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January 31
Uncle Patricks Advice to Children
-- a collection of rules to live by. Some highlights:
Wear the condom. No, for the love of Pete, not the mint-flavored one. Jesus, that thing burns.
and
Heres a helpful tip for job interviews: try not to stab your future boss in the arm with a freshly sharpened pencil. If you must stab someone with a pencil, have the common sense to dull the point to a state where you can be sure it wont easily break the skin. (via boingboing)
posted by amberglow at 9:34 PM PST - 23 comments
Sowing One's Wild Oats And Postponing Last Straws:
Some things never change the world over and the gist of this amusing language lesson (
be sure to listen to the sountrack too) seems familiar and even easy to guess. However, different cultures allow for different rates of growing up - and
out of things. Regarding the
sowing of wild oats, is the West really the most lenient and generous, in terms of age-limits? What part does religion play? In other words, what's the maximum you can get away with nowadays?
At a pinch, I'd say Southern European Catholic countries will extend a woman's visa till she's 35 and a man's till he's 40 but certain *cough* other cultures seem to be even more favourable towards eternal adolescence.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:53 PM PST - 18 comments
The Campaign Desk
If you are a political news junkie, try this: Critique and analysis of 2004 campaign coverage from Columbia Journalism Review
It is good. It is solid.It is intelligent.
posted by Postroad at 12:55 PM PST - 8 comments
January 30
Media for Democracy
-- a non-partisan citizens' initiative to monitor mainstream news coverage of the 2004 elections and advocate fair, democratic and issue-oriented standards of reporting. The project links voters with more than 100 independent media reform groups in a targeted campaign to prevent the types of media mistakes -- such as early, erroneous and politically biased projections -- that plagued the 2000 election. Brought to you by
Mediachannel.org, who recently called primary coverage "Electotainment."
posted by amberglow at 9:24 PM PST - 2 comments
Former Davenetics publisher and CSPAN fanatic Dave Pell is now blogging at
Electablog. After a couple years of earnest "soapbox 'n rants" style of political blogging, it's nice to see political-themed sites with a sense of humor and humility popping up (like
wonkette as well, mentioned
last week).
posted by mathowie at 4:46 PM PST - 3 comments
Confessions of a Car Salesman
Edmunds.com sent one of their writers to work at two car dealerships for a month or so at each to find out just how the stereotypically sleazoids learn to be so slick and annoying yet ultimately successful--at least most of you have bought a new car at least once, right? (Lengthy, not necessarily breathless prose can be shortcircuited if you skip to the
lessons learned page.)
posted by billsaysthis at 4:19 PM PST - 30 comments
US elections: the world-wide vote.
"In November 2004, U.S. citizens will elect their new President. The outcome of these elections directly influences the lives of citizens around the world.
Theworldvotes.org seeks to apply new technologies to provide citizens around the world with a voice in matters that affects us all.
Ensure that your voice is heard by registering electronically and add momentum to a worldwide drive to establish global democracy."
Noble sentiments, but isn't this an admission of submission to the empire? A surrender of sovereignty? A call for
a new Caracalla's edict? Is this a good idea both for the US and the "rest of the world"?
posted by talos at 11:13 AM PST - 31 comments
Attack of the Seven Teen Girls from Petaluma!
Well, maybe not that title, but the story of teenage girls spending two years to convince developers to build a multiplex in their hometown would have made a great '80s teen flick. Armed with binders of business plans and black-and-white skirt suits, they succeeded, and broke ground Thursday. All because they were sick of asking Mom for rides.
posted by marzenie99 at 11:01 AM PST - 13 comments
Sworn virgins.
"A sworn virgin is called such because she swearstakes a vow under the law of the
Kanunto become a man. From the day she takes this vow (which is sometimes at a very early age), she becomes a man: she dresses like one, acts like one, walks like one, works like one, talks like one, and her family and community treat her as one. She is referred to as he. He will never marry and will remain celibate all of his life." If you find this stuff intriguing, by all means read Alice Munro's great short story "The Albanian Virgin" (from
Open Secrets, 1994); you might also want to check out
A Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture, where there's much more cultural weirdness, and Edith Durham's classic
High Albania (online
here), from which I first learned of these mannish gals. Oh, and there's a
movie!
posted by languagehat at 9:47 AM PST - 15 comments
Forget the Super Bowl. In Philadelphia all eyes are on the Wing Bowl, where 20,000 (often) drunk (mostly) men filed into the Wachovia Center beginning shortly after dawn this morning, a workday, to ogle thong-clad Wingettes and cheer on the eaters. This year's winner:
Sonya Thomas, a 105 lb. woman, who knocked off 2-1 favorite and four-peat reigning champ
El Wingador by gobbling 167 buffalo wings in 34 minutes.
The event is huge. Miss Thomas
is not.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:16 AM PST - 16 comments
It has been said that reality is all about perspective -- a camera is a pinhole view of the world that frequently filters out much of the story. With that in mind,
check out this video of the familiar "I have a scream" speech by Dean. I'm no Dean supporter, but from down in the trenches it doesn't look nearly as bad as it played on TV. Obviously the video you've seen on the news has the best part and the audience noise turned down, but from this vantage point, the speech almost seems appropriate for the crowd and the moment (but was still a lapse in judgement to forget cameras were rolling). I hope this isn't too subtle of a point -- forget all the politics involved -- this is a fascinating look at a familiar scene that was looped for the past week, but from an entirely different perspective and a different story emerges. [via
Vidiot]
posted by mathowie at 7:08 AM PST - 51 comments
In Defense of Ikea and Starbucks.
"[If] you're so desperate for your own
soixante-huit moment that you can sit there with a straight face and tell me that you're being oppressed by flat-packable pine furniture with goofy pseudo-Scandinavian names, I'd advise you to spend a few days working with child slaves in the Sudan, or something." MeFite
adamgreenfield pleads for "a little sense of scale."
posted by Vidiot at 6:33 AM PST - 85 comments
Three Blind Phreaks, See How They Scam ...
The Badirs pulled off Mamet-worthy phone cons, employing cell phones, Braille-display computers, ace code-writing skills, and an uncanny ability to impersonate anyone from corporate suits to sex-starved females. On the phone, the brothers morph into verbal 007s, intimidating men, seducing women, and wheedling classified information from steely-voiced security personnel [...] An intense cat-and-mouse game developed: the Badirs on one side, with fraud investigator David Osmo and prosecutor Doron Porat on the other [...] his car's GPS system and email were repeatedly hacked. "There was a message waiting for him with his password in it," says Ramy, sounding quite pleased. "After that, he changed his password every hour before giving up on email altogether and using a typewriter."
posted by Blue Stone at 6:11 AM PST - 7 comments
Garth Marenghi
is a sculptor of nightmares, is the only person you'll ever meet who has written more books than he has read. Now you can see the return of his
Cult '80s TV show. If you only get to see one TV series from the UK this year, and if you dare, then vist the Dark Place.
posted by seanyboy at 2:09 AM PST - 17 comments
January 29
In case you've been wondering about Europe's nascent GPS system, the Economist has
an update.
posted by kliuless at 9:11 PM PST - 2 comments
Pixar Dumps Disney:
"It is impossible to know how bad this is for Disney." On the other hand:
Disney can begin creating sequels to all of Pixar's films, something it could not do under its current arrangement and is almost certain to exploit. On the third hand:
One film executive suggested that Mr. Jobs could now be considered a candidate to run Disney if indeed Mr. Eisner ever left.
posted by alms at 8:42 PM PST - 26 comments
Hasta Mudra: a research project in movement and myth.
"The content within this website is derived of excerpts from an ongoing research project on hasta mudra as they are utilized in Bharata Natyam classical dance of India. The literal translation of the Sanskrit hasta mudra is hand (hasta) symbol (mudra), though hasta mudra can be interpreted in English as hand gestures or sign language." [Flash.]
posted by homunculus at 4:06 PM PST - 1 comments
Old Time Candy
- ready to say goodbye to your New Year's Resolution diet? Old time candy will sell you gift boxes based on decade! We looked for the nostalgic sweet stuff before, but here is another good collection.
posted by plinth at 4:05 PM PST - 4 comments
Janet Frame
, New Zealand writer, is dead at 79. More information about her life,
here, and obituary notice
here. Nominated for the Nobel Prize for Fiction last year, I had hoped she might yet win. RIP.
posted by jokeefe at 11:46 AM PST - 5 comments
The Beneficiaries of Saddam's Oil Vouchers: The List of 270
(This is the first xlation I could find). The following report from MEMRI's Baghdad office is a translation of an article which appeared in the Iraqi daily Al-Mada, which obtained lists of 270 companies, organizations, and individuals awarded allocations (vouchers) of crude oil by Saddam Hussein's regime. The beneficiaries reside in 50 countries: 16 Arab, 17 European, 9 Asian, and the rest from sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Only a portion of the 270 recipients are listed and identified.
posted by kablam at 10:01 AM PST - 17 comments
Business Card Menger Sponge Project
The primary goal of the Business Card Menger Sponge Project is to build a depth 3 approximation to Menger's Sponge ... out of 66,048 business cards . This can be done by building 8000 business card cubes out of 6 cards each, linking them together and using the additional cards to panel the 18,048 exterior faces of the sponge.
With all the troubles in our world today, the confusion of the Presidential primaries, terrorism, you name it, it is good someone can find a project that gets people involved and serves, after its completion, as a greatly beneficial offering for mankind.
posted by RubberHen at 9:52 AM PST - 4 comments
Reference
nuts, here's a great product for you. Good stuff for the wall of your study.
posted by tetsuo at 9:41 AM PST - 8 comments
Michael, aged 25, was abducted by
Lord's Resistance Army rebels in northern Uganda. His captors beat him on the head with rifle-butts when he was no longer able to carry their loot and left him for dead. Government soldiers
found him a week later. "Termites had started eating me alive," he recalls. Michael's is one of many personal testimonies published in
When the sun sets, we start to worry..., a book launched Thursday by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in conjunction with its
Integrated Regional Information Networks. Using personal accounts and powerful black-and-white photographs,
When the sun sets, we start to
worry... aims to draw attention to the plight of more than a million Ugandan men, women and children whose present existence encompasses a degree of misery and horror seldom seen elsewhere.
posted by mookieproof at 9:17 AM PST - 2 comments
Save the Hubble!
I know, I know, it's an internet petition... but it's to save the Hubble Telescope! That's worth a minute out of your day.
posted by Hugh2d2 at 6:00 AM PST - 10 comments
xplanet
is a powerful and free app that lets you display an earth view on your desktop, with highly configurable degrees of realism. available for multple os's, you can even configure it to periodically download recent (within 3 hours) cloud cover maps, as well as your local weather forecast, satellite paths, recent earthquake or volcanic activity. be sure to check out the
gallery.
posted by crunchland at 3:09 AM PST - 27 comments
January 28
Has Howard Dean Sold Out?
One of the most prominent themes of the Dean's insurgency campaign, was the call to "Throw the Bums Out!" Dean, in most speeches talks about his rivals as "Washington and Party Insiders", and he draws contrast with himself. One of his battle cries has been to get rid of the "special interests" and "take back America" for the people.
Why then, has
Dean fired his campaign manager Joe Trippi, who is often credited with the candidate's fast rise and strong organization, and replaced him with
Roy Neel, former adviser in the Al Gore 2000 presidential campaign, and former chief lobbyist for the
U.S. Telecom Association?
(A nice combo of a "Washington Insider" and a "Special Interest," if there is one)
Howard, what happened to "taking America back" from the Special Interests?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 6:49 PM PST - 106 comments
The DOD Wargames Abrupt Climate Change:
Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islandswaves of boat people pose especially grim problems...As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies. Wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life.
posted by alms at 6:20 PM PST - 22 comments
Whirly Ball
looks like a ton of fun. It's Jai Alai meets basketball meets bumper cars. What a great sport for those of us who are athletically challenged!
posted by Fantt at 3:04 PM PST - 20 comments
Snakes.
An animated film based on a woodcut by M.C. Escher. Slow to load, beautiful to watch (and listen to).
posted by jonah at 1:18 PM PST - 16 comments
"Circuit bending
is the electronic art of the implementation of the creative audio short-circuit. This renegade path of electrons represents a catalytic force capable of exploding new experimental musical forms forward at a velocity previously unknown. Anyone at all can do it; no prior knowledge of electronics is needed." - Reed Ghazala. More
proselytizing from Ghazala, and a
LiveJournal for up-to-the-minute advice, feedback and opinions.
posted by jon_kill at 12:04 PM PST - 20 comments
Rebellion brewing in Saudi city
The tiny city of Sakaka in the remote al-Jouf province that borders Iraq may seem an unlikely setting for the beginning of a revolution against the ruling al-Saud family.
But one does not have to spend too long here to realise that this is what is happening.
posted by Postroad at 11:23 AM PST - 44 comments
Bon air! Nuit d`fête!
More than likely, if you're of a certain age (I won't pretend to know the exact one) and live in the U.S., you know the theme song in English, at least. It's
Green Acres, which came out on DVD on Jan. 13, and will hit
TV Land this spring, after years of being hard to find and in bad condition when you could find it. Its reputation has been bolstered over time by praise from, among others,
Matt Groening (see No. 50), who has reportedly called it one of the primary inspirations for "The Simpsons."
Have you rented any old TV shows on DVD, ones you can't necessarily catch on cable or syndication, and reconsidered your opinion of them? Do shows that seemed modern at the time now seem backdated, or vice versa, or more influential than you might have guessed?
posted by raysmj at 9:11 AM PST - 45 comments
Yer OUT!!!
Minor league pitcher in Cleveland Indians organization admits that appearing in gay porn was perhaps not the best idea.
posted by psmealey at 8:52 AM PST - 82 comments
The Drift Table
lets you float gently over the British landscape from the comfort of your living room.
Other projects from the
Equator research group include a tablecloth that glows and a key table that responds to your mood. Hi-tech knick-knacks, or a glimpse of the subtle way we'll interact with the domestic environment of the future?
posted by jack_mo at 7:14 AM PST - 8 comments
GEODE
(Geo-Data Explorer) is a free service offered by the U.S. Geological Survey.
It allows the user to retrieve, display, and manipulate multiple types of information, such as satellite images, geologic maps, graphics, live camera feed, three-dimensional images, and spreadsheet data.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 3:11 AM PST - 1 comments
The Lucky W Amulet Archive
: "A folkloric resource that contains hundreds of interlinked pages describing and illustrating amulets, talismans, lucky charms, and good luck pieces from around the world and all eras".
posted by taz at 1:58 AM PST - 10 comments
January 27
What they left behind:
"Craig Williams, a curator at the New York State Museum, drove four hours to visit Willard Psychiatric Center in the spring of 1995. The complex, located 65 miles southwest of Syracuse, was about to shut down after more than 100 years ... a staffer suggested he check out the attic of an abandoned building, and that's when he found 400 suitcases covered by decades of dust and pigeon droppings"
posted by ryanshepard at 7:56 PM PST - 27 comments
New Hampshire Crosstabs:
Primary voter characteristics cross-tabulated with their candidate choice. Dean runs strong with PhDs while Kerry gets the high-school-only crowd. Veterans vote just about the same as everyone else. And, surprise surprise, there don't seem to be any African Americans or Asians voting in New Hampshire.
posted by alms at 5:33 PM PST - 30 comments
AL FRANKEN KNOCKS DOWN DEAN HECKLER
Defending free speech by tackling a heckler?
"I got down low and took his legs out," said Franken afterwards. "I'm neutral in this race but I'm for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down." Wacky.
[via the delightful and always dependable NY Post!]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 1:58 PM PST - 45 comments
Filthy rich, but don't feel like buying your 5-year old a
real Porsche just yet? Perhaps
one of these will suffice for now.
Vroooooomm...
posted by Witty at 1:57 PM PST - 8 comments
Little Brother!
Seven free mp3's from a very exciting hip hop group out of North Carolina. ?uestlove from The Roots says he's jealous of just how good they sound. I know that some of you will appreciate this.
posted by Slimemonster at 10:27 AM PST - 24 comments
The BBC is buying up search terms
for '
Hutton Inquiry' and '
Hutton Report' through Google's Adwords service.
I see this almost as the online journalistic equivalent of a government sexing up dossiers, and a first for any news organisation, according to the Guardian. Regardless of your (or Hutton's) opinion of the BBC's role in the
Kelly affair, I don't see how they can possibly justify trying to control where people get their news from, especially as Hutton is almost certain to find the corporation (well,
Andrew Gilligan anyway) to be a contributing factor in Kelly's suicide.
posted by cbrody at 7:16 AM PST - 13 comments
Mary Cheney: "The next time you walk into a gay public place, be prepared for a chorus calling you everything from a quisling and a betrayer to a selfish, fiendish, nasty example of a human being." Michelangelo Signorile's open letter to the VP's gay daughter.
posted by archimago at 6:23 AM PST - 78 comments
Howard Dean seems to be on record
as stating that citizens should be required to use a government-issued ID before they can log on to the Internet. He also seems to say that PC manufacturers should be required to add card-readers to all of their PC products to facilitate this. Read for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
posted by DWRoelands at 6:11 AM PST - 38 comments
January 26
The Bird Man of Telegraph Hill: a beautiful story of a formerly homeless man, a flock of wild parrots in San Fransisco, and how their relationship transformed them both.
"You see them and you have to love them..."
posted by moonbird at 4:55 PM PST - 16 comments
Heinz Meanz Beanz:
Is America ready for a sassy, intelligent, outspoken, wilful, foul-mouthed, irreverent, garrulous, domineering, flamboyant, freethinking and utterly charming First Lady?* Portugal certainly is - as Teresa Heinz Kerry, born Teresa Simoes Ferreira, is Portuguese and it would be nice to have
a secret agent such a close ally in the White House. But there's also
a lot of hate about. Do most American voters really take candidates' wives, husbands or partners into account?
*
Heh. The "utterly charming" was added at the last minute when I realized that all these adjectives could apply to Hilary Clinton.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 1:56 PM PST - 57 comments
Ikea Walkthrough:
Now you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. A skeleton, probably the remains of a luckless consumer, lies here. Beside the skeleton is a rusty SKARPT high-quality steel knife with hard plastic handle and a shopping cart. Search the body. Take the IKEA GIFT CARD (still has $43 on it). Take and eat the SWEDISH FISH for sustenance. Now go: S, E, D, D, E, SW, W, SW, D, W, U, S
posted by turbodog at 11:15 AM PST - 61 comments
Live From Davos:
Frank talk and subtle spin as heads of state take Q&A from corporate honchos, in a session heavy on talk of terror:
John Ashcroft shares the stage with Prince Turki al Faisal al Saud,
Pervez Musharraf touts his vision of "enlightened moderation," the handsome young
King of Jordan keeps his finger on the roadmap, and embattled Ecuadoran president
Lucio Gutierrez takes a break from the tear gas to reassure skeptical capital markets. CSPAN for foreign filmgoers. (RealPlayer and Windows Media)
posted by hairyeyeball at 11:14 AM PST - 6 comments
Cutting up the King:
This seems sacrilegious, even if the tapes
are deteriorating. They're planning to cut up some of Elvis Presley's original master tapes from Sun Studio and
sell them as collectibles. I suppose one could email the
publicity contact if this bothered them. The snipping starts tomorrow.
posted by bendybendy at 10:25 AM PST - 8 comments
Photobucket.com
A free place to dump pictures you want to hotlink from sites like eBay, Craigslist, or even your personal site. There is a 100MB limit, but
even that isn't absolute. This seems like a too good to be true service, how long can something like this last?
posted by jonah at 7:55 AM PST - 22 comments
Folklore.org
"is a web site devoted to collective historical storytelling. It captures and presents sets of related stories that describe interesting events from multiple perspectives, allowing groups of people to recount their shared history in the form of interlinked anecdotes."
[via Daring Fireball]
posted by kirkaracha at 7:48 AM PST - 2 comments
POWER RANGERS:
Did the Bush Administration create a new American empireor weaken the old one?
The left's favorite blogger,
Talking Points Memo's Joshua Michah Marshall has been published in this week's
New Yorker.
posted by jpoulos at 6:57 AM PST - 29 comments
Furl
is an elegant application that acts as your web filing cabinet. Store, rate and categorize web clippings with the click of a bookmarklet. Once collected, search, share or publish your links via email or RSS. (via
Inter-Alia.)
posted by ajr at 5:51 AM PST - 12 comments
January 25
Grand Theft Avocado
[NYT, reg. req.]
"When the Super Bowl comes, there is going to be thievery," Mr. Luce said. "People want guacamole."
At a dollar a pound and up, avocado theft is a growing
worldwide problem.
Do you know where your dip came from?
posted by Jos Bleau at 7:23 PM PST - 30 comments
Stress epidemic strikes American forces in Iraq
Up to one in five of the American military personnel in Iraq will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, say senior forces' medical staff dealing with the psychiatric fallout of the war.
This revelation follows the disclosure last month that more than 600 US servicemen and women have been evacuated from the country for psychiatric reasons since the conflict started last March.
posted by Postroad at 4:30 PM PST - 24 comments
Live and let dye?!
Hair dyeing causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, especially in cases of repetitive dyeing over years, especially with darker colors.
This might sound trivial, until the names of
some potential victims are mentioned. Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis, Joey Ramone, Louis Malle, Charles Lindbergh, King Hussein of Jordan, Paul Tsongas, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Casey, Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Steve Reeves, and Mr. T. (Shaddup, foo! I'm in remission!) Not that any of them would ever dye their hair, of course.
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:13 AM PST - 19 comments
January 24
An interesting documentary
I stumbled across about international banking's rise to power through history. It features poor quality video with not-quite-synced audio, yet it kept me riveted.
Part two goes on to explain how the country will never be able to escape debt under the current monetary system.
posted by timb at 9:59 AM PST - 28 comments
Whatever happened to Howard Dean?
"He was assassinated by Bill and Hillary with the assistance of Chris Lehane, the political hit man who first worked for Kerry and now backs Clark.
Desperate to keep control of the Democratic Party, the Clintons used their negative researchers and detectives to the ultimate and generated a story-a-day savaging Dean. The Vermont governor, not ready for prime time, cooperated by being thin-skinned, surly and combative. "
caveat: I'm not trolling, but as a democrat I find this interesting. Ok, nauseating.
posted by mecran01 at 9:05 AM PST - 102 comments
Faux News
cites a Heritage Foundation report that asserts the poor in America are doing just fine because many of them live in their own homes and have cars.
However, I know poor homeowners who have to deal with rampant crime, high property taxes (to subsidize the suburbs,) bank redlining, lousy schools and crumbling infrastructure. Also, car ownership is a necessity for most people in most places- not a luxury as would be suggested.
Rather than citing the statistics of DVD-player ownership, I'd prefer to know more about real quality-of-life issues, such as how many of these people have health insurance. What do you think?
posted by drstrangelove at 8:00 AM PST - 72 comments
Morgan Spurlock sets about to document what happens when he switches to an all-McDonald's diet for thirty days. Very scary stuff, indeed.
"It was really crazy - my body basically fell apart over the course of 30 days."
posted by moonbird at 7:14 AM PST - 6 comments
January 23
Do Most People Even Know What They're Eating?
Pork is served as veal; tilapia as red snapper and who knows what goes into sausages and other processed meat and fish products? You don't have to be an observant Jew or Muslim to be worried. How many years have those chicken pieces been frozen? How much
pork and beef have been added to them? As food is increasingly disguised (fish fingers, chicken nuggets, beefburgers) to hide its origins, feeding on hypocritical popular revulsion with animals' existence, death - and carcasses! - aren't consumers setting themselves up for an ever greater measure of food fraud? That is, if they still care. (And no, it's not just an American phenomenon.) [
Via The Daily Gullet. ]
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:04 PM PST - 49 comments
The Making of a Sex Slave
(NY Times; reg. req) The next time you seek comfort in the arms of a working girl, ask yourself if she's lying down with you because she likes the money or sex, of if she's doing it because she's been kidnapped, beaten, raped, taken to a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language, and told that the corrupt local police will murder a member of her family if she tries to escape. Prostitution might be
victimless crime, but the horrors described here certainly aren't; the problem is, how's a john with a conscience going to tell the difference? A (much) longer report, terrifying in its thoroughness, on a topic
lightly touched on here.
posted by hhc5 at 6:33 PM PST - 46 comments
More Mars Express images.
The German space agency (DLR) has the biggest and fastest loading set of Mars Express images I've seen so far. Among them is one which apparently was not part of the press kit (it hasn't been in any MEX-related report), and is not on the official
ESA site:
This one. It shows the Spirit rover landing site in Gusev crater -- and the area is covered with a green substance. Olivine or salt, perhaps. It should be highly interesting to get spectral readings. [Note: These images are, to my knowledge, near true color like all other MEX/HRSC photos.]
posted by Eloquence at 5:36 PM PST - 14 comments
Head US WMD Hunter Gives Up
After stepping down, Mr Kay told Reuters news agency that he did not believe there were any large stockpiles of such weapons in existence in Iraq.
Mr Kay is being succeeded by former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer.
Earlier this month, Mr Duelfer said he believed the chances of finding chemical or biological weapons in Iraq now were close to nil, the BBC's Jon Leyne in Washington reports.
Woo-hoo?
mrmanley? Time for that Right-wing apology!
posted by Perigee at 1:14 PM PST - 62 comments
You may be familiar with the story,
reported here, about the southern California watch maker who supplied wrist watches for Mars scientists to get to
work on time. You may not have seen these time applications that make the time story equally as compelling for the rest of us. What is interesting from a graphics standpoint is the different qualities expressed with these versions, as a
table of exact times for specific locations (this site has a lot of great detail about the mission), or as an approximate time with shadows projected on the
Mars map (for Mac OS X).
Any other Mars time graphics that you know about?
posted by xtian at 12:05 PM PST - 5 comments
His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald's and document the impact on his health. "It was really crazy - my body basically fell apart". Spurlock charted his journey from fit to flab in a tongue-in-cheek documentary which he has taken to the
Sundance Film Festival.
posted by stbalbach at 10:00 AM PST - 63 comments
My Yahoo's rss aggregator (beta)
might be just the ticket for getting regular folks consuming blogs in a big way. Or RSS could remain the provence of the geeks. Thoughts? Is this the beginning of RSS for the people?
posted by christina at 7:59 AM PST - 5 comments
Burns Night.
'Robert Burns: poet and balladeer, Scotland's favourite son and champion of the common people. Each year on January 25, the great man's presumed birthday, Scots everywhere take time out to honour a national icon. Whether it's a full-blown Burns Supper or a quiet night of reading poetry, Burns Night is a night for all Scots.'
More on
the Robert Burns Tribute site.
posted by plep at 6:26 AM PST - 3 comments
African-American == Black?
Several high-school students at a predominantly white (well, predominantly NOT black) Nebraska high school were disciplined for a campaign to get 16-year-old student Trevor Richards awarded the school's annual "Distinguished African-American Student" award. Richards is from South Africa, now lives in America (not sure if he's a citizen, the CNN story isn't clear), but here's the catch: he's white.
posted by Bluecoat93 at 5:49 AM PST - 111 comments
Google (kinda) Offers Social Networking called Orkut
Acording to this
CNET artice, Orkut is the outgrowth of a personal project by Google Engineers Orkut Buyukkokten. He created "Orkut.com in the past several months by working on it about one day a week--an amount that Google asks all of its engineers to devote to personal projects".
And oh, by the way:
"
Membership to orkut is by invitation only.
If you have a friend who's a member of orkut, have them invite you to join."
posted by < 
