September 2002 Archives

"nearly 20" kids beat man to brain death with bats, shovels and boards Brutal stuff. One of the kids in custody is only 10 years old. The victim had "confronted them for throwing an egg at him and punched one teen in the mouth". They went and organized a mob, and returned, according to the Milwaukee Police. What do you do with a 10 year old murderer, anyway?
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 10:33 PM PST - 42 comments

There's a reason why you've been getting those 'RapeMaster' spam ads although we're not sure why, but alot of weird stuff is popping up in spam. I could live without ads for 'farmer girl on cow' sites.

To heck with thinking this out, it's obviously a massive conspiracy involving the Government, Government Ops, Ariel Sharon, the CIA, the Queen of England, Mothers who post bikini pics for pedophiles, Wired.com, Capitol Hill Blue and other forms of media to discredit the Internet while using the Internet to do it.

Anyways, what sorts of weird 'GovOps' spam are you getting in your mailboxes?
posted by RobbieFal at 9:27 PM PST - 10 comments

EBay in patent dispute. EBay is currently involved in a patent dispute with someone who claims to have patented the idea of online auctions in 1995. EBay believes it has found prior art in a USENET post from 1994.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 9:16 PM PST - 7 comments

EU officially excludes Americans from war crimes tribunal. "Defusing a trans-Atlantic spat, the European Union agreed Monday to spare U.S. citizens the fate of standing trial on war crimes charges in the newly created International Criminal Court."
posted by botono9 at 9:07 PM PST - 45 comments

Oh No - Not the O-Zone Layer AGAIN! It seems that our wonderful ozone hole over the Earth has split in two... Now you don't need to wear 100 sunblock just on Australia and Antarctica. But scientists *sound* a little happier, or perhaps I'm just reading into it a little too much.
posted by djspicerack at 8:33 PM PST - 4 comments

What lies beneath. Confirming what you probably already knew, "as we juggle eating, drinking and working at our work stations, the tight shadowy crevices between our keyboard become the computer equivalent of a black hole, sucking in pizza toppings, contact lenses, paper clips, the odd insect...". Germ freakery or a genuine hygiene concern?
posted by netsirk at 7:29 PM PST - 43 comments

The Rise of the Ideopolis "Democrats have been gaining strength in areas where the production of ideas and services has either redefined or replaced an economy dependent on manufacturing, agriculture, and resource extraction. Many of these areas are in the North and West, but they are also in states like Florida and Virginia. Republicans are strongest in areas where the transition to postindustrial society has lagged. Many of these are in the Deep South and Prairie States. As Democratic politics has evolved over the last decade, it has increasingly reflected the socially liberal, fiscally moderate priorities of these new areas -- what we call a politics of progressive centrism. Republicans have continued to espouse an anti-government credo closely identified with business and the religious right -- a politics that plays well in parts of the Deep South but not in a new postindustrial America." (Check out what's going on in Illinois). If that doesn't work, there's always the NASCAR Democrats.
posted by owillis at 7:13 PM PST - 15 comments

Geeky obsessiveness on a level that I can definitely get behind. A shot by shot analysis of the full trailer for "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers". The trailer is up in Quicktime here, for all us fanboys.
posted by GriffX at 6:32 PM PST - 19 comments

If you can spare a moment from histrionic rhetorical arguments about far away places you have no real experience with to involve yourself with practical ways to stop the trend toward a fundamentalist totalitarian corporate dictatorship in this country and step by small pragmatic step reclaim democracy, a good first step is to support Oregon's Measure 23, to promote comprehensive universal health care using a single payer public finance mechanism, or support healthcare for everyone in your state.
posted by semmi at 6:30 PM PST - 37 comments

Music compact disc distributors, retailers settle price fixing suit. But they're still busting our chops for downloading MP3s. This is ammo to Kazaa or WinMX the SOBs into submission, I say. What share of this cash will actually benefit consumers? By the way, part of the press release at the AG's site may be cut off. It's the bottom of the first page: Today’s settlement has three major components: 1. Sales Practice Changes. Defendants have agreed to an injunction preventing them from forcing retailers to increase CD prices and encouraging price competition between them.
posted by stevefromsparks at 6:18 PM PST - 7 comments

One sunny day, Bill Beaty was walking through a car park when he noticed a black car that appeared to have a series of interesting spots and highlights on its hood. On closer inspection, he also noticed several hand prints which had a curious property: they didn't appear to be on the surface of the paintwork at all but instead looked as though they were floating several inches below the surface. In some cases they even looked like they were floating above the surface. After thinking about this he came to realize that he looking at a kind of holographic effect but this kind of hologram didn't require all the usual paraphernalia nor was it caused by light wave interference. It was a kind of holography that could be used to draw pictures in 3D by hand. (More inside...)
posted by lagado at 6:10 PM PST - 10 comments

Bill O'Reilly's views on American protection of Israel, and the response of the Muslim World.
posted by yevge at 6:08 PM PST - 27 comments

Pakistani man denies having sex with Taliban American. Not that there's anything wrong with it.
posted by msacheson at 5:44 PM PST - 19 comments

"They were acting like bin Laden was hiding behind every door. That just wasn’t the way to be acting with civilians." According to this Newsweek article, some members of U.S. Special Forces seem to think the military's recent operations to track down Al Qaeda went a bit awry.
posted by moonbiter at 5:18 PM PST - 13 comments

Cicero, writing in the first century BC, mentions an instrument “recently constructed by our friend Poseidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets.” Archimedes is also said to have made a small planetarium, and two such devices were said to have been rescued from Syracuse when it fell in 212BC. This reconstruction suggests such references can now be taken literally.
posted by grumblebee at 4:43 PM PST - 9 comments

Need some office equipment? Maybe you'll want to check out the 8863 items from Arthur Andersen being auctioned off, starting tomorrow. Lots of printers, monitors, servers, apparently not much cable management, but no shredders that I've seen yet. Then again, I haven't looked through the 6 meg Excel spreadsheet of all items either. Just the ticket, in case you need 18 floors(600,000 square feet) worth of furniture and equipment. A cold, hard footnote to a pathetic and shameful story of integrity squandered.
posted by dglynn at 2:55 PM PST - 16 comments

U.S. helped Iraq start bioweapons program

"I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs,'' said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector. "But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time."

" -isn't iraq just another case of blowback and is anyone asking what the next round of "blowback" will be if we go in again?
posted by specialk420 at 2:46 PM PST - 35 comments

Is the US targeting al-Jazeera? In defense of al-Jazeera, they have interviewed Israeli officials and members of the Bush administration. They have also been critical of Arab dictatorships. In October of last year, Colin Powell tried to gag Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera's response? They did a story on the attempted censorship. Six weeks later, the al-Jazeera office in Kabul was demolished by a pair of 500 lb. bombs. Sami al-Haj, a cameraman for al-Jazeera, has been illegally imprisoned without charges by the US for nine months. His wife -- the mother of Sami's three-year old son -- assumed that he had been killed until she received a letter from him in April. Can we really say that their approach to journalism is biased and disrepectful, but ours is not?
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:18 PM PST - 14 comments

Student arrested with boxcutter & scissors. But the thing that really boggled my mind was this: "Since February, we've taken more than 25,000 boxcutters from carry-ons and off of passengers. We've taken more than 500 firearms and 215,000 knives," Johnson said." For one thing, I guess I had never realized how much box cutting went on in the US - but the bizarre piece is the guns. A half dozen I can see, but five freakin' hundred? How can that many people - in the post 9/11 world - still be trying to get serious weapony onto airplanes?
posted by MidasMulligan at 1:33 PM PST - 45 comments

Torricelli Considers Dropping Out Of His Re-Election Bid ...and Republicans' hopes to reclaim the Senate brighten. Why drop out now, with only 5 weeks left? Is Torricelli guilty of even more ethics violations than previously thought? (more inside...)
posted by jennak at 12:18 PM PST - 67 comments

Testimony of Teens Kidnapped w/ authorization of parents and taken to overseas "behavior modification" schools. After researching these schools almost 5 years ago I am horrified that most of them are still running and whose teachings are even showing up in the form of seminars in kindergarten. Has anyone else had experience with schools like this, whether directly or through a family member or friend ?
posted by bkdelong at 11:44 AM PST - 17 comments

American Dreams premierd last night on NBC. "This evocative drama -- set against the memorable, upbeat sounds of the 1960s -- depicts a more innocent America as seen through the youthful Pryor family of Philadelphia as they brace for cultural turbulence ahead that still resonates in this contemporary era." Several things along those lines in the show caught my attention. One being the way the 1960's mother role is portrayed. Is she content or is she oppressed? What happend to the everyday sit-down family dinner, where some things are not appropriate to say at the dinner table? Why did it seem like such a simpler place and time? Would America today feel the same pain if we lost our president? The show is not a whole lot different from the concept of the Wonder Years but it seems fresh compared to some of the other NBC dramas.
posted by Recockulous at 11:06 AM PST - 53 comments

BobCrane.com is a pay-pr0n site (don't worry; the first page, at least, is work-safe) that collects the explicit photos, films, etc. that "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane took of himself and a ceaseless stream of female companions in his off-hours. What makes the site unusual is that it's run by Bob's son, Scotty, who takes particular pride in defending his dad's sexual prowess and mental health. This defense is necessary because Crane is being biopic'd in a new film by Paul Schrader which, according to a recent NYT article, imagines Crane as the archetypal sex addict, culminating in a still-unsolved murder. [reg. req'd: metafilter41, metafilter; much more inside.]
posted by blueshammer at 10:37 AM PST - 16 comments

RAPGEN Between the photo shoots, trips to the orthodontist for work on your platinum grill, and keeping your hos in check, you don't have time to sit down and compose songs. It's rare that you even have time to kick back with a 40. Producing with RAPGEN ensures that you'll always be keeping it real.
posted by adamms222 at 10:33 AM PST - 8 comments

The following is a [partial] list of the most frequently challenged books of 2001...
1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
2. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
3. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (the "Most Challenged" fiction book of 1998)
4. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
5. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
6. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
(Last week was Banned Books Week. Sorry this is late. Did you remember to hug your favorite banned book? Does anyone really think children need to be "protected" from these books?)
posted by Shane at 10:22 AM PST - 52 comments

Freedomland was an entertainment park, the largest anywhere in the world. It was New York's answer to Disneyland. Built in the shape of the United States, this 205-acre park's main theme was American history. It was divided into seven sections of our country, each with its own special exhibit or disaster. You could travel from the East Coast to the West Coast, all in one day. It only lasted frm 1960 till 1964 and considered one of the greatest failures in amusement park history.
posted by atom128 at 10:03 AM PST - 10 comments

American Heritage magazine's fifth annual Overrated and Underrated list is out, with this year's experts weighing in on the most overblown poet, underappreciated pirate, and overadmired Roosevelt, among many others. (See the Metafilter discussion of last year's list for more dichotomies.)
posted by arco at 9:32 AM PST - 17 comments

Myth Dispelled: Shoe Size, Penis Size Not Linked. I guess there's no need in buying my shoes two sizes too large any longer (pardon the pun). Damn you scientists!
posted by pallid at 9:18 AM PST - 22 comments

Are you writing a novel? An article in the NY Times urging would-be authors to pack it in. Given the quoted stat (that 81% of Americans 'feel they have a book in them'), and extrapolating it for the rest of the world, that still means that there are roughly 12,887 unwritten books out there in me-fi land. Is this true? And has anyone actually written theirs down?
posted by jonathanbell at 9:16 AM PST - 59 comments

David Hasselhoff notifies media that he's hit rock bottom. "I am *too* a tortured artist. See?"
posted by spotmeter at 9:07 AM PST - 30 comments

Theologian of the Year: Ms. Buffy. "We need someone who can not only deconstruct the problem of evil, but kick it's hiney; someone with a preternatural sense of comic timing and an eye for fashion."
posted by jacknose at 9:05 AM PST - 13 comments

The Demon in the Freezer An article by the author of The Hot Zone. " The water contained the whole molecules of life from variola, a parasite that had colonized us thousands of years ago. We had almost freed ourselves of it, but we found we had developed a strong affinity for smallpox. Some of us had made it into a weapon, and now we couldn't get rid of it. I wondered if we ever would, for the story of our entanglement with smallpox is not yet ended".
posted by Mack Twain at 1:57 AM PST - 10 comments

Republican Insider Hint #1: Apply foot to mouth and win. America ain't no democracy. Trent Lott on McDermott: "For him to be in Baghdad, the center of one of the most dangerous dictators in the world, with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, to be questioning the veracity of our own American president, is the height of irresponsible," said Lott, R-Mississippi. "He needs to come home and keep his mouth shut." Yes, yes, we have three traitorous democratic congressmen in Baghdad presently, who are lobbying that government to allow the return of UN weapons inspectors.
posted by crasspastor at 11:41 PM PST - 94 comments

Did perfume from a dress make T.S. Eliot so digress? Or was it the scent of other men? A rash of biographies this year claim to have found closet homosexuals just about everywhere; Adolf Hitler, G.F. Handel, Friedrich Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot are all suspected – largely without substantial evidence – of being gay. [more inside]
posted by Ljubljana at 11:38 PM PST - 15 comments

Do you know what the Second Amendment actually says? UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh presents a remarkably clear, educated, and non-inflammatory explanation of the amendment, including plenty of historical references. As with my previous post (about Liberalism and Conservativism), I submit this not to promote a viewpoint, but to (hopefully) educate those who would debate about it.
posted by oissubke at 10:09 PM PST - 33 comments

A gaping but temporary hole has opened in the blogosphere. Will Vehrs claims that this week's PunditWatch will be the last of the venerated Sunday Morning political talkshow digests until November 5th--the weekend before the election. Who will step up to the plate at this critical juncture?       ...please?
posted by goethean at 8:11 PM PST - 10 comments

A six month reprieve. Congressman Sensenbrenner just last week proposed a bill that would delay for six months the effectiveness of CARP fees webcasters would otherwise have to start paying in October. The bill is up for a crucial vote on Tuesday. If you want to Save Internet Radio in the U.S., this is your chance! Call your representative (no time to use faxes or snail mail, just dial the Congressional Switchboard, 202-225-3121) and tell your Congresscritter to support HR 5469.
posted by IPLawyer at 6:22 PM PST - 9 comments

Agency disavows report on Iraq arms "The International Atomic Energy Agency says that a report cited by President Bush as evidence that Iraq in 1998 was 'six months away' from developing a nuclear weapon does not exist. 'There's never been a report like that issued from this agency,' Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's chief spokesman, said yesterday in a telephone interview from the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria."
posted by owillis at 1:41 PM PST - 52 comments

"Patience has its limits", she said after she pummeled a few snot nosed brats... after she removed her veil and burqa.
posted by jcterminal at 1:29 PM PST - 18 comments

This Green House, an Orlando couple's struggle to build the ecologically friendly home of their dreams: "The question eventually comes down to the price of environmental consciousness. I was asked, 'Why bother with all these things if the readily available alternatives are suitable?' And my best response is: 'Why not?'"
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:53 PM PST - 11 comments

Kodak Girl - Martha Cooper began her love affair with photography when her dad gave her a Kodak Baby Brownie sometime around 1946. A professional photographer, for the last 25 years she's also been an avid collector of photographica. Her focus is on images of women with cameras. Browse through more than a century of historic photos, quirky memorabilia, advertising, toys, comics, movie stills and figurines - it's a fascinating site! In her own photos, Ms. Cooper favors art, anthropology, and urban folk culture. Her colorful work can be viewed at NYCity Snaps.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:10 AM PST - 2 comments

Ever wonder just who's fattening who's wallet? The Transnational Corporations Observatory [multilingual] seems to know quite a bit. Now if i can only figure out how the ad council gets their money...
posted by phylum sinter at 5:00 AM PST - 3 comments

"All it takes is a snowball," he said, "to start an avalanche." Vaclav Havel speaks to Cuban exiles.
posted by swell at 3:16 AM PST - 10 comments

The last Minority Report in the Nation by Christopher Hitchens
posted by semmi at 11:45 PM PST - 46 comments

Ahhhh ahhhhhhh! (Flash link) I never knew the lyrics to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," but I'm pretty sure I'll never forget them now. Animation! Vikings! And... kittens! However, as much fun as the video is, I'm not convinced it's historically accurate.
posted by headspace at 10:56 PM PST - 21 comments

Sometime in the past hour, explodingdog.com (no, I'm not linking to it) got its front page hacked. Now I can understand the motives behind hacking as cyber-terrorism (.pdf file), or to promote your political or social agenda, and I can't say that I totally disagree with hacktivism as a sort of civil disobedience. I also understand hacking as a way to show off your skills. But off all the sites out there, why would some stereotypical punk kids (or whomever) pick a great site like explodingdog to hack? Where's the challenge? So many hackers say they're out to free the Internet - then why attack a site that give away so much for free?
posted by anastasiav at 10:40 PM PST - 22 comments

Activists' names on no-fly blacklist - A federal "No Fly" list, intended to keep terrorists from boarding planes, is snaring peace activists. Several federal agencies -- including the CIA, FBI, INS and State Department -- contribute names to the list. But no one at those agencies could say who is responsible for managing the list or who can remove names of people who have been cleared by authorities.
posted by dejah420 at 9:45 PM PST - 20 comments

Returning to Reason Reasonably. Dreams of rationalism now dog university life, says Stephen Toulmin in his new book, Return to Reason. He argues that we must restore faith in our ability to reason about the moral life. Via Arts & Letters Daily.
posted by gd779 at 7:54 PM PST - 19 comments

I wasn't aware that mosquitoes even had breasts.
posted by zenpop at 6:26 PM PST - 10 comments

Owner takes car to dealer.
Tech takes car on joyride at 140 mph.
Tech writes up experience and posts to internet.
Owner reads tech's post.
Hilarity ensues!
posted by Wet Spot at 5:28 PM PST - 52 comments

Use P2P? You might be unknowingly stealing money from one of your favorite websites. Add-on software that come with the programs divert commission money from affiliate sales on popular websites like Amazon.com to the creators of the file sharing programs. Follow the link for instructions on how to uninstall the software. Yet another reason I use KaZaa Lite. I've got to get those MST3K episodes from somewhere.
posted by Pinwiz at 4:54 PM PST - 17 comments

Small house, big ambitions. I've always lived in small houses and flats so this would be the perfect little place for me. As people are progressively continuing to stay single for longer into their lives, are homes like these what they'd be looking for to settle into?
posted by feelinglistless at 4:04 PM PST - 23 comments

Project Blinkenlights transforms the Tower T2 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France into a huge computer screen. Wanna play a giant game of Tetris via your mobile phone? Or just wonder at the giant pixellated images which the Parisiens can? Go here! Or if you have Unix on your computer, you can hook up live. Those wacky Euro's, eh?
posted by dash_slot- at 1:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Is this poetry? How about this, this or this? They're all examples of visual or concrete poetry, which has a long history. The modern version grew out of Lettrisme and helped give birth to the worldwide mail art movement. Two leading visual poets, Uruguayan activist Clemente Padin and Argentinian Edgardo Vigo, both had serious run-ins with dictators during the 1970s. The huge Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry puts gem after gem at your fingertips. Another great collection: Brazilian Visual Poetry. [more inside]
posted by mediareport at 12:35 PM PST - 39 comments

Bored with all the usual vacation spots? The Iraqi embassy considers Iraq safe for travel, and they are probably about 80 percent right. It's the 20 percent you have to worry about.
posted by konolia at 12:07 PM PST - 2 comments

Apple releases iSync barely meeting its promise to unveil the software before the end of September. Will Apple's iSync finally take the hassle out of syncing between PDAs, online calenders, email, and cell phones? Why hasn't anyone else made this kind of software?
posted by jragon at 11:01 AM PST - 19 comments

Meet Edgar Sanchez

He's 'Helmet Man' at Kansas City Chiefs football games.
He runs a store that sells 'George Foreman grills.'
He sells hot dogs in downtown.
He appears on the radio.

And he was in the Witness Protection Program for testifying against Sheik Omar Rahman, the man behind the bombing of the World Trade Centers.
posted by RobbieFal at 10:04 AM PST - 4 comments

Anyone go to the anti war protest in London today? The number of the people has been estimated from between 3000 (by the police) to 350,000 (by the organisers). I reckon 200,000. Either way, its the largest peace protest ever in the country. Me and my friends sign was a great success, with many people commenting on it/photographing it. It was the only black one we saw, so easily stood out. It said 'Its all about the oil' on one side, and on the other there was a picture of Bush looking stupid, and 'No to War'. The protest was peaceful (or was when I left) and on the whole, a success. The only question is, will Bush and Blair take any notice?
posted by Orange Goblin at 9:39 AM PST - 130 comments

Turkish Police Seize 33lbs of Weapons-Grade Uranium. The destination of the Uranium is still under investigation but it was seized 155 miles from the Iraqi border.
posted by Mick at 8:35 AM PST - 43 comments

Looks like Verisign forgot to renew their UK domain name.
posted by timeistight at 12:00 AM PST - 15 comments

Musician on the Moon Lucia Pamela passed away this June at the age of 98, but not without garnering several moving tributes from her fans. Ms. Pamela not only believed that she had a pink Cadillac that could fly to the moon, but released a concept album about it. She also sponsored a coloring book contest to promote a surrealistic space-age coloring book that later inspired a song by Stereolab. A true American original.
posted by jonp72 at 9:26 PM PST - 5 comments

"We're Jeff and Tracy. We're Your Good Neighbors. We Smoke Pot." Jeff and Tracy were tired of drug war advertising that demonized them. So they decided to create their own ads to 'come out' as normal, all-American pot smokers.
posted by Dirjy at 8:07 PM PST - 155 comments

Liberalism FAQ and Conservativism FAQ describe the differences (and similarities) between the two oft-discussed by seldom understood political mindsets. Both FAQs are detailed, concise, enjoyable, and not annoyingly biased. Read with caution: Knowing your enemies sometimes makes it less fun to bash on them.
posted by oissubke at 5:21 PM PST - 25 comments

Centre for Contemporary Images. Provides things such as Up to 625.
posted by plexi at 5:19 PM PST - 2 comments

Making the case for United Nations intervention against the United States - Ted Rall takes a look at the world situation from a slightly different perspective. The scary thing is that this could run unedited in the newspapers of many countries around the world and their readers would agree with it. Is America out of touch with the rest of the world?
posted by Argyle at 3:56 PM PST - 68 comments

The Truth Squad - ABC News wants your help. Specifically, the ABCNEWS Political Unit Election Watchdog (PUEW), looking to keep upcoming elections as truthful as possible, wants you to gather up your election mail; take notes about the campaign-related phone calls you get; and send them your tips and credible accounts, so that they can go through them. They have a page of descriptions of what they are looking for. Are they expecting things to be particularly ugly? Are they trying to dig something up, or is this really an attempt to neutralize election season lies?
posted by mikhail at 3:08 PM PST - 8 comments

How many Saddams are there? "A German television network said on Thursday it had made a scientific study of 450 photographs of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and concluded there are at least three doubles posing as the Iraqi president."
posted by owillis at 1:54 PM PST - 38 comments

CSS Art? The weblog of Steven Champeon is in hiatus-mode now. At the moment it presents certain photos on the first page. Photos? If you click one, you get something that looks like a badly increased jpeg or something. But it isn't. Take a look in the source code. How did Champeon made that? And: Why?
posted by ronsens at 12:23 PM PST - 20 comments

Two ways to destroy Chemical Weapons. When UNSCOM was in Iraq they destroyed in place tons of chemical weapons: VX, Sarin. and Mustard gas were burned out in the open. The effort to destroy the United States' aged chemical arsenal includes building special incinerators costing over 1.5 Billion Dollars each. If we didn't need them in Iraq why do we need them here? What's the difference? And now that the incinerators are ready for testing why is the goverment switching from burning to neutralization with water at three sites? Billion Dollar toilet seats?
posted by Mack Twain at 11:47 AM PST - 7 comments

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) could cost the Democrats control of the Senate after a former aide tried one of the dumbest political stunts ever. The aide attended a strategy session of Harkin's opponent, Rep. Greg Gaske (R), and taped the discussion. He then gave a transcript to Harkin's campaign manager. As expected, Republicans are turning it to their advantage. The Democrats control the Senate by just one seat. Did Harkin's campaign just hand the Senate to the GOP?
posted by PoliticalJunkie at 11:25 AM PST - 34 comments

Meet ILL Mitch. He raps, he boards and sometimes he punches and raps.
posted by Bag Man at 11:00 AM PST - 13 comments

Information gods amongst mortals is the first in a series of three blog entries (so far, anyway) by Brad Wardell on the topic of the growing knowledge gap between the net-savvy and the non-wired. I found the link in a newsletter from WinCustomize today. They plugged all three:

1. Information gods amongst mortals
2. The Information Gods respond
3. Information Gods Srike Back

He explores the theory that those who are net savvy are quickly leaping ahead of the non-wired among us: "You know the situation. Someone has told you something you want to know more about and within a few minutes you have gotten yourself up to speed on it. You did it through the use of the Internet. A combination of search engines and helpful websites have educated you on that topic."
posted by tbc at 10:17 AM PST - 12 comments

Comic books, cannibalistic worms, albinos, copyright infringement, and the Blues. This story has it all.
posted by anathema at 10:07 AM PST - 6 comments

Blondes 'to die out in 200 years' . The last natural blondes will die out within 200 years, scientists believe. A study by experts in Germany suggests people with blonde hair are an endangered species and will become extinct by 2202.

[Insert blonde joke here]
posted by MintSauce at 9:50 AM PST - 66 comments

A course that uses LEGO beams, plates, gears, motors, a 68HC11 microcontroller board programmed in C, and various sensors to construct autonomous (i.e., self-contained, no direct human control) robots to hunt down and retrieve eggs. How come I never got to make things like this when I got my engineering degree? There's video too. Other cool projects are a walking machine, a human powered sub, or a future truck. I wish the real world of engineering was as fun and creative as college.
posted by jonah at 9:39 AM PST - 8 comments

'The guy who tried to kill my dad.' Setting aside partisan bickering, this description of Saddam Hussein by George W. Bush today sent my mind reeling. Is this in reference to something published in the past that is just escaping my mind? The Reuters version of the story adds that it is reference to "an Iraqi plot to kill former President George Bush after the 1991 Gulf War." Anyone have a link to that older story?
posted by bclark at 9:36 AM PST - 36 comments

Scott Ritter on Weapons Inspection, Chemical, Biological and Nuclear WMD Why hasn't the American media picked up on these issues that are being put forth by Scott Ritter? Is Mr. Ritter correct in his assessment of Iraqi capabilities?
posted by FullFrontalNerdity at 9:20 AM PST - 44 comments

Think of the children! Is the crayon-toting lobbyist the next big thing in politics? Is this a legitimate political strategy or despicable behaviour on the part of the teacher? Charles Helwig at the University of Toronto has some evidence that elementary school age children have some understanding of democracy and freedom of speech and "can use those concepts to evaluate political systems". How old does a person need to be to voice an opinion? (via plastic)
posted by snarfodox at 8:14 AM PST - 23 comments

First there was L. L. Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee and the Bridge Wars. Then came Biggie and Tupac with the west coast, east coast rivalry. Now rap battles have transcended mediums, I give you Ludacris vs. Bill O'Reilly. Word.
posted by Dr_Octavius at 8:11 AM PST - 49 comments

Do you feel a little lighter when you go to visit your Aunt Betty in Poughkeepsie? Maybe this gravity map can shed a little light on the subject.
posted by NedKoppel at 8:07 AM PST - 7 comments

At last, the United Nations earns it's keep.
posted by flatlander at 6:19 AM PST - 40 comments

Rubberboy demonstrates that alphabet art can be used as more than just a creative teaching tool for kids. Artists have a long tradition of using the ABCs as a canvas for the macabre, the sacred, the erotic and the just plain kinky. warning! links contain flash and some NSFW material.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:57 AM PST - 10 comments

Hurah! It's Friday! Time to do some work! Well, actually, no. But this is a seriously good game that combines "pairs" with something of the "Street Fighter" genre. It's also written by a mate of mine who I went to uni and shared a house with. Anyone else got any 1 or 2 player games worth wasting the day with? 5 hours to go to beer and counting ...
posted by ralawrence at 4:13 AM PST - 10 comments

If you still go to raves, think twice before popping that pill this weekend. A new study by JHU suggests that the long-term effects of esctasy could lead to conditions similar to Parkinson's. [related: Erowid's MDMA vault]
posted by hobbes at 3:32 AM PST - 37 comments

What's So Absurd About Partisanship? The Lying in Ponds* website is a clever attempt to measure partisanship in the daily columns of the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Although - or perhaps because - its methodology is simple and straightforward, its conclusions, though necessarily unsurprising, are quite interesting, often amusing and seem fairer than er, more partisan "media watch" thingies [Don't miss their 2002 Top Ten.]. But why is being openly partisan seen as such a terrible thing in America? Why is so much time and effort expended to hide it or deny it? Or, put another way, why is bipartisanship such a desirable thing, often presented as being somehow above politics? Is it American exceptionalism again?
*[Echoing what Dennis said in Monty Python And The Holy Grail: "Listen!Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!"]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:04 AM PST - 20 comments

A professor of vision science at MIT understands that life isn't just black and white, even though we often see it that way. This amazing illusion proves it, and these slick, fast-loading, Flash demonstrations of lightness perception show how it's done. (My favorite is the "Koffka Ring".) White paper here, for deeper background.
posted by taz at 1:27 AM PST - 29 comments

Wilton's Word and Phrase Origins is a well researched etymology site that puts out a fine newsletter in .pdf form, has a pretty consistently interesting discussion group, and is sometimes referenced by MeFites.
posted by sklero at 12:19 AM PST - 5 comments

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

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

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

Weeeeeeeird...
posted by RobbieFal at 9:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Did Lenient Fire Codes Make 9/11 Worse? Tony Fitzpatrick, the designer of the London Millennium Bridge, developed computer simulations with the help of an engineering consulting firm, in order to generate new suggestions for safeguarding buildings from terrorist attack. Fitzpatrick's conclusion: In the end, ordinary fire codes might have saved the World Trade Center victims.
posted by jonp72 at 9:10 PM PST - 10 comments

Jedi (n) and Klingon (n) will now be listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. As will Ass-Backward. Given MetaFilter's interest in grammar this seems worth noting. How the editors decided that "Jedi" is worth inclusion but "Stormtrooper" is not is a conversation I would have loved to have heard. Naturally, people complaining about such inclusions ain't new. However, when words are removed from the same dictionary it's hardly noticed. Clearly unused words go away, so why do people make a stink about this year after year? Slow news cycles? Or is it an extension of the Prescriptivist - Descriptivist Argument with the Prescripts making a push for the "hearts and minds" of the public?
posted by herc at 4:11 PM PST - 35 comments

One of my co-workers commited suicide. There were no apparent signs; on the contrary, she was young, dedicated, driven, and personable. I was shocked to learn that suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S. It doesn't make sense to any of us, but it makes you think a lot more about the lives of the people we often spend eight hours a day with.
posted by mad at 3:34 PM PST - 71 comments

Israeli-Arab Hero this kid had a lot of guts - will he get the recognition he deserves in israel or the US? username: metafilter password: metafilter
posted by specialk420 at 3:01 PM PST - 11 comments

An Open Letter to Congress from the editors of The Nation. All the makings of a final plea.
posted by mooseindian at 12:47 PM PST - 91 comments

Scientists grow pig teeth in rat intestines. Wait! Keep reading . . .
[This] experiment suggests the existence of dental stem cells, which could one day allow a person to replace a lost or missing tooth with an identical tooth grown from his or her own cells.
So can I stop flossing now?
posted by mikrophon at 11:58 AM PST - 25 comments

For years, it's been observed that some people infected with HIV never develop full-blown AIDS. Now American and Chinese scientists think they know why. But remember kids, barebacking is still dangerous, and a cocktail is not a cure. Maybe this research will change all that.
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:57 AM PST - 21 comments

cool or creepy? apple is hyping the way forensic detectives in a southern town have gone mac. are we supposed to focus on the guy with the ipod or the corpse on his screen?
posted by subpixel at 11:40 AM PST - 32 comments

War as a Way of Life The latest Reggio/Glass collaboration - Naqoyqatsi - is coming out Oct. 18. From the looks of the trailer, this could be the coolest of the trilogy. Of course, who could forget the scene from Koyaanisqatsi where Reggio jumps from scene of Twinkies rushing through production line to fast-forward scene of daily-grinders moving up escalators in subway station - priceless. Just more 70's grad-student dope-smoking backdrop -- or essential media for our age?
posted by minnesotaj at 11:32 AM PST - 15 comments

Nonograms (also known as "Griddlers" or "Paint By Numbers") were invented by Non Ishida in 1987. Originally trying to design pictures that could be created by turning the lights on or off in the windows of skyscrapers, Ishida soon realized that the same principle could used as the basis for a new genre of logic puzzle. Since then, enigmatologists around the world have wasted hours solving them online and completing entire books of these elegant brainteasers.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 10:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Vovox: An alga consisting of photosynthetic, flagellated cells, organized into a spherical colony, which may contain daughter colonies. But the main issue is: they're really neat-looking. And here they are in anaglyph 3-D.
posted by interrobang at 10:13 AM PST - 11 comments

Whoa! Gag! They did what?? "The history of drinking urine for therapeutic purposes dates back at least to the Holy Roman Empire when great urinal troths were erected in the public squares......" courtesy of WFMU magazine
posted by protocool at 9:15 AM PST - 49 comments

X-treme juggler! Jason Garfield is, apparently, one of the best jugglers in the world. (I'm not a fan, I happened across this link while perusing Todd Smith Juggling Equipment.) Jason is quite a juggler, judging from the video clips (Quicktime). He's also quite full of himself, judging from his bio and his Rules of Life. Just thought I'd share the weirdness.
posted by starvingartist at 9:01 AM PST - 30 comments

Would you have the patience to apply for this job? 142 occupational questions. Some are thought-provoking, others need to be unpacked like a philosophical argument (scroll about halfway down the page for the beginning of the occupational questions section). If you want to apply for the archivist position at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, in Austin, Texas, help yourself.
posted by datawrangler at 8:41 AM PST - 13 comments

Electraum is a great collection of amazing electronic and ambient mp3s(try the Cerebellum, Red Lines or Kunstner for good examples), mostly from unknown artists. The mp3s rotate monthly, and there's a mailing list you can join to remind you when the music changes. You've already missed the previous seven installments, but there's plenty more to go around...
posted by 40 Watt at 8:04 AM PST - 4 comments

CNNNN: Chaser Non-stop News Network. This week, the Terrorthon reveals that Iraq is a bad place. "Last week, President Bush demanded unconditional access for weapons inspectors. And what does Saddam go and do? He gives unconditional access to weapons inspectors. Can you believe the nerve? It was a very aggressive act of compliance. Very provocative compliance. President Bush mustn't take yes for an answer." Must-watch for all Americans... From the same gang that brings you The Chaser, which continues dispite problems with its distributor over this story. Apparently it was in bad taste. I just thought it was funny...
posted by robcorr at 8:01 AM PST - 11 comments

This Saturday is "Public Lands Day" in the US! You can volunteer to help clean up some of the 262 million acres of land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management! While cleaning streams and repairing livestock fencing, you can ponder how come in the 21st century the BLM still leases over 163 million of those acres to private ranchers for a pittance! This antiquated, marginal, money-losing institution has damaged 80% of the waterways west of the Mississippi, threatening entire species and ecosystems. A new book, Welfare Ranching, lists and illustrates the many problems with federal livestock grazing, and there's now a campaign to buy out ranchers' permits and turn the "wild" west back over to nature.
posted by soyjoy at 7:11 AM PST - 12 comments

Expelled for Blogging? Kid threatened with expulsion after having the nerve to blog from school. I assume his high school had nothing else to crack down on other than the gangs of bloggers up to no good like keeping a tech journal.
posted by Coop at 6:59 AM PST - 33 comments

Re-Shape Your Eyes While You Sleep? Wow - I don't know about you, but if I could wear contacts during my sleep that I *took out* when I woke up and didn't have to wear any all day, and I could see, then I'd do it in a second. When will it become reasonably priced?
posted by djspicerack at 6:59 AM PST - 25 comments

NYC Subways and then some. This has been one of my favorite sites for a long time. It's amazingly comprehensive, and not just being content with New York, it covers nearly every other subway in the world as well. If you're not into the technical details, just enjoy the thousands of pretty pictures.
posted by The Michael The at 6:23 AM PST - 20 comments

The street where my office is will most likely be fenced off and guarded by police when I roll in tomorrow morning. Conventional wisdom in D.C. for tomorrow is: a) Don't try to drive b) Don't try to take the Metro, either. Great.
posted by GriffX at 6:15 AM PST - 76 comments

Satire is alive and well? "Taliban Reunited is the simple way to find out what your old terrorist chums and captives are doing now." (Satire is dead?)
posted by MintSauce at 6:02 AM PST - 3 comments

Don't get used to looking at houses on the Internet. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is proposing a rule that allows realtors to withhold some/all of the information in the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) from websites. The NAR says the MLS is intended for "Broker-to-Broker" and not for consumers. It is designed to produce customer leads, not to give sufficient information for decision-making
posted by patrickje at 1:01 AM PST - 18 comments

Typical jokes aside, the Make Your Own Bush Speech application is a great use of flash. Some fun hints: layer phrases over one another for added effect, and always end with the "afghanistan and beyond" blurb. Now if I could only save the speeches out as mp3 files, and layer some beats underneath...
posted by mathowie at 12:47 AM PST - 38 comments

Iraq trains terrorists? Conclusive evidence from our leaders? Why do I suddenly feel like I am living in Oceania?
posted by FilmMaker at 12:37 AM PST - 39 comments

The Guardian announces weblog competition winners! and commends 30 in all, so at the very least there are some new and interesting places to have a little surf. I hadn't heard of any of them before and the ones I have had a look at are worth a second glance, although , at the risk of appearing a mite cynical, there seem to be plenty of Guardian links in a couple of them.
posted by Fat Buddha at 12:35 AM PST - 21 comments

Britney Spears, Madonna, Other Stars in TV Ads on Piracy "Too many people don't realize that when you download a song you like from a peer-to-peer network or some other unauthorized Internet source, what you're doing is stealing music," says Britney. Somebody ask Brit if she knows what peer-to-peer means. This is the latest Big Idea from the RIAA.
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 10:21 PM PST - 78 comments

Kazaa to RIAA; "Catch us if you can!" Although I was initially skeptical, it seems as though Kazaa's decentralized system is proving to be a problem for the RIAA. With Napster, it seemed like they caved almost immediately. What I'm wondering is, does Kazaa actually have a change at establishing some sort of favourable ruling concerning file-trading / P2P? I know it's probably too early to tell, but speculation makes for great conversation some times.
posted by Dark Messiah at 10:05 PM PST - 15 comments

A bill is currently being pushed through Congress that will give health care providers, including those that are federally funded, the right to refuse to perform abortions or administer contraceptive medication for personal moral reasons. Next week: firefighters allowed to let houses burn down because they hate the color of the curtains.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:41 PM PST - 72 comments

Alana Dung passed away quietly in her sleep at age 3 from leukemia, but not before inspiring 30,000 people in Hawai'i to register themselves with The National Bone Marrow Registry. Since her parents and brother were not marrow matches, her family made her battle public. To honor her memory, they eventually formed the Alana Dung Research Foundation, an organization dedicated "to support research efforts designed to improve the quality of life for children with serious illnesses." Her brief life also inspired a play. Is your marrow registered?
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:21 PM PST - 17 comments

Originator of term "Shareware" Dies
Bob Wallace, was born in Washington, D.C. in 1949, the author of PC-WRITE, and one of three persons credited with coining the term "Shareware" was found dead at his Northern California home on Friday, September 20th, 2002. In 1978, Bob joined Microsoft (the company that wrote MS DOS for IBM) when the company had only ten employees. He was employee number 9. Five years later, Bob decided to break with Microsoft (which by then had grown to company of over 300 employees) and establish his own company: Quicksoft. Among Quicksoft's innovations in software design and marketing was the "shareware" concept. Cause of death was determined to be pneumonia.
posted by jackspace at 5:55 PM PST - 24 comments

Do you plan to stay at a Marriott hotel any time soon? If so, you might want to relieve yourself in the dark since a spy cam was found in a Marriott hotel's bathroom lighting fixture and connected to the same circuit so as to turn on with the lights.
posted by David Dark at 5:45 PM PST - 24 comments

Riding The Reputation Seesaw: I'm a sucker for underrated/overrated lists anyway, but this series of short articles from underrated American Heritage magazine is one of the best I've ever read. I specially liked the haphazard criteria for selecting the categories, leaving out some of the most obvious.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:30 PM PST - 17 comments

Think the upcoming Ice Age theory has died? It's been mentioned once or twice in discussion threads, but I spent some time in the library recently reading this very interesting article from Discover magazine. I was discussing it with a meteorolgist friend of mine, and supposedly the mini-ice age theory is very alive and has a lot of support. Should we start buying more electric blankets?
posted by mychai at 4:38 PM PST - 12 comments

Kinoko-ya has stunningly beautiful pictures of mushrooms. (Please don't crash the site, gang; I'm using it for research...)
posted by realjanetkagan at 3:20 PM PST - 25 comments

Who's richer: Montgomery Burns, Cruella De Vil, or Bruce Wayne? On the heels of last month's Top-Earning Dead Celebrities list, Forbes brings us their Fictional Fifteen, the wealthiest made-up people in the world. Anyone see any egregious exclusions?
posted by GreyWingnut at 2:33 PM PST - 51 comments

Bumfights.com producers arrested and charged with "conspiracy, solicitation of a felony crime and illegally paying people to fight". The site itself was discussed here a few months ago. At that time, there was disagreement as to the legality of the tapes. The producer defended his legal footing saying that the participants signed releases. Looks like that wasn't enough, hearing to start Oct 10th.
posted by jonah at 1:26 PM PST - 60 comments

Similarities between the United States and the Roman Empire. With the comparrison having become common, it is interesting to consider just how much the two really have in common. What would Cicero think?
posted by homunculus at 11:34 AM PST - 48 comments

Daschle Accuses Bush of Politicizing Iraq Debate "You tell those who fought in Vietnam and World War II they are not interested in the security of the American people" because they are Democrats, Daschle said. "That is outrageous. Outrageous." The full text of Daschle's comments. Do we finally have an opposition party?
posted by owillis at 11:04 AM PST - 74 comments

Mel Gibson wants to do a movie on the last 12 hours of Jesus's life. The only issue? He wants to do it totally in Latin and Arameic without subtitles. A cool way for Hollywood to branch out from the norm, or artsy pretension from a rather boring actor? Time may tell. Seen also on AICN.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:41 AM PST - 55 comments

Donald, do you know what those Germans are up to? Like, comparing everyone and their hamsters to Hitler? [Spoiler alert: the first comment explains it, for those who don't get it]
posted by vowe at 10:23 AM PST - 27 comments

In the new LRB, a pretty good attempt to answer the pressing question - why do the Bush people want to attack Iraq so much?
posted by Mocata at 9:34 AM PST - 20 comments

The Plight of the Pregnant Prisoner. Every culture has to decide what to do with their pregnant prisoners. Here in the USA, are we doing the best we can? And then there is the whole abortion debate.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:26 AM PST - 6 comments

A Visual Journey: Photographs by Lisa Law 1965-1971 Lisa Law's photographs provide glimpses into the folk and rock music scenes, California's blossoming counterculture, and the family-centered and spiritual world of commune life in New Mexico. They are moments that she lived, witnessed, and recorded on the frontier of cultural change.
posted by konolia at 8:48 AM PST - 3 comments

So how would you spend your retirement? In the grand tradition of the backyard Falcon and Gundam (link in Flacon thread), a retired Canadian Navy officer built a German submarine. In his garage. With "egg poaching cups and a motor from his wife’s blender", among other items. Sadly, he died before its launch. (more inside)
posted by GhostintheMachine at 7:51 AM PST - 6 comments

Think you're smart? How does your test-taking ability stack up to your forebears? Could you have graduated eighth grade in 1895? Been accepted into college in the 1930s? What do you think - is it easier to be a student today or harder?
Oh, here's a cheat sheet in case the 8th grade exam proves too challenging!
posted by madamjujujive at 7:41 AM PST - 32 comments

Mullet Talk, FM morning radio show comedy at it its finest. Of course, in Pittsburgh we appreciate the finer things in life. Sadly, this is the only episode I could find on the web.
posted by Recockulous at 7:38 AM PST - 10 comments

Milk and meat from cloned cows and their offspring may be on store shelves by next year. Apparently breeders are already raising "scores" of clones in America. Just another step to making animals to suit our needs (domestication, organ cloning, and Silk from goat's milk.
posted by LordMcD at 7:27 AM PST - 30 comments

What do you get when you mix 50 pounds of silly putty, a parking garage and bored techies? Ahh, the hilarity (AVI link).
posted by psychotic_venom at 6:58 AM PST - 19 comments

The end of an era? The Miss America crowning had just 12 million viewers tune in this past Saturday, the lowest viewership in the history of the pageant. Are people turned off by this type of competition? Or are there just better things to do on a Saturday night?
posted by MediaMan at 6:27 AM PST - 36 comments

Satire is dead. "On Monday 23rd September, the Metropolitan Police (acting with the support of The Internet Watch Foundation) contacted my web host, Webfusion (aka Host Europe), and requested that thinkofthechildren.co.uk be 'removed from the public domain'."
posted by MintSauce at 4:54 AM PST - 31 comments

"He was twitching and his eyes were not quite shut ... I thought he was dead."   With the rise in home-computers during the mid-nineties came the fall of game arcades and their unhealthy drifter culture. The family-oriented nVidia and ATI companies provided home-entertainment and the final nail in the coffin for the infamous arcade. That was until late 1998, and DDR. Dance Dance Revolution swept the nation and kids exchanged "moves" like bubblegum. It was a juggernaut. It was out of control. DDR claimed victim after victim, with no signs of stopping...
posted by holloway at 1:36 AM PST - 14 comments

The State of the Nation's Ecosystems - According to a report commissioned five years ago by President Clinton and finally completed and released, the United States may have no streams left that are free from chemical contamination, and about one-fifth of animal species and one-sixth of plant types are at risk of extinction.
posted by dejah420 at 1:13 AM PST - 14 comments

In 1900 a sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck of an ancient merchant ship off the tiny island of Antikythera near Crete. The corbita, dating from the first century B.C., was heavily laden with treasure of all kinds, original bronze life-size statues, marble reproductions of older works, jewelry, wine, fine furniture and one immensely complicated scientific instrument. The Antikythera mechanism was originally housed in a wooden box about the size of a shoebox with dials on the outside and a complex clockwork assembly of gears inscribed and configured to produce solar and lunar positions in synchronization with the calendar year. By rotating a handle on its side, its owner could read on its front and back dials the progressions of the lunar and synodic months over four-year cycles. The device has been estimated to be accurate to 1 part in 40,000. (more inside...)
posted by lagado at 11:06 PM PST - 15 comments

August Strindberg & Helium. In 1978, the artist and writer Edward Gorey met the members of Monty Python at a fort in Tunisia. The group was in the process of filming The Life of Brian. Although Gorey contributed little to the finished product, the British troupe's impact on him was sizable. In the twenty years that followed, Gorey slowly retired from civilization. Since 1996, he has been studying Macromedia Flash. Strindberg & Helium is the result.
posted by Marquis at 9:58 PM PST - 36 comments

Spike Jonez's hilarious new IKEA ad (click the TV to watch it, you'll need Quicktime)... ...and here's the Slate.com article that led me to it.
posted by adrober at 9:52 PM PST - 45 comments

The Timecube guy has gone even more insane than ever before. Some quotes on his site right now.

"Tis Time to kill any educator who does not teach Cubicism above cubelessness."

"Time Cube debate denial is educator evil. It is not immoral for students to kill all educators who ignore Nature's Harmonic Time Cube or suppress free speech rights to debate Time Cube Creation Principle. Ignorance of Time Cube is Greatest Evil."

Will the Time Cube guy soon meet up with the FBI? I'm sure endorsing murdering of teachers isn't legal.
posted by RobbieFal at 8:49 PM PST - 32 comments

"Friend, was you up all night long getting in trouble? Did you happen to rob the grocery store? Did you kill somebody last night?" I grew up listening to Pearlee Toliver, also known as the Jewel of the Dial, voicing radio ads and spinning gospel as only she could. "Why not check it out and lock it in?" [More inside.]
posted by littlegreenlights at 8:24 PM PST - 1 comments

Gore: Saddam must go Al Gore has told Iraqi opposition politicians that the United States remains committed to the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein. "There can be no peace for the Middle East so long as Saddam is in a position to brutalise his people and threaten his neighbours" - Al Gore [more inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:47 PM PST - 47 comments

Farkers requested that this be spread to all communities on the web. It is absolutely Snopes approved.
posted by oflinkey at 4:35 PM PST - 64 comments

Keanu = Krypotonite? The only thing he has in common with the Man Of Steel is his last name!
posted by peachwood at 2:01 PM PST - 52 comments

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, revolutionary and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, would be 100 years old today.
posted by Silune at 12:07 PM PST - 30 comments

U.S. forces head to Ivory Coast - with all the debate for/against military action in the middle-east, I'm pleased to see US forces being deployed to protect innocent people. "Their first task may be to retrieve about 100 American children who have been trapped at a school in the city of Bouake for five days and to protect Americans in three or four Ivory Coast towns held by rebels. "
posted by Stuart_R at 10:23 AM PST - 28 comments

Here They Are, Science's 10 Most Beautiful Experiments. My fave? Foucault's pendulum. The one in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry always fascinated me (NYTimes link).
posted by o2b at 10:20 AM PST - 11 comments

23 dead, numerous injured in a temple in Gujarat, India. About 3 - 5 terrorists carrying AK-47s entered the temple complex and started shooting indiscriminately, a couple of grenades were detonated too. Indian special forces are currently engaged in a shoot-out, as Gujarat is placed on red alert. Some claim this act was done to disrupt the elections in the state of Jammu & Kashmir.
posted by riffola at 10:07 AM PST - 20 comments

Want your independent coffeehouse to be a success? Pray for a Starbucks to open next door.
posted by NortonDC at 9:28 AM PST - 54 comments

Michigan: Land of Alternative energy? "DTE Energy [Detroit Edison] said Monday it has a deal to build and test a hydrogen system capable of generating more than 15,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The $3-million test project, funded by DTE and the U.S. Department of Energy, is to be operational in 2005. " Wayne State University is also jumping on the bandwagon. What, if anything, is your town doing (or claiming it will do)?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:39 AM PST - 15 comments

Is Jesse ever happy? You'd think he'd be happy with the #1 movie in the country for 2 weeks straight being a movie that is cast totally with black people. But nope, he's not. He's upset because there was a goof on Rosa Parks and MLK Jr. Wasn't this just a movie?
posted by the_0ne at 7:31 AM PST - 83 comments

Who'll Be The First To Have Sex In The Museum Of Sex? New York's new museum opens Saturday. As an online aphrodisiac, it's offering a titillating map of sexual congress in Manhattan, [Click on 1001 Nights In Manhattan and be prepared for a full-screen invasion] as well as an interesting exhibition of photographs by Paul Duda called The Pubic Parade and librarian Ralph Whittington's extensive collection of significative pornography, recently acquired and welcomed by the art community. All of this obviously points to an important, earth-shattering question: where exactly is the funniest place you've ever had sex?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:26 AM PST - 66 comments

Ex-dot-commers are considering other careers. In this case, a potentially lucrative, more recession-proof trade: Bartending ("When times are good, people drink. When times are bad, people drink.") Not a terribly enlightening article in itself, but tell me: Have you or a friend abandoned a tech field? What's your new job?
posted by Shane at 6:47 AM PST - 27 comments

Don't forget to meet some old friends tonight. Warning the official link is a spoiler, so you've been warned.
posted by Beholder at 5:31 AM PST - 52 comments

"I asked who was playing. A Moroccan group, said the cabbie. He told me its name. Did I want to know what it was singing? Certainly. It was a plea to Israel from the Arab people. The chorus was, 'We have the same father. Why do you treat us this way?' Who might the father be? I asked. 'Ibrahim,' he said. 'The song is called Ismail and Isaac,' after his sons."
posted by artifex at 3:58 AM PST - 8 comments

Is Libya next? This story in Israel's Ha'aretz has a very very interesting lead: "The U.S. agrees with Israeli assessments that Libya has renewed its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb, and that those efforts have been stepped up since 1999, when the UN sanctions on the country were removed." Not only that, Ariel Sharon says that he believes the Iraqis might be helping build said nuclear bomb, and that Libya might attain nuclear capability before Iraq does. And not only that, the always-exciting "unnamed experts" suggest that Pakistan and North Korea might have a hand in this as well. Libya is still on the State Department list of nations that support terror, so why hasn't this story been getting any play stateside? Is it really overstating the case to suggest that Bush's new doctrine of preemptive strikes without hard evidence, if applied across the board, could very well lead to world war?
posted by textureslut at 2:43 AM PST - 76 comments

Finally released, The British Government's Dossier On Iraq appears, after two hours of reading, to be quite remarkable in it's - well - unremarkableness.(.pdf link from mainpage)
posted by Doozer at 2:14 AM PST - 28 comments

Nawal El Saadawi seems to think that for any type of fundamentalist religion women are like canaries in the coal mine for the dangers to follow. Female genital mutilation would certainly seem to be a pretty good pointer to get out of the mine, if you ask me. She points out the hypocrisy of the "post-modern veil" and politicians who criticize the Moslem notion of propiety without acknowledging the West's notions of female attire is similarly veiled. I'll grant her that. But, I'd rather wear some smart eyeliner than a head full of burka. I wonder if the propensity of Western couples to have the man drive is anything like the Saudi propensity to disallow women from driving, only with a Western middle class less restrictive enforcement policy? Do the spinsters in Saudi Arabia have sex? And how? And with whom? Why are sexual minorities in 26 Middle Eastern Countries outlawed? What are the reproductive & sensual habits of the Islamist Fundamentalist?
posted by filchyboy at 1:33 AM PST - 51 comments

While it's hard to say when the dotcom bubble began to burst, it's now officially clear when the internet stock bubble ended, which would be today. With the NASDAQ taking the first dip to 1996 levels, it's time to grab a Webvan-delivered 40oz out of your orange Kozmo-surplus bag and tip it in honor of all them Pets who still can't drive.
posted by mathowie at 11:52 PM PST - 20 comments

I vividly remember watching Ken Burns' amazingly great The Civil War during the Gulf War. Now that we're apparently having a Gulf War sequel, The Civil War has been remastered and re-released. The Washington Post jumps on the bandwagon with an online discussion with Ken Burns and a great Flash map of the campaign from the Seven Days to Antietam.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:34 PM PST - 9 comments

This may not make as effective a sales pitch as "weapons of mass destruction," but with two oil men in office, it can't be ignored as a possible ulterior motive to war in Iraq. Am I a cynic or should we be asking if this "preemptive" war is really about what they are saying it's about?
posted by karlcleveland at 11:15 PM PST - 7 comments

CodeDoc, a new exhibition at Whitney Artport, forces us to view the scripts and codes that generate software art before seeing the “art.” The other aspect of the curatorial premise: each artist's code must create art that connects three points in space.
[via rhizome].
posted by hama7 at 11:09 PM PST - 12 comments

Dr Venter says he will be able to provide an individual's genome on a CD in about a week for $712,000 (£400,000) from later this year with the ultimate goal to sequence someone's entire genome in 24 hours for $1,000 (£562).
posted by nasim at 10:44 PM PST - 9 comments

Is Germany next on the list? Well, no, but the way the Bush administration approaches diplomacy needs some work. Is a war in Iraq worth "poisoning" America's relationship with the international community?
posted by elwoodwiles at 9:48 PM PST - 30 comments

Gore Assails Bush's Iraq Policy The text of former vice president Al Gore's speech before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
posted by semmi at 9:17 PM PST - 42 comments

The Trick Behind the Trick? A great piece about the subtle and ongoing dismantling of democracy in America by the Bush Administration. What's so sad about this ongoing disaster is that there are no Republicans willing to stand up for liberty, when the last great speech by a President on our present danger was given by Eisenhower.
posted by minnesotaj at 5:31 PM PST - 49 comments

Ah, skydiving. The air around a dropzone, especially a big one like SkyDive Chicago, is pretty rarefied: a newcomer to the sport like myself is entirely lacking in cool, even if normal people think having made even one solo jump is pretty impressive. I'm certainly nowhere near the cool-level of the Golden Knights, the Army's team of crack parachutists. Speaking of them and SDC, they were of course there when this year's national championships were held in August. I especially liked the video of them showcasing their excellent HALO technique.
posted by kavasa at 5:30 PM PST - 20 comments

~Did I ever tell you I'm your hero? I am the subtext beneath your sling~
[Not work-safe. Don't read it out loud, anyway.]
While Nerve strives for intelligent, what about full-on intellectual erotica? I submit Foucault's Pendulous... at Suspect Thoughts. Not – at all – to be confused with Foucault's Pendulum, which oddly enough has its own bit of intellectual erotica in it that ties together the Khaballah, new pregnancy, and a woman telling her husband he's being an idiot, all at the same time.
posted by Su at 3:24 PM PST - 3 comments

Reporters Find New Outlet, and Concerns, in Web Logs according the Gray Old Lady today. I never read the blog by Steve Olafson, a.k.a. Banjo Jones, but it was shut down at the request of hi