"My child is safer at an organized cockfight than she is at a Lobo basketball game" was one of the comments overheard as New Mexico decided to be one of the two states to allow cockfighting. Reasons to keep cockfighting: Watching the bloody sport causes less emotional stress on children than a college basketball game and It's "part of the state's hispanic culture"
Obviously, the opposition to this mounts, but with Oklahoma and Oregon unable to send the roosters to pasture, is Cockfighting destined to remain on the fringes of America?
posted by RobbieFal at 3:55 PM PST - 7 comments

Cells obtained from the well-preserved legs of a mammoth found last summer in Russia's far-northern Yakutia region are "conditionally alive" and could provide the DNA needed to resurrect the long-extinct tuskers.
posted by stbalbach at 2:41 PM PST - 15 comments

The principality of Liechtenstein has thought of an innovative way of rasing tourism revenue: Rent the whole country! Liechtenstein, established by the Holy Roman Empire in 1719 and sovereign since 1806, is among the smallest nations on the planet. It boasts a population around 33,000 living in a nation around 0.9 times the size of Washington DC. Check out the Liechtensteinian homepage. (in German)
posted by elwoodwiles at 2:20 PM PST - 6 comments

Which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003? Isn't Time Magazine typically read by real conservative types? I took the informal survey, with about 348,000 other respondents and was surprised by the percentages.
posted by giantkicks at 10:33 AM PST - 39 comments

John Higgins - Mayor of Amherst and famous race car-driving dingo expert - was born and grew up in Scotland. His online shop sells all kinds of Scottish clothing. As a self-taught artist in drawing and watercoloring, John Higgins illustrated the children's book "Handsome Me." Puppeteer. Linux fanatic. Admitted crier. Known as the "Wizard of Wishaw," in Hong Kong they worship him as a god, but the only thing he ever wanted to be in life was a chef. Send a message to John Higgins. He recently quit his job and stays at home all day playing the sitar. His neighbors are concerned. He may just be the most sarcastic man on Earth, having turned himself in after viewing a marijuana = terrorism commercial.
posted by son_of_minya at 9:55 AM PST - 10 comments

White Stripes capture their 'Elephant'? World famous radio DJ John Peel has been told to stop playing songs from the new White Stripes album, 'Elephant'. Apparently, he was 'interfering with the global marketing strategy by continuing to play the record'. A scheme which involves giving people who aren't fans of the band copies of the album five months before it comes out. The result? It's on Kazaa already, and DJs who love the band can't play the record. There's also some mp3s ( <- note that a link to one there) of Peel talking about the ban.
posted by tapeguy at 8:33 AM PST - 14 comments

Some interesting Q & A with Roger Ebert in the National Post regarding commercials in movie theatres. We assume that the only sure fire way to get your message across would be to walk out and demand your money back, but a theatre manager is quoted as saying Everything else is secondary to making sure all commercials are running -- including customer complaints. Yes, but for how long? And why does it seem that so few people are annoyed by this?
posted by quietfish at 6:36 AM PST - 61 comments

Now that we can Create a Hit Single in less than 2 minutes thanks to Microsoft, more & more people start worrying about music and its destiny. In UK, the 23 years old (and Xtina fan, 'I can't wait till she's number one' he says) Wes Butters takes over the great Radio 1 institution 'the Chart show'. (the guardian article) Can this mean the end of quality music shows? (Nah... Just a beginning downfall.)
posted by Sijeka at 5:57 AM PST - 9 comments

The Modern Antiquarian. Quirky, funny and joyous guide to the folklore and folkloric sites of Britain. There is a weblog too - read about Carmarthenshire standing stones or adventures in Cornwall.
posted by plep at 5:34 AM PST - 3 comments

John Hurt: Although it was not John (wrong sex anyway) who through a gentle voice and pleasant demeanor (yet he had this about him too) served as my primary impetus to play the guitar, it was nevertheless he, and others who played like him - but mainly he who provided me with my first technical model (emotional model to some extent also) for playing the guitar. He was the first I heard who played in the three-finger, non-choking, "picking" style, and he was one of the best. He was in his quiet way, a very great man, and I deeply mourn our loss of him.          John Fahey

                                Mississippi John Hurt

"I just make it sound like I think it ought to"                              (more →)
posted by y2karl at 1:15 AM PST - 20 comments

The Mother of All Maritime Links. Feeling a little landlocked? From "Pirates" (over twenty links) to "Weather & Tides," from plain old "History" to "Music" and beyond, this site is one of the more comprehensive available.
posted by datawrangler at 7:38 PM PST - 3 comments

Pseudonyms. Bibliography of pseudonym dictionaries. Noms de guerre, noms de plume.. Authors with ten or more pseudonyms. Noms de guerre of Palestinian leaders. Declarations of pseudonyms in the US Catalog of Copyright Entries (Renewals). The Brontë Pseudonyms. [Topic suggested by La Grande Rousse].
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:12 PM PST - 10 comments

Phantom Cosmonauts On November 28, 1960, a morse code transmission reading "SOS to the whole world" from an orbiting spaceship was picked up by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers with their home-made radio tracking station in San Maurizio Canavese, Italy. Sometime between February 2-4, they picked up telemetry of a dying cosmonauts heartbeat and breathing. Yuri Gagarin, the universally acknowledged first man in space, did not make his flight until April 12, 1961. These brothers claimed that they intercepted radio transmissions of other secret flights as well. Were there secret Soviet spaceflights that ended in the death of Cosmonauts? Most tend to disagree, and offer an excellent debunking. I started reading about this several weeks before the Columbia, but it now has a new poignancy. I agree that it is exceedingly unlikely that these alleged flights took, but the claims of these brothers, mingled with various other rumor and various Soviet urban legends, (along with the fact of Russian/Soviet general secrecy about most everything,) create an alternate history that is exceedingly disturbing.
posted by Snyder at 5:12 PM PST - 17 comments

The first cracks in the foundations of Colin Powell's "Case for War" speech are beginning to be uncovered by a Cambridge professor. Some of the information taken from an "up to date" British intelligence dossier was apparently plagiarized and dramatically spun from a California graduate student's paper, describing the Iraqi regime during the 1990s. Will it make any difference in U.S. public opinion if the Powell speech is debunked? Will the widening gap between U.S. and global opinion further weaken the UN?
posted by zekinskia at 4:35 PM PST - 32 comments

If you thought the Patriot Act was bad... It looks like it's going to get worse. Center for Public Integrity has the full text (pdf) for the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003". Lowlights include a "DNA database on 'suspected terrorists'" as well as pretrial detention for "suspected terrorists" without bail. There's more. (via The Scoop)
posted by owillis at 3:37 PM PST - 40 comments

The play's the thing... From a flyer at a demonstration, earlier today: On March 3, 2003. Groups all over the world will perform readings of Aristophanes' anti-war play Lysistrata to show Bush and the world that war is not the only option. The list of performances is quite impressive. Pro-peace? Get involved!
posted by condour75 at 3:35 PM PST - 22 comments

Come and Be Black for Me. A gentle but pointed personal essay on Black History month. "I am glad February is almost over. It's during this month that everyone is looking for me - or rather, anyone who can come and be black for them."
posted by RJ Reynolds at 2:55 PM PST - 5 comments

I just discovered the answer to a question I asked here. Apparently, the police can get a DNA sample from a suspect without the suspect's knowledge or consent. The police probably had a warrant, but the article doesn't say.
posted by titboy at 2:39 PM PST - 7 comments

Björk's music videos (some NSFW) are among the best. Her directors are the cream of the industry, and draw affecting ideas from her music. Here's the latest one, and here's my favorite.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 1:37 PM PST - 45 comments

now available! As someone who loved T1 & T2 this looks like mostly a rehash of those two. What's your take?
posted by milnak at 1:17 PM PST - 28 comments

Hey you, XYZ! Look at your zipper -- was it made by Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, or YKK? Probably. With seven million zippers produced every day at YKK America's National Manufacturing Center in Macon, Georgia, alone, it's no wonder that the zipper on whatever you're wearing right now is a YKK...or is it?
[a bit more inside]
posted by DakotaPaul at 1:07 PM PST - 25 comments

The decadence of American democracy is the subject of Daniel Ellsberg’s memoir. In 1971, as a disillusioned Pentagon staffer, he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. As usual for London Review of Books, it’s a long-ish essay but para 17 alone is a breathtaking confession of top brass arrogance. Link to the second half of essay at foot of page or here.
posted by skellum at 12:31 PM PST - 8 comments

Wine, Chicago, and Bob. Sounds like a dangerous combination, but fortunately the GUI Gallery keeps 'em separated for your safety. Via my good friend wysinger.com
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:29 PM PST - 3 comments

The US Department of Education - Or Not?
A link or two for those who don't own a television. Or a Michael Jackson CD.
Reaction to federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind (which is directed purely at education, and has been discussed here before ) and Head Start (which has a social component, and has not (I think)) is starting to filter in.
Should the Federal Government worry about disparities in educational expenditures? Should it worry about how services are delivered?
posted by 314/ at 12:13 PM PST - 4 comments

heather champ is looking to get moby to submit a shot himself to the mirror project by her fortieth birthday. now moby's taken shots of himself in several reflective surfaces before and he even keeps a weblog - so he's pretty much the mirror project's target audience. as of today, there's only eighty.one days left for heather's dream to become a reality. spread the word and make one gal's dream a reality.
posted by boogah at 11:38 AM PST - 30 comments

Not your average athlete He walked away from pro football glory to serve his nation, and he's loving every minute of it.
posted by oissubke at 11:36 AM PST - 37 comments

In an article called "The Sociobiological Conceit", Gene Callahan says darwinism is logically flawed and inherently self-contradictory: "if moral ideas are simply an 'illusion' fostered on us by our genes then so are all of our other ideas – including the ideas of sociobiology!". Callahan, fyi, belongs to the ultra-libertarian circles of the Mises Institute and LewRockwell. Would any of the evolutionists among us care to politely refute him?
posted by 111 at 11:16 AM PST - 20 comments

Soda Jerks Flash fun for a Friday afternoon. Couple of funny cartoons, the most recent a spoof of Joe Millionaire.
posted by billman at 11:16 AM PST - 3 comments

the message board messageboard
(friday amusement - all text but maybe nsfw if they can read your screen)
a sock-puppet show of numerous odd stories. witness harold tucker's hallucinations in the cornfield, olivia's search for sterling bridgeport, and give sympathy to wally simmons tragedy with internet procured sperm pills or tyler grubb's suicidal bout with alcohol. lots of other strange sad and hilarious stuff there too. a fine lampoon on truth or identity as it's represented in forums or metafilter itself ...i mean, we're all real people right?
posted by Peter H at 10:33 AM PST - 3 comments

"We decided not to run it..."
In the surreal world that is today's media, Colin Powell has no opposition. None. There is no alternative view. None. In this Kafkaesque place, Reps. DeFazio and Paul didn't conduct a press conference yesterday. Nor did they introduce legislation that counters George Bush and Colin Powell's world view...a world view, mind you, that the world doesn't share.

Does corporate media serve the interests of the people and democracy or the elites and profit? Did you hear about this bill? Do you think this is an important story that deserved media coverage?
posted by nofundy at 10:09 AM PST - 43 comments

Psychotherapy and an Arrow Key Workout Armwrestle with Sigmund Freud, the greatest "it's all related to sex and your childhood" minds ever to walk the earth. Friday Flash.
posted by gramcracker at 9:37 AM PST - 5 comments

Bush will raise the national terror threat level today from yellow to orange (CNN). This means little to us here in NYC where we've already been at orange. (At least that's what I've heard, although orange looks like a brownish color on my TV screen and a sort of muddy green on my computer monitor.) What, if anything, will your town, city, state, company, family do in response to this heightened threat level?
posted by jellybuzz at 8:54 AM PST - 58 comments

Baby, It's Cold Outside: Perhaps it's unethical - well, it's certainly incestuous - to draw your attention to one of madamjujujive's great links on quonsar's brilliant Meepzorp blog ("Where, thank the Lord, it is always Friday" - Christian Science Monitor, 18.12.76). But what about linking two? Bouncing Baby and Gulp are two great Flash pieces that address the question of nurture; motherhood; the oral nature of pleasure; the ontology of fuzzy gratification; the metaphysics of the transition from womb to nipple and other meretricious bullshit justifications for fun.
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 8:52 AM PST - 3 comments

Martian Law: From the Cato Institute comes this paper exploring the best choices for law on the red planet when colonization occurs.

Mars is a case of what political theorists would call a perfect state of nature. No one lives on Mars. No one currently has legal title to any part of Mars. On what basis then can Mars be exploited by individuals or consortia?

Of course, Kim Stanley Robinson has already explored this subject in his ground-breaking Martian trilogy.
posted by jdroth at 8:48 AM PST - 10 comments

Michael feels betrayed and I'm kind of with him on this one. I thought I would just check in on the Jackson special for a few minutes, but I stuck around, mainly because I literally could not believe what I was seeing. What I was waiting for never actually happened: some concession that what was being exploited was not so much a celebrity as someone who is mentally ill. The interviewer's questions (often repeated emphatically for shock value) and Barbara Walters' snarky commercial-break comments seemed a bit on the cruel side when discussing someone who has so little grounding in reality. I can understand the concern about children, Jackson's and others; there is clearly a cycle of abuse (though clearly unintended on Jackson's part), and it is something legal authorities should address; however, I would question opening those issues up on television and trying to assign Jackson motives he is clearly not mature enough, sexually or otherwise, to comprehend, not to mention their own exploitation of the children for ratings.
posted by troybob at 8:42 AM PST - 65 comments

A Vanity Fair advice writer thinks you shouldn't learn Spanish. Unless of course you want to talk to the Help. Got word of this in one of those darn petition emails this morning...anyone have a copy available to confirm this? Maybe they thought Latinos wouldn't read this issue? except...Oh yeah, Salma Hayek is on the cover.
posted by th3ph17 at 8:22 AM PST - 38 comments

Wembley Stadium - Arguably the most famous sports ground in the world, host of the 1966 World Cup final and the 1948 Olympics is being rebuilt. Today the famous twin towers go under the wrecking ball. You can see it all on webcam. Sad end to one of our sporting treasures.
posted by brettski at 8:00 AM PST - 11 comments

What's wrong with these pictures? I thought I knew at least a little bit about art until I took this quiz. That, plus the blurb about spider-goats (eew!) makes me think that maybe decaf isn't strong enough to kick-start my brain this Friday morning.
posted by Oriole Adams at 5:48 AM PST - 21 comments

Bush orders guidelines for cyber-war Is it my old age that makes me wonder what else might be in this secret directive as regards computers and the Net? "First set of rules for attacking enemy computers studied." Perhaps you support the president or you are the enemy (recall: you are with us or against us)....
posted by Postroad at 5:27 AM PST - 7 comments

Gifts & Blessings. The textile arts of Madagascar.
posted by plep at 5:15 AM PST - 10 comments

Stones in My Pathway - in the tradition of Alan Lomax, Bill Steber is a photojournalist who is documenting Mississippi blues culture. His work includes an array of photos, music clips and interviews capturing the environment that spawned the music, spanning "juke joints, cotton farming, sacred music, rural church services, river baptisms, folk religion and superstition, life on Parchman penitentiary, hill country African fife and drum music, and diverse regional blues styles." A beautiful site and jewel of a find for blues buffs. via Portage
posted by madamjujujive at 5:09 AM PST - 13 comments

Cosmic bolt probed in shuttle disaster - Scientists poring over 'infrasonic' sound waves Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California, The Chronicle has learned.
posted by y2karl at 12:32 AM PST - 29 comments

The Powell is sent in order to carry the water: I find Japanese "Engrish" websites unfunny and stupidly patronizing but this blog is potential poetry - Surrealist poetry. Whether it was machine-translated or drafted using Breton's, Ionesco's or Burroughs' techniques, it's splendidly memorable: Rather than "I am sad" we need "mush truth". All it needs is some artful, e.e.cummings-like arranging on the page to be transformed into art. [Via Linkfilter].
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:55 PM PST - 25 comments

N.C. Congressman OK with the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII What is even scarier is this man is the head of a Homeland Security subcommittee. This is without question as repelling, hurtful and unfit to come out of US leader as Trent Lott's comments but somehow I do not believe this will get as much press nor condemnation. It is really chilling to wonder how many others on the committees and the Bush administration hold this or similar attitudes. It makes you wonder how far would they go in the name of Homeland Security if they thought they could get away with it.
posted by GreenDragon at 9:58 PM PST - 20 comments

Handy tips for those new to the bomb threat call in line. This "FAQ" from the LAPD's website is actually a checklist of things novice police phone operators are instructed to ask anyone calling in to leave a bomb threat. Useful information being collected includes tone of caller's voice (raspy? pleasant?), background noise (party atmosphere?) and important personal data about the soon to be bomber (what is your name? what is your address?). Sleep soundly, Los Angeles, your days of random explosions are a thing of the past.
posted by jonson at 9:35 PM PST - 11 comments

Armed Services Editions. Printed in the millions, publishing incredibly diverse authors and subjects, now semivaluable. What (besides this tiny project) are our servicemen reading today? This is the closest thing I can find, and it’s linkless and referenceless.
posted by interrobang at 9:30 PM PST - 5 comments

Albumen photographs: history, science, preservation and gallery.
posted by hama7 at 9:25 PM PST - 11 comments

Iraq - Its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation (pdf) is Downing Street's recently released intelligence dossier regarding Iraq, mentioned during Colin Powell's UN speech. Fair enough maybe, but they copied it pretty much wholesale from here (authored by a postgraduate student from California), without even as much as a thank you. More info here (channel4.com) and here (bbc.co.uk).
posted by toby\flat2 at 8:56 PM PST - 17 comments

Our stalwart ally ... Albania? When there is much to be concerned about with America's relations with other nations, it's a relief to see that America and Albania can work together militarily after they spent 45 years aligned against the US. What a difference a few decades could make in foreign relations.
posted by RobbieFal at 8:34 PM PST - 7 comments

A short, creepy yarn, and easily dismissed... "The loss of the Columbia space shuttle is suffused with symbols begging for attention. Columbia is named, in part, after Christopher Columbus and symbolically points to the very discovery of the American nation. Strangely, on the threshold of America's preemptive invasion of Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction, the shuttle's hold contained the first Israeli astronaut who in 1981 himself participated in a preemptive attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor to eliminate its capacity for developing weapons of mass destruction. An uncanny echo, but certainly not the only one...As we are on the precipice of a war with Iraq, the whole Arab world screams that it is not Iraq but America's relationship with Israel and the Palestinian crisis that is the root cause of all Arab anti-American sentiment and certainly all terrorism. Suddenly the Columbia crashes with an Israeli astronaut over George Bush's home state as debris rains down on "Palestine, Texas."
posted by troutfishing at 7:48 PM PST - 49 comments

Strangely compelling. YELLOWTAIL is an interactive software system for the gestural creation and performance of real-time abstract animation. Yellowtail repeats a user's strokes end-over-end, enabling simultaneous specification of a line's shape and quality of movement. Each line repeats according to its own period, producing an ever-changing and responsive display of lively, worm-like textures. If you like the Java version, you can download the full screen version with sound.
posted by Wet Spot at 7:12 PM PST - 11 comments

I'm a celebrity dammit, why wont you pay attention to what I'm telling you! It's bad enough I have to pay $10 to watch your lousy movie and hear your crappy music, just don't tell me how to think.
posted by beatnik808 at 2:39 PM PST - 67 comments

Peter David, Writer of Stuff (bibliography) appears to have a blog. With a Buffy/Angel commentary as today's post, no less.
posted by Cyrano at 2:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Everybody Hates Us. Michael Spencer notes that evangelical Christians are almost universally disliked. Are there good reasons? "We are loathed, caricatured, avoided and disliked because we often deserve it."
posted by aaronshaf at 2:16 PM PST - 89 comments

Striking, panoramic photo collages of the ruins of U.S. and Canadian concentration camps used to isolate Japanese-Americans during WWII. Masumi Hayashi's rich site also features documents, personal stories and Shockwave interview clips, a discussion board and data on each camp. And, yes, this post was inspired by U.S. Congressman Howard Coble's recent comment.
posted by mediareport at 1:43 PM PST - 32 comments

The Power of Art? This interesting article becomes extremely clever if you think about some of the basic history of "Guernica". Little-known artist Picasso (see '37 for initial ideas, '45 for completed painting) was commissioned to paint it after the horrific slaughters of the Spanish Civil War. “...Picasso's tour de force would become one of this century's most unsettling indictments of war.” (more inside)
posted by valval22 at 12:59 PM PST - 10 comments

A frequent point of opposition to the war on drugs is that of taxation. The argument goes like this: If the prohibition on illegal drugs ended, the government would see a surplus like no other (and pay for treatment, enforcement, etc). The folks in Kansas have a strange hybrid option: keep them illegal, but ask that drug dealers report taxes on their profits. Their FAQ lists the details and the a rate sheet (pdf) is available. Drug dealers not following suit can be busted as tax evaders, in addition to selling drugs. Novel approach or silly idea?
posted by mathowie at 12:53 PM PST - 37 comments

Twiggy, Queen of Mod "As the first teenager to become a supermodel, her impact was instant and international.".
posted by konolia at 12:51 PM PST - 9 comments

Hard time gets harder. New York City has banned smoking in all workplaces, and apparently that includes jails. Do you have the right to smoke in jail? A prison full of convicts all having nicotine withdrawl at the same time can't be a good thing.
posted by quibx at 12:36 PM PST - 25 comments

"In the last 13 years I have kept everything you have sent in close to heart and in safe keeping. I now hope to open these files again and share more of the creations given to us by you, the Dead Heads". The keeper of the Dead Files has put online hundreds of emails and newsletters and exuberantly colored and illustrated envelopes and letters from the fans of the Grateful Dead. There are, as you'd expect, many drawings of skeletons and American Beauty roses, but you certainly don't have to be a fan to appreciate all the handiwork, personality, and creativity that went into these. I like the irregularity of the hand drawn lettering. {via coudal}.
posted by iconomy at 12:21 PM PST - 11 comments

"Feminism" isn't the problem , it's Woman's Super Ego that's the problem. "...there comes a time in every relationship when a woman has to be tender and empathetic. If she can't or won't do that, it doesn't matter if she has the face of Helen of Troy with George Eliot's mind."
posted by vito90 at 10:21 AM PST - 55 comments

Despite the FBI's best efforts, the spy only passed public domain information to North Korea In Graham Greene's hilarious "Our Man in Havana", a salesman-unlikely-turned-spy passes vacuum-cleaner blueprints as plans of a nuclear plant to his superiors at MI6. Turns an American of Korean origin has been doing pretty much the same with North Korea and thus cannot be charged with espionage. One can only hope that the current bullish attitude of North Korea is all based on the info passed by this guy (who, BTW, sold it for cash).
posted by magullo at 10:13 AM PST - 8 comments

Is the U.S. suffocating reform in Iran? "'Despite sporadic verbal concern with the condition of human rights in Iran, the U.S. is protecting and providing clandestine support to the right-wing conservatives in Iran,' says Sayed Ali Asghar Gharavi, a member of the banned but tolerated Iran Freedom Movement (IFM), the country’s leading opposition party. 'The U.S. government in no way favors the coming to power of the reformist groups in Iran and is secretly supporting the religious conservatives.' Government insiders in Iran allege that the deal, first proffered by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, is simple: If the hard-liners quietly support the United States in Iraq, Washington will quietly support them. U.S. State Department officials declined to comment." It seems unlikely that the Bush administration would side with the mullahs, but considering the U.S.'s troubled history with Iranian democracy, it's not inconceivable. Perhaps this is why Michael Ledeen's cries of alarm aren't being heeded.
posted by homunculus at 9:50 AM PST - 25 comments

E-terrorism over-rated. Journalist Brian McWilliams exposes the media whoring of fellow "reporter" Dan Verton and "security intelligence" company mi2g. He shows just how easy it is to fake a "terrorist" organization online and finally gives some exposure to the amount of FUD that gets spread around by some reporters and a lot of comp. sec companies simply to make money. Though I don't think Verton gets it:

"Although the hoax this week taught me a valuable lesson about the nature of information on the Internet, it's less clear that McWilliams' scheme has done anything to advance the understanding of cyberterrorism."

Um...yeah Dan. He showed just how half-assed a job some people do in actually verifying sources and Internet-based information. Kudos to your anti-FUD efforts, Brian.
posted by bkdelong at 9:25 AM PST - 8 comments

"Architecture is the only art that moulds the world directly ... Nobody in the 20th century grasped this more firmly than Speer's patron and employer, Adolf Hitler." Albert Speer was the man Hitler picked to mould his future empire, starting with its capital, Berlin, that would have been rechristened Germania. In an ironic twist of fate, Albert Speer's son, also named Albert Speer and also an architect, is currently in the running to radically rebuilt Beijing.
posted by costas at 8:48 AM PST - 8 comments

In the autumn of 1999 Donald Knuth gave a series of lectures at MIT on God and Computers. You can watch[realplayer] and listen[mp3] to them here (Warning: this is over ten hours of material).
posted by wobh at 7:10 AM PST - 14 comments

"Since Terry has been with us our productivity has gone up 46%" Here's hoping our company doesn't resort to recruiting Mr Tate - otherwise I'll have to remember to fill up the coffee jug. (Windows Media, requires sound)
posted by ralawrence at 6:40 AM PST - 28 comments

In other news, the Washington Post is reporting that The Fairly Odd Parents on Nick is "the next SpongeBob." Film at 11 (no, I mean film at 9 pm on Fridays, 7:30 pm on Saturdays, Sat and Sun at 10 am, and Sundays at 3). I could have told you that.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 5:24 AM PST - 20 comments

Which Breakfast Club character are you? No, it's not another online quiz. It's an article on a project done by a social researcher, asking 900 high school sophomores to choose which Breakfast Club character they were most like. Following up 16 years later, their associations played out to a high degree as they grew older. So which were you, Jock, Princess, Brain, Basket Case or Criminal? Did your self-image in high school have lasting effects on your life?
posted by JParker at 12:09 AM PST - 45 comments

As an update to a difficult earlier thread, "Ripper" or Brandon Vedas has a new memorial site dedicated to "the education and prevention of future tragedies", and is up thanks in part to the work of his brother.
posted by mathowie at 11:21 PM PST - 37 comments

Terry Jones of Monty Python fame attempts to apply the Bush administration policy to his own neighborhood.
posted by thedailygrowl at 9:31 PM PST - 54 comments

First, it is well to remark two things: the first is that love ought to be put more in deeds than in words. The Spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola. . We begin by quieting ourselves. Become aware of God's goodness, the gifts of life and love. Be thankful. Recall that without faith, the eye of love, the human world seems too evil for God to be good, for a good God to exist. There ya go, the bars up and now you cant touch it. Some pictorial help here.a preface here.Sound too obscure for you ?see here for their modern day application.
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:24 PM PST - 15 comments

Tweedledum and Tweedledee: Two great essays from very opposite sides of the barricades, but embodying the same healthy bloody-mindedness: reverent Roger Scruton, English, conservative and monarchist ,on the Right, and irreverent Glen Newey, Scottish, socialist and republican, on the Left. The differences are plain to see. But it's the similarities, I think, that point to the enduring strength of the British political spirit.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:08 PM PST - 9 comments

When network technicians think about sex. It isn't pretty. The storage capacity of sperm, the bandwidth (burst capacity) of an orgasms, latency of data transmission, and viable segment length.
posted by srboisvert at 7:16 PM PST - 7 comments

Ad Aware 6 released. The long awaited (at least for me) king of spyware detectors is now available for download.
posted by skallas at 6:37 PM PST - 36 comments

Welcome to the European Railway Picture Gallery. The monthly archive is a nice place to begin.
posted by four panels at 6:16 PM PST - 12 comments

In his 1947 letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations Albert Einstein wrote of 'enhancing the moral authority of the UN' and portrayed the United Nations as a "transitional system toward the final goal, which is the establishment of a supranational authority". Is the United Nations the depository of the moral authority of the international community? Some say no. Is there really such a thing as moral authority or is it one of those intangibles that, as a Supreme Court justice once said about obscenity, we cannot define, but we know it when we see it? Could a "one world government" work and would it really produce "moral authority" ? (More Inside)
posted by Mack Twain at 3:58 PM PST - 42 comments

Well known for speaking the truth about governments and getting pressured for it [7th paragraph from the top], Alain Labrousse recently published his Dictionnaire géopolitique des drogues [Geopolitical Dictionary of Drugs]. I don't think it's been translated in English yet, but all his previous works have, so I'm sure an English version is on the way. His latest book is being well received by everyone who's interested in "open source" information about drugs, particularly how the various national economies profit from them. A recent review [in French], cites one example of twisted international relations concerning drugs [my translation]: Europe speaks no evil about activities in Morocco, the most important source of cannabis in the world, or in Turkey, where scores of laboratories transform afghan opium into heroin, simply because these two countries provide a frontline of resistance to radical Islam. In North America, in Mexico, the United States tolerated for 70 years the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional - PRI), even though its leaders supported, and even chose mexican drug cartels. Geostrategic interests outweigh the most basic needs of the war against drugs.
posted by titboy at 3:45 PM PST - 0 comments

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity in words of four letters or less
posted by Mwongozi at 2:37 PM PST - 30 comments

Hey, did you see Romenesko today? Now it really is Romenesko. The blog that everybody calls "Romenesko" has just officially changed its name due to a rather silly threat of a lawsuit from MediaNews Group. Poynter president James Naughton explains, "The gist of the law firm's concern seems to be that eliminating the space between the words Media and News might prompt the unsophisticated, raffish crowd who tune in to Poynter Online to think it was Dean Singleton in his pajamas pecking away at the keyboard in Romenesko's Evanston apartment." So, from here on out, it's just plain old "Romenesko."
posted by soyjoy at 2:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Why articulate people make bad colleagues Nick Denton, proprietor of various websites, sometime columnist for Management Today, and supposed intelligent person has come up with this gem in his weblog: "But I've been interviewing software engineers, and find myself prejudiced against those that talk fluently. . . . Either they were born persuasive, and so they've always been able to get away with it; or else they've always broken promises, so they've had to learn how to explain away their failures." For the most part, I think he's wrong, but I can see where he's coming from. Should articulate people be banned from time-sensitive positions?
posted by gkostolny at 2:31 PM PST - 41 comments

Almost unbelievably, the way being charted to revive the economy is to reinflate the bubble When you're on a permanent war footing, it's worth being reminded, stupid, that it's all about the economy. A lengthy piece.
posted by skellum at 2:11 PM PST - 23 comments

kevin mitnick, the famed hacker who was released recently from jail has granted Slashdot an interview in which he debunks many of the myths about him. He provides some insights into the ethics of the journalists that profitted from his case.
posted by Raichle at 1:47 PM PST - 3 comments

Japanese create "invisible" cloak. Well, not really. Technically, just a two sided cloak, the front of which is a projector, and the back of which is a camera. Only works, one would imagine, if you're looking at a person straight on, and even then it would help if you were partially blind, or at the very least, raised in the wilderness & easily fooled by modern technology.
posted by jonson at 1:14 PM PST - 50 comments

The Chuck Hagel voting machine ownership story gets even scarier. In today's Best of the Blogs, Jerry Bowles reveals more bizarre details about the Chuck Hagel/voting machine story, including the fact that the majority ownership stake in the voting machine company that counted Senator Hagel's upset victory in 1996 (and his reelection in 2002) is held by a man long associated with the radical organization Christian Reconstruction, which believes in overturning democracy and replacing it with a Christian theocracy. This is really weird and frightening stuff, if it checks out.
posted by mitsu at 1:14 PM PST - 11 comments

Look and Read offers storylines, songs, video clips and my first introduction to Wordy from this classic BBC School series. As someone who grew up on Sesame Street and Schoolhouse Rock, I found it interesting to see the British equivalent. Plus, it's good campy fun.
posted by snez at 1:10 PM PST - 4 comments

Lana Clarkson, gunned down in Phil Spector's home, was the star of B movies like Barbarian Queen and Barbarian Queen 2, and also made appearances on classic television shows such as the A-Team, Knight Rider, Three's Company and of course, The Love Boat.
posted by car_bomb at 11:39 AM PST - 17 comments

Powell's address to the UN. In a direct, long and rich presentation, Colin Powell has laid the cards on the table, and presented what's likely to be our most explicit case for war. While it's difficult to separate the larger issue of War on Iraq from just this presentation, I'm interested in other takes on Powell's speech. Anything substantially new? Truly irrefutable? Strong enough to justify immediate action? Does this have more heft coming from Powell (considering he's more trusted than Bush on this issue), or is he acting as a mouthpiece? Or, to be succinct, did Colin change anyone's mind? At the very least, he satisfied my need to know more about why our administration is acting so urgently.
posted by kokogiak at 10:44 AM PST - 227 comments

Oxford University is looking to take advantage of distributed computing to find a cure for smallpox. Much like SETI@Home, the Smallpox Protection Project and Oxford's effort to cure cancer rely on individual computer users to download and run screensaver software to crunch numbers in an effort to speed up processing of large amounts of data. How will this kind of initiative impact science in the future? Can we, by volunteering our processors, be part of the quest for a cure?
posted by greengrl at 10:00 AM PST - 19 comments

From the always excellent Sharpeworld comes a true gem: her father's comedy duo's site, Coyle and Sharpe. Harking back to another era (1960's San Francisco), the site features images, articles, and videos, but the hidden audio tracks of man-on-the-street bits are not to be missed. They have all the innocence of Candid Camera, but are quite a bit funnier.
posted by mathowie at 9:52 AM PST - 8 comments

Ashleigh Brilliant's Pot-Shots are sometimes fun, sometimes depressing, but almost always interesting.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:06 AM PST - 5 comments

U.S. admin using future shares of Iraqi oil to build anti-Iraq coalition. Nation building just doesn't get any better than this.
posted by magullo at 7:58 AM PST - 53 comments

The denizens of Fark are having a crisis of conscience after one of their members died in a car accident. There are only a few holdouts against the outpouring of sympathy from the biliously sarcastic community. "Farkers, seriously - where's your irreverence?" asked Labberdasher. "Not one 'he should have gone for a Darwin award' ... ?"
posted by rcade at 5:31 AM PST - 60 comments

"I am fascinated by stories and myths of the double, the doppelganger, and the alchemist's artificial man: the homunculus. According to certain medieval texts, the Jewish golem can only be brought to life during its maker's state of ecstasy. The word ecstasy means literally 'to be beside oneself'." [last link realplayer]
posted by hama7 at 5:13 AM PST - 15 comments

Yugoslavia chapter closed: The Archduke, the Maverick Communist, and the War Criminal. After a storied, and often violent, 20th century, the (nearly) all-encompassing Balkan federation is no more, and what remains may not survive. Even in the shadow of a violent breakup, though, some former republics are moving on, though others remain a concern.

The roots of the region, of course, lie much deeper.
posted by apostasy at 1:27 AM PST - 9 comments

Consumer Power! Not only can you register to join dozens of pending or proposed class action lawsuits, but you can try to convince an attorney to start a new one just for you. A welcome alternative to the Better Business Bureau or a sign of the approaching demise of Western civilization?
posted by boltman at 11:09 PM PST - 1 comments

Drug War Roundup V. "It's the most horrible mistake I've ever made," says a juror who helped convict Ed "Guru of Ganja" Rosenthal of marijuana production. The judge in Ed's case didn't consider him a flight risk, but may have after reading "The Drug War Refugees" (reg. req.), about Americans fleeing to Canada. The entire drug trade is approximately "the size of the Spanish economy and about 8 percent of world trade." And, of course, is responsible for hippo migration to Columbia.
posted by raaka at 10:19 PM PST - 22 comments

The IBM 1403 Printer (1964) playing music. This may change your life.
posted by the fire you left me at 8:19 PM PST - 23 comments

Admired from a distance, the almost mythical Audi A3 may come stateside Toyota and Hyundai have had great success as of late with the much maligned hatchback auto design here in the United States. Even Volkswagen's international best-selling Golf saw a double-digit sales spurt in 2002 in a country that looks down on hatchbacks. Now it appears that Audi North America is looking to bring over the wonderful next generation A3 to our side of the pond. Why has the hatch been so scorned (Chevette?) and would you be interested in one - or, why not?
posted by tgrundke at 6:09 PM PST - 56 comments