 PM PST - 9 comments
April 3rd is "Take Back the Net" day.
Only 12 days until they ask you to buy something from your favorite online store, or buy stock in the company to send a message to the world that the Internet Economy will survive. Does anyone smell a cute marketing scare tactic? "I gotta buy TiVo, or Amazon will die and I need my books and movies $3 cheaper!"
posted by Mark at 8:41 PM PST - 3 comments
SF Gate article
states, "with a wireless ethernet card, a laptop and some basic software savvy," people walking around downtown San Francisco could just point their antenna at a building and be privy to private, unprotected coporate networks.
posted by paladin at 5:19 PM PST - 9 comments
can standing up for your 1st amendment rights go too far?
the
independent florida alligator, the independently owned and run student newspaper of the university of florida, where i go to school, has entered into a lawsuit with the orlando sentinel trying to gain access to and copy the autopsy photos of dale earnhardt... saying that the injunction issued at widow teresa earnhardt's request by the state to block the public from access to these photos is a violation of the sunshine laws and their first amendment rights, they have thrown compassion to the wind in a self-righteous publicity stunt, and it's funny that their only supporters are other editors, writers, etc. is this going too far? i know writers live by their reputations, and this will certainly make them known, but how low is low? what do you guys think?
posted by zerotype at 3:07 PM PST - 9 comments
Is this the future of web?
Is it me or are many Internet sites starting to mimmick newspapers?
Large banner ads, aken to the full page spreads of newspapers and magazines. Oversized headlines. What next? Have major sites abandoned the internet as a separate medium?
posted by igloo at 1:12 PM PST - 9 comments
reboot?
is MetaFilter or are any metafilterians taking part in this? I think it sounds kinda fun. But I don't know what I'd do on a week without MetaFilter....work?
posted by darkpony at 11:03 AM PST - 30 comments
Vulnerabiity in OpenPGP
You don't even need to crack the key, just get hold of it, modify a few bytes, and presto, sign away from other persona. The issue here is
signing, not encrypting. The implications are evident when you think of internet voting, tax filing, etc., but it is still a victory for open cryptography, where peer review can find serious flaws.
posted by pecus at 10:43 AM PST - 2 comments
It's going to get ugly
a few years from now. Mad Cow Disease has an incubation period of between 10 and 16 years (or even as much as 30 years). Significant exposure predates 1985. Oh joy.
posted by fleener at 9:47 AM PST - 44 comments
It's happening again:
"Do you believe you were descended from a monkey?" Rep. Denny Altes shot back. "If we teach kids they were descended from monkeys, don't you think they'll act like monkeys?"
posted by aladfar at 8:33 AM PST - 64 comments
yo d00dz! hav u seen tihs?
"Two-thirds of the 18-24 year olds questioned do not worry about punctuation, grammar or style when writing messages. About 16% sign every e-mail with love and kisses, even when addressing their boss."
l8s, love wrighty XX
posted by gi_wrighty at 8:00 AM PST - 30 comments
"The Most Dangerous Piece of Software in the World."
With his usual hyperbole, Calcanis of
SAD calls
WebWasher a scary product. We all know that net advertising is not profitable (i.e. Salon going to subscriptions) and as products like WebWasher proliferate, we can be truly assured that none of these net business models are worth anything. Of course software to kill ads on the web has been around for years but is this the one that will break into the mainstream?
Better sell your DoubleClick stock (like it was worth anything to begin with ;)
posted by gen at 7:29 AM PST - 35 comments
March 21
Blood for oil
All these nations scrambling to gain control over oil, and I had thought american interests were in spreading democracy to those who lack it but have and/or need oil.
posted by Postroad at 8:33 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Ocean Floating Residence.
"For The World is no ordinary cruise ship. Instead of carrying thousands of passengers for a week or two at a time, it will be home to around 200 residents who have paid between $2m and $7m apiece for one of its 110 apartments."
posted by Zool at 7:28 PM PST - 5 comments
Exploring the Black Sea with robotic submersibles.
The Black Sea is the largest body of anoxic water in the world. A remarkable thing happens in such waters: wood, cloth, food, and other organic materials do not decay and disappear ships that went to the bottom hundreds or thousands of years ago still rest on the seafloor in almost the same condition as when they sailed the surface. The trick is getting down into the depths to find them.
posted by lagado at 7:06 PM PST - 11 comments
VBS Worm Generator Software.
I read in a foreign techi. publication about this Argentin kid who supposedly offers this virus generating software on his homepage. Being a layperson I don't know what to make of it. Is this possible?
posted by semmi at 5:47 PM PST - 5 comments
Bangalore tech support
(NY Times, free reg. req.) try to convince callers that they're actually nearby in the US, like one who "conjured up a fictional American life, with parents Bob and Ann, brother Mark and a made-up business degree from the University of Illinois."
posted by paladin at 4:05 PM PST - 3 comments
Bill Gates' dad in NY Times Mag Q&A
on bequests, estates, philanthropy and work ethic. (He's involved in administering his son's charity activities.) NY Times link, so free registration or your own personal backdoor required.
posted by jhiggy at 1:20 PM PST - 1 comments
While I'm not a huge Hole fan, Courtney Love's
letter to other recording artists makes me look at her a bit differently. The letter is a pretty strong plea for them to organize a union representing their interests. With all of the press that has been genereated over the RIAA/
Napster battle, do you think the timing is right?
Garage Bands of the world, Unite! Move over Rick Trumka
(link via SVN).
posted by trox at 1:14 PM PST - 30 comments
ever wish those new laptops were a little cheaper?
hackers have found a simple way of changing the prices on e-commerce sites and then submitting a purchase order with the new price...all in the "edit page" feature of your browser... suddenly network security is not the only thing to be aware of with online transactions.
posted by zerotype at 9:14 AM PST - 29 comments
a white man speaking black truths
After the California school shooting, ther had been a number of discussions and some links to the idea that blacks don't do school shootings. The article dealing with this issue elicited a huge response on-line by blacks to the piece, written by a whiteman. Here is how many blacks responded.
posted by Postroad at 8:18 AM PST - 35 comments
The Onion joins the
AYBABTU bandwagon with this article:
Congress Adds 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us' Amendment To Bankruptcy Bill
WASHINGTON, DC-- Seeking to increase fiscal accountability among citizens who have no chance to survive make their time, the House of Representatives added an "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" amendment Monday to H.R. 333, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2001. "What you say!!!" shouted the bill's sponsor, Rep. George Gekas (R-PA), following the amendment's approval. "This bill will not only make debt-ridden Americans more accountable, but it has the added benefit of taking off every 'zig' for great justice." Opponents of the amendment protested that it would potentially set up U.S. the bomb.
posted by Maxor at 6:05 AM PST - 10 comments
"Tired of praying and waiting for His second coming, a group of scientists aims to
clone Jesus Christ and fulfill the much awaited biblical prophecy." [via the
PDI]
posted by lia at 1:19 AM PST - 35 comments
March 20
About as creepy as an old copy of Creepy,
but much funnier and much more crude. Flash stuff in the old
Mad magazine vein. And best of all, no banner ads and largely non-commercial.
So why aren't their more original, non-arty, non-techno-ey, non-animal-abusing, non-commercial Flash things like this?
posted by foist at 8:52 PM PST - 2 comments
Tiki Trouble
My kids have been logging major time with this lately, so I thought I'd share it. For our collector of Tikiana. (Flash)
posted by rodii at 7:07 PM PST - 3 comments
The cyborg manifesto
scares me. I first read it in this month's
adbusters magazine, then online. It paints a provocative picture of our future. Will we look back on this as the just the beginning or is it vapor-futurism?
flash 4 required
posted by will at 4:07 PM PST - 23 comments
Thinking Outside the Box.
A washington post article on technology and its incompatibility with humans.
"Instead of hunting down people who smoke pot, they'd be hunting down people who sell business software that crashes. They'd owe people a buck or go to jail. That's what Washington should be doing." Via Slashdot
posted by bytecode at 3:17 PM PST - 10 comments
W. Post: Follow the Money
Or, rather, are TV stations gouging political advertisers -- and is this, the price of advertising, the quandary rather than reforming the financing of said campaign or issue advertising? Quite intriguing.
posted by raysmj at 3:12 PM PST - 5 comments
