Note to U.S. Drug War: Netherlands to Close Prisons for Lack of Criminals
http://www.disinfo.com/content/story.php?title=Note-to-U-S--Drug-War-Netherlands-to-Close-Prisons-Lack-Criminals
The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty. During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Informer's Role in Bombing Plot
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/nyregion/23informant.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
The role of informants has been a constant in the terror cases made by federal and local authorities since 9/11. And just as constant have been the attempts by lawyers for those charged to portray their clients as dupes, people who would not have committed to do harm without the provocation of the informants...

(Excellent way to increase the Fear Factor--fund your own terrorists, then entrap them as scapegoats...--ED)

Brit MP saw undercover cops egging crowd to riot at G20
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/09/brit-mp-saw-undercov.html
A British Member of Parliament claims he saw two undercover cops acting as agents provocateurs at the G20 demonstrations, attempting to get the crowd to riot... The men apparently threw missiles at the cops and tried to get others to do the same, then, after being accused of being provocateurs, flashed credentials at the police and passed through their lines...

Why the Washington Post refuses to label waterboarding as torture
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/may/12/washington-post-us-press-publishing
The Washington Post ...appears to have gone soft in the face of imagined threats from members of former president George W. Bush's administration. The paper's congressional reporter, Paul Kane, revealed in an online forum that the Post will not call waterboarding torture because it fears being sued for libel (and the paper could not bear the resulting costs)...

US House Committee on Government Reform: Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI use of murderers as informants, internal version, 2004
http://tinyurl.com/pr8g3l
This extensive and important document gives narrative findings and recommendations concerning FBI corruption, including murder, from the 1960's until 2000.

Charlie Skelton's Bilderberg files
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/charlie-skeltons-bilderberg-files
Once a year, it is rumoured, the global elite gather at a luxury hotel to chew the fat and fine-tune their secret plans for world domination. We sent Charlie Skelton in pursuit...

(Reminds me of Jon Ronson's Them...--ED)

Aussie censors implement six degrees of separation policy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/07/oz_link_ban/
The Australian Government yesterday broke new records for web censorship by requiring the takedown not just of a page containing harmful content, nor even a page linking to harmful content, but a page linking to a link to allegedly harmful content.

Why journalists deserve low pay
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0519/p09s02-coop.html
The demise of the news business can be halted, but only if journalists commit to creating real value for consumers and become more involved in setting the course of their companies.

(I wonder if the writer is a journalist...--ED)

University of Chicago Censors Student?s Facebook Photo Album
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/10560.html
A University of Chicago dean ordered a student to change the title of his Facebook.com photo album and remove pictures of his ex-girlfriend after she complained to the dean... On January 19, 2009, University of Chicago student Andrew Thompson posted a photograph "album" on his personal Facebook page. The title of the album was "[Name of ex-girlfriend] cheated on me, and you're next!"

Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/16/danger-mouses-emi-ki.html
EMI has told Danger Mouse that his latest CD won't see the light of day due to "legal issues," so he's responding by releasing the disc as a blank CD-R in a jewel case with art and liner notes. Fans can just download the music off a P2P site and burn it to the CD-R.

More Fake Journals From Elsevier
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/09/1514235&from=rss
...several librarians say that they have uncovered an entire imprint of 'advertorial' publications.

We've got the crew of Atlantis
http://somalipirate.livejournal.com/9925.html
Dear America, We've got the crew of Space Shuttle Atlantis. $1 million each. Pay up

Six Simple Steps You Can Take To Protect Your Gripe or Parody Site
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/six-simple-steps-you
All too often, the targets of critics and parodists try to strike back with accusations of copyright or trademark infringement. While such accusations may be something of a badge of honor--after all, at the very least, it means you've got your target's attention--they can also be frustrating and intimidating...

White House Czar Calls for End to 'War on Drugs'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124225891527617397.html
The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

Afghanistan's only pig quarantined in flu fear
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSTRE5444XQ20090505
Afghanistan's only known pig has been locked in a room, away from visitors to Kabul zoo where it normally grazes beside deer and goats, because people are worried it could infect them with the virus popularly known as swine flu.

Top 10 Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs
http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/wolfram-easter-eggs/
Slowly but surely, people have been finding some interesting quirks within Wolfram Alpha, triggered by specific questions or events. These interesting easter eggs will make you smile or raise an eyebrow in bewilderment.

A programmer's view of the Universe, part 3: The Death of Richard Dawkins
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/05/programmers-view-of-universe-part-3.html
This is a science fiction short story. It's different from many other sci-fi stories in that it is set in the "near future", but it has realistic schedule estimates. So unlike 1984, 2001, The Singularity is Near and all the other sci-fi stories that grossly underestimated their project durations, this one is set 1000 years in the future. I.e., right around the corner...

3D printing buildings: interview with Enrico Dini of D_Shape
http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/217-3D-printing-buildings-interview-with-Enrico-Dini-of-D_Shape.html
Traditional building methods tend to reel in dreamers outlandish dreams though. Building with concrete and brick require scaffolding and a lot of manpower. This creates constraints... Rather than accept these constraints as a given Enrico set out to completely remove them. In 2004 he invented and patented a full scale 3D printing method that used epoxy to bind sand. Enrico could now 3D print buildings.

The Interesting Case of Ignosticism
http://chaoskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/05/interesting-case-of-ignosticism.html
When most people think of non-religious positions they mainly think of the big two of Atheism and Agnosticism. There are at least two other non-religious positions and today I will mainly focus on the relatively new position of Ignosticism... Ignosticism is covered very well in Oolon Colluphid's award-winning book 'Who is this God Person Anyway?'... There is always that fourth non-religious position but it doesn't really warrant it's own blog post. Apatheism is just the position of "I don't know, and I don't care."...

Are Spiritual Encounters All In Your Head?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104291534&ft=1&f=1012
According to polls, there's a 50-50 chance you have had at least one spiritual experience -- an overpowering feeling that you've touched God, or another dimension of reality. So, have you ever wondered whether those encounters actually happened -- or whether they were all in your head? Scientists say the answer might be both.

Student's Wikipedia hoax quote used worldwide in newspaper obituaries
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0506/1224245992919.html
Mr Fitzgerald said he placed the quote on the website as an experiment when doing research on globalisation. He wanted to show how journalists use the internet as a primary source and how people are connected especially through the internet, he said.

Executive Psychopaths
http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2004/10/executive-psychopaths/ar/1
Chances are good there?s a psychopath on your management team. Seriously... I'm talking about the real thing, the roughly 1% of the population that is certifiably psychopathic. True psychopaths are diagnosed according to very specific clinical criteria, and they're nothing like the popular conception. What stands out about bona fide psychopaths is that they?re so hard to spot. They're chameleons. They have a cunning ability to act perfectly normally and indeed to be utterly charming, as they wreak havoc on the lives of the people around them and the companies they inhabit...

(So. Tell me. Why should Psychopathy be treated any differently than any other non-neurotypical condition, like Aspies? Should Psychopaths be standing up for their rights?...--ED)

Leg extensions turn humans into horses
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10233215-1.html
Seattle artist Kim Graham says her Digitigrade Leg Extensions "give a person the uncanny and graceful appearance of an animal." Granted, they don't look all that comfortable, though the artist insists it takes just 10 to 15 minutes of walking to get used to them. They're made of steel, cable, foam, and rigid plastic and add 14 inches of height to the wearer--kind of like stilts with an animal twist.

Possible site of free will found in brain
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17092-possible-site-of-free-will-found-in-brain.html
Free will, or at least the place where we decide to act, is sited in a part of the brain called the parietal cortex, new research suggests.

New Pattern Found in Prime Numbers
http://pda.physorg.com/_news160994102.html
In a recent study, Bartolo Luque and Lucas Lacasa of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain have discovered a new pattern in primes that has surprisingly gone unnoticed until now. They found that the distribution of the leading digit in the prime number sequence can be described by a generalization of Benford?s law. In addition, this same pattern also appears in another number sequence, that of the leading digits of nontrivial Riemann zeta zeros, which is known to be related to the distribution of primes.

Roswell debris confirmed as extraterrestrial: Lab Located, Scientists Named!
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2009/05/roswell-debris-confirmed-as.html
Newly discovered documents reveal that in the months immediately following the purported 1947 UFO crash at Roswell, secret government studies began on a material that was previously unknown to science. The "memory metal" that was studied precisely matches some of the debris material reported by several witnesses to the crash...

"Lost World" of Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090501-dinosaur-lost-world.html
An isolated group of dinosaurs somehow survived the catastrophic event that wiped out most of their kind some 65.5 million years ago, a new study suggests.

Amazing Origami Trilobite
http://tektonten.blogspot.com/2009/05/amazing-origami-trilobite.html
The trilobite was wet folded from a single 24.4" (62 cm) square of paper. The level of detail of the legs on the underside is truly amazing...

Doctor Who Papercraft - K9 Robot
http://tektonten.blogspot.com/2009/05/doctor-who-papercraft-k9-robot.html
In order to create a cleaner looking finished model, Huxter modified the original magazine template by erasing the dashed fold lines.

Scholar denies oral roots of fairy tales
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/19/oral-roots-fairy-tales
Traditional view that fairy tales were handed down via folk traditions has 'no basis in verifiable fact'

(I suspect this may be a case of not all crows being black...--ED)

Beautiful people are paid more than counterparts 'because they are worth it'
http://tinyurl.com/p4x9uc
Researchers discovered attractive people get paid better and rise higher up the corporate ladder than less good-looking colleagues of equal ability. But they believe it may not be simply down to bosses lusting after beautiful members of staff, it may actually be because they are easier to work with and better educated...

US6025810: Hyper-light-speed antenna
http://www.delphion.com/details?&pn=US06025810__
A method to transmit and receive electromagnetic waves which comprises generating opposing magnetic fields having a plane of maximum force running perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating a heat source along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating an accelerator parallel to and in close proximity to the heat source, thereby creating an input and output port; and generating a communications signal into the input and output port, thereby sending the signal at a speed faster than light.

Utah schools: kilt not a fashion statement
http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/4412105.php?
The principal of a Utah middle school has been asked to apologize for forcing a kilt-wearing student to change his clothes.

How David Beats Goliath
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true
Eurisko was an outsider. But it was precisely that outsiderness that led to Eurisko?s victory: not knowing the conventions of the game turned out to be an advantage.

How Neanderthals met a grisly fate: devoured by humans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/17/neanderthals-cannibalism-anthropological-sciences-journal
A fossil discovery bears marks of butchering similar to those made when cutting up a deer

(Needs more evidence, but I think it's likely. We still eat other Great Apes...--ED)

The first European: Created from fragments of fossil, the face of our forbears 35,000 years ago
http://tinyurl.com/d8ax6a
Dressed in a suit, this person would not look out of place in a busy street in a modern city. The clay sculpture, however, portrays the face of the earliest known modern European - a man or woman who hunted deer and gathered fruit and herbs in ancient forests more than 35,000 years ago. It was created by Richard Neave, one of Britain's leading forensic scientists, using fossilised fragments of skull and jawbone found in a cave seven years ago.

(Look, it's a Mammoth & Neanderthal Muncher! Om nom nom nom nom!!!...--ED)

Hobbits 'are a separate species'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8036396.stm
Scientists have found more evidence that the Indonesian "Hobbit" skeletons belong to a new species of human - and not modern pygmies.

Women can be misogynists too
http://sisterblister-zombietron.blogspot.com/2009/05/women-can-be-misogynists-too.html
After all the discussion of ...the crazy footballer sex/rape/whatevershutup saga, the one thing people keep talking about are the ugly attitudes emerging from people in regards to women...rape...sluts. And the one thing that keeps being said is "I can't believe these attitudes are coming from so many other women"... But the thing that you forget when you only ever talk to people who agree with your views is that women can be misogynists just as much or more than men.

Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8772014
The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals... Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies...

How Do We View Global Hip Hop Culture? [Series Introduction: On Cultural Appropriation]
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/05/12/how-do-we-view-global-hip-hop-culture-series-introduction-on-cultural-appropriation/
2NE1 is just one group in a long line of Korean hip-hop ...artists that I have enjoyed... After watching the video, my friends had a range of reactions everything from "Who knew Koreans rolled hard?" to amazement to laughter. But some people weren?t quite as accepting, posing the question "Why do they have to take our stuff?"

The Ten Most Revealing Psych Experiments
http://brainz.org/ten-most-revealing-psych-experiments/
Some of the experiments psychologists have conducted over the years reveal things about the way we humans think and behave that we might not want to embrace, but which can at least help keep us humble. That's something.

Terry Gilliam on Heath Ledger's death and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6281714.ece
Terry Gilliam is the master at overcoming adversity. But the death of Heath Ledger pushed him to despair

A Rejection Letter
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Reject.html
A copy of a rejection letter my agent received for the first book of mine she handled.

There's No Klingon Word for Hello
http://www.slate.com/id/2217815/pagenum/all/
A history of the gruff but surprisingly sophisticated invented language and the people who speak it.

Strictly Cash
http://papersky.livejournal.com/150837.html
I'm not sure if I've mentioned before about all the time travellers around in Montreal... I didn't confront them. What would have been the point? It's not as if they're doing any harm -- the opposite, in fact, running a second hand bookstore is a service to humanity, and I said, I quite like time travellers. And if anything awful is going to happen to the city, well, they'll know, and as long as they're there, we'll know it's still safe.

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
1995 - Yukihiro "Mad Matz" Matsumoto creates Ruby to avert some vaguely unspecified apocalypse that will leave Australia a desert run by mohawked warriors and Tina Turner. The language is later renamed Ruby on Rails by its real inventor, David Heinemeier Hansson...

Lovelace -- The Origin
http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-origin-2/
Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate child of mad, bad and dangerous to know poet and nutcase Lord Byron...

(This strip is AWESOME!!!...--ED)

I Swear I Am Not Making This Up
http://www.the-isb.com/?p=1539#comments
The latest issue of Jughead and Friends Digest opens with a story called "Getting His Goat"... In the story, ...the students are encouraged to bring their pets to school... Since they?ve gotten rid of Goats A, B and D, Weatherbee assumes they missed one, and begins searching for Goat C...

(Yup, prolly a coincidence. Funny, though...--ED)

How To Be Broken Up With: Some General Guidelines
http://theferrett.livejournal.com/1271890.html
How To Be Broken Up With, Assuming You Didn't Do Anything Obviously Skanky Like Cheating On Them Or Strangling Their Kitten.

(Some wise advice. Of course, the bastard posts it way after I need it...--ED)

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."

The myth that "no one dies from US torture, so its not torture...
http://jlassen.livejournal.com/699828.html
It's not "just" about torture. It is about murder. How many were murdered by the Bush Regime, and its choice to use enhanced Interrogation/torture to illicit false confessions.

Is Versed being used for torture?
http://ideas.4brad.com/archives/000100.html
There are drugs which erase memory (or rather block the formation of memories while they are used.) It seems disturbingly probable to me that these might be being used for torture... Apply the drug, then apply torture which leaves few permanent marks. The victim would awaken unaware they had been tortured or what they had confessed to. They could not testify later about their torture, they would not even know to.

Warner Music to Warner Music: You are pirates!
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/04/warner-music-to-warn.html
You'd think Warner'd be more receptive to people sharing and spreading advertisements for their artists. But they're in such a panic about infringment they've gone so far as to ban even the official videos. Amazing.

(Yarr!...--ED)

Judge Reviewing Pirate Bay Trial Bias Is Removed for Bias
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/judge-reviewing-pirate-bay-trial-bias-is-removed-for-bias/
Judge Ulrika Ihrfelt was assigned to investigate whether the four should be granted a retrial based on revelations that the original trial judge is a member of industry copyright-protection groups. But Ihrfelt was removed from the case Wednesday amid allegations that she was a member of the same organizations...

Pakistan's mystics targeted by Taliban
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30902421/
The blast in March was the most high-profile in a recent spate of attacks against Pakistan's homespun, tolerant brand of Islam by hard-liners trying to replace it with the more austere version espoused by the Taliban, al-Qaida and other Sunni extremist groups... "And to think they do this in the name of Islam." The fissure between the two forms of Islam has left some wondering whether the government or its Western allies could harness the moderation of the Sufis

ACLU Sues Myriad and the USPTO Over Gene Patents
http://zarq.livejournal.com/878448.html
...the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against Utah-based Myriad Genetics and the US Patent and Trademark Office. Myriad holds the US patents to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, associated with hereditary causes of breast and ovarian cancers. Their patents guarantee the company the right to prevent anyone else from testing or studying those genes, which the ACLU says is unconstitutional and inhibits researchers from finding treatments and cures...

John Pratt: Co-Founder, Fundable.org
http://cthings.com/blogger/people/2006/02/john-pratt-co-founder-fundableorg.html
...has apparently swindled, defrauded and embezzled fundable.org clients...
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20242720&postID=113985127739306960

Andrew Bolt, Wajin-looking Koori, Aboriginality, and comments full of lies
http://viv.id.au/blog/20090502.4743/andrew-bolt-wajin-looking-koori-aboriginality-and-comments-full-of-lies/
For those who are unaware of Bolt, I envy you. He's a leading voice in Stolen Generation denial in this country...

(Andrew Bolt. As a journalist, he makes great landfill. This post is an excellent look at the lies this little shitbag is famous for...--ED)

The Foundry?s Anti-discrimination Ad
http://www.antiprejudicead.net
This segment of The Gruen Transfer was scheduled to appear on the ABC-TV program on May 13, 2009. It was not approved for broadcast by the ABC... This is a confronting ad. We at Gruen feel that it may be offensive to some people... It is clearly an anti-discrimination ad, an argument for tolerance, not divisiveness. As road safety advertisements sometimes use horrific accident images to make a point, so too this ad uses shock to drive home the ugliness of prejudice...

Entitlement issues...
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.

BADD: Bloody Torchwood
http://troubleinchina.livejournal.com/419774.html
I think about how they decided disability and deformity would be their stand-in for horrible and unimaginable...

The Real-Life Superhero Apartheid Begins Here, Apparently.
http://io9.com/5238047/the-real+life-superhero-apartheid-begins-here-apparently
For some, the emergence of real-life superheroes is proof that human nature isn't inherently selfish, but instead, noble. And for others, it's a sign that they should become supervillains... "Who wants to become super villains with me just so we can go mess with these guys? Seriously. I want to hang him from a fire-escape by his wallet chains..."

Super Villain Attacks Cincinnati's Real Life Superhero. Your Move, Shadowhare
http://io9.com/5241787/super-villain-attacks-cincinnatis-real-life-superhero-your-move-shadowhare
The "Consortium of Evil" has placed a bounty on Shadowhare's identity. And so it begins. A nefarious team evil doer, who is located somewhere on the "The Dark Side," has posted a Craigslist ad with a $10 bounty on the identity of Shadowhare.

Would be Bond villain seeks femme fatale - m4w
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/cas/1146174823.html
...As an affably evil British gentleman of taste and status, I require an attractive women between the ages of 18-30 to be my main lieutenant and the cause of much sexual tension. Ability to seduce and kill potential rivals a plus, as is any experience with death laser repair manuals. Potential infidelity when dealing with a certain British spy is acceptable, though not encouraged. Must like cats. Evil yet attractive female scientists building weapons of mass destruction will also be considered...

Mowing with goats
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/mowing-with-goats.html
Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we've rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we're not "kidding")...

Is Astrology a Science?
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/4/10/17459/9222
Answer: probably not. This essay will attempt to explain the "probably".

(Not any more, anyway... not for centuries...--ED)

Roswell: A Quest for the Truth
http://desertdarkness.blogspot.com/2009/04/roswell-quest-for-truth.html
...I'm inclined to ask: what are the chances of aliens from some far-off world (with large heads, small ears, and dwarfish bodies) turning up in the same location as human-beings seemingly exhibiting similar characteristics? Personally, I'd say the chances are slim to zero...

Kid keeping a lending library of banned books in her locker
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/24/kid-keeping-a-lendin.html
A teenager asks Yahoo! Questions whether maintaining a lending library in his school locker is illegal (as opposed of merely in contravention of school regulations). A school friend asked to borrow off him The Catcher in the Rye, one of the books in the banned list, and one thing led to another...

Attention NoScript user
http://adblockplus.org/blog/attention-noscript-users
...This is going to be about the popular NoScript extension which happens to make its money from ads. And to make sure that somebody sees these ads it goes pretty far...

(Looks like the Extension Developers are feudin'...--ED)

Would you eat a stack of 16 sugar cubes?
http://www.sugarstacks.com/
A label can tell you there are 39 grams of sugar in your soda, but what does that much sugar look like?

Random Reports of Bigfoot Wearing Clothes
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/bushman/
In the 1960s and 1970s, reports from the American West would occasionally surface of hairy bipedal Bigfoot being seen with tattered plaid shirts and ragged shorts on their bodies... Graves was looking into the accounts from the Nahanni Valley, the "Headless Valley," so-called because of the strange vanishings and decapitations of prospectors there for over 200 years. Indeed, a dozen men had disappeared from there since 1904, and four bodies were found without their heads.

How Ursula K Le Guin led a generation away from realism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/may/21/ursula-k-le-guin-realism
The most vital writers of my generation have been weaned from a puritanical distrust of imagination by her influence

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_film

Bana: Nero Is Really The Misunderstood Tragic Hero Of Star Trek
http://io9.com/5241359/
"I never really saw him as a villain, even though he sort of performs that function for the drama of the story. To me, yeah, he was Nero, leader of the Romulans who has been wronged and is seeking revenge, and that's kind of how I see him so I think..."

7 Clearly Fake News Stories That Fooled The Mainstream Media
http://www.cracked.com/article_17318_7-awesomest-fake-news-stories-that-were-taken-seriously-by.html
With the advent of the Internet, the situation has changed so that instead of powerful media moguls spreading bullshit, pretty much anybody can do it. After all, if the story is good enough, the mainstream media will report it, no matter how transparently retarded it is...

The Extraordinary Anti-Nazi Photomontages of John Heartfield
http://tinyurl.com/qbwun6
How the photomontage art of John Heartfield, a contemporary and friend of Brecht, warned the world of the rise of Hitler and Nazism...

Freeman Dyson and the irresistible urge to be contrary about climate change
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=freeman-dyson-and-the-irresistible-2009-04-30
...Dyson's purpose seems to be to throw out "heretical" ideas that can then spur further debate... "I like to express heretical opinions," Dyson said, with an impish gleam in his eye. "They might even happen to be true."

(See, this is how a Real Scientist does it... learn, climate change deniers, learn...--ED)

Merck and Elsevier publish fake peer-reviewed journal
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/03/merck-and-elsevier-p.html
Pharmaceutical giant Merck paid science publishing juggernaut Elsevier to publish a fake peer-reviewed scientific journal, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine...

The "conscious pilot"--dendritic synchrony moves through the brain to mediate consciousness
http://www.springerlink.com/content/a415kw68517m2v87/fulltext.pdf
The "conscious pilot" is a metaphorical description for a mobile gamma-synchronized dendritic web as vehicle for a conscious agent/pilot which experiences and assumes control of otherwise non-conscious auto-pilot neurocomputation... gamma synchrony does not ensue from neurocomputation in synaptic networks. Rather, gamma synchrony occurs via "sideways circuits"--neurons (and glia) inter-connected by electrical synapses called gap junctions which physically fuse and electrically couple neighboring cells.

(Interesting...--ED)

Unknown internet 2: Could the net become self-aware?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227062.100-unknown-internet-2-could-the-net-become-selfaware.html
Yes, if we play our cards right - or wrong, depending on your perspective... Not that it will necessarily have the same kind of consciousness as humans...

More computer security: Running online frauds for fun and profit
http://tacit.livejournal.com/299317.html?style=mine
The fake PayPal and bank sites I discovered a couple of weeks ago were running on a server belonging to an ISP called a2b2.com, which at the time I believed wasn't actually a corrupt ISP, but rather a single clueless individual. The ISP a2b2.com is located in Great Britain and seems to be run by just one person... The ISP is corrupt. Its owner, Russell Foster, appears to be knowingly and deliberately profiting from phony scam Web sites...

1st Pics of Mysterious Viral "Missing Link"
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/05/1st-pics-of-viral-missing-link-.html
The virus, which is so large and weird that it?s redefined the very concept of a virus, has been photographed for the first time. When the virus was originally discovered infecting amoebas in a Parisian water tower in 1992, it was so large that researchers thought it was a microbe...

Eczema's link to asthma uncovered
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8055038.stm
Scientists believe they have found what triggers many children with eczema to go on to develop asthma.

Israel's 'Cup&Up' promises uplifting breasts without the surgical risk
http://tinyurl.com/35wx4a
"What we've done is build a silicone bra, insert it into the body and attach it to the ribs and to the fascia. It's like a normal external bra, where a strip lies on the shoulder and attaches around the body. We attach it to the ribs instead of to the shoulder, and to the fascia in the lower part of the body."

The science of voodoo: When mind attacks body
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227081.100-the-science-of-voodoo-when-mind-attacks-body.html
Perhaps when the biomedical basis of voodoo death is revealed in detail we will find it easier to accept that it is real - and that it can affect any one of us...

What is Morgellons Disease? Is it a physical or psychological condition?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=morgellons-disease-parasites-skin-psychiatric
Patients are tormented creeping, crawling sensations in their skin, but docs say there is no evidence of bugs or parasites

(Interesting it's finally hit SciAm--even if it's dismissive...--ED)

Revealed: RAF fighter planes 'used super-fast fuel from the U.S. to win the Battle of Britain'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1180896/RAF-fighter-planes-used-super-fast-fuel-U-S-win-Battle-Britain.html
...apparently, an American superfuel that gave our fighters the edge over the Germans. In fact, according to a U.S. science writer, the RAF may have been shot out of the sky without it. It is a suggestion almost certain to start a dogfight with historians and veterans - indeed almost anybody who knows anything about the Battle of Britain. And it follows an unfortunate pattern of our allies across the Atlantic trying to rewrite war history...

Are you 'app-noxious'?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30686965
iPhone, other mobile apps can turn enthusiasts into annoying know-it-alls

(Mmm... Microsoft preaching about Apple being annoying. Who says irony is dead?...--ED)

British Cult Classic UFO Is Headed To The Big Screen
http://io9.com/5263679/british-cult-classic-ufo-is-headed-to-the-big-screen
Gerry Anderson's UFO, one of the seventies' most secretly awesome shows, is getting a movie adaptation. But is America really ready for the show's bold mix of grim moral ambiguity and absurd purple wigs?

Horror Story Printed On Toilet Paper In Japan
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/24/ap/strange/main5036602.shtml?tag=main_home_storiesBySection
In a country where ghosts are traditionally believed to hide in the loo, a Japanese company is advertising a new literary experience _ a horror story printed on toilet paper.

The Glider: A Universal Hacker Emblem
http://catb.org/hacker-emblem/
About half the hackers this idea was alpha-tested on instantaneously said "Wow! Cool!" without needing any further explanation.

Dead Pixel in Google Earth
http://urbanprankster.com/2009/04/dead-pixel-in-google-earth/
Helmut Smits figured out a way to add a "dead pixel" to Google Earth. He created a 82 x 82cm burned square, the size of one pixel from an altitude of one kilometer.

Qwned
http://robin-d-laws.livejournal.com/350160.html
The piece we know today as the chess queen underwent a gender transformation sometime around the 10th Century, after journeying from its origin point in India, via the Muslim world, into Europe.

Why tweeters should beware of worms
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227065.700-why-tweeters-should-beware-of-worms.html
...the microblogging service, has major holes in its security, a London conference will be warned this week. Graham Cluley of antivirus firm Sophos says the Twitter website is vulnerable to viruses written in the Javascript web-programming language...

http://www.HowtoUseTwitterforMarketingandPR.com/
http://www.HowtoUseTwitterforMarketingandPR.com/

Dawkins strips away religion's dead wood
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/11/buddhism-religion-dawkins
Dawkins is doing religion a favour -- by exposing faith and spirituality to criticism, he paves the way for their renewal

(HAIL ERIS!..--ED)

Other Mother: Coraline Rag Doll Paper Model
http://www.darkinthedark.com/other-mother/
As you know, this is a replica of the doll that the lovely Other Mother used to lure Coraline to her domain, except made out of paper. Now you can make your own Coraline Papercraft. Download the pdf below.

Physicists Create Universe Smaller Than a Marble
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/sciencetech/physicists-create-universes-smaller-than-a-marble/1148
This scientific breakthrough lies in the bottom of a chamber no larger than your pinky finger, filled with helium and cooled to 0.0003 degrees Fahrenheit above absolute zero...

People can be a bit like water.
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=565#comments
I was talking to a friend recently, who was confused about why it was that people encouraged her to become more assertive, and yet became angry when she actually was more assertive and it conflicted with their wishes.

Asperger's theory does about-face
http://www.thestar.com/article/633688
A groundbreaking study suggests people with autism-spectrum disorders such as Asperger's do not lack empathy -- rather, they feel others' emotions too intensely to cope. People with Asperger's syndrome, a high functioning form of autism, are often stereotyped as distant loners or robotic geeks. But what if what looks like coldness to the outside world is a response to being overwhelmed by emotion -- an excess of empathy, not a lack of it?

and An Aspie's reaction
http://fayanora.livejournal.com/470097.html

Ticket for Violating Autism Stereotype
http://www.thiswayoflife.org/autismticket.html
Often, autistics are expected to follow certain rules and regulations, and fit properly within their stereotype. As a humorous attempt to make it easier to "enforce" these stereotypes, the following ticket may be used to let an autistic person know that they were "out of line." Feel free to give one to your autistic friend when they show a violation of a stereotype!

Geeks make least selfish lovers: Official
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/21/geek_survey_results/
It's offical: Geeks make the most considerate lovers, with four in five declaring that sex should be more about their partner than satisfying their own filthy needs... However, before you lot start imagining that all this means that geeks are ultimately destined to genetically dominate the species as partners flock to them for fully satisfactory intercourse, just 38 per cent of them are managing to make the beast with two backs three times a week or more.

Goose photographed flying upside down
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5353933/Goose-photographed-flying-upside-down.html
A photographer has taken a picture of a greylag goose, as the bird was flying upside down.

Poets Ranked by Beard Weight
http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2009/05/poets-ranked-by-beard-weight.html
...a classic of Edwardian esoterica, a privately printed leaflet offered by subscription to the informed man of fashion...

and Hire a Zombie
http://home.comcast.net/~jim.emelander/hireazombie/index.html
...your number one full-service undead staffing and training service solution. We can handle all your walking dead and living corpse placement needs. We specialize in placement of temporary, contract, temp-to-hire and career candidates who will do the dead end jobs that no one else will or would want to do...

if it explodes, it's chemistry; if it dies, it's biology; if it doesn't work, it's physics

The Gurkha Justice Campaign
http://www.gurkhajustice.org.uk/
Gurkhas are fighting for Justice. They want the same terms and conditions as their UK and Commonwealth counterparts. Britain has had no greater friends than the Gurkhas. They have served all across the world in the defence of our Country for nearly 200 years. Over 45,000 died in the two World Wars as part of the British Army. They are still fighting in the British Army today...

Dangerous terrorists arrested in the UK weren't
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/24/dangerous-terrorists.html
Remember the urgent raids British cops conducted two weeks ago after the names of potential terrorists leaked when a top official got out of a cab, holding a top secret memo that the newspapers photographed and published? Remember how this publication had the potential to tip off these scary terrorists about their impending arrests? Turns out that the police didn't find any evidence, though they held the men for 13 days. Then they let them go.

McCain: Don't Investigate Torture Memos
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/ftn/main3460.shtml
The Arizona Republian and former POW suggested that the push to investigate and possibly prosecute Bush administration officials who crafted the legal basis for waterboarding may be a desire to "settle old political scores"...

Torture: does it actually work?
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/04/26/torture-does-it-actually-work/
...most of the discussion has been around the moral and ethical dilemmas involved, with the strongest argument in favour being the infamous 'ticking bomb' scenario. But in fact these arguments and make-believe situations are irrelevent if torture doesn't work in the first place...

False torture confession made its way into Powell UN speech...
http://jlassen.livejournal.com/694491.html
The intelligence reports from al-Libi's torture, of course, were used (in spite of DIA doubts about them) as a central claim in Colin Powell's speech to the UN a year later.

Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html
The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death... The main difference is that the drowning process is halted... After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war... More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts...

Bush's willing torturers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/apr/23/torture-legal-opinions-senate-bush
We now know that legal opinions were merely retroactive cover. The Bush administration's first instinct was towards abuse...

Why Torture?
http://jlassen.livejournal.com/692159.html
The media is full of false frames about the "torture debate." These frames are designed to hide the real reasons why the poltical leaders of this country engaged in massively criminal conduct. they did it for political gain.... Torture doesn't gain reliable intelligence...... It generates false intelligence. This is a long standing truism known by the CIA and Military Intelligence...

Oklahoma Man Arrested for Twittering Tea Party Death Threats
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/twitterraid
An Oklahoma City man who announced on Twitter that he would turn an April 15 tax protest into a bloodbath was hit with a federal charge of making interstate threats last week, in what appears to be first criminal prosecution to stem from posts on the microblogging site... Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents who identified him as the Twitter user CitizenQuasar. In a series of tweets beginning April 11, CitizenQuasar vowed to start a "war" against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building...

"Ask a Wingnut"
http://dir.salon.com/topics/wingnut/
...is written by a real live conservative and former Bush official who chooses to remain anonymous. Each week "Glenallen Walken" will bridge the cultural divide and answer questions from liberals about why conservatives think and do what they think and do.

Is It Time To Panic?
http://www.isittimetopanic.com/

(Current Big Thing to panic about: Killer Bees that shoot Swine Flu out of their tiny mouths ONOZOMG!!!...--ED)

Swine Flu Outbreak: Miss Piggy Detained at U.S./Mexico Border
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=2310
Noted entertainer Miss Piggy has been refused reentry into the United States as she attempted to return from a two week tour of nightclubs in Mexico City and Guadalajara. Following a deadly outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, border officers are under strict orders to turn away any boars or hogs coming over from the South without exception... According to some reports, border agents allowed her long-time boyfriend, a green bug-eyed frog, to cross into the United States, leaving Piggy abandoned at the roadside checkpoint as the lanky amphibian rode off on a remarkably realistic-looking bicycle. The incident, she says, is her most humiliating experience since losing the "best actress" Oscar to Sally Field in 1979...

London cop's Facebook: "Can't wait to bash" G20 protestors
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/25/london-cops-facebook.html
One of the policemen who participated in the assaults on the London G20 protesters had earlier posted to his facebook that he couldn't "wait to bash some long haired hippys" ...

Pc 'eager to hit G20 protesters'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8016620.stm
A police officer is being investigated after allegedly writing on a website that he was keen to "bash some long haired hippies" at the G20 protest...

Jared Diamond Sued by New Guinea Natives for Crimes of Anthropology
http://io9.com/5226368/jared-diamond-sued-by-new-guinea-natives-for-crimes-of-anthropology
Diamond's notion of tribal culture is based on a fantasy of Diamond's own - one that was propagated by the New Yorker, which never fact-checked his story with the two men it featured as main characters. Wemp killed nobody, and Isum is not in a wheelchair - as you can see from the picture above...

(Of course, one would have to ascertain that the men making the accusation are the men that Diamond was actually talking about...--ED)

Goldman prize winner beaten up by masked Shell "security"
http://community.livejournal.com/guerillanews/890646.html
Two years to the day after he was awarded the prestigious Goldman environmental prize, Mr Corduff was protesting what locals insist are illegal works when he was set upon by the security workers, who knelt on his face, twisted his arms behind his back and beat him with an implement...

Death for blasphemy
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=173977
The death penalty is now mandatory for blasphemy, under Article 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code. The option of a life term for a person convicted on the charge has been taken away... The fact is that for any person accused of blasphemy, the possibility of obtaining a fair hearing have over the past decade or so become slimmer and slimmer... To make the situation still worse is the fact that the blasphemy law has been abused more and more often. It is ironic that during the past five years, Muslims have emerged as its main victims...

What Every American Should Know About the Middle East
http://dmiessler.com/blog/what-every-american-should-know-about-the-middle-east
...frighteningly few know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and most think the words "Arab" and "Muslim" are pretty much interchangeable. They aren't. So here?s a very brief primer aimed at raising the level of knowledge about the region to an absolute minimum...

(I'm not proud to say I knew all of these...--ED)

Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
...in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled. "Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success"...

"MBAs: Most Bloody Awful", Aussie radio documentary on the problem with biz-school
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/26/mbas-most-bloody-awf.html
In this superb Australian public radio documentary... the idea of "scientific management" and "professional management" is subjected to an extremely critical look and comes up wanting. Focusing on the Harvard Business School and the circumstances that gave rise to it... It looks at the difference between MBAs and real entrepreneurs, looking at all those successful founders who didn't get MBAs (Gates, Jobs, Bezos, etc)...

Asylum-Seeker Rejected Based On Wikipedia, Appeals Court Reverts
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/asylum-seeker-r
The Department of Homeland Security should not use the user-generated Wikipedia to decide whether an asylum seeker can enter the United States, a federal appeals court ruled Friday... Using the Wikipedia page as evidence, the government convinced an immigration judge that the document did not prove her identity, calling it a one-way travel document based on information provided by the applicant.

Wikipedia Art dispute pits artists against Wikimedia Foundation
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/wikipedia-suit-could-put-it-on-the-wrong-side-of-fair-use.ars
Wikipedia uses plenty of copyrighted material and trademarks under the doctrine of fair use. But a trademark infringement lawsuit against a couple of artists would put the Wikimedia Foundation on the opposite side of the fair use fight...

Metallica's Lars Ulrich 'Pirates' His Own Album
http://torrentfreak.com/metallica-frontman-pirates-his-own-album-090305/
It?s been nearly nine years since Lars Ulrich became one of the most vocal opponents of Napster and the generation of file-sharers it spawned. Not one to speak about something he has no experience of, Ulrich has just admitted downloading his own album, Death Magnetic, and it was "bizarre"... "I figured if there is anybody that has a right to download 'Death Magnetic' for free, it's me"...

Rapidshare Shares Uploader Info with Rights Holders
http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-shares-uploader-info-with-rights-holders-090425/
In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided...

What CSI(COP) Is About
http://www.ufomystic.com/wake-up-down-there/what-csicop-is-about/
It is a little-known but important look into the origins of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal (CSICOP- now CSI-Committee For Skeptical Inquiry)... CSICOP ...published the work of other members which debunked the Mars Effect with faulty equations and a mistake in their original public challenge to the astrologers. When Rawlins tried to point out that they should come clean with their mistake, he was bullied by the governing committee and eventually "fired" from his position with them...

(It's interesting to note that CSICOP have now removed the "Scientific" from their name...--ED)

Secrets of the Phallus: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=secrets-of-the-phallus
Evolutionary psychologists decipher the "Rosetta stone" of human sexuality...

(Because it's a tool in the Sex Wars. Don't go there, it'll destroy your life...--ED)

"Daggering" Trend Is Breaking Jamaican Dicks
http://jezebel.com/5213000/daggering-trend-is-breaking-jamaican-dicks
Doctors from local hospitals in Kingston, Jamaica, report that they've been seeing a record number of broken dicks in the past few months. They attribute this to the increased popularity of "daggering". Daggering, or "daggeration", is slang for very, very rough sex...

( think "break" is the wrong word, although it sure sounds and feels like something's breaking...--ED)

Angry Woman Beats A Sex-Crime Suspect On Subway Platform
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/18/nyregion/angry-woman-beats-a-sex-crime-suspect-on-subway-platform.html
Accusing a fellow rider of fondling her, a 27-year-old Queens woman angrily dragged a 31-year-old man off a crowded Lexington Avenue subway train ...and beat him. So overwhelmed was the man that he apologized while the woman was beating him, and he asked a subway conductor to call the police... The man was arrested on a charge of third-degree sexual abuse... and the woman was issued a criminal summons for harassment...

Raising Katie
http://www.newsweek.com/id/194886
Several pairs of eyes follow the girl as she pedals around the playground in an affluent suburb of Baltimore. But it isn't the redheaded fourth grader who seems to have moms and dads of the jungle gym nervous on this recent Saturday morning. It's the African-American man--six feet tall, bearded and wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt--watching the girl's every move. Approaching from behind, he grabs the back of her bicycle seat as she wobbles to a stop. "Nice riding," he says, as the fair-skinned girl turns to him, beaming. "Thanks, Daddy," she replies. The onlookers are clearly flummoxed...

There Are No Gays In Star Wars
http://kotaku.com/5230325/there-are-no-gays-in-star-wars
BioWare take their Star Wars role-playing seriously. So seriously that the developers are shutting down talk on Old Republic's message boards about homosexuality, because it's a term that does "not exist in Star Wars".

The Definition of Beautiful
http://www.tiarashafiq.com/2009/04/27/the-definition-of-beautiful
My goodness. so much beauty everywhere, it overflows and runs like a waterfall...

The yoga supergran who can still assume the lotus position... at the age of 83
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1172810/The-yoga-supergran-bend-backwards-age-83.html
Yoga instructor Bette Calman may be 83, but she's still bending over backwards to spread the benefits of the ancient Indian discipline. The nimble grandmother can really pull some shapes and with her set hair and pearl earrings she looks as glamorous as Greta Garbo in a pink jumpsuit. With 40 years of teaching under her belt, the Australian wonder is living proof that a lifetime's dedication to yoga will keep you flexible as a rubber band...

Study suggests Buddhist deity meditation temporarily augments visuospatial abilities
http://www.physorg.com/news160056314.html
...meditation allows practitioners to access greater levels of visuospatial memory resources, compared to when they are not meditating. The authors state that this finding "has many implications for therapy, treatment of memory loss, and mental training"...

A Drug To Re-Awaken Ancient Human Genes And Fight HIV
http://io9.com/5227470/a-drug-to-re+awaken-ancient-human-genes-and-fight-hiv
"Junk DNA" are inactive parts of your genome, switched off long ago in evolutionary history. Now scientists say there's a junk gene that fights HIV. And they've discovered how to turn it back on...

Pro-disease Nutters...
http://larianlequella.com/2009/04/pro-disease-nutters.shtml
There are people out there that think vaccines cause autism. They have some "celebrities" in their ranks. Never mind that these people are just plain WRONG in their assertions, but they are a public health risk in their stances...

The Australian antivax movement takes its toll
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/04/26/the-australian-antivax-movement-takes-its-toll/
...a TV program in Oz called "Sunday Night" aired an excellent exposé of what happens when parents don't vaccinate their kids... The antivaxxers claim to be concerned about children... but their total lack of critical thinking, their denial of the research, and their wholesale belief in conspiracy theories and antiscience rhetoric is making children sick. And some of these children are dying.

(Which kinda exposes the hole in the attack on antivaxxers... Fear, based on "evidence", is going to be very resistant to contradictory--albeit sound--facts. Abusing and ridiculing the antivaxxers is just going to increase the danger to everyone...--ED)

What happened before the Big Bang?
http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr09/bigbang/index.html?nl=1
...this is where scientists start to worry. A prediction of something infinite is often a sign that the theory you are using to make that prediction has reached the limits of its applicability...

Welcome to The Sentry Project.
http://www.paintballsentry.com/
This site is the home of the most developed, consumer level, autonomous turret sentry on the web.

Hackers Claim They Created 'Unfixable' Windows 7 Exploit
http://i.gizmodo.com/5225374/hackers-claim-they-created-unfixable-windows-7-exploit
Two researchers at the Hack In The Box conference are claiming they found a way to gain access to any Windows 7 computer undetected...

DANGER! Flying Objects!
http://www.simplyphysics.com/flying_objects.html
Once you've been in the MRI field for any length of time, you start hearing all of the various horror stories about thing that have flown into a scanner. Often, newcomers don't take the real danger of flying objects seriously until they witness an oxygen tank or gurney flying into a magnet themselves. This page will contain a collection of pictures and stories of metalic projectiles...

Quantum Theory May Explain Wishful Thinking
http://www.physorg.com/news158928941.html
Humans don?t always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply "wishful thinking." This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. But now, scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple explanation for human decision-making - and may eventually help explain the success of human cognition overall...

(Well, how about that...--ED)

A Unique Memorialization Option that Gives ''Life After Life''
http://www.nmreef.com/AllAboutTheReef/
The Neptune Memorial Reef is an environmentally friendly alternative to a traditional funeral and cemetery burial...

Google Mars
http://www.google.com/mars/
In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, we've created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made. If you have half as much fun exploring them as we did making them, you're in for a great time.

Scientists claim to have found language of ancient Indus civilisation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/23/indus-civilisation-language-symbols
If true, deciphering the words may unlock the secrets of one of the most mysterious civilisations known

Wild dogs take Chewbilee Line
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2372125.ece
STRAY dogs are commuting to and from Moscow on underground trains in search of food scraps. The clever canines board the Tube each morning. After a hard day scavenging and begging on the streets, they hop back on the train and return to the suburbs where they spend the night. Experts studying the dogs say they even work together to make sure they get off at the right stop -- after learning to judge the length of time they need to spend on the train. The mutts choose the quietest carriages at the front and back of the train.

Spider "Resurrections" Take Scientists by Surprise
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090424-spider-resurrection-coma-drowning.html
Like zombies, spiders in a lab twitched back to life hours after "drowning"--and the scientists were as surprised as anyone. The spiders, it seems, enter comas to survive for hours underwater, according to a new study...

Fertility expert: 'I can clone a human being'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fertility-expert-i-can-clone-a-human-being-1672095.html
Controversial doctor filmed creating embryos before injecting them into wombs of women wanting cloned babies

My Shower Curtain is a Green Warrior
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/04/25/my-shower-curtain-is-a-green-warrior/
...your shower curtain has heard it all, and thanks to artist Elisabeth Buecher, it?s not taking any more of your excuses. Your soapy butt is getting kicked out after 4 minutes, when the shower curtain Elisabeth designed inflate with spikes...

Harlan Ellison Rude (and Lewd) to Fan, Film at 7:30
http://www.blueblood.net/2007/08/harlanellisonmakesameliagsad/
Tags: arrogance, arrogant, author, biopic, book, college, collegiate, documentary, erik-nelson, genre, harlan-ellison, hydrox, luddite, michael-moorcock, neil-gaiman, oreos, oscar_the_grouch, robin-williams, science-fiction, screening, sexist, walk, white-wolf, womanizer, writer

(The tags are a good summary. And let's face it, it's not like anyone's going to be surrprised by the story...--ED)

5 Massive Hit Songs That Almost Didn't Get Released
http://www.cracked.com/article_17268_5-massive-hit-songs-that-almost-didnt-get-released.html
We like to think we all know a hit song when we hear one. If we don't, we like to at least think that guys like Quincy Jones and Keith Richards know a hit song when they hear one (it's sort of their job). Apparently, it's not as easy as we thought, as a lot of classic songs almost never made it out of the studio...

Russian president's blog expands
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/04/21/Russian-presidents-blog-expands/UPI-52981240348848/
Russia's president is adding his voice to the country's most popular social networking site, the Kremlin confirmed Tuesday. President Dmitry Medvedev will begin adding his kremlin.ru blog posts to LiveJournal, a social networking site that is considered the most popular blogging site in all of Russia...

blog_medvedev
http://blog_medvedev.livejournal.com/

The Office XXX Parody
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/fcecbf2e04/the-office-xxx-parody
If you like The Office, but are saddened by its lack of penetration, check out the trailer for the porn version of The Office. It's called The Office - a XXX Parody.

and The World's Most Influential Person Is...
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1894028,00.html
In a stunning result, the winner of the third annual TIME 100 poll and new owner of the title World's Most Influential Person is "moot". The 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole, received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) to handily beat the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Oprah Winfrey. To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective, it's worth noting that everyone moot beat out actually has a job.

US Man Added To FBI 'Most Wanted' Terror List
http://tinyurl.com/cldmq5
An animal rights activist has become the first American to feature on the FBI's list of 'Most Wanted' terrorists.

(As has been obvious for some time, in the same way we were prepped as the Cold War was finishing to start fearing Middle-Eastern Terrorists, the next War will be against Animal Libbers. You are being manipulated...--ED)

My Tortured Decision
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html
There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn't, or couldn't have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions -- all of which are still classified... Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh?s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods...

(I read an interesting piece--which I have unfortuately now lost--about a professional sadist laying the motivations of the CIA bare in their Torture campaign...--ED)

Lego waterboarding
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/21/lego-waterboarding.html
As we now know, the CIA destroyed thousands of images and videos of interrogations using torture, including those showing waterboarding.

Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial
http://www.thelocal.se/19028.html
A lawyer representing one of the men convicted in the Pirate Bay trial has called for a retrial after reports that the judge was a member of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives.

Pirate Bay judge had conflict of interest: mistrial?
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/23/pirate-bay-judge-had.html
...the judge in the Pirate Bay trial is a board member for a copyright industry lobbying group, and this conflict of interest may result in a mistrial.

Norwegian P2P downloaders buy more music
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/20/norwegian-p2p-downlo.html
Researchers at the BI Norwegian School of Management conducted a study that concluded that downloading infringing copies of music strongly correlates buying above-average amounts of music. The music industry says that this doesn't prove that downloading from P2P entices people to buy music... when the music industry targets "the worst offenders" in its legal campaigns against downloaders, the people they're attacking are the ones who are spending the most on music.

British National Party Language and Concepts Discipline Manual, July 2005
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/British_National_Party_Language_and_Concepts_Discipline_Manual%2C_July_2005

One cheer for Fred Phelps
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2009/04/one-cheer-for-fred-phelps.html
...the point here is that Fred Phelps is a free man. His only legal troubles stem from instances of direct physical assault -- not from the hateful content of his beliefs. So when the folks at NOM insist that their opposition to same-sex marriage is a matter of "religious liberty," the liberty they're talking about has to be the liberty to exceed the Fred Phelps standard -- the liberty not just to restrict membership on religious grounds, or just to preach against homosexuality as a sin, or to condemn and denounce homosexuals as people hated by God, but the liberty, apparently, to go beyond all that, beyond anything even Fred Phelps has imagined. Fred Phelps is a free man, so if you think your freedom is going to be restricted, you must be planning to outdo Fred Phelps...

Susan Boyle Video Profits: $0
http://mashable.com/2009/04/23/susan-boyle-video-profits/
...YouTube and ITV have been unable to monetize the Internet sensation that is Susan Boyle is a rather significant blunder, and highlights some of the archaic ways that business is still done between old and new media...

(They're all a bunch of Simon Cowells... can't somebody just shoot him?*...--ED)
(* linkfrenzy in no way condons the shooting of Simon Cowell)

Giant mystery blob found near dawn of time
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30353034
Galaxy-sized object puzzles astronomers; is it related to a black hole?

New Gene Switch Sows Epigenetic Doubts
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/new-gene-activa.html
Once upon a time, researchers knew that DNA contained four nucleotides: A, T, C and G. Then they found a fifth. And now they've found a sixth...

Three Neanderthal Sub-groups Confirmed
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090415075150.htm
The Neanderthals inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East 30,000 to 100,000 years ago... The new study confirms the presence of three separate sub-groups and suggests the existence of a fourth group in western Asia. According to the authors, the size of the Neanderthal population was not constant over time and a certain amount of migration occurred among the sub-groups...

Controversial Hobbit Looks Tiny in Person
http://www.livescience.com/history/090422-hobbit-cast.html
...the Hobbit brain most closely resembles Homo erectus, and is least like the brain with microcephaly. "In our view we dispensed at that point with the microcelpahy hypothesis. It's not just that their brains are small; they're differently shaped. It's its own species"...

Feeling Sluggish
http://www.slate.com/id/2216124/
Slugs don't sting; they don't suck our blood. Yet when the subject of repulsive creatures comes up, slugs are often the first ones that crawl to mind...

(Me, I think slugs are grand...--ED)

Bringing Back The Extinct Aurochs
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/ext-aurochs/
The Heck Cattle were created by Adolf Hitler?s geneticists because the dictator wanted to bring back to life the extinct aurochs, a legendary breed believed to be the size of a rhino...

Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4409958/Extinct-ibex-is-resurrected-by-cloning.html
An extinct animal has been brought back to life for the first time after being cloned from frozen tissue...

(Not totally successful yet, but that's the first... strap yourself in, we're in for a ride...--ED)

Lost Aboriginal language revived
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7992565.stm
The sounds of a lost language echo across a packed classroom in suburban Sydney as high school children help to revive an ancient part of Australia's rich indigenous culture. Dharug was one of the dominant Aboriginal dialects in the Sydney region when British settlers arrived in 1788, but became extinct under the weight of colonisation...

Simulated brain closer to thought
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8012496.stm
A detailed simulation of a small region of a brain built molecule by molecule has been constructed and has recreated experimental results from real brains... While many computer simulations have attempted to code in "brain-like" computation or to mimic parts of the nervous systems and brains of a variety of animals, the Blue Brain project was conceived to reverse-engineer mammal brains from real laboratory data and to build up a computer model down to the level of the molecules that make them up.

Vegan Buddhist Nuns Have Same Bone Density As Non-vegetarians
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090416102302.htm
A study comparing the bone health of 105 post-menopausal vegan Buddhist nuns and 105 non-vegetarian women, matched in every other physical respect, has produced a surprising result. Their bone density was identical.

Yet Another Journalism Professor Gets Nearly Every Fact Wrong In Saying Google Needs To Pay
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090420/0328074563.shtml
With all the journalists declaring that Google needs to pay newspapers, it's amazing how often their arguments are based on simply incorrect statements -- the sort of thing that is the real problem newspapers face. When they make an argument based on entirely incorrect information, no one trust them...

Twitter Telepathy: Researchers Turn Thoughts Into Tweets
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/braintweet.html
Early on the afternoon of April 1, Adam Wilson posted a message to Twitter. But instead of using his hands to type, the University of Wisconsin biomedical engineer used his brain. "USING EEG TO SEND TWEET," he thought...

Tweetbomb - A Tweet To Shake The World
http://singularityhub.com/2009/04/22/tweetbomb-a-tweet-to-shake-the-world/
A simple message, less than 140 characters, is sent out to followers around the world and within hours, perhaps minutes, more than 100 million people have been mobilized to act...

Amazonfail: How Metadata and Sex Broke the Amazon Book Search
http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Amazonfail-How-Metadata-and-Sex-Broke-the-Amazon-Book-Search-53507.asp
Amazon failed in a big way on Easter weekend. As the largest bookstore in the world, if a book does not appear in its lists or its search results, the book practically disappears. The event now known as #AmazonFail involves a great cast of characters-books, metadata, sex, search results, traditionally disenfranchised groups, a possible hacker, the Kindle, the absence of institutional response, and the emergence of Twitter for sharing information very quickly on a massive scale...

Hateful Ignorance Versus Hate As A Sword
http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2009/04/hateful-ignorance-versus-hate-as-sword.html
...mostly it was his expression, his tone, which indicated he actually believed Ellen Degeneres hates America, that it's a commonly known reality, and while he wasn't going to pretend it was okay with him, he had to speak the truth in order to win the question. Epic delusion.

Woman sends stripper impersonator to highschool reunion as a prank
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/23/woman-sends-stripper.html
Andrea Wachner sent an erotic dancer, named Cricket, to impersonate her at her ten year high school reunion. The dancer wore a hidden ear piece to stay in communication with Wachner...

There is no such thing as a white anti-racist
http://community.livejournal.com/debunkingwhite/810570.html?style=mine
Whiteness itself is a political term that emerged among European white ethnics in the US... In short, anyone who claims to be white, even a white anti-racist, is identifying with a history of European imperialism and racism transported and further developed into the US.

(For given values of "white" and "anti-racist"...--ED)

Who Gets to Tell a Black Story?
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061100scott-corner.html
No one talked about race at that meeting. At least, not directly. No one remarked upon the fact that Mr. Simon was white and that nearly everyone in his book was black...

Joss Whedon and the blurry line between homage and appropriation
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/02/16/joss-whedon-and-the-blurry-line-between-homage-and-appropriation/
...before you mount your counter-argument, just do one thing. Take a good look at the picture of Eliza Dushku as Echo on the set of Dollhouse at the top of this post. See behind her? It looks like there might just be an East Asian person in the photo, maybe doing Tai Chi. Hey, maybe that guy in beige will become one of the main characters on the show.
Or maybe he'll just stay firmly in the background.

Black Burlesque History
http://blackburlesquehistory.weebly.com/
Burlesque has had a great resurgence in the Western World. But in 2002 there was only one Black performer in Canada who I knew of and no more than 5 or so in the USA. Now, the numbers are growing but sadly women of color are being left out of the history books (and media coverage) yet again. I hope to remedy that...

Woman, 86, made burglary suspect cry
http://www.arcamax.com/weirdnews/s-530989-691995
Police in Wales said an 86-year-old woman used her metal crutch to beat a 26-year-old burglary suspect to tears and forced him to sit and wait for officers...

As Long As There's No Hair Potentially NSFW.
http://jumpoffthebridge.com/2009/04/as-long-as-theres-no-hair.html
Am I the only one totally loving this? Good old-fashioned activism at its finest.

"One Of My Biggest Pet Peeves Is A Girl Who Is Not Probably Groomed On All Parts Of Her Body"
http://jezebel.com/5224687/one-of-my-biggest-pet-peeves-is-a-girl-who-is-not-probably-groomed-on-all-parts-of-her-body
...no matter how far we have come -- I mean, we kind of almost had a female president of the United States, right? -- there will always be shallow, narcissistic dudes who think that porn stars and Victoria's Secret models are illustrative examples of what it means to be a woman...

(Make the shitsplatter wax his face...--ED)

The Easiest Way to Change People's Behavior
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/03/the-easiest-way-to.html
...don't fight yourself to change your behavior in the midst of the wrong environment; just change the environment... You want to make it easier to do something you want done and harder not to.

(This is Tao...--ED)

Stories That Would Have Turned Out Differently If the Protagonists Had Had Cell Phones
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/10/6norvig.html

CORDELIA: Well, does looking at guns make you wanna have sex?
XANDER: I'm seventeen. Looking at linoleum makes me wanna have sex.

Raising Hell
http://www.thegreenwolf.com/raisinghell.html
...asks what black magic really is and offers a subversive perspective on why magic is done and what it should be done for. Kali Black demonstrates how we can be socially responsible in how we practice magic, while also questioning what power really is, and how we manifest or don't manifest that power with our magical practice.

Qld police & Aboriginal rights activists
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/bartlett/2009/03/27/qld-police-aboriginal-rights-activists/
This might seem fairly minor to many people (unless you happened to be the people being arrested), but it is very reminiscent to me of Brisbane in the 1980s (and no doubt prior to that) when there was constant (mostly) low level police intimidation of political activists. There has been a lot of improvement since then in many respects, but I hear regular comments from a range of people - far beyond just political or Indigenous activists - that relations between police and Aboriginal people are not much better now than there were 20 years ago.

Secretive US prisons hold "terrorists" including animal rights activists and people who gave to the wrong charity
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/15/secretive-us-prisons.html
The Department of Justice is using secretive prison facilities on U.S. soil, called Communication Management Units, to house inmates accused of being tied to 'terrorism' groups. They overwhelmingly include Muslim inmates, along with at least two animal rights and environmental activists...

US boycotts racism conference
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/04/200941945958160251.html
The United States has said it will not attend an United Nations conference on racism because the text of the draft final statement contains language it is "unable to support"... Australia and Canada have also chosen not to attend...

Boston College Campus Police: "Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious
...the investigating officer asked that he be permitted to seize the student's computers and other personal effects because they might yield evidence of the crimes of "Obtaining computer services by Fraud or Misrepresentation" and "Unauthorized access to a computer system." ...campus and state police ...trying to paint a student as suspicious in part because he can navigate a non-Windows computer environment...

Border patrol alleged to have beat up and tazed pastor, smashed his car, on US soil, because he insisted on 4th Amendment rights
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/16/border-patrol-beat-u.html
A pastor (of all people) gets pulled over in Arizona at an internal anti-terrorism checkpoint and refuses to submit to a vehicular search (as per his fourth amendment rights). Hilarity ensues as authorities break his car windows with hammers and shoot him with a taser...

The Bush Six to Be Indicted
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-13/the-bush-six-to-be-indicted/
Spanish prosecutors will seek criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales and five high-ranking Bush administration officials for sanctioning torture at Guantánamo.

Eric Holder v. America's legal obligations
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/17/treaties/index.html
If, as Barack Obama proclaimed yesterday, "the United States is a nation of laws" and his "Administration will always act in accordance with those laws," isn't it the obligation of those opposing prosecution to justify that position in light of these legal mandates and long-standing principles of Western justice?

Tea Bagging For Dummies...
http://jblaque.livejournal.com/662634.html
...or, more accurately, for suckers: They are not what they claim to be. They are not "spontaneous" or "grassroots." They are another corporate-funded campaign to trick people into supporting more cut taxes for the rich.

Tale Of Two Hitlers
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/tale-of-two-hitlers-by-digby-robert.html
When a liberal activist group accidentally put a 30 second citizen generated ad featuring a comparison between Bush and Hitler on its web site, the political establishment goes nuts. Glenn Beck, a highly paid television pundit spends an entire hour comparing Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini to Obama and the political establishment acts like it's perfectly normal.

(Double standards? In my Political Establishment? It's more likely than you think!...--ED)

Media Having Trouble Finding Right Angle On Obama's Double-Homicide
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/media_having_trouble_finding_right?utm_source=a-section
"President Obama's letter presents us with a classic journalistic quandary," executive editor Bill Keller said. "If we print it, then we're giving him control over the kinds of stories we choose to run. It would be an acknowledgment that we somehow give the nation's commander in chief special treatment." Added Keller, "And that's just not how the press in this country works."

Phelps' Church Hit with $10.9 Million Judgment
http://www.drudge.com/news/118107/phelps-church-hit-109-million
The father of Lance Cpl Matthew Snyder, a Marine who died serving in Iraq in March 2006, has won a $10.9 million judgment against the Westboro Baptist Church, the group that picketed his son's funeral with signs reading "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "You're going to hell."

Why Andrew Bolt should be Sodomised with a Calculator - Part 142
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2009/04/17/why-andrew-bolt-should-be-sodomised-with-a-calculator-%E2%80%93-part-142/
His problem is that everyone else in journo land...has actually made the effort to find out about the reality of the asylum seeker figures and have treated the current situation accordingly in their reporting of the matter. Quite a sophisticated, sensitive and highly responsible approach for which the entire industry, apart from the notable few, deserve a marvelous round of applause. But oh no, not our Caped Crusader for the Cretinous... So let's take Bolt?s pig-ignorant horseshit out the back and kill it...

PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/pins.html
Hackers have crossed into new frontiers by devising sophisticated ways to steal large amounts of personal identification numbers, or PINs, protecting credit and debit cards, says an investigator...

A matter of noting the stupidity of television producers and newspaper editors
http://txtriffidranch.livejournal.com/295102.html
Many of you may be familiar with the story going around about the gentleman in the Urals who was allegedly found with a fir tree growing in his lung. I finally had a chance to see alleged photos of this miracle, and I'm the first to call shenanigans...

Cephalopods share common toxic armoury
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/04/15/2543328.htm
The discovery that all octopuses, cuttlefish and some squid are venomous has opened a new range of possibilities for future drug discoveries, an Australian researcher says.

Man bites snake in epic struggle
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7999909.stm
A Kenyan man bit a python which wrapped him in its coils and dragged him up a tree during a fierce three-hour struggle, police have told the BBC.

Big brood of rotund rare parrots
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7999568.stm
One of the world's rarest birds, New Zealand's kakapo, is now not quite so rare thanks to the arrival of 34 kakapo chicks. Those chicks, born over the past few months, take the world population of the flightless nocturnal parrot ...to 125. In 1995, kakapo numbers had dwindled to just 51...

Should You Run or Freeze When You See a Mountain Lion?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=should-you-run-or-freeze-when-you-see-a-mountain-lion
New study disputes conventional wisdom to stay put or risk triggering lion's instinct to pursue

Why Marriages Fail
http://www.shrinktalk.net/archives/why_marriages_fail_1.phtml
Depending on where you get your numbers, one in two new marriages ultimately end up in divorce... What makes this "1 in 2" figure even more sobering is the implication that the 50% of marriages that remain intact are happy ones...

(Marry someone you'll be happy to be married to...--ED)

The FedEx arrow and how to deal with it.
http://innerbrat.livejournal.com/624852.html
I chose, from then on, to train myself to see the arrows. To understand how women, and later people who are anything but white, heterosexual, able-bodied cissexuals being marginalised and portrayed in problematic ways in stories. I love stories, I dislike bigotry. Being able to see the arrows was something I took upon myself as a way to develop myself. Now I see arrows a lot.

Burning Man 2008: The American Dream
http://www.feministing.com/archives/010934.html
...As I looked around at all the naked bodies slinking around everywhere. Noting that there weren't many people of color or really many different kinds of bodies. What i saw was thin, white bodies. Most of them weren't totally naked. Usually they were wearing something, like hot pants, or a cowboy hat, showing the rest of their body. I immediately realized that I wouldn't feel comfortable naked. I would stick out, because I was curvy and brown. That didn't feel very feminist... I also had no choice but to take to task the dramatic underrepresentation of people of color in music, attendees and art. There isn't much to be said because so few people of color in attendance kind of says it all... This lack of a POC presence also had a strong impact on the music. The majority of the music was trance (mostly psy-trance) house and breaks... More working class, people of color oriented forms of electronic music (dub-step, drum and bass, techno, electro-breaks, hip-hop or reggae) was not to be found...

Spreadtweet
http://www.elliottkember.com/spreadtweet.html
So, you work at a big corporate, huh? And you're not allowed to use Twitter... Wouldn't it be awesome if there were a Twitter tool that looked just like Excel?

Here Before Oprah
http://herebeforeoprah.com/
(Tool for telling if someone was on Twitter before Oprah's show on the microblogging service...--ED)

10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates
http://mashable.com/2009/04/10/extraordinary-twitter-updates/
The following are 10 of the most extraordinary and creative uses of Twitter updates. These amazing updates have made the news, pushed the boundaries of what the status update can do, and have even fundamentally changed people?s lives.

Facebook Makes You Stupid, Twitter Makes You Dead Inside
http://agitationist.com/facebook-makes-you-stupid-twitter-makes-you-dead-inside
Ohio profs say that use of Facebook leads to lower college grades, and others in California have found that Twitter gradually renders its users? moral compasses untrustworthy...

Thsrs - The Shorter Thesaurus
http://fwww.ironicsans.com/thsrs/
If only there were a service that helps with the struggle of rewriting a 146-letter message to fit in a 140 character limit. Well now there is..

Pourable Batteries Could Store Green Power
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/26/liquid-battery-solar.html
Scientists at MIT are ...developing large, eco-friendly stationary batteries made entirely from liquid metal that would store large amounts of power from wind farms or solar cells or serve as backup power sources for hospitals...

Girl with Y chromosome sheds light on maleness
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16934-girl-with-y-chromosome-sheds-light-on-maleness.html
A seven-year-old girl with a Y chromosome is providing new clues about a possible "master switch" of maleness. The girl has the normal chromosome count -- 46 -- and should be male. Other children who have the male sex chromosome but do not appear to be boys have been found to have gene mutations that temper the Y chromosome's effects. However this child doesn't have ambiguous gonads, shrivelled testes or other developmental defects. She instead has a normal vagina, cervix and set of ovaries...

Our "Missing" Chromosomes
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/16/our-missing-chromoso.html
So here's the thing: We have 46 chromosomes. Our nearest great ape relatives have 48. On the surface, it looks like we must have lost two. But that's actually a huge problem... it's doubtful any primate could survive a mutation that simply deleted a pair of chromosomes... All this left scientists with a thorny dilemma: How could we have a common ancestor with great apes, but fewer chromosomes? Turns out: The chromosomes aren't missing at all.

Stanford students create a prosthetic leg that works for only $20
http://dvice.com/archives/2009/04/stanford-studen.php
Legs like the JaipurKnee Project produces, on the other hand, while not as technically impressive, restore the basic function of natural walking, which in itself is impressive enough.

John "Game of Life" Conway: particles have the same kind of free will that people have
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/17/john-game-of-life-co.html
Kevin Kelly linked to a paper "co-authored by mathematician John Conway, inventor of a cellular automata demonstration known as the Game of Life, [who] argues that you can't explain the spin or decay of particles by randomness, nor are they determined, so free will is the only option left."

(The flaw in that argument is the assumption that there are only three options...--ED)

Just Say No to Aging?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/193197?digg=1
A provocative new book from a Harvard psychologist suggests that changing how we think about our age and health can have dramatic physical benefits.

You are not your brain
http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2009/03/25/alva_noe/print.html
We have become too reductive in understanding ourselves, argues philosopher Alva Noe. Our thoughts and desires are shaped by more than neurons firing inside our heads.

Form and Function
http://ironmaven.blogspot.com/2008/01/form-and-function.html
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights...

Quantum weirdness: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/mar/17/templeton-quantum-entanglement
A lifetime studying quantum mechanics has convinced Bernard d'Espagnat that the world we perceive is merely a shadow of the ultimate reality

Language of music may really be universal
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090320_music
Na?tive Africans who have never listened to the radio before can none?the?less pick up on happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music, according to a new report. The result shows that the expression of those three basic emotions in music can be universally recognized, the researchers said...

Neanderthal Rights
http://www.reason.com/news/show/131717.html
The morality of resurrecting our closest evolutionary cousins

Why Being Smart Won't Get You Laid
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/129887
From my observations, the following dating challenges seem to be common to most smart people. In fact, the smarter you are, the more clueless you will be, and the more problems you're going to have in your dating life.

Skeptify me: Skeptics and their skepticky ways
http://blogsquatcher.blogspot.com/2009/04/skeptify-me-skeptics-and-their_17.html
...skeptics are motivated by their deep-seated fear of what they cannot control. And that is interesting and something worth thinking about. But today I mainly want to talk about technique, because skeptics have a definite toolset that they use in their debunking. By recognizing these tools, you can also learn to recognize when you are being skeptified...

Three Clear Photographs Taken of Triangular UFO over South Carolina
http://www.ufocasebook.com/2009/sc031609.html
I was sitting outside waiting for the mailman to come by my home. The weather was overcast most of the day...

What if Susan Boyle Couldn't Sing?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-palumbo/what-if-susan-boyle-could_b_187804.html
Then Susan opened her mouth and sang. And her voice was so powerful, so achingly beautiful, so full of yearning, that even the usually heartless Simon Cowell was blown away... let's not be too quick to congratulate ourselves for taking her so fully to our hearts. We should've done that anyway, as we should all those we encounter who fall outside the standards of youth and beauty as promulgated by fashion magazines, gossip sites, and hit TV shows. We should've done that anyway, before Susan Boyle sang a single note.

(I can't stand watching those shows. They make me too angry. There's always at least one judge--sometimes more--that desperately begs for the Cricket Bat Of Justice in the face...--ED)

Spiritual effects of 'mushies' linger
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/07/02/2291997.htm?site=science&topic=human
The effects of psilocybin from so-called magic mushrooms last for more than a year, and may offer a way to help patients with fatal diseases or addictions, according to US researchers.

Hairdresser turns robber into sex-slave
http://russiatoday.ru/Top_News/2009-04-14/Hairdresser_turns_robber_into_sex-slave.html?fullstory
A hairdresser from the small Russian town of Meshchovsk has subdued a man who tried to rob her shop, and then raped him for three days in the utility room...

Hairdresser turns robber into sex slave
http://www.mosnews.com/society/2009/04/14/1013/
A young hairdresser in Kaluga, Central Russia, locked a robber who tried to steal her money in the basement of the beauty salon. After that, she has brutally raped her hostage for three days. A court in Kaluga has filed criminal charges against both of them...

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html
Abstract: The exponential dependence of resistivity on temperature in germanium is found to be a great big lie. My careful theoretical modeling and painstaking experimentation reveal 1) that my equipment is crap, as are all the available texts on the subject and 2) that this whole exercise was a complete waste of my time.

(No stranger to linkfrenzy, but I felt like relinking it for those of you who've missed it previously...--ED)

"If my fourteen year old son walked in with a pair of stilettos and a bottle of blond hair dye, saying he wanted to be called Lolita and wear lip gloss, I'd fight to the death to defend him; if my fourteen year old daughter did that I'd lock her in her bedroom with a copy of The Female Eunuch and a pair of Doc Martens."

You are being lied to about pirates
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html
Some are clearly just gangsters. But others are trying to stop illegal dumping and trawling... The people our governments are labelling as "one of the great menaces of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side...

(You are being lied to. Chances are, you're believing the lies...--ED)

AP IMPACT: Citizens held as illegal immigrants
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090412/ap_on_re_us/mistaken_for_illegal_i
Pedro Guzman has been an American citizen all his life. Yet in 2007, the 31-year-old Los Angeles native -- in jail for a misdemeanor, mentally ill and never able to read or write -- signed a waiver agreeing to leave the country without a hearing and was deported to Mexico as an illegal immigrant... In a drive to crack down on illegal immigrants, the United States has locked up or thrown out dozens, probably many more, of its own citizens over the past eight years. A monthslong AP investigation has documented 55 such cases...

Soldiers Blinded, Hospitalized by Laser 'Friendly Fire'
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/03/dont-lase-me-br.html
1214518899An American soldier was blinded in one eye and three others required medical evacuation out of Iraq in a series of laser "friendly fire" incidents, the U.S. military has disclosed. These injuries are caused by the misuse of dangerous green-laser dazzlers...

Recommendation: Don't Hoard Food or Guns
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/428041.html
I don't think America will tear itself apart the way Wiemar Germany did during their Great Inflation, but I do see enough parallels with history that we can no longer rule out the possibility....

The Science of When to Get Married
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-07/the-science-of-when-to-get-married/
How do we pick the moment at which we finally decide to settle down? When it comes to romantic decision-making, neuroscientists say the rational part of our brain gets dumped...

New orangutan population found in Indonesia
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090412/ap_on_sc/as_indonesia_new_orangutans
Conservationists have discovered a new population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia -- perhaps as many as 2,000 -- giving a rare boost to one of the world's most endangered great apes.

Future's bright, future's orang
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2372001.ece
A BABY orangutan takes a peep at the world, snug in the arms of her mum...

Discussion Guide to ARROW TO THE SUN
http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2009/04/scholastic-guide-to-arrow-to-sun.html
McDermott's award-winning Arrow to the Sun is deeply flawed and should not be subtitled "A Pueblo Indian Tale." It is so deeply flawed, in fact, that the word "Pueblo" should be replaced. It's new title, I think, should be: Arrow to the Sun: Gerald McDermotts misleading-erroneous-inaccurate "Pueblo Tale" that cannot in fact be called a Pueblo Indian tale...

Fairfax hurts itself by holding out on link love
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20090414-Fairfax-is-keeping-its-readers-locked-in-the-cellar.html
So who are Australia's bad search citizens? Fairfax Digital Media -- j?accuse. I probably should explain. By bad citizen, I mean failing to contribute to the ecosystem of the blogosphere...

Was a 'mistress of the lionesses' a king in ancient Canaan?
http://www.physorg.com/news158237703.html
The legend is that the great rulers of Canaan, the ancient land of Israel, were all men. But a recent dig by Tel Aviv University archaeologists at Tel Beth-Shemesh uncovered possible evidence of a mysterious female ruler...

Female "King" Ruled in Canaan, Carving Suggests
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090410-canaan-female-king.html
The home of a mysterious female "king" in Canaan, the land that became ancient Israel, may finally have been identified...

Google sees infrared in plan to scan world's books
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227026.000-google-sees-infrared-in-plan-to-scan-worlds-books.html
...character recognition software needs a neat 2D image of the text. But book bindings cause pages to arch up either side of the spine - bending text and making it hard to interpret. However, last week Google was granted a patent on an answer to this problem. Its trick is to project an infrared pattern onto the open page spread...

A Twitter virus shows up: StalkDaily
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/40822
A Twitter virus has shown up...

How StalkDaily Opened a Gaping Hole in Twitter
http://mashable.com/2009/04/11/stalkdaily-twitter/
...it's possible that StalkDaily itself was not associated with the attack at all. Either way, its name is now associated with the most sophisticated Twitter attack to date.

Hacker targets Twitter to teach the company a lesson in security
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=hacker-targets-twitter-to-teach-the-2009-04-13
A teen identifying himself as Michael "Mikeyy" Mooney has claimed credit for the cyber attacks...

Rules for the Cult of Capitalism
http://renegadefuturist.com/archives/2009/04/13/rules-for-the-cult-of-capitalism/
Socialism is on the rise in America. Capitalists are on the defensive. So I've put together a handy list of rules to use whenever debating anyone who doubts the power of the Flying Invisible Market Hand to solve all life's problems...

5 Years After: Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization
Street drug-related deaths from overdoses drop and the rate of HIV cases crashes

Blue Zone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
...a project... that studies the regions of the world where people commonly live active lives past the age of 100 years. Scientists and demographers have classified these longevity hot-spots by their inhabitants' ability to live longer, on average, than anyone else in the world... Four Blue Zones have been discovered so far...

An Amazon tribe converts the missionary
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20090412-ENTERTAIN-904120305
The Pirahã are the "Show me!" tribe of the Brazilian Amazon. They don't bother with fiction or tall tales or even oral history. They have little art. They don't have a creation myth and don't want one. If they can't see it, hear it, touch it or taste it, they don't believe in it... Everett did not know this when he first visited them... A missionary and a linguist, he was sent to learn their language, translate the Bible for them, and ultimately bring them to Christ. Instead, they brought him to atheism. "The Pirahãs have shown me that there is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life and death without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell and in sailing toward the great abyss with a smile."

How to Make Breastfeeding Difficult
http://www.compleatmother.com/bf_difficult.htm

Remembering Marilyn Chambers -- 1952 - 2009
http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2009/04/still-insatiable-the-legacy-of-marilyn-chambers.html
That grin of hers... Marilyn's instant expression of earthy satisfaction. It was like a combination of Huck Finn, The Miss America Pageant, and the first great fcuk you ever had, all rolled into one...

Pin-Up Picture
http://www.listal.com/list/pinup-picture
(Various female celebrities posing for pin-ups, 50-ishly...--ED)

Knights Templar hid the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6040521.ece
Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said yesterday in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic?s missing years... among other alleged offences such as sodomy, the Knights Templar had been accused of worshipping idols, in particular a "bearded figure". In reality however the object they had secretly venerated was the Shroud...

Eostre: The Making of a Myth
http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/502368.html
Last Easter and the Easter before that, and for several more Easters, a story circulated both among neopagans and those they wished to educate. It concerned the origin of the Easter Bunny. The story goes something like this...

Found: the brain's centre of wisdom
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6037175.ece
Scientists have identified the seat of human wisdom by pinpointing parts of the brain that guide us when we face difficult moral dilemmas...

(I don't think that's "wisdom", however much they might wish it so...--ED)

The Church Of LOTU
http://churchoflotu.wordpress.com/
A religion for atheists and critical thinkers. Yes, that?s what I said. ...LOTU stands for "Laws Of The Universe", the idea being that atheists respect and "worship" the natural laws as explained to us by scientists...

50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm
The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense... So I won't be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.

tweenbots
http://www.tweenbots.com/
In New York, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us...? Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal...

Commodore 64 Original Hardware Laptop
http://benheck.com/04-05-2009/commodore-64-original-hardware-laptop
This project somehow has the distinction of being both the longest and fastest portable electronics project I have ever done...

The Jack T. Chick Parody Archive
http://www.weirdcrap.com/chick/
We love the originals, but we thought that since there are so many whacked-out Christians who take them seriously, satirical parodies of them would be necesary to piss those people off, too. Indeed, some of the hate mail we have received concerning this web site (soon to be put on-line for all to see!) is from angry fundies who claim that reading a Jack T. Chick comic directly led them to Christ. Obviously, not everyone sees Jack Chick as the paranoid, crazed weirdo that we do. Many people have been making parodies of Chick comics, twisting the stories around to more accurately and honestly send the message that the authors really meant, or just to have good old-fashioned, tasteless fun with them...

and 5cm fir tree removed from patient's lung
http://www.mosnews.com/weird/2009/04/13/firtree/
It is obvious that a five-centimeter branch is too large to be inhaled or swallowed, doctors say. They suggest that the patient might have inhaled a small bud, which then started to grow inside his body.

CIA Black Sites No Longer Being Used, Panetta Says
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/09/cia-black-sites-no-longer_n_185278.html
Panetta told agency employees in an e-mail message that the guards will be replaced with CIA officers at the sites, which President Barack Obama ordered closed on his second day in office.

Chase Bank to Chrysler and its Workers: Drop Dead
http://www.care2.com/causes/politics/blog/chase-bank-to-chrysler-drop-dead/
Chase has been the extremely generous recipient of all sorts of government largesse to save it from its own bad management and decisions, without which they'd be in serious trouble. And now that they have been made whole (and used much of the government money not to kickstart lending as intended, but rather to acquire other assets for themselves), they are refusing to make any concessions to anybody else. Hypocrisy anyone?

(Wankers...--ED)

Texas lawmaker: Asians should change their names to make them 'easier for Americans to deal with.'
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/09/brown-asian-names/
On Tuesday, State Rep. Betty Brown (R) caused a firestorm during House testimony on voter identification legislation when she said that Asian-Americans should change their names because they?re too hard to pronounce:

(Wanker...--ED)

Wikileaks: ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainess" in CIA Custody, 14 Feb 2007
http://tinyurl.com/cdu7wr
Strictly confidential 14 Feb 2007 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report into the treatment of 14 "High Value Detainees" held by the CIA... The document lists a number of abuses against CIA held prisoners...

London cop's unprovoked attack on G20 protestor BYSTANDER who then has fatal heart attack
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/07/london-cops-unprovok.html
A London cop charged Ian Tomlinson, a G20 demonstrator an innocent bystander at the G20 demonstrations who was on his way home from work, who was walking peacefully with his hands in his pockets, clubbing him and throwing him to the ground without provocation. Shortly after, he suffered a fatal heart attack. Does anyone believe that Tomlinson was the only person who was attacked without provocation by the police that day?

(Bastards...--ED)

the G20 protests: truth and mirage
http://libellum.livejournal.com/342278.html
Everyone in London has been following the saga of the G20 protests and the police response to it. But I keep finding things other people haven't seen, and other people keep finding things I haven't seen, and when I told my mum and dad about this at the weekend they hadn't heard about any of it, so I'm not sure how far this has spread in the national press yet. And even if you're in London, if your sources are the BBC, the free papers or the Evening Standard, you've probably got a distorted version of events...

Video reveals G20 police assault on man who died
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/video-g20-police-assault
Exclusive footage obtained by the Guardian shows Ian Tomlinson, who died during G20 protests in London, was attacked from behind by baton-wielding police officer

7 Tips for Difficult Conversations
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/dowling/2009/03/7-tips-for-difficult-conversat.html
There are certain conversations all leaders dread: the ones in which we have to deliver bad news, discuss a sensitive or "political" subject, or talk about a project or meeting that's gone wrong.

(AKA "How to be a bastard to people and get away with it"...--ED)

Larry Sanger's Open Letter To Jimmy Wales
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:George_The_Dragon/Larry_Sanger%27s_Open_Letter_To_Jimmy_Wales
Jimmy, I don't know a better place than this for an open letter to you. I recently read the Hot Press interview with you. The lies and distortions it contains are, for me, the last straw, especially after this came to light, in which you described yourself as "co-founder" in 2002. I've reached out to you on a couple of occasions to coordinate our "versions"--well, my version and your fanciful inventions--about how Wikipedia got started. Last year I read about a speech in which you represented me as being more or less opposed to Wikipedia from the start--despite it being my own baby, really--and I wrote to you saying that if you keep this up, I will speak out. Well, I'm finally speaking out...

SyFy Modernizes, Bastardizes The Phantom
http://io9.com/5203921/syfy-modernizes-bastardizes-the-phantom
The SciFi Channel have released a glimpse at how they're going to turn classic comic strip The Phantom into a sci-fi series, and their idea seems to be to... drop everything recognizable about the character?

(Wankers...--ED)

Vegetarian spider: Small jumping species steals lunch from ants.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35121/title/Vegetarian_spider
A little eight-legged pickpocket that darts around acacia trees could be the first known vegetarian spider.

PS 62-107: Exploitation of the Pseudomyrmex-Acacia mutualism by a predominantly vegetarian jumping spider (Bagheera kiplingi)
http://eco.confex.com/eco/2008/techprogram/P12401.HTM
Here we describe unique features of the ecology of Bagheera kiplingi Peckham, a widespread Mesoamerican jumping spider (Salticidae) that nests on swollen-thorn acacias and consumes the plant's specialized leaf tips (Beltian bodies) and petiolar nectar as predominant components of its diet... This study provides the first evidence of a spider exploiting or 'cheating' any obligate ant-plant mutualism. That such exploitation is being performed in a taxon never before known to feed on solid plant material is extraordinary.

AP launches campaign against Internet "misappropriation"
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/ap-launches-campaign-against-internet-misappropriation.ars
AP announces an aggressive new initiative to clamp down on "misappropriation" of news content--a concept that goes well beyond copyright.

Google's Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It
http://daggle.com/090406-225638.html
Let's go on up to Rupert Murdoch, who says Google's stealing his copyright in a recent Forbes article... Let me help you with that, Rupert. I'm going to save you all those potential legal fees plus needing to even speak further about the evil of the Big G with two simple lines. Get your tech person to change your robots.txt file... Done. Do that, you're outta Google. All your pages will be removed, and you needn't worry about Google listing the Wall St. Journal at all. Oh, but you won't do that. You want the traffic, but you also want to be like the AP and hope you can scare Google into paying you. Maybe that will work. Or maybe you'll be like all those Belgian papers that tried the same thing and watched their traffic sadly dry up.

5 Years After: Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization
Street drug-related deaths from overdoses drop and the rate of HIV cases crashes

Immunised from scrutiny
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/07/transform-drugs-prohibition
Legalising drugs is less harmful and costly than prohibition - as the Home Office's own data shows... Our report shows that, based on the Home Office's own analysis, the UK is wasting around £4bn every year on a drug war that achieves the opposite of its stated aims while simultaneously maximising harm associated with drug use - and creating £9bn in crime costs...

"Holy war against the Catholic Church"
http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=160e491f-ab13-44ee-953b-d39e649d2c2c
Devotees of bizarre 'Saint of Death' popular with drug traffickers call for jihad against Church in Mexico after military destroys several of their shrines...

What Happened to the Perry Bible Fellowship?
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2009/03/30/what-happened-to-the-perry-bible-fellowship/
It's been over a year since cartoonist Nicholas Gurewitch entered semi-retirement. But he's working on a movie, a TV show -- and he even made a surreal appearance on a Fox News interview show. And he's left behind a message for his fans, tucked away in plain sight

sita pays her dues
http://bossymarmalade.livejournal.com/485975.html
Nina Paley reads the Ramayan and doesn't like it... Then her husband dumps her, and suddenly Sita's story becomes something else: a discourse upon which Paley can inscribe her own feelings and perceptions, a beautiful exotic therapy session called Sita Sings the Blues that will win her awards and acclaim. am tired of this. I am tired of white women using my words, my concepts, my goddesses and my stories and my clothing and my food for their own fulfillment, ignorant of the context of oppression and imperialism, and then telling me I should be happy about it... Let me tell you my truth...

Gentleman in New Orleans Loses Chunk of Arm in Possible Zombie Attack
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/08/gentleman-in-new-orl.html
The headline is a keeper: "Metairie man says stranger chewed, swallowed after taking bite out of his arm." The story is horrible, but more frightening still, it suggests the imminent threat of a worsening zombie onslaught...

Zombie Outbreak in Bristol, Vermont
http://twitter.com/zetes
There's been a Zombie Outbreak being twittered about in Vermont since the start of the month: @zetes is a fireman on the ground...

Sasquatch, Real or Imagined? You Decide.
http://www.seattlecourant.com/section/opinion/171
So it is with this knowledge that I will continue to watch television documentaries seeking answers to the question: Does sasquatch exist? My answer is: Yes. But we will never prove it.

Hobbit brain small, but organized for complex intelligence
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/42469/title/Hobbit_brain_small%2C_but_organized_for_complex_intelligence
Evolution may have endowed a controversial species with small but humanlike brains equipped to support advanced thinking

Why What Frightens 'Skeptics' Frightened Einstein
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-slater/why-what-frightens-skepti_b_184778.html
I'm fascinated by the fanatical zeal with which self-styled skeptics pounce on non-ordinary events and try to discount them--largely by the liberal use of words like 'preposterous'. Posing as 'scientific', these ideologues are clinging to a materialism long since discredited by quantum physics...

'Scientism' infects Darwinian debates
http://www.vancouversun.com/Life/Scientism+infects+Darwinian+debates/1464023/story.html
An unflinching belief that science can explain everything about evolution becomes its own ideology

Morristown UFO Hoax
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/04/morristown-ufo-hoax.html
In the end, I don?t think this experiment proved anything about the gullibility of the witnesses... or even the news media. The witnesses explained what they had seen, which was an accurate representation and the news media, for the most part, didn?t go too far overboard. It was reported early on and often that one solution was flares on a balloon and flares on a balloon is the final answer. As for the critical thinking skills of the two men, I think they need to revisit that...

Bai Ling Wrote Her Own Crank 2 Dialogue
http://io9.com/5202681/bai-ling-wrote-her-own-crank-2-dialogue
Crank 2's script may have been the "most offensive" Jason Statham ever read - but that was before costar Bai Ling rewrote it. Bai told us about catfights, upskirts and the craziest movie ever.

(I may be in lust...--ED)

And now, a conversation about that ad...
http://maxomai.livejournal.com/1450759.html

(Which ad? The Gay Marriage Threatens Us wanker ad, that's which ad...--ED)

Twitter Does Deep Knee Bends
http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2009/04/twitter-does-de.html
"Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic recently authored an interesting blog post about the demographics of Twitter users. What he discovered was that 18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are actually 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter (Index of 88). It is the 25-54 year old crowd that is actually driving this trend. More specifically, 45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely."

Twitter Friend Or Follow
http://friendorfollow.com/
Who are you following that's not following you back? Who's following you that you're not following back? Find out!

How To Backup Your Twitter Account
http://www.twitterpowersystem.com/blog/how-to-backup-your-twitter-account/
The issue of backing up data from your Twitter account is becoming more important as people spend considerable amounts of time and effort building a valuable reputation and network of contacts.

6 Writers Who Accidentally Crapped Out Masterpieces
http://www.cracked.com/article_17221_6-writers-who-accidentally-crapped-out-masterpieces.html
So what does it feel like to write something that will inspire audiences for generations? Apparently it feels like another day at the office, as it turns out some of the greatest works of all time weren't intended to be classics... and often were just dashed off for the hell of it.

(And for those who are curious about the Frankenstein Wikipedia citation...ED)

Owen Davies's top 10 grimoires
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/08/history
From ancient Egypt to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, grimoires - books of magic spells - have exerted a huge influence on religion and science. Owen Davies picks his top 10, and yes, HP Lovecraft makes the cut

(And why not? The Necronomicon works just as well as the others ;}P> ...ED)

The War of the Worlds: Interior Illustrations
http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/illus/interior.html
(Some lovely works here...--ED)

The War of the Worlds: Other Images
http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/other/other.html
These are things associated with audio or video versions of the book, or documentaries about the book, both completed and unrealized.

MARTIAN TRIPOD
http://home.hetnet.nl/~erwin47/models/tripod/
in 1978 Jeff Wayne came with a musical verion of this story, featuring great names, such as Richard Burton and Justin Hayward. With both the LP and the CD version came paintings, by Michael Trim, to visualise certain parts of the story. On these paintings I based the paper model of the Martian Fighting Machine...

They Don't Make Dictionaries Of Sumerian Like They Used To
http://dteleki.livejournal.com/497.html
One of the happiest memories of my life is the afternoon when my grandmother, Suzanne Teleki, explained to me Why They Don't Make Dictionaries Of Sumerian Like They Used To And Why Decades-Old Sumerian Dictionaries Are So Vastly Much Better. It was a very long, very detailed, and very abstract explanation. I was fascinated. In hindsight, I am amazed that at that age I was even able to follow her explanation, and able to enjoy it so much. As I understood it, The Problem With Newfangled Sumerian Dictionaries goes something like this....

BoingBoingBingo!
http://www.boingboingbingo.net/

The Q Asks the The Last Surviving Star Trek Red Shirts
http://www.tvscifi.com/content/view/30/28/
Dead Red ShirtToday we visit an alien planet where the last 5 Enterprise security officers have gathered to remember their fallen comrades...

Austin, TX Fans Get Surprise Showing of Star Trek Movie
http://trekmovie.com/2009/04/06/austin-tx-fans-given-surprise-showing-of-entire-star-trek-movie/
Promoted as just a 10 minute preview of the new Star Trek to show along with The Wrath of Khan, tonight fans in Austin, TX were actually shown the entire new Star Trek movie. The event included surprise guests, including the original Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy... Two minutes in to the showing of TWOK, the film appeared to have 'melted' and the guys came back out on the stage and appeared to be stalling for time while the film was fixed...and then, wearing a ball cap, Leonard Nimoy came out in front of the audience holding a film can. Nimoy noted to the crowd that it just didn?t seem fair that people in Australia were the fist to see the film and asked them "wouldn?t you rather see the new movie?" ...After that they showed the entire new Star Trek movie...

Man shoots himself during "Watchmen" movie
http://www.kmtr.com/news/local/story/Man-shoots-himself-during-Watchmen-movie/H0qmxSQyCkim5hh80WuOSA.cspx
About midway through the film some of the moviegoers told the manager they heard a "popping" noise like a gunshot. A 24-year-old man was found in the rear of the auditorium with a gunshot wound to the head.

(Now that's what I call a serious critic...ED)

Men Embarassed Over Burlesque Confusion
http://satyremagazine.blogspot.com/2009/03/men-embarassed-over-burlesque-confusion.html?zx=681eeb1f2c37d66
Thousands of men all over the World, but mainly one in Edinburgh, were ashamed today to realise they have been getting sexually aroused by perfectly respectable performance artistes...

Google broke reality
http://woodburner.livejournal.com/479322.html
number of horns on a unicorn, number of horns on a unicorn in googols, number of horns on a unicorn barn in teaspoons per light year...

"when i was in college, my sociology professor gave what i consider to be the perfect example of what challenging assumptions is all about. "the norm," he said, "is one penis per urinal. to challenge that, all you have to say is 'move over.'"

Theano's Day - everyone (male or female) invited to blog June 24 to celebrate a woman philosopher!
http://community.livejournal.com/discord_society/195737.html
Everyone (of all genders) is invited to participate in Theano's Day, an event to celebrate and rediscover women's contributions to philosophy throughout the centuries.

Conficker Eye Chart
http://eyechart.sie.isc.org/

Conficker worm kills 48 in Pakistan
http://www.sovietskynews.com/cutenews/news/index.php/2009/04/01/conficker-worm-kills-48-in-pakistan.html
48 are confirmed dead in Islamabad, Pakistan, arousing suspicion that the much-feared Conficker.c computer worm has taken its first victims...

Blowing Rainbows
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/427808.html
Okay, I'm serious: you need to stop letting people with a vested interest in the stock market, including the President and his economic team, blow rainbows up your ass. This is not the bottom. We are not anywhere near the ...let me lay out for you the important economic indicators that the news media here in America have completely and utterly glossed over:

G20 protests erupt in London
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/apr/01/g20-protest?picture=345361836
A protester dressed in Guy Fawkes garb stands out from the police crowd at the Bank of England

Guantanamo 'fun' - Miss Universe
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7976207.stm
Life may be tough for its full-time residents, but for Miss Universe a day out at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was simply "a loooot of fun!"

Neandertal cannibalism? Maybe not
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=neandertal-cannibalism-maybe-not-2009-04-02
Scientists have long argued that Neandertal remains from the site of Krapina in northern Croatia exhibit evidence of cannibalism. The fragmentary nature of the bones, along with cut marks on a number of fragments, were said to be signs that our closest relatives feasted on one another. But a new study suggests that the nicks seem to be the result of much more recent handiwork.

How similar was Neandertal behavior to that of modern humans?
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-similar-was-neandertal-behavior-2009-04-06
Neandertals have long been portrayed as dumb brutes. But a growing body of evidence hints that these extinct humans were much savvier than previously thought. The results of a new study presented here last week at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society bolster that view, and suggest that, in fact, Neandertals acted in much the same way as early modern humans.

Slide Show: The Hidden Face of Nefertiti
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=nefertiti-ct-scan-egypt
Using computed tomography, researchers uncover the original molds for the royal sculpture

Darwin Debunked?
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/22751
Sam Kean is a favorite of ours on staff. We geeked out on his pieces explaining Carbon Trading and covering a Natural Nuclear Reactor in Oklo, Nigeria. This month, he?s profiling the new field of epigenetics and how maybe Darwinists shouldn?t have derided LaMarcke's theories so much.

Scientists Find 'Baffling' Link between Autism and Vinyl Flooring
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=link-between-autism-and-vinyl
Swedish children who live in homes with vinyl floors are more likely to have autism, according to a new study, but what's behind the link is unclear

Physicist develops battery using new source of energy
http://www.physorg.com/news156011642.html
Researchers at the University of Miami and at the Universities of Tokyo and Tohoku, Japan, have been able to prove the existence of a "spin battery," a battery that is "charged" by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ)...

Astronomers Compile Most Detailed Map of Nearby Universe
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/03/astronomers-compile-most-detail-map-of-nearby-universe/
A new detailed map of the nearby Universe reveals not only where local galaxies are currently, but where they are heading, how fast and why. "It's like taking a snapshot of wildebeest on the African plain"...

Quantum setback for warp drives
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23292/
Include quantum mechanics in the calculations and faster-than-light drives become unstable

Aboriginal Village
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s993544.htm
When Graham Phillips travelled to Western Victoria to investigate the remains of an Aboriginal village he was simply not prepared for the scale of what he found. Archaeologist, Dr Heather Builth showed him the remains of 100s of stone huts, more than 75 square kilometres of artificial channels and ponds for farming eels, and smoking trees for preserving the eels for export to other parts of Australia. And all this appeared to have been in operation for thousands of years.

Secrets of the stones
http://www.eniar.org/news/stones.html
Far from being wandering hunter-gatherers, some Aborigines lived in villages, traded and farmed. Graham Phillips reports on remarkable archaeological findings that have unearthed a society more sophisticated than anyone imagined. For nearly 8000 years, the Gunditjmara people of western Victoria farmed eels. They modified more than 100 square kilometres of the landscape, constructing artificial ponds across the grassy wetlands and digging channels to interconnect them. They exported their produce and became an important part of the local economy.

Burners Torched Over Native Party
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/music/burners_torched_over_native_party/Content?oid=954007
Local Native Americans go to war against insensitive Burners and win.

Derailing for Dummies
http://www.derailingfordummies.com/
Just follow this step-by-step guide to Conversing with Marginalised People™ and in no time at all you will have a fool-proof method of derailing every challenging conversation you may get into, thus reaping the full benefits of every privilege that you have. The best part is, you don't even have to be a white, heterosexual, cisgendered, cissexual, upper-class male to enjoy the full benefits of derailing conversation!

Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids' Books
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6647713.html
As a teenager, I lived in two worlds: the traditional Bengali heritage inside our home and the contemporary California of my suburban peers... I trudged back and forth between cultures, relying heavily on stories for insight into the secrets and nuances of North American life. But exactly what did those stories communicate about my place as a brown-skinned foreigner?

In Honor of Lovelle Mixon: Cheering Those Who Fire Back
http://community.livejournal.com/guerillanews/889428.html
Early in the afternoon on Saturday, March 21, Lovelle Mixon, a 26 year-old Black man, was pulled over by two Oakland police officers while driving through downtown. Mixon had stopped meeting with his parole officer a month before, and a warrant had been issued for his arrest. What happened next is still the subject of speculation, but the result was both the officers were shot and mortally wounded, and Mixon had disappeared. Later that day, the police received a tip telling them Mixon was hiding in a nearby apartment. A SWAT team entered the apartment, and Mixon was killed in the gunfire, but not before he killed two more officers and lightly wounded a fifth.

Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1889021,00.html
Obviously, marijuana can be abused. But the costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse?

Nine Words You Might Think Came from Science but Which Are Really from Science Fiction??
http://blog.oup.com/2009/03/science-fiction/
...we asked Jeff Prucher, freelance lexicographer and editor for the Oxford English Dictionary's science fiction project, to revisit the blog. Below are Prucher's picks of words

Near-death experiences: Heaven can wait
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/features/neardeath-experiences-heaven-can-wait-1657869.html
Tunnels, bright lights, visions of the deceased. Do near-death experiences really offer a glimpse of the afterlife -- or is there a more rational explanation?

(It depends on who gets to define "rational", doesn't it...--ED)

Someone is Attempting to Delete Apostolic Johannite Church Wikipedia Article
http://jordanstratford.blogspot.com/2009/03/someone-is-attempting-to-delete-ajc.html
Despite listing 9 branches in 6 countries, someone is trying to declare the Apostolic Johannite Church as not noteworthy enough for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is deleting ALL articles on Contemporary Gnosticism
http://jordanstratford.blogspot.com/2009/03/wikipedia-is-deleting-all-articles-on.html
The Apostolic Johannite Church, the Alexandrian Gnostic Church, the Ecclesia Gnostica, Gnostic authors and university professors, even this article on modern Gnosticism itself are on the chopping block or have already been deleted. We're talking about independently published books, peer-reviewed academic authors, university and college course materials, internationally published news stories -- all of these sources are being dismissed as either not relevant or not reliable

Breakdown of book costs
http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html
There is an interesting article in Money Magazine this month that helps explain it a little bit. They took a bestselling hardcover novel ...and broke down what the various costs are. These costs are obviously estimates, and will differ greatly depending on print run but I think it is really interesting to see the basic breakdown.

Responsible Klingong Male Seeking Intergalactic Convention In My Pants - m4ww - 192 (Low Orbit)
http://humboldt.craigslist.org/cas/1104711365.html
Looking for some hot Klingon babes, possibly Romulan. I am a mature Klingon male with my own car. My mom goes to sleep around 9:00 PM so we can hang out at my house but we would have to be quiet.

Zombie trouble in upstate Vermont?
http://brains.zombiestew.com/2009/04/01/zombie-trouble-in-upstate-vermont/
We've been tipped off to a possible, developing story in upstate Vermont. A fireman by the name of Brian Wright has been posting some somewhat disturbing messages on Twitter over the last week...

Internet Explorer 9 to use Mozilla's Firefox code base
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/24163/1162/
Microsoft Corporation today quietly announced the end of internal development of Internet Explorer. A spokesman said that one of the senior managers saw a car-bumper sticker which said "The only good use for Internet Explorer is to download Firefox", which prompted some soul-searching within the company.

Urban Camouflage
http://www.urbancamouflage.de/
Urban Camouflage deals with the question how to camouflage oneself and one?s identity in the commercial space. The costumes are inspired by ≪ghillie suits≫, the camouflage suits of snipers and hunters.

The Rocky Horror Watchmen Show
http://www.filmthreat.com/blog/?p=1372
I just realized why Watchmen seems so familiar. It's really The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A campy, slightly gay bad guy who loves his fancy outfits and lives in a secluded fortress of his own design...

"When Will Everything Return to Normal?"
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/427162.html
If any one of those thirteen statements is wrong? ...There will not be a "return to normal" in September of this year. Nor will it come by September of 2012. And maybe not for several years after that. If any one of those statements are wrong, we are screwed.

Western internet censorship: The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Western_internet_censorship:_The_beginning_of_the_end_or_the_end_of_the_beginning%3F
We're arresting you for speeding.
What's the speed limit, officer?
The speed limit is secret.

China's hi-tech 'death van' where criminals are executed and then their organs are sold on black market
http://tinyurl.com/d2wzev
In chilling echoes of the 'gas-wagon' project pioneered by the Nazis to slaughter criminals, the mentally ill and Jews, this former member of the China People's Party will be handcuffed to a so-called 'humane' bed and executed inside a gleaming new, hi-tech, mobile 'death van.' ...Inside each 'death van' there is a dedicated team of doctors to 'harvest' the organs of the deceased. The injections leave the body intact and in pristine condition for such lucrative work... The British Transplantation Society and Amnesty International have condemned China for harvesting prisoners' organs.

Officer with TB who refused to deploy is convicted
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61620
An Army chief warrant officer, who argued his health problems should have prevented him from going to war, has been convicted of failing to deploy to Iraq and disobeying an order... a 19-year veteran who has active tuberculosis and suffers from back injuries ?was sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to forfeit $1,300 a month for the next six months...

Scientist Gets Experimental Ebola Vaccine
http://news.aol.com/article/scientist-gets-vaccine-after-ebola-scare/401851
It was a nightmare scenario: A scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice. Within hours, members of a tightly bound, yet far-flung community of virologists, biologists and others were tensely gathered in a trans-Atlantic telephone conference trying to map out a way to save her life.

Does 'the dose make the poison?'
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/lowdose/2007/2007-0525nmdrc.html
Extensive results challenge a core assumption in toxicology

Dogs (not chimps) most like humans
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29895614/
Man's best friend serves as model for understanding human social behavior

90% of wild chimpanzees are dead
http://www.examiner.com/x-4592-Birmingham-Family-Health-Examiner~y2009m3d28-90-of-wild-chimpanzees-are-dead
A census of West African chimpanzees living in C?te d'Ivoire shows that 90% have died, according to researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Deforestation, farming, poaching and wars have made it harder for chimps to find protected places to live. The few chimpanzees left are widely scattered with only one substantial group left living in Ta? National Park.

Sword attacker sliced off victim's left hand
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/courts/sword-attacker-sliced-off-victims-left-hand-1686405.html
A MAN who had just had his hand severed with a samurai sword punched his attacker in the face with the stump, a court heard yesterday...

01-04-09: Conroy scraps filter blacklist
http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/fullduplex/soa/Conroy-scraps-filter-blacklist/
Facing a barrage of criticism over the government's controversial internet filter, communications minister Stephen Conroy today blamed "those meddling kids" for its failure and announced that the blacklist will be scrapped in favour of a new public whitelist administered via viewer votes on a new weekly television show....

A Blacklist for Websites Backfires in Australia
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1888011,00.html
"It's the most ill-conceived pile of stupidity by the biggest bunch of cretins that I've ever seen in my life,"

Leaving computers on overnight = $2.8 billion a year
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/130078
...all the power wasted while computers are sitting idle overnight adds up, and one study has finally tried to measure it. The tally: An estimated $2.8 billion wasted on excess energy costs each year in the U.S. alone.

(That's about $2.30 per computer per month, btw...--ED)

The Question That Makes Amazon $2.7 Billion Of Revenue
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-magic-behind-amazons-27-billion-dollar-question-2009-3
Because of a very subtle yet clever feature, Amazon makes the best of both the positive and negative reviews easy to find. And that feature, based on our calculations, is responsible for more than $2,700,000,000 of new revenue for Amazon every year. Not bad for what is essentially a simple question: "Was this review helpful to you?"

Love's online spat sparks first Twitter libel suit
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/loves-online-spat-sparks-first-twitter-libel-suit-1656621.html
It was merely a matter of time: Twitter, the latest social networking phenomenon, appears to have sparked its first libel action. And perhaps inevitably, singer Courtney Love, well known for sounding off online, is at its centre.

Men versus women: Sleep apnea symptoms
http://www.revolutionhealth.com/blogs/stevepocetamd/men-versus-women--sl-2945
...women are different from men even when they have the same disorder--obstructive sleep apnea... Women were less likely than men to have the "typical" symptoms of sleep apnea like snoring, pauses in breathing observed by the spouse, and daytime sleepiness. They were more likely to have "atypical" symptoms such as insomnia, restlessness, mood changes, palpitations at night, and nightmares.

RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant
http://readersrooms.com/2009/03/27/racefail-09-why-horror-ignores-the-elephant/
With a few exceptions, race isn't discussed much in the horror genre. Most folks are afraid to discuss it or admit there is a problem. With good cause: the last horror brand RaceFail discussion involved the release of Brandon Massey's anthology series, Dark Dreams. The bulk of the discussion revolved around the series being the equivalent of reverse discrimination (because, you know, there are no all white, even more specifically, all white male, horror anthology series) or writer affirmative action...

An Elephant Disappears
http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2009/03/elephant-disappears.html
Suddenly, I lost existance. I was waiting patiently in the airport, quietly watching people go by. My luggage was stacked up next to me and I felt that I looked like quite the world traveler. Suddenly this illusion was shattered when a security type guy came with a luggage cart and began loading my luggage. I sputtered a protest, 'Hey, that's my luggage.' He looked at me, annoyed and said, "Luggage can't be left unattended." ...At this point a pilot in uniform happens by and sees a commotion. He comes over automatically siding with the security guy. He asks what is going on, before security can answer, I say, "He says my luggage is unattended because I am a disabled man and can't supervise my own luggage."

Dog to Unicorn Transformation Kit
http://www.mcphee.com/resources/april08/unidog.html
This is not a costume. This is a kit to completely transform your beloved pug or beagle from a cute canine to the ultimate unicorn. It includes screw-in horn, hoof attachments, medical grade glue, peroxide, mane fur, a tail and a handful of glitter!

A Tale of Two Battlestars
http://www.battlestargalactica-wiki.com/page/A+Tale+of+Two+Battlestars
Who says the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica has nothing in common with the original 1978 series? Close scrutiny reveals a couple dozen common threads. Well, sort of...

Why the F*** Do You Have A Kid?
http://whythef***doyouhaveakid.com/ [RealURL is NSFW]

(I suspect it's because either they were shagging, or one of these people is called Mary... children having children, but actually, there's nothing special in these faces. Look back 40,000 years, you'd see just these faces still...--ED)

Scavenger's Manifesto: HOWTO be an urban scavenger
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/30/scavengers-manifesto.html
...a book that explains how to live off the fat of the city: freegan, dumpster-diving wild-herb-harvesting life that lets you enjoy the good things without spending a penny.

(I notice the absence of a free download...--ED)

Windows 7: RC is nearly there
http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/maryb/2009/03/30/windows-7-rc-is-nearly-there/
The Windows 7 team is hard at work. There?s a new build almost every day

imermanence is forever
http://www.contrariwise.org/2009/01/03/theme-week-misspellings-day-3/
So is your tattoo.

Hackerspaces
http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hacker_Spaces
...community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects.

Jack "King" Kirby's "Lost" Comic Book Version of The Prisoner
http://blogs.amctv.com/the-prisoner/2009/03/jack-king-kirby-the-prisoner.php
Legendary comic book artist Jack "King" Kirby did a version of The Prisoner that never officially saw the light of day. He never finished it, true -- some parts aren't inked, others have temporarily scrawled in dialogue -- but that incompleteness makes the artwork that much more fascinating.

10 Geological Wonders you didn?t know
http://www.oddee.com/item_96619.aspx

Japan finds man who survived both atom bombs
http://mysterytopia.com/2009/03/japan-finds-man-who-survived-both-atom.html
Somehow, he got up the next day and returned home to Nagasaki, just in time for it to be dropped on him again...

New site captures authors' identities and won't let go
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/03/filedbyauthor.html
Without permission or advance notice, FiledByAuthor.com has cataloged the information of about 1.8 million authors into individual pages. There are biographies, photos, links to purchase books from online retailers and links to share the author's FiledBy page through a dizzying list of social networking sites... 1.8 million writers are already conscripted -- and they can't be removed from the site. There is no opt out.

(Methinks they're more pissed by the extortion of having to pay a member's fee to change your personal details...--ED)

Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down To Area Man
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/reaganomics_finally_trickles_down
Twenty-six years after Ronald Reagan first set his controversial fiscal policies into motion, the deceased president's massive tax cuts for the ultrarich at last trickled all the way down to deliver their bounty, in the form of a $10 bonus, to Hazelwood, MO car-wash attendant Frank Kellener.

(It was yellow, too...--ED)

A Condom Saved Me From Prison in East Germany
http://open.salon.com/blog/procopius/2009/03/26/a_condom_saved_me_from_prison_in_east_germany
Although I knew I was safe, I walked as fast as I could until Checkpoint Charlie was out of sight. I saw a grimey little corner bar and walked inside. I quickly drank two Berliner Kindl beers to calm my nerves, and then I, too, burst out laughing. A rubber in my wallet had just saved me from an East German prison!

No dating, thanks, just sex
http://www.stuff.co.nz/295808/No-dating-thanks-just-sex
Dating culture is dead - instead, young New Zealand women are regularly getting drunk and cruising around in packs looking for men to have sex with... They are reported to have an average of 20 sexual partners, double that of their Australian and British counterparts and almost three times the global average of seven.

(I've always thought NZers were tops. Have I mentioned that I think NZers are tops?...--ED)

Artist paints herself having sex with each president of the USA
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/27/artist-paints-hersel.html
Artist Justine Lai's new project is a set of oil paintings of her having sex with every president of the USA, in order.

(She's cute too. I wish i was a president of the USA...--ED)

and Lesbian Sex With Men
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/04/lesbian-sex-w-1.html
Before I'd started having sex with women, my reaction to a guy's premature ejaculation had been pretty traditional: disappointment, frustration, embarrassment on his behalf, attempts to soothe his ego, feeling like I'd done something wrong. But this time, my reaction was to say, casually and matter-of-factly, "Oh. Well, is that any reason to stop?"

(Actually, I think I'll pass on having Lesbian Sex With Men, if it's all the same to you...--ED)

USA follows old Australian road on immigration detention
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/bartlett/2009/03/25/411/
As Australia moves away from some of our past discredited, damaging, expensive and inhumane policies in the area of immigration detention, it seems the USA and Italy have moved in the opposite direction.

The Long and Sadistic History Behind the CIA's Torture Techniques
http://www.alternet.org/rights/132743/the_long_and_sadistic_history_behind_the_cia%27s_torture_techniques/
Sleep deprivation, extremes of temperature, noise, and beatings are some of the nastier methods the U.S. employed in the Bush era.

Israel troops admit Gaza abuses
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7952603.stm
An Israeli military college has printed damning soldiers' accounts of the killing of civilians and vandalism during recent operations in Gaza. One account tells of a sniper killing a mother and children at close range whom troops had told to leave their home. Another speaker at the seminar described what he saw as the "cold blooded murder" of a Palestinian woman. Israel frequently claims to possess the most moral army in the world...

Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html

Argentine philosophy prof faces prison time for posting unofficial translations of out of print Derrida texts
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/23/argentine-philosophy.html

G20 protest professor suspended
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7967096.stm
A university professor who warned that bankers could be "hanging from lampposts" during G20 protests next week has been suspended from his job.

This Is Not A Club We Want To Join
http://newmatilda.com/2009/03/23/not-club-we-want-join
The Government's clean feed proposal has earned us a place on a watch list of repressive countries such as Zimbabwe and Malaysia

Wikileaks.de domain-owner's house raided over publication of secret government censorship lists
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/25/wikileaksde-domainow.html
The home of Theodor Reppe, who owns the wikileaks.de domain, was raided by German police in retaliation for Wikileaks' publication of the secret government blocklists from around the world, like the Australian list of forbidden sites...

It certainly looks like the ACMA blacklist, eh Senator Conroy
https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/It_certainly_looks_like_the_ACMA_blacklist%2C_eh_Senator_Conroy
Evidence is mounting that the list of websites published by Wikileaks is almost certainly ACMA's "secret" blacklist.

Blood and Honour international Neo-Nazi network messages and passwords, Mar 2009
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Blood_and_Honour_international_Neo-Nazi_network_messages_and_passwords%2C_Mar_2009
Blood and Honour is an international neo-Nazi white-power network built around a musical promotion front...

Mexico destroys 'Death Saint' revered by criminals
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jqfNhDmadO52vyj274r_ZlmsQOkwD975A1RO0
Officials in Nuevo Laredo have destroyed more than 35 statues dedicated to a "Death Saint" Santa Muerte popular with drug traffickers...

Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127001.300-space-storm-alert-90-seconds-from-catastrophe.html?full=true
IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power. A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun...

When a Man is the Victim: A Second Study in Rape Apology
http://thecurvature.com/2009/03/20/when-a-man-is-the-victim-a-second-study-in-rape-apology/
...in cases where a man is the victim of a woman?s violence, rape apologism is strongly rooted in the denial that women?s actions can count as violence at all -- and especially that their actions can count as sexual violence against men, who are routinely construed as incapable of being victims. In cases of both of these two types of sexual violence (though hardly the only two that exist), the victim is accused of "wanting it"...

Absurd anti-bikie laws do not stop bikies, but legalising drugs will
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090324-Absurd-anti-bikie-laws-do-not-stop-bikies-but-legalising-drugs-will.html
New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees is today contemplating adopting his South Australian counterpart Mike Rann?s absurd anti-bikie laws. As I noted in Crikey on 1 April last year, these laws are largely unenforceable, cement in law the concept of guilt by association and would do nothing to lessen the problem of bikie gangs? violence because they completely miss the point -- which is that bikie gangs thrive on our refusal to decriminalise drugs.

Harvard Economist Blames Twitter for Down Economy
http://socialmediamafia.com/2009/03/best-april-fools-joke-of-2009/
Policy experts predict a Twitter moratorium may be declared for Summer 2009 as part of an effort to stimulate economic production and reverse GDP declines.

Twitter gets you fired in 140 characters or less
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29796962/
The 'it' social networking tool of the hour streamlines your humiliation

Couple tries to buy from only blacks
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.buyblack22mar22,0,1848954.story
The Andersons, African-Americans who rose from humble means, are attempting to spend their money for one year exclusively with black-owned businesses and are encouraging other African-Americans to do the same. It is part experiment, part social activism campaign.

Going Galt
http://orangemike.livejournal.com/39740.html
I can testify that sales of Atlas Shrugged have picked up at the bookstore I work at part-time, which has a lot of businesspeople as customers.

The Heilbronn DNA Mixup
http://mwinkelmann.com/2009/03/the-heilbronn-dna-mixup/
DNA traces of an unknown eastern-European woman had been found at almost 17 crime scenes, including two murders (including a 22 year old police officer) but also car jackings, unprofessional break-ins and on a bullet fired in a marital dispute. The crimes where spread around a large area including south-west Germany, France and Switzerland...

What do you get if you divide science by God?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7955846.stm
A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God...? The Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension", has been won by French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.

60-foot penis painted on roof
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/newsbeat/newsid_7961000/7961224.stm
An 18-year-old has secretly painted a 60ft drawing of a phallus on the roof of his parents' £1million mansion in Berkshire. It was there for a year before his parents found out....

Malaysian Woman Jailed For Worshipping Tea Pot
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/03/19/malaysian-woman-jailed-worshipping-tea-pot/
The eccentric sect emphasizes unity between all religions and considers the teapot the symbol of purity and love "pouring from heaven"...

Silk-Dyed Eggs
http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/03/silk-dyed-eggs.html
You need 100% silk for this to work...

Belly Buttons May Signal a Woman's Vigor
http://www.livescience.com/health/090203-belly-buttons.html
Many mammals have virtually no noticeable belly button. We humans, however, are left with an umbilical scar that is not only obvious but which varies dramatically... Aki Sinkkonen at the University of Helsinki in Finland thinks the belly button, aka the umbilicus, serves a greater purpose than mere cosmetics: It may be an indicator of mating potential in fertile women...

The next not-so-big thing: nanogenerators
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=nanogenerator-2009-03-26
Since there isn't a battery in existence yet that's small enough to couple with a nanodevice, researchers have sought to power their microscopic creations with energy drawn from their surroundings...

Spicy Vegan Hot Cross Buns
http://www.vegsoc.org/news/2001/easter-recipes3.html

Subway Art Gallery Opening
http://improveverywhere.com/2009/03/18/subway-art-gallery-opening/
For our latest mission, 50 Improv Everywhere agents created an art gallery opening on the 23rd Street subway platform in Manhattan. We put up 30 placards next to objects in the space (pipes, electrical boxes, signs, advertisements), transforming them into works of art. The gallery included a bar, a coat rack, and a cellist...

Preventing MySpace Hotlinking Or "How to force MySpace hotlinkers to Sign Out"
http://www.jibble.org/myspace-hotlinking/
Anyone who views a profile which contains one of my hotlinked images will be automatically logged out of MySpace. *Chortle*.

Presto Loads a Streamlined Desktop in 15 Seconds
http://lifehacker.com/5175680/presto-loads-a-streamlined-desktop-in-15-seconds
Presto, a fast-loading Linux desktop you install from Windows, lives up to its promise of an alternative, speedy boot-up with quick web/email access.

Qt Web Browser
http://qtweb.net/
compact, portable and secure alternative web browser

Internet Explorer 8 gets hacked, already
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/164680.asp
A 25-year-old German graduate student who goes only by Nils has hacked Internet Explorer 8, along with Safari and Firefox, at CanSecWest's hacking competition.

Circumcision cuts risk of herpes, HPV
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=circumcision-cuts-risk-of-herpes-hp-2009-03-25
Circumcision is often touted for its potential health benefits: reduced risk of urinary tract infections for baby boys, and lower rates of HIV in teens and men. Now a new study shows that it may also cut a man's chances of contracting two more common, incurable sexually transmitted diseases.

(In b4 OMG MUTILATIONZ!!!...--ED)

Map of Abandoned London Underground Stations
http://siologen.livejournal.com/345598.html
I did a real bodgy version of this map in 2005. This one isnt perfect, but it shows, using the latest update of Harry Beck design, where the stations and in some cases tunnels would be if they hadnt closed down...

The Original Inspiration For Batman's Joker, German Actor Conrad Veidt
http://laughingsquid.com/the-original-inspiration-for-batmans-joker-german-actor-conrad-veidt/
While there?s an ongoing debate over who actually created the character of Batman?s iconic nemesis The Joker (comic book artist Bob Kane, writer Bill Finger and artist Jerry Robinson have all variously claimed the idea) one aspect of his origin seems to be relatively free from dispute: that the creators drew their visual inspiration from German actor Conrad Veidt?s portrayal of the character Gwynplaine in the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs...

(I thought this was general knowledge amongst the Comic fraternity, but perhaps I was mistakenn...--ED)

Comics Grammar and Tradition
http://www.blambot.com/grammar.shtml
Comic book lettering has some grammatical and aesthetic traditions that are quite unique. What follows is a list that every letterer eventually commits to his/her own mental reference file.

Gadgets and Designs made from Chocolate
http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/03/20/gadgets-and-designs-made-from-chocolate/

Canadian accused at U.S. border of 'stealing American jobs'
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/03/16/bc-borderprotectionism.html
Sales representative from B.C. denied entry to U.S. to meet with suppliers

Google: the majority of takedown notices are bogus
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/18/google-the-majority.html
Google has filed a submission with the New Zealand government in response to the new law there, which compels ISPs to terminate your Internet connection if you're accused of copyright infringement three times. In its submission, Google discusses its experience with "notice and takedown," which allows people to censor web-pages merely by asserting that they infringe copyright -- and they note that this process is routinely abused -- check out the numbers they proffer...

Iron Exposed as High-Temperature Superconductor
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=iron-exposed-as-high-temp-superconductor
New class of superconductor may help pin down mysterious physics

Diebold Admits Audit Logs in ALL Versions of Their Software Fail to Record Ballot Deletions
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6995
Startling admission made during public hearing in CA to consider decertification of the company's voting and tabulation software...

Darth Vader actor battles prostate cancer
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/18/darth.vader.cancer/index.html
David Prowse, who played Darth Vader in the original "Star Wars" films, has revealed he is suffering from prostate cancer but is still feeling "fantastic."

Louisiana: unarmed, black, 73-year-old cancer survivor shot dead by police
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/louisiana_unarmed_black_73_year_old_cancer_survivor_shot_dead_by_police/
On the last afternoon of his life, Bernard Monroe was hosting a cookout for family and friends in front of his dilapidated home on Adams Street in this small northern Louisiana town. Throat cancer had robbed the 73-year-old retired electric utility worker of his voice years ago, but family members said Monroe was clearly enjoying the commotion...

Giant Worm Not Actually Making Spice in Cornwall
http://io9.com/5174455/giant-worm-not-actually-making-spice-in-cornwall
Researchers at the Blue Reef Aquarium in Cornwall made a discovery worthy of a Frank Herbert novel: A massive, 4-foot-long reef worm that was chomping through their local corals. ...Staff eventually lured it out with fish scraps -- but not before it bit through 20lb fishing line.

People who use barrels to catch rain from their roofs breaking law, says State of Colorado
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/18/people-who-use-barre.html
...a story about "rainwater harvesters" in Colorado who are not allowed to collect rainwater that falls in their own yard, because the water rights belong to farmers, ranchers, developers and water agencies...

Scenes from the recession
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/scenes_from_the_recession.html
It can be difficult to capture financial pressures in photographs, but here a few recent glimpses into some of the places and lives affected by what some are calling the "Great Recession".

Put Your Money To Work, On The Planet Calypso
http://io9.com/5174723/put-your-money-to-work-on-the-planet-calypso
The Earth banking system may be collapsing, but now there's an extraterrestrial bank for you to squirrel away your funds. Entropia Universe, an MMO set on the Planet Calypso, just got a Swedish banking license...

Santo Daime Wins Court Decision
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/ayahuasca/ayahuasca_law24.shtml
Allowing the Use and Importation of Ayahuasca

Baby tuatara, a rare reptile, found on New Zealand mainland
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=baby-tuatara-a-rare-reptile-found-o-2009-03-19
The discovery of a one-month-old tuatara, a rare reptile descended from lizard-like dinosaurs, has conservationists in New Zealand celebrating.

Tibetan Exiles Fight Online Censorship One Troll at a Time
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/19/tibetan-exiles-fight.html
The aim of the project is bold: to change attitudes towards Tibet among ordinary Chinese in the hope that they will gradually shape Beijing?s policies...

abandoned place... behind my own wardrobe
http://community.livejournal.com/abandonedplaces/1684430.html?style=mine
A few years ago I was living in this really old place in the countryside, after I had moved in I noticed one day some light shining through a tiny hole at the back of my wardrobe. I was curious, and found that one of the panels at the back of the wardrobe could be unscrewed. So I unscrewed it and found a hidden room, complete with little beds, drawers and wardobes...

The swashbuckling rock rebels of Radio Caroline
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-swashbuckling-rock-rebels-of-radio-caroline-1647240.html
In the Sixties, only one station truly tuned into the spirit of the age. Radio Caroline sparked a pop revolution -- and now it's inspired a movie...

RACEFAIL09

(ED: Back when it'd only been going for a couple of weeks, I had a good long hard think about whether to actually post about it myself. I came to the decision that there's already enough conceited white guys attempting to be neutral and balanced and give everyone the wonderful benefit of their astounding insight, and that I'd be doing everyone a favour by just shutting the fuck up and listening to the people who don't get listened to.

Sadly, my attitude has not been shared by others. So, I continue to listen to the people who don't get listened to. For the most part, and if they seem to add notable points, they get linked here. But in line with standard linkfrenzy practice, you may expect that dissent and even FAIL will also occasionally get linked.

There is no attempt to be comprehensive. But sometimes a post which attempts this will be linked. )

O HAI RACEFAILZ: Notes on Reading an Internet Conflict
http://tablesaw.livejournal.com/404850.html
I've been following RaceFail for a while now, and I'm just now coming to grips with the fact that my personal concept of it has collapsed. RaceFail is a decentralized internet conflict, and thinking about it in terms of sides, timelines, or threads are all (sometimes necessary) simplifications. What it is is a hypertext, wherein everything refers to something or multiple things, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly.

RaceFail, Silence and Words
http://sparkymonster.livejournal.com/316365.html
There has some been discussion about people who aren't posting publicly. Is their silence assent? I don't necessarily think so.

from the department of redundancy department
http://throughadoor.livejournal.com/675442.html
Some Advice for White Fans Who Have Only Recently Encountered RaceFail.

Bingo, Mr. Scalzi. BING-O.
http://vito-excalibur.livejournal.com/213437.html
I must apologize to Mr. Scalzi! He listened to friends, changed his position, and apologized. I really didn't think this was something he would do. I'm very glad to be wrong... That being said: His discussion sucks balls.

Racists? In MY buddhists?
http://community.livejournal.com/stupid_free/1129977.html
In buddhists, singingyogi makes a post about racism and how he totally isn't racist and he's also not sexist. There's isn't a ton of wank (this is a Buddhist community, after all), but some of the content is just delicious.

about emmett till
http://community.livejournal.com/debunkingwhite/798538.html
One of the things that upset people the most about the Emmett Till murder (besides the fact that it was a murder)was that the killers gave a long and detailed magazine interview about it... and not much happened to them.

Australian anti-racism resources
http://community.livejournal.com/debunkingwhite/646449.html
...it would be nice to have some resources which deal with the specific issues of Australia, especially from the POV of australian POCs...

Activists use Wikipedia to bait blacklist regulator
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/NewsStory.aspx?story=98964
The Wikipedia page for the Australian Communications and Media Authority holds a link to a site on the authority's blacklist in a further test to the regulator's ability to censor the internet...

(Surprise! wikiquo editors have had the link removed and the page locked...--ED)

U.S. Retires 'Enemy Combatant,' Keeps Broad Right to Detain
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009031302371.html?hpid=topnews
The Obama administration yesterday jettisoned the Bush-era term "enemy combatant" but maintained a broad right to detain those who provide "substantial" assistance to al-Qaeda and its associates around the globe.

(New term: ObamaFAIL...--ED)

Protests greet Bush's first speech as ex-president
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090317/ts_nm/us_bush_canada
More than 100 protesters chanted "war criminal" and flung shoes in Calgary on Tuesday, angry that former U.S. President George W. Bush was in the Canadian city to give his first speech since leaving the White House.

How British cops are criminalising peaceful protest
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/17/how-british-cops-are.html
Last week Lib Dem MP David Howarth held a meeting in Westminster to present a highly disturbing and potentially explosive report on the way police in the UK are criminalising legitimate protest. The report... documents a concerted campaign by police to deter, smear, intimidate, harass, and criminalise UK citizens who did nothing more than attempt to exercise their right to peaceful protest...

Scenes from 'Scenes From A Recession'
http://catsidhe.livejournal.com/112929.html
Somehow it's always reasonable to hurt the poor as a way to make them shape up. Tougher bankruptcy laws, welfare reform, it's all good social engineering. But if you talk about hurting the rich to make them reform, it's terrible. Taking money away from a guy with plenty more to spare is worse then taking money away from a person with none left.

Marvel Now Promotes Gay Agenda With Wolverine Toy
http://christwire.org/2009/03/marvel-now-promotes-gay-agenda-with-wolverine-toy/
It looks like our homo supporting friends over at Marvel have created a new toy to encourage young boys to perform mouth to mouth in a non holy way to a blow up toys twiddle rompus!

(A fine example of iodine deficiency happening on the part of the "christwire" kooks over there...--ED)

Pope: Condoms Not Answer in AIDS Fight
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885695,00.html
Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday that the distribution of condoms is not the answer in the fight against AIDS in Africa. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

(Another example of iodine deficiency--Only Jesus can cure the AIDS! He's trying to make a metapoint of course. But he really does end up time and time again with a nasty case of FAIL all over his shoes. And he's quite frankly wrong... Abstinence has been repeated shown to be Full Of Fail--not just infection rates, but pregnancy rates amongst teenagers skyrocket when Abstinence is the promoted method of choice by authorities. Get over yourself, the Catholic Church. Admit your FAIL and move on...--ED)

Proposal at U.N. rights council to criminalize 'defamation of Islam'
http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1316871&ct=6829271
UN Watch, a human rights monitoring organization based in Geneva, denounced a new U.N. resolution circulated today by Islamic states that would define any questioning of Islamic dogma as a human rights violation, intimidate dissenting voices, and encourage the forced imposition of Sharia law.

Glenn Beck Recycles "X-Files" Plot to Spread Fear of Obama
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/15/105724/472/86/708765
FOX News personality, Glenn Beck, has broadcast a right-wing conspiracy theory about the Obama administration setting up 'concentration camps,' part of a secret plot to establish totalitarian rule. ...Beck's criticism ...seems to have been ripped directly from the plot of The X-Files... he has proclaimed repeatedly that ...he "cannot debunk" the existence of the camps, which are supposedly being set up under the auspice of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), but which Beck claims will be used soon for mass imprisonment of American citizens with right-leaning political views.

(Actually, the whole FEMA Concentration Camps thing is decades old, but it's usually cited the other way around: right-wing governmental arrests of left-leaning dissidents. And with more evidence, I must say...--ED)

Kid walks to soccer, neighbors call the cops
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/17/kid-walks-to-soccer.html
...the story of Lori from a small town in Mississippi, who sent her 10-year-old on foot to soccer practice, only to have him picked up by the cops, who reported "hundreds" of 911 calls by curtain-twitchers who were horrified at the thought of a 10-year-old walking a third of a mile to a local school.

Designing Booklife
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2009/02/22/designing-booklife/
...Jeff asked if I could put together some cover ideas for his forthcoming writer's guide... I agreed to this whilst busy with several other projects so the initial drafts were rather haphazard.

(The first design's better than the rest, in my opinon. In fact, the last design, which they went with, was I thought the worst!...--ED)

Cat Colonies
http://docbrite.livejournal.com/671830.html
...evidence gained through lab and shelter studies showing that cats who live in large colonies may have significantly fewer emotional/behavior problems than cats who live alone with their human, and fewer catfights than cats who live with their human and just one or two other cats, especially if the two or three cats weren't raised together. ... in nature there is no such thing as a "wolf pack"; this is apparently a longtime misconception based on observation of zoo and shelter wolves forced into unnatural proximity, which caused them to fight, eventually establish an "alpha" wolf, and form a pack. In the wild, they live in small family units...

(Brilliant! More evidence I need a bunch of cats!...--ED)

The Truth about the Twisty Kats
http://www.karmafarms.com/twisty.htm
Pets are NOT created by natural selection; they are created through selective breeding. How long do you think a chihuahua or a Munchkin would make it in the wild? Virtually ALL English bulldogs are born by c-section because their jaws are too huge to pass through the birth canal. Just take a long look at our pet breeds today and find even ONE developed by a geneticist to improve its survivability in the wild.

After years in eclipse, fresh L0phtCrack version released
http://www.betanews.com/article/After-years-in-eclipse-fresh-L0phtCrack-version-released/1237313931
The fabled hacker tool ran aground on Symantec's lawyers.

10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/03/10-annoying-hab.html
Everyone has annoying habits, and a sizable part of every successful marriage is learning to live with those things each other does that annoy you. I think it's safe to say, too, that geeks have some habits that we think are awesome, but that non-geeks find a little...less awesome.

(It's all true. Apart from the 'annoying' bit...--ED)

Gotham Descends Into Chaos in First Glimpse of Batman: Battle for the Cowl
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/02/dc-comics-float.html
What does Gotham City do when Batman disappears? It falls apart -- and quite easily, it seems.

(What a load of old trout... get over yourselves, DC.--ED)

An Online Bento Evolution
http://www.aibento.net/2009/02/an-online-bento-evolution/
...besides presenting to you some of my most popular lunches, here are the most influential bento sites that brought me to where I am today...

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable
http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html
Scientists call it the Naked Photo Test ...say a photo turns up of you nakedly doing something that would shame you and your family for generations. Bestiality, perhaps. Ask yourself how many people in your life you would trust with that photo. If you're like the rest of us, you probably have at most two. Even more depressing, studies show that about one out of four people have no one they can confide in.

(Darn you, Cracked! Darn you to Heck!...--ED)

Dolichocephaloids
http://www.dappercadaver.com/blog/2009/03/02/monster-mondays-dolichocephaloids/
Todays Monster Monday from Dapper Cadaver travels down the spine of the Americas to Peru, circa 2000 years ago for a kind of person bizarre and real, the Dolichocephaloids or Peruvian Coneheads... What we do know about the Dolichocephaloids is limited, what we believe about them is vast, and what we don?t know about them is enormous.

Why Gandalf Never Married: 1985 talk by Terry Pratchett
http://www.ansible.co.uk/misc/tpspeech.html
I'd better say at the start that I don't actually believe in magic any more than I believe in astrology, because I'm a Taurean and we don't go in for all that weirdo occult stuff...

(Interesting chat from when he was working on Light Fantastic, and obviously thinking about Equal Rites...--ED)

Link to a specific part of a YouTube video
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/link-to-youtube-minute-second/
If you want to link to a specific part of a video on YouTube, you can. For example... Notice the "#t=31m08s" on the end of the url? That link will take you 31 minutes and 8 seconds into that video... Deep-linking to a specific part of a YouTube video is really easy, so I wanted give a short example to tell how to link to a certain minute and second of a video.

Younger Self
http://beatonna.livejournal.com/85795.html
The younger self comics were the first comics I started to make, before the website started and before history comics etc.

and Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/al_gore_places_infant_son_in
Al Gore--or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al--placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity's hubristic folly... In the final moments before the Earth's destruction, Gore expressed hope that his son would one day grow up to carry on his mission by fighting for truth, justice, and the American way elsewhere in the universe, using his Earth-given superpowers to become a champion of the downtrodden and a reducer of carbon emissions across the galaxy.

Huntingdon Life Sciences Exposed
http://www.shac.net/HLS/exposed.html
In the past few years HLS have been infiltrated and exposed time and time again by journalists, animal rights campaigners and members of the public... Every single time vicious animal cruelty, fraud, incompetence and rule breaking has been exposed on a large scale. HLS workers have been caught on camera punching animals in the face and falsifying test data, they have been caught dealing illegal substances on company premises and workers have been drunk at work and killing animals due to neglect.

(HLS must have negatives of the British Royal Family performing "The Aristocrats" to have gotten away with so much, for so very, very long...--ED)

Australia secretly censors Wikileaks press release and Danish Internet censorship list
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Australia_secretly_censors_Wikileaks_press_release_and_Danish_Internet_censorship_list%2C_16_Mar_2009
The first rule of censorship is that you can not talk about censorship....

ACMA takes aim at Whirlpool, supplier
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1161107#r4
IN an unprecedented move, Australia?s communications regulator has threatened to fine a company up to $11,000 a day for indirectly leaking part of its top-secret list of banned internet web pages.

Media Watch 'dangerous'
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20090317-Media-Watch-Dangerous-and-simplistic.html
The ABC Media Watch program has been "dangerous and simplistic" in its criticism of News Limited CEO John Hartigan in the wake of the Pauline Hanson photograph affair, according to News Limited's Director of Corporate Affairs, Greg Baxter.

(Is that True, or was your News Limited?...--ED)

Obama Continues Bush-Era Extremism on Liberties, Secrecy
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/15/obama-continues-bush.html
The Obama administration has undone a few of the Bush administration's worst policies, true. Yet when it comes to Obama's increasingly clear disdain for some core civil liberties and his administration's penchant for secrecy despite cheerful rhetoric to the contrary, Salon's Glenn Greenwald arrives at a dismal -- but sadly, logical -- conclusion...

The latest banking scam
http://jlassen.livejournal.com/677130.html
Unemployment benefits delivered by "debit card" which then has a ton of hidden fees...

Atheists call for 'debaptism'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7941817.stm
Mr Hunt has become the pioneer in a rejuvenated campaign for a way of cancelling baptisms given to children too young to decide for themselves whether they wanted this formal initiation into Christianity. However, baptism is proving a difficult thing to undo. ... In the face of resistance from the Church, the society has come up with a document of its own. The "Certificate of Debaptism" has a deliberately home-made look, with its mock-official decoration and quasi-official language.

Debaptise Yourself!
http://www.secularism.org.uk/debaptism.html
Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had! Our hugely popular Certificate of Debaptism (over 100,000 downloads!) is now available to buy online. Get your very own certificate, printed on quality parchment paper. Perfect for framing and 100% unofficial!

(The following is worth reposting...--ED)

Atheists bond during 'debaptism'
http://tinyurl.com/67u3hr
Belief in God symbolically evaporated when more than a hundred atheists were "de-baptized" with a blow dryer yesterday...

Raped and killed for being a lesbian: South Africa ignores 'corrective' attacks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/12/eudy-simelane-corrective-rape-south-africa
Her brutal murder took place last April, and since then a tide of violence against lesbian women in South Africa has continued to rise. Human rights campaigners say it is characterised by what they call "corrective rape" committed by men behind the guise of trying to "cure" lesbian women of their sexual orientation.

Intelligent Design Sort
http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/intelligentdesignsort.html
Intelligent design sort is a sorting algorithm based on the theory of intelligent design.

'Enjoy life while you can'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
Climate science maverick James Lovelock believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam. So what would he do?

Gary Vaynerchuck Can't Help You
http://sethsimonds.com/gary-vaynerchuck-cant-help-you/
There are cries of delight coming from Austin, Texas, about how inspirational and noteworthy Gary Vaynerchuck?s talk was... Six months from now, 90% of you will have settled back into your dead end jobs and mundane lives. You will have almost entirely forgotten the thrill you got from hearing the fast-talking Belarusian swear on stage. Gary Vaynerchuck cannot help you bring about real changes in your life. Why? Because real change starts with a recognition of deficiency and a no-holds-barred desire to improve.

The Walking Wounded
http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2007/03/the_walking_wou.html
Korean media are increasingly reporting on people who want to kill themselves finding others with similar desires by the Internet and arranging group suicides -- meeting in motels or parks and drinking poison together.

Liberia's Blackboard Blogger
http://renegadefuturist.com/archives/2009/03/15/liberia%E2%80%99s-blackboard-blogger/
Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger. He take runs the "Daily News", a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn?t afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand. Alfred serves as a reminder to the rest of us, that simple is often better, just because it works.

50 Reasons No One Wants to Publish Your First Book
http://www.bookgasm.com/whatnot/50-reasons-no-one-wants-to-publish-your-first-book/
2. There's this thing called punctuation. You might want to look into it.

(Reason 51: it will cost someone thousands of dollars to publish your book, and it's more of a gamble than you think that any copies will ever sell...--ED)

Traditional Publishers Crash (and Burn at) SXSW
http://medialoper.com/hot-topics/print/traditional-publishers-crash-and-burn-at-sxsw/
Without warning the panel discussion was turned into an impromptu focus group. A twist that was met alternately with skepticism, amusement, and open hostility.

(I find it hard to find this to be anything but Blaming the Victim...--ED)

The New Book Banning
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0212wo.html
...under a law Congress passed last year ...children's books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. ...ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere...

Save The Books
http://www.nickharkaway.com/2009/03/save-the-books-uscpsia/
Forget the eBook - the biggest threat to America?s literary heritage right now is the CPSIA. ...the legislation passed last year in the aftermath of the lead-paint-in-Chinese-toys scare. ...the CPSIA's net has caught books printed pre-1985 which may have lead in their inks and paints...

History is debunked
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/history-is-debunked-1645388.html
So Robin Hood didn't just rob the rich to give to the poor; he robbed poor monks as well. Friar Tuck would be dismayed at yesterday's revelation that a 550-year-old Latin note hidden in the library at Eton debunks the myth of the men in green.

(Bollocks. The Church of the time was no friend of the poor...--ED)

FizzBin - The Technical Support Secret Handshake
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/FizzBinTheTechnicalSupportSecretHandshake.aspx
We need a word that says "I know tech" when you're on the phone with tech support, you'd just say "Fizzbin" and they'd know.

Vampires a Mathematical Impossibility, Scientist Says
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/061025_vampire_debunk.html
A researcher has come up with some simple math that sucks the life out of the vampire myth, proving that these highly popular creatures can't exist.

(Next up: Research reveals that Santa can't possibly visit every house in the world on Xmas Eve...ED)

24 Ridiculously Expensive Everyday Items
http://coolmaterial.com/cool-list/24-ridiculously-expensive-everyday-items/
If you?ve ever wondered what it would be like to have a million dollars you probably only thought about the cars, the yachts and the bling, and overlooked the details like what kind of toilet seat or fancy tennis ball cans you?d use. We tracked down 24 of the most ridiculously expensive everyday items you could blow your wad on.

Ice Cream Man
http://www.icecreamman.com/about
Ice Cream Man's mission is to travel the country, eventually the world, giving away FREE ice cream.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'
http://tinyurl.com/asmvrs
...last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an "executive assassination ring."

The Dictatorship
http://gmskarka.livejournal.com/477382.html
Over the last eight years, we had a system in place where the American people believed that our laws were governed by the Constitution, and enacted by Congress. The truth, however, was that the Bush administration secretly vested itself with the power to ignore those public laws, to declare them invalid. The above memos, which were active until October of 2008 (and in a few cases early January of this year), set forth a series of secret laws that vested absolute power in the President.

Torture Commission Hearing Now Under Way
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/4/43757/68969/337/704438
The purpose? To determine whether a commission should be established to look into torture and related matters known or alleged to have occurred during the Cheney-Bush administration.

Slain US Nazi hated Obama, had parts for 'dirty bomb'
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Slain_white_supremacist_had_components_for_0309.html
Trust fund millionaire James G. Cummings, an American Nazi sympathizer from Maine who was slain by his wife Amber in December, allegedly had the radioactive components necessary to construct a "dirty bomb," a newly released threat analysis report states. The man, allegedly furious over the election of President Obama, purchased depleted uranium over the Internet from an American company.

How to stop the drug wars
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13237193
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution

Obama administration: releasing details of secret copyright treaty endangers "national security"
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/13/obama-administraion.html
The White House is refusing to release documents about the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a super-maximal copyright treaty that a bunch of rich countries are negotiating behind closed doors to escape the activists who've started to report on their shenanigans at the UN's World Intellectual Property Organisation. Incredibly, the Obama administration claims that disclosing the details of this secret copyright law would endanger "national security."

Warner Music attacks babies
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/13/warner-music-attacks-1.html
Warner Music's war on fair use has sunk to new lows, with the company sending takedown notices to YouTube over videos in which babies and toddlers interact with music in adorable ways...

Conan copyright trolls censor fan-readings of public domain stories
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/conan-copyright-trol.html
Broken Sea Audio, a nifty non-profit audiodrama troupe has been threatened with litigation if they continue to adapt 'public domain' stories that were written by the late Robert E. Howard...

How Theresa Hatt Caused The Financial Crisis
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/how_theresa_hatt_caused_the_financial_crisis.php
Last month, Theresa Hatt died at 52, after a brief struggle with cancer. ...shortly after her death, Hatt's son, Paul Kelleher, began the sad task of calling his mother's creditors, to inform them of her passing. The calls were uneventful, if depressing, until Kelleher got to Bank of America... When pressed, ...the estates rep ...continuing to suggest that cases like his mothers had played a role in the financial crisis... The rep's apparent intention, as Kelleher described it, was to mislead him into believing that he was obligated -- at first legally, then, failing that, morally -- to cover his mother's debt...

Economists call for patent and copyright abolition
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/11/economists-call-for.html
Two economists at Washington University in St Louis have published a paper arguing that copyright and patent are a net drag on the economy and should be abolished.

Randians and their sense of self importance....
http://jlassen.livejournal.com/676336.html
The sense of entitlement coming from this CEO and all around hot shit wall street captain who drove his company into an iceberg is... well... to be expected. These are the people who BELIEVE in a bunch of Randian fariy tales... These people ARE John Galt. Spoiled, self-important pricks who believe that the entire world will collapse without their masterful presence in it. How DARE some government CLERK make decisions that impact HIS COMPANY?! If your such a Randian fucking hero, Jimmy, maybe you shouldn't be relaying on THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO GIVE YOU A LOAN when NO-ONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE FREE MARKET was willing to do so.

Opportunities in the Digital Arena for Independent Bookstores: An Action Plan for the American Booksellers Association
http://news.bookweb.org/6662.html
While there is no guarantee that digital content will have the impact that some are predicting, and while we should not let the issue derail us from other important work we must do, it is clear that this is something that requires serious study and attention now.

On Campus, Vampires Are Besting the Beats
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/05/AR2009030501541.html
...on today's college campuses, you're more likely to hear a werewolf howl than Allen Ginsberg, and Nin's transgressive sexuality has been replaced by the fervent chastity of Bella Swan, the teenage heroine of Stephenie Meyer's modern gothic "Twilight" series. It's as though somebody stole Abbie Hoffman's book -- and a whole generation of radical lit along with it.

RaceFail 09
http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=RaceFail_09
...a term used to refer to an extended discussion of race and racism in science fiction books, culture, fandom, and criticism that began in January 2009. It has been called by many other names, including the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom 3 (or 2), and RaceFail 9000. (Ed. note: A more positive name could highlight the community strength and backup shown... but so far it's mostly been described as "fail".)

(A less confronting term than "racism" could be a more effective way of highlighting the difference between reactionary racists and fellow-travelling progressives, as well... yes, I'm stirring--RealED)

A themed summary of RaceFail '09 in large friendly letters for those who think race discussions are hard
http://logophilos.net/blather/?p=1162
For the benefit of white people only just discovering "Racefail '09", or what was originally called "Writing The Other/Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM '09", I am going to attempt to break it down into small bits for you...

Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/12/mary-ann-mohanraj-gets-you-up-to-speed-part-i/
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/13/mary-anne-mohanraj-gets-you-up-to-speed-part-ii/

That was so racist I can't even be mad...no wait I can
http://sparkymonster.livejournal.com/316768.html
Dave Chappelle: "A lot of black people can relate to this. Have you ever had something happen that was so racist, you didn't even get mad? You were just like 'God damn, that was racist!' I mean it was so blatant you were like 'wow...' Like it didn't even happen to you. It was a fucking movie. Like you were watching 'Mississippi Burning.'"

"comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable" is not just a bumper sticker for me
http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/317851.html
What I Have Learned Through These Conversations About Race

How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism (A Guide For White People)
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/12/02/how-not-to-be-insane-when-accused-of-racism/
It?s true - a lot of white people, hell, most white people turn ten different shades of pissed off and shoot steam out their ears if someone suggests they?ve said something racist. And if you make a point of talking about race and racism, sooner or later someone will accuse you of being racist, fairly or unfairly.

(What works well is to keep in mind that if you're non-white and dealing with racism, if you go insane--as you prolly have more cause to do--they'll shoot you eight times in the head at point-blank range... very leveling, that--ED)

what is privilege?
http://community.livejournal.com/debunkingwhite/794697.html
because i can see we're about to need this.

(in case you've not read it, the following is an expansion...--ED)

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
http://mmcisaac.faculty.asu.edu/emc598ge/Unpacking.html
"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"

Lesbian Nation
http://www.cultureghost.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=114
In the late nineteen-seventies, several thousand women in North America decided not to concern themselves with equal pay for equal work, or getting their husbands to do the dishes. Why capitulate, why compromise when you could separate, live in a world of your own invention. The lesbian separatists of a generation ago created a shadow society devoted to living in an alternate, penisless reality...

(I hope they're still out there...--ED)

Slumdog Millionaire star falls ill
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/4902847/Slumdog-Millionaire-star-falls-ill.html
Slumdog Millionaire child star Azharuddin Ismail has fallen ill as fears grow about the psychological state of the two young Indian actors.

Doodling keeps your mind sharp: Study
http://www.canada.com/Technology/Doodling+keeps+your+mind+sharp+Study/1335782/story.html
...while most people think doodling is a sign of a wandering mind, new research suggests it improves our concentration when we're bored. People asked to do a doodling task while listening to a dull, monotonous phone message recalled 29 per cent more information on a surprise memory test than non-doodlers...

The Bet
http://jophan.org/mimosa/m12/white.htm
This is a story about how I won -- and lost -- a bet. The bet was with Harlan Ellison, and it was his idea. He was wrong and I was right, and in the end it didn't matter.

(Ellison sure gets away with a lot of shit...--ED)

Let's drop the charade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/mar/02/religion-atheism
It's right we come to terms with the fact that free will, just like the sense of a higher power, is an illusion

(Horseshit. Free will is as much an illusion as the Number 3...--ED)

Philosophy?s great experiment
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10638
A dynamic new school of thought is emerging that wants to kick down the walls of recent philosophy and place experimentation back at its centre. It has a name to delight an advertising executive: x-phi. It has blogs and books devoted to it, and boasts an expanding body of researchers in elite universities. It even has an icon: an armchair in flames. If philosophy ever can be, x-phi is trendy. But, increasingly, it is also attracting hostility...

(Modern Philosophy seems increasingly to me to be more akin to Sophophilic Rape... One wonders if the marriage of Sophophilia and Neuroscience will be a good or a bad thing...--ED)

Psychological characteristics of vicious dog owners
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/03/psychological_charac.html
An article on the psychological characteristic of vicious dog owners has just appeared online in the compelling academic publication, The Journal of Forensic Sciences, finding that those who who own dangerous dogs are more likely to endorse antisocial and psychopathic character traits and more likely to report criminal behaviour...

Stone the crows! Exploding toad case solved
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/stone-the-crows-exploding-toad-case-solved-489894.html
After weeks of flummoxing scientists, Germany's great exploding toads mystery has been solved. They were gruesomely murdered by crows with a taste for foie gras...

Second Genesis: Life, but not as we know it
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126990.100-second-genesis-a-new-start-for-life-on-earth.html
...a no-less profound search is on for a "shadow biosphere" - life forms that are unrelated to the life we know because they are descendants of an independent origin of life. We know for sure that life got going on Earth once, so why couldn't it have happened twice? Many scientists argue that there is no reason why a second genesis might not have taken place, and no reason why its descendants should not still be living among us.

(Ah, the assumption that we were the first...--ED)

Why are orang-utans so like us?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126981.500-why-are-orangutans-so-like-us.html
In 2009, revisiting the red ape is a useful reminder that not everything to do with morphology can be attributed to the closeness of a genetic relationship. We can evolve likenesses even to our more distant cousins if both sets of ancestors faced similar problems.

Zoo chimp 'planned' stone attacks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7928996.stm
A male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on zoo visitors, according to researchers...the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later use as missiles. Further, the chimp learned to recognise how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to fashion further projectiles.

Man who lost face in '05 mauling knows hell of new chimpanzee victim
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/02/22/2009-02-22_man_who_lost_face_in_05_mauling_knows_he.html
Davis survived a horrific chimpanzee attack at a California wildlife rescue center in March 2005 - but not before his nose and mouth were ripped off, an eye was gouged out, his left foot was mangled and most of his fingers and buttocks were devoured.

How Strong Is a Chimpanzee?
http://www.slate.com/id/2212232/
The bone-crushing power of the apes has been greatly exaggerated. Repeated tests in the 1960s confirmed this basic picture. A chimpanzee had, pound for pound, as much as twice the strength of a human...

(Yup. They're "only" twice as strong...--ED)

A Change Of Pace
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/02/a-change-of-pace.html
Yesterday, the House passed the Captive Primate Safety Act, which would make it illegal to "import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce" any nonhuman primate. (Humans are covered by the 13th Amendment.) ...to summarize: owning nonhuman primates as pets is bad for the owner, really bad for the primate, and bad for public health. Bad, bad, bad.

A model of biblical proportions:
http://tinyurl.com/balpqv
man spends 30 years creating a model of Herod's Temple

Catalog of Exoplanets
http://www.planetary.org/exoplanets/
Our catalog is designed with resources for every level of study whether you are a professional, amateur, teacher, student, or simply want to find out what the buzz is about the latest exoplanet discovery.

What Cruel Teeth You?ve Got: The Path Impressions
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/03/11/what-cruel-teeth-youve-got-the-path-impressions/
...it's a unique game, almost stretching the use of the word "game" to describe it as such, in which you take one of six Little Red Riding Hoods through the woods, on her journey to Grandmother's house. However, simply completing this task is the shortest route the the game's ending - indeed, if anything, finishing the game is really the last thing you want to do...

The God Who Was Lost!
http://desicritics.org/2009/03/03/010024.php
Buddhism and I have a strange relationship... The very idea of somebody actually claiming that it took orientalists to actually study and bring forth knowledge of the orient is shocking to them. Hence this book is not reviewed to that extent nor referred to that much... Now returning to the book/ It is very good. It talks about how these white men struggled to piece together this giant multi-dimensional mystery...

The Daft Punk's Console
http://www.najle.com/idaft/
Work it, make it, do it.

A Parable
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd594.html
Years ago a railway company was erected and one of its directors -- probably the commercial bloke -- discovered that the initial investments could be reduced significantly if only fifty percent of the cars would be equipped with a toilet, and, therefore, so was decided.

(This story told me that I am a Mathematician, not a Programmer...--ED)

25 Biggest Blunders in Wikipedia History
http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/02/10/25-biggest-blunders-in-wikipedia-history/
Wikipedia can be a great site when you need a quick reference on history, pop culture or even politics. But its reputation as an authoritative research resource is doubted by professors and other experts who deter students from quoting Wikipedia in their papers. One reason is that a lot of the information on Wikipedia is either incomplete or downright false. Because anyone can technically edit or contribute to Wikipedia, the site is vulnerable to hackers and vandalism. Sometimes, the blunders are serious libel cases which result in lawsuits; and sometimes, they?re just funny.

A Guide to Snowflakes
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/class/class.htm

(Check out all the beautiful and unique ones!...--ED)

DVD Habits Reveal Your Character
http://www.livescience.com/culture/090309-dvd-habits.html
If you buy a movie on a DVD instead of renting it, you probably have a higher level of education, value your independence, have a greater interest in the cinema in general, and are a more selective consumer.

(Or maybe you're just a horder, like me...--ED)

The 10 Most Amazing Unreleased Things Ever Made
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/08/the_10_most_amazing_unreleased_things_ever_made.php
...there are a lot of dead dreams out there, moldering in warehouses, vaults, and half-corrupted hard drives. Most of them probably wouldn?t have a chance at greatness, but a few are so intriguing that we can?t help but take up their causes. And that?s what we?ll do here, whether the cause is for an Orson Welles movie or a Nintendo game about a pro-wrestling ape...

Forensic Pathology Notes, and How to Tell if Someone is a Vampire
http://tinyurl.com/b8undt
Hopefully this is self-explanatory. It was a required lecture, and it was a verrrry horrible day for me. So I thought I?d share my notes with everyone.

Veggie Cat Food? Why Not All Cats Need Meat
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=veggie-cat-food
Some tips (and warnings) for considering switching your cat to a vegetarian diet

The 25 Most Inappropriate Things An Objectivist Can Say During Sex
http://ellis14.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/the-25-most-inappropriate-things-an-objectivist-can-say-during-sex/

and 237 Reasons to Have Sex
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/08/01/237-reasons-to-have-sex/

(...if you need a list, you're doing it wrong... wanna make out? ;}P> --ED)

FBI Arrests 4 Activists as "Terrorists" for Chalking Slogans, Leafleting and Protesting
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/2009/02/22/aeta-arrests/
It was only a matter of time. Since the passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a sweeping new law labeling animal rights activists as "terrorists," corporations and industry groups have been pushing the federal government to use their new powers... On February 19th and 20th, the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI arrested four animal rights activists as "terrorists"...

Environmentalist Sentenced to 21 Years as a "Terrorist"; Violent Racists Receive Half That
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/2009/02/05/marie-mason-sentenced/
The government made a concerted effort to demonize not just the defendant, but anyone who supports the defendant by attending a public court proceeding... the FBI is more concerned about environmental activists than presidential assassination attempts...

Terrorist group claims responsibility for loss of your keys
http://newsbiscuit.com/article/terrorist-group-claim-responsibility-for-loss-of-your-keys-413
A moderate terrorist group contacted several national newspapers yesterday and claimed responsibility for the recent inconvenience when you were unable to locate your house keys...

Breaking Down The Sense Of Impenetrability
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/breaking-down-sense-of-impenetrability.html
The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality. When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgment that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality...

(Remember, THIS IS ALSO CHILDREN this was happening to... if you support the Bush War On Terror, this is what you support...--ED)

Gates: Media photos of war dead need families' OK
http://theleafchronicle.com/article/20090226/NEWS01/90226020
Families of America's war dead will decide whether the flag-draped caskets of their loved ones can be photographed by news organizations when the fallen return to U.S. soil... The new policy reverses a ban put in place in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush. Some critics contended the government was trying to hide the human cost of war.

Santorum At CPAC: 'Absolutely We Hope That' Obama Fails, 'I Believe His Policies Will Fail'
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/28/santorum-cpac-obama/
Just before President Obama was inaugurated, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh declared, "I hope he fails." Though some Republicans have distanced themselves from Limbaugh?s sentiment, conservatives at CPAC have fully embraced it.

(Well, fair's fair I guess. I hoped Bush would fail in his quest to Imperialize the rest of the world and seize control of its resources. They're allowed to hope Obama will fail in his quest to make the world a more peaceful, prosperous and safe place, and repair the damage that that cocaine-snorting binge-drinking abusive bastard Bush did...--ED)

Jindal Admits Katrina Story Was False
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/jindal_admits_katrina_story_was_false.php
Remember that story GOP wunderkind Bobby Jindal told in his big speech Tuesday night -- about how during Katrina, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a local sheriff who was battling government red tape to try to rescue stranded victims? Turns out it wasn't actually, you know, true.

Help the police
http://www.metafilter.com/79396/Help-the-police
"Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations."

Video shows King Co. deputy kicking teen girl
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iHWVrwkBL12ififWPtrZvrkj5JOQD96KH50G0
A King County sheriff's deputy kicks a 15-year-old girl, slams her to the floor of a jail cell, strikes her and pulls her hair in violence captured on videotape. Prosecutors released the surveillance video in Friday in the assault case against Deputy Paul Schene, who is accused of using excessive force on the girl.

(I bet Schene wishes he was serving on Palm Island...--ED)

Antisocial Personality Disorder
http://karisable.com/crserial.htm
A serial killers suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder and appear normal or charming, sometimes referred to as the "mask of sanity." Sometimes there is a sexual element to the murders and they may have a commonality such as gender, occupation, appearances, race, etc... According to an FBI Behavioral Unit study 85% of the world's serial killers are in America. At any given time 20 - 50 unidentified active serial killers are at work...

Young. Gay. Proud. Murdered: the hairdresser battered to death
http://tinyurl.com/cbg6ye
Michael Causer, an 18-year-old hairdresser, was battered to death while he slept upstairs at a party. But the acquittal of a teenager accused of his homophobic murder has sparked a campaign in Liverpool for justice

Microsoft admits to, defends banning Lesbian Xbox Live user
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/02/microsoft-admits-to-defends-banning-lesbian-xbox-live-user.ars
Xbox Live isn't known for the social graces of its users, and one gamer was harassed for outing herself as a lesbian... with Microsoft then banning her account. The company tells Ars that gay or straight, discussion of your sexual orientation in your profile is verboten, but "don't ask, don't tell" doesn't work too well.

'Radioactive' college chief on porn charges missing
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/radioactive-paedophile-on-the-run-1633851.html
A college principal, who may be a danger to others after receiving intensive radiation treatment, is believed to be on the run in Ireland after failing to appear in Britain on child pornography charges. A court in London was told that Thomas Leopold, 42, could harm anyone he comes into contact with because he was given large doses of radiation for a thyroid condition and his levels of radioactivity could be dangerous to others.

ATF Agents Closing In On Nation's Most Notorious Cigarette Bummer
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/atf_agents_closing_in_on_nations
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives announced Tuesday that the agency has intensified its manhunt for an individual suspected of bumming more than 75,000 cigarettes nationwide...

Viagra-fuelled orgy ends in death
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2009/02/26/8544156-bang.html
Sergey Tuganov made a $4,300 bet with two women that he could last a 12 hour sex marathon with them both. The mechanic swallowed dozens of Viagra pills in the course of the session to ensure he would win.

New Studies Link Cancer To Pot And... Nothing, Really To Ecstasy
http://io9.com/5151690/new-studies-link-cancer-to-pot-and-nothing-really-to-ecstasy
It's good news/bad news when it comes to recreational drug news. New studies show that the long-term effects of Ecstasy aren't as bad as suspected... but smoking pot might lead to testicular cancer.

Cellphones tap wisdom of the crowds
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126956.600-cellphones-tap-wisdom-of-the-crowds.html
DAVID, a Masai herdsman from Kisumu in Kenya, answers a call on his cellphone. After listening to the message, he repeats a short phrase in his Masai dialect. He then listens to another short message, and repeats the new phrase. After 30 minutes, he ends the call, having earned enough for a week's worth of personal cellphone airtime.

How boobonomics explains the world
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/janice_turner/article3085180.ece
Let's assume a pretty girl, who has been snapped in her bikini for a local newspaper, seeks a big-time career. Her agent phones a men's magazine and proposes for a given sum, say £3,000, that she pose in lingerie...

Chinese probe crashes into moon
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7917957.stm
A Chinese lunar probe has crashed into the moon in what Beijing has called a controlled collision.

MRO Goes Into Safe Mode
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/02/27/mro-goes-into-safe-mode/
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter unexpectedly rebooted its computer Monday morning, Feb. 23, and put itself into a limited-activity mode, an automated safety response...

Tibetan monk 'shot' while on fire
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7916544.stm
A Tibetan monk has been shot after setting fire to himself during a protest at Beijing's rule, reports say.

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1157784/Do-mysterious-stones-mark-site-Garden-Eden.html
...the parallels with our own era are stark. As we contemplate a new age of ecological turbulence, maybe the silent, sombre, 12,000-year-old stones of Gobekli Tepe are trying to speak to us, to warn us, as they stare across the first Eden we destroyed.

Princeton physicist tells Congress global warming fears are 'mistaken'
http://tinyurl.com/chn8wx
Award-winning physicist Dr. Will Happer coined the phrase "CO2 famine" and branded claims about man-made global warming as "mistaken" today at a Congressional hearing.

George Will and the Global Cooling Scare
http://tinyurl.com/dfm6kw
George Will is entitled to his own opinions. He is not entitled to his own facts. This morning's Albuquerque Journal published a column by Will in which he repeats a canard that has been a common theme in the political debate over climate change - that today's alarm over global warming should not be trusted because scientists in the 1970s predicted a looming ice age. What follows is a string of quotes, that, if you follow them back to their original sources, do not support his thesis...

Digital politics is different
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7914828.stm
In November 1988 the New Statesman, published a special edition of the magazine asking those concerned with the health of British democracy to stand up and be counted. The proposal ...called 'Charter 88', called for a new constitutional settlement, one which would guarantee civil liberties and the rule of law. Shortly afterwards 348 people paid for and signed an advert in the Guardian newspaper asking people to offer support, and a year later an organisation called Charter 88 was founded... The Charter was eventually signed by over 85,000 people... It would be fascinating to trace the history of this important movement, and perhaps watch some of the barnstorming speeches that took place at its many public meetings over the years, but there seem to be no recordings and few accessible records of what happened in the early days....

The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox
http://www.slate.com/id/2188684/pagenum/all/
The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable "strong bidders." Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them--and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

More Than Just A Whore: Sex Work, Firefly and Audience Engagement
http://whoretoculture.net/2009/02/21/more-than-just-a-whore-sex-work-firefly-and-audience-engagement/
Ultimately, Firefly is not aware or critical enough of the common social consciousness around sex work to fully deconstruct it; instead it engages with established misperceptions and subtly promotes them. It is not the worst depiction of sex work in media today; but it is far from ideal.

Sita Sings the Blues to air in full on PBS
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/23/sita-sings-the-blues.html
Nina Paley's brilliant -- and troubled -- animated short "Sita Sings the Blues" will air on PBS. This is the critically acclaimed short film that blends Hindu traditional stories with jazz-era music, whose distribution has been stopped by an unforeseen copyright claim on some of the 1920s music that is integral to the film.

Of Cultural Appropriation and White Feminists
http://zooeylive.blogspot.com/2006/12/of-cultural-appropriation-and-white.html
I first came across Nina Paley?s work in my "Living Epics of India" class. All the white students in the class were really enthusiastic and excited about her. So I decided I should give it a try too. ...clearly Ramayana for Paley became a personal artifact... Paley claims to have re-worked the Ramayana from "Sita's point of view"... Please remember that we do not need a clueless white woman like you to prove the relevance of our literary works or to provide their feminist re-interpretations. We have already accomplished those tasks ourselves.

Its Called Cultural Appropriation, FOOL!!
http://thefreeslave.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/its-called-cultural-appropriation-fool/
...these people who act as if culture appropriation is their birthright (which it has been) aren?t really interested in OUR healing. They aren?t concerned about the damage and violence done us by cultural appropriation...

Taking the Slum Out of ?Slumdog?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21srivastava.html
IT does not take much to galvanize protest against a movie in India, but few thought the word "slumdog" would cause so much anger...

13 Unsolved scientific puzzles
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article5797028.ece
Author Michael Books has investigated some of the most puzzling anomalies of modern science, those intractrable problems that refuse to conform to the theories. Here he counts down the 13 strangest...

How to spot a hidden religious agenda [Gcache]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126975.800-how-to-spot-a-hidden-religious-agenda.html
I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda...

(ONOZ! Reds Creationists under the Beds!!!...--ED)

That Voodoo That Scientists Do
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2009/02/that_voodoo_that_scientists_do.php
When findings are debated online, as with a yet to be released paper that calls out the field of social neuroscience, who wins?

Sir David Attenborough and the Yeti
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/attenborough-yeti/
Yeti evidence is 'convincing' says wildlife expert Sir David Attenborough

What do you think of these?
http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-do-you-think-of-these.html
We received these pictures late last night. They were apparently taken in remote forest in Northern California. I am not going to endorse them or otherwise, and I am certainly not going to tag them as "the real deal". However, they are interesting.

Revisiting categories of bigfoot belief
http://blogsquatcher.blogspot.com/2009/01/revisiting-categories-of-bigfoot-belief.html

Yowies -- Fact or Fiction?
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/opit.htm
If the eastern puma can survive, as an almost invisible entity in such a heavily populated area as the eastern portion of North America, how much easier is it for cryptic species to survive undetected in less heavily populated localities. In Australia, several carnivorous species, the mainland Thylacine, Tasmanian tiger, feral pumas and black panthers, the Yowie and the Junjadee are all regularly reported. When biologists point out that Thylacines were easily trapped and hunted in the early part of this century and so could not possibly have changed their behavior to become cryptic, it is possible to understand that the cryptic members of the population always avoided the hunters and continue to do so now.

Great Ape Spotted In Woods Near Macclenny
http://www.news4jax.com/news/14596253/detail.html
Official Uses Box Of Donuts In Attempt To Lure Ape From Tree

Bigfoot lives!
http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/02/11/cryptozoology/print.html
Don't laugh. The quixotic quest for beasts of lore is not far from what drives zoologists to find new and incredibly rare creatures today.

Sheldrake Indicted for 'Crimes Against Reason'
http://www.dailygrail.com/news/sheldrake-accused-of-crimes-against-reason
...Science is our best method for exploring what we do not understand. But for some people science has become a religion. They need authority and certainty, and want to believe that the fundamental answers are already known. Scientific fundamentalism serves deep emotional needs, but it is counter-productive for the progress of science itself.

Does Science Ever Apologise?
http://wolven.livejournal.com/1582293.html
Religious groups have apologised to the world, when they've been wrong. Slavery, the Holocaust, all kinds of shit...

Black Helicopters are Here to Stay
http://www.alienseekernews.com/articles/black-helicopters-are-here-to-stay.htm
George Knapp recently said on a recent episode of History Channel's UFO Hunters, that the black helicopters that are seen near cattle mutilation sites are the Night Stalkers... I am talking about the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky... They are a very secretive unit ...from what I see, everything points to the Night Stalker's as being the culprits....

Bad Astronomy and UFOs
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/11/bad-astronomy-and-ufos.html
Here?s something that I find incredibly amusing. An expert in one subject being asked an opinion in an related subject and then answering the question with misinformation. You would think that a scientist would want to know the facts before he made a claim that is so easily refuted. I?m thinking here of Phil Plait and his Bad Astronomy column in which he talked about UFOs just a couple of days ago...

Interview with Dennis Balthaser, UFO Researcher
http://www.alienseekernews.com/articles/interview-with-dennis-balthaser.html
Primarily I've learned that something important happened near Roswell in 1947. That we've been given 4 excuses by the Air Force in these 61 years, and I do not believe that we've been told the truth yet about what actually happened...

William S. Burroughs authentic grocery shopping list
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120384625089&_rdc=1
during his later years at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, there were people always around to help him with some of life's mundane chores, like food shopping and doing errands. There would always be a shopping list that Burroughs and others would add to. Offered here are three pages of grocery lists with most of the items being written by William S. Burroughs...

List of mainstream films with unsimulated sex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mainstream_movies_with_unsimulated_sex

List of Australian politicians convicted of crimes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_politicians_convicted_of_crimes

List of outsider musicians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_outsider_musicians

The Shaggs
http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_inc/6960623.html
The Wiggin sisters themselves never planned to become a music group, but as Dot later said, "[Austin] was something of a disciplinarian. He was stubborn and he could be temperamental. He directed. We obeyed. Or did our best."

Godzilla bukkake macros
http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=5161&Focus=132651
I've wondered for a while how real Godzilla bukkake would look like. So I made some Godzilla bukkake macros.

It's Godzilla bukkake night
http://churrasco.tumblr.com/post/82099697/its-godzilla-bukkake-night
Warren Ellis hopes Godzilla bukkake image macros don?t become a meme.

(Warren Ellis: Master of Reverse Psychology...--ED)

Brontosaurus For Sale: Pickup Only
http://accidentalmysteries.blogspot.com/2009/01/brontosaurus-for-sale-pickup-only.html
...for sale on eBay, measuring 56 feet long, 20 feet tall and about 10 feet wide, with the asking price just $29,500.

Magenta isn't a real color?
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/16/magenta-isnt-a-real.html
Magenta is the evidence that the brain ...has apparently constructed a colour to bridge the gap between red and violet, because such a colour does not exist in the light spectrum...

Cat nips owner's lung cancer
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2009/02/16/8406656-sun.html
Man credits feline friend's paws of life for discovery of large tumour

Legal Warning
http://www.squatter.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=30
Here is a copy of the Legal Warning for you to download. Please read the Squatters Handbook before using.

Screaming jelly babies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_jelly_babies
...a chemistry demonstration which is practised in schools in the United Kingdom. The experiment shows the amount of energy there is in a "jelly baby"... When the experiment is performed, the jelly baby bursts into flames and makes a screaming sound.

The Jellyactrics are here !
http://hostessex.net/mysharedaccounts/accol/Campaigns/jellyactrics.htm
The sweets feature five different older people all happily involved in enjoying life in varying ways, from knitting to pigeon fancying.

How to bake a potato
http://howtobakeapotato.com/
step by step with pictures

RIP Joe Ades
http://zarq.livejournal.com/861267.html?style=mine
"The man in the thousand-dollar suit sells his $5 potato peelers on New York City street corners six days a week. Ten hours a day. Joe Ades could talk a starving dog off a meat truck."

Old Man of the Lake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_of_the_Lake
The Old Man of the Lake is the name given to a tall stump of tree, probably a hemlock, which has been bobbing vertically in Oregon's Crater Lake for more than a century. Due to the extremely cold water of the lake, the tree has been rather well preserved.

The Emotional Abuse Checklist
http://thingsarelookinup.com/Abuse/test.shtml
Emotional abuse aims to control or manipulate another person. The damage done to its target is very far-reaching. It should not be taken lightly.

(Just the thing for the self-loathing to undertake: see how much of your own behaviour can be shoehorned into the definitions!...--ED)

White House Watermelon Email From California Mayor Dean Grose Inspires Outrage
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/25/white-house-watermelon-em_n_169933.html
The mayor of Los Alamitos is coming under fire for an e-mail he sent out that depicts the White House lawn planted with watermelons, under the title "No Easter egg hunt this year."

Wikileaks Forced to Leak Its Own Secret Info
http://www.klintron.com/brain/archives/2009/02/20/wikileaks-forced-to-leak-its-own-secret-info/
[Wikileaks] sent an emergency fund-raising appeal on Saturday to previous donors. But instead of hiding email addresses from the recipients by using the bcc field, the sender put 58 addresses into the cc field, revealing all the addresses to all the recipients. Someone then submitted the email as a leaked document, writing "WikiLeaks leaks it?s own donors, aww irony. BCC next time kthx."

Mermaid dream comes true thanks to Weta
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4858855a11.html
Nadya Vessey lost her legs as a child but now she swims like a mermaid. Ms Vessey's mermaid tail was created by Wellington-based film industry wizards Weta Workshop after the Auckland woman wrote to them two years ago asking if they could make her a prosthetic tail. She was astounded when they agreed.

Report: Octuplet Mom Offered $1M To Do Porn
http://www.wbaltv.com/entertainment/18791288/detail.html
The very public saga of octuplet mom Nadya Suleman has taken a lurid turn. According to TMZ.com, Suleman has been offered $1 million by major porn distributor Vivid Entertainment to star in a porn movie.

Ground Zero
http://www.carloslabs.com/node/16
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city? With Google's Maps framework and a bit of Javascript, you can see the outcome. And it does not look good.

Lovelock: "We can't save humanity"
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/02/lovelock-we-cant-save-humanity.html
Lovelock explained his belief that humanity as we know is a goner. Earth cannot feed 6 going on 7 billion people, he said. Pressed by the interviewer he took a punt and suggested there could be just 1 billion of us left in 100 years time. Lovelock's point seemed to be that we should give up on trying to save the planet and the entirety of the human species by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and focus instead on equipping "lifeboat nations" with the necessary infrastructure (schools, roads, houses) to support swarms of climate refugees.

(I hope he's not right. I seem to recall he thinks nuclear plants are also the way to go--I hope he's not right with that one, either...--ED)

Joss Whedon Explains Why DC Comics Movies Don't Work
http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/02/25/joss-whedon-explains-why-dc-comics-movies-dont-work/
...a fascinating bit of commentary from "Buffy", "Angel" and "Firefly" mastermind Joss Whedon has hit the web today... In essence, he says that DC Comics' characters are "too mythological and god-like to connect to audiences."

(Which just begs the question of why they worked as comics, really...--ED)

Jedi workout: Fight fat with the Force
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29387518
A new fitness craze to help you look like Luke and not Jabba the Hutt

Identifying Yourself As A Lesbian Gets You Banned On XBOX Live
http://consumerist.com/5160187/identifying-yourself-as-a-lesbian-gets-you-banned-on-xbox-live
Teresa says that she was harassed by other players and later suspended from XBOX Live because she identified herself as a lesbian in her profile. When she appealed to Microsoft, she says they told her that other gamers found her sexual orientation "offensive."

Alp-sized peaks found entombed in Antarctic ice
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090224/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_antarctica_mountains
Jagged mountains the size of the Alps have been found entombed in Antarctica's ice, giving new clues about the vast ice sheet that will raise world sea levels if even a fraction of it melts, scientists said on Tuesday.

Our world may be a giant hologram
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true
For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it... "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

(But not in any kooky newage way. This is SERIOUS SCIENCE..--ED)

EPA Shuts Down Local Ghost-Entrapment Business
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/epa_shuts_down_local_ghost
Citing unsafe practices and potential toxic contamination, the Environmental Protection Agency shut down a small ghost- entrapment operation in downtown Manhattan today, and had four of the business' spectral-containment specialists arrested in the process.

Supreme Court Rules on EPA Right to Regulate Ectoplasm and PKE Levels
http://www.dailygaming.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=227
Just one month after a decision involving carbon emissions, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday in a landmark case that will give the agency authority to regulate levels of ectoplasm and psychokinetic energy released into the atmosphere under the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970...

I can has cheezburger ... and pathos?
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/11/15/pathos_lolcats/
The lolcats, the Internet's most famous felines, may be hilarious. But in their yearning, I see nothing less than the tragedy of the human condition.

Non-reversing mirror
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16585-amazing-mirrors
This mirror does not produce a "mirror" image, making it possible to read reflected text normally... a mathematician at Drexel University, Philadelphia, used computer algorithms to generate the mirror's bizarre surface, which curves and bends in different directions. The curves direct rays from an object across the mirror's face before sending them back to the viewer, flipping the conventional mirror image...

What?s in the Vault? by Eric Drexler
http://metamodern.com/2009/02/22/what%E2%80%99s-in-the-vault/
They?re called "vaults". They?re in our cells, and in those of every plant, animal, and fungus. Like ribosomes, they?re atomically precise self-assembled structures made of protein and RNA, but they?re big and hollow, large enough to pack many ribosomes inside... Vaults are unusual in many ways, but what I find most surprising about them is this:...

tabbloid
http://www.tabbloid.com/
Turn your favorite RSS feeds into a personal magazine

Hitler's Flying Saucers
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ufo_aleman/rfz/index.htm
A Guide to German Flying Discs of the Second World War

Flying Saucers and the Third Reich
http://www.unmuseum.org/germufo.htm
...the Germans developed an amazing array of secret weapons in a short time. Were flying discs part of the Luftwaffe arsenal? And if so, was this secret looted and used by the Allied victors after the war?

Disc Aircraft of The Third Reich
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ufo_aleman/esp_ufoaleman_1.htm
Many have often inquired why then when war started in 1939 did Germany not use these advanced and unique machines in air combat?

Body mod - Turn your pee blue!
http://cre.ations.net/creation/body-mod---turn-your-pee-blue
We've all dreamed of it - who wouldn't want to have bright blue urine? Alright, I admit some people might be appalled at this strange activity, but many will find it interesting. No, you don't have to contract Syphilis to get blue urine. The method presented here is quite harmless.

Fark on Unix
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=4233963
Chef creates a fine dining vegetarian restaurant called Ubuntu. Guests say the food is way better than at ordinary restaurants; but they hate that they have to cook it all themselves

US Democracy Server: Patch Day
http://www.chromecow.com/2009/01/20/us-democracy-server-patch-day/

Parliamentary Government matters. Jack Straw's right.
http://matgb.livejournal.com/357757.html?style=mine
Jack Straw has decided not to appeal a decision and instead the Cabinet has voted, using the power allowed it by law the law, to prevent the release of documents, for the first time since the FOI Act was passed... Parliament voted for the Iraq war. The nation almost certainly opposed it. That is the real problem. In defending the principles of our democracy, for once in his life, Jack Straw is right. And if you think I liked typing that last sentence you really don't know me.

Hamas no, human rights yes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/18/hamas-palestine-israel-human-rights?commentpage=4&commentposted=1
Why are the left and the anti-war movement ignoring Hamas's repression of the Palestinian people?

This act by New Hampshire is a clear warning to the federal government that they could face being stripped of their power by the States (presumably through civil war!)
http://tinyurl.com/acsbf8 {Gcache}
The New Hampshire state legislature took an unbelievably bold step Monday by introducing a resolution to declare certain actions by the federal government to completely totally void and warning that certain future acts will be viewed as a "breach of peace" with the states themselves that risks "nullifying the Constitution"...

State of Arizona: HCR 2024 A concurrent RESOLUTION
http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/49leg/1r/bills/hcr2024p.htm
Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the State of Arizona, the Senate concurring, that: 2. That this Resolution serves as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

Train search by Border Patrol just another incident from the Constitution-free zone
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2009m1d4-Train-search-just-another-incident-from-the-Constitutionfree-zone
You're traveling by train. Suddenly, it slows and comes to an unscheduled stop. Armed, uniformed men come aboard with dogs. They question passengers, search luggage and remove one of your fellow travelers for further interrogation. Is this some Cold War-era movie? Nope. It's New Year's Eve on an Amtrak train in California...

Many Americans do love their police state
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2009m1d5-Americans-do-love-their-police-state
Scattered through the comments to yesterday's column about a Customs and Border Patrol stop of a passenger train that never crossed the boundaries of the United States are little gems of the sort that I've come to dread and anticipate in equal parts: praise for the government for behaving in an arbitrary and heavy-handed manner...

Around the Nation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/23/AR2008112302364.html
A farm couple got a huge surprise when they opened their fields to anyone who wanted to pick up free vegetables left over after the harvest -- 40,000 people showed up. Joe and Chris Miller's fields were picked so clean Saturday that a second day of gleaning -- the ancient practice of picking up leftover food in farm fields -- was canceled Sunday. " 'Overwhelmed' is putting it mildly," Chris Miller said. "People obviously need food."

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html
"I look at these people's faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him," said one employee. "How could you take a man's life to save $20 on a TV?"

Sasha Obama Keeps Seeing Creepy Bush Twins While Riding Tricycle Through White House
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sasha_obama_keeps_seeing_creepy
A little more than a month after the first family's move to the White House, reports of strange happenings have continued to surface, with Sasha Obama confirming Tuesday that she had once again been visited by the eerie specter of the Bush twins...

Google launches judgemental search engine
http://newsbiscuit.com/article/google-launch-judgemental-search-engine-417
Google is set to launch a new version of its omnipresent search engine that will question the cultural validity of people?s enquiries. Rather than instantly offering a comprehensive list of the most popular websites and images related to the keywords, the new version will offer its opinion on the subject of the enquiry and if it finds the request to be intellectually vacuous, will steer the user clear of the original search altogether.

Russian Mosquito Survives in Outer Space
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,498784,00.html
According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, a mosquito managed to live 18 months clinging to the outside of the International Space Station, without any food, being bombarded by radiation and enduring fluctuating temperatures ranging from minus 230 degrees to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. "We brought him back to Earth. He is alive, and his feet are moving"...

Hidden Cameras in DTV Converters? YouTube Hoax Fans Conspiracy Fears
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/dtv-converters.html
Ever wonder what the government is really up to paying for all those digital TV converter boxes? Last week a Spokane, Washington man claimed he'd discovered the horrifying truth, and he produced a YouTube video to prove it. In a 90-second video that's popping up on tin-foil-hat sites everywhere, 28-year-old software engineer Adam Chronister is seen cracking open his government-subsidized Magnavox converter, and revealing to the world the tiny video camera and microphone hidden inside...

For the vampire buffs, here's an origin story
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/02/a-short-history-of-vampirism.html
You don't expect to learn about vampires at a forensics meeting, but they were a hot topic of conversation at the American Academy of Forensics annual meeting in Denver last week. I'd never really thought about where the original vampire legend might have emerged from, but the appearance of bodies as they decompose might have been one source of inspiration.

Hollywood's Eight Wackest Movie Werewolves
http://www.complex.com/blogs/2009/01/23/hollywoods-eight-wackest-movie-werewolves/
Take a six-pack of the Silver Bullet with you if you hit the theater this weekend. Werewolves are back in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the third installment of the monster series. The prequel traces the origins of the beef between vampires and Lycans (werewolves). What is left unclear is why Hollywood continues to dog out werewolves with its funky looking man-beasts. ...read on for eight more questionable designs from werewolf past...

Real-life Mowgli kept alive by cats
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/3866797/Real-life-Mowgli-kept-alive-by-cats.html
A one-year-old boy has been found living rough on the streets, apparently being kept alive by cats.

The Bailey Affair: Psychology Perverted
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Reviews/Psychology%20Perverted%20-%20by%20Joan%20Roughgarden.htm
All in all, Bailey?s book, as well as Blanchard?s early research, is not only politically incorrect, but totally incorrect. Their work is useless to future researchers because it fails to conceptualize gender identity as distinct from sexual pleasure.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell? No, Just Don't Be.
http://jezebel.com/5151879/dont-ask-dont-tell-no-just-dont-be
Amy Brian enlisted in the military for 3 years in the 90s, and then came back in 2003 only to be deployed to Iraq. But it was a trip to Wal-Mart that did her in. In that trip, a civilian co-worker at the U.S. Property and Fiscal Office saw Brian kiss her girlfriend. So despite not asking nor telling, she was kicked out of the military.

Computer-Generated Paper Accepted for Prestigious Technical Conference
http://io9.com/5117892/computer+generated-paper-accepted-for-prestigious-technical-conference
A prankster who submitted a computer-generated research paper to the International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering discovered that not only was his fake paper accepted - its "author" is to chair a panel... The good news is that the IEEE has done its job so well that now computers themselves can submit papers and present them at its conferences. The bad news is . . . well, pretty obvious. I guess this means Alan Sokal can finally, at last, shut the hell up about how science journals never accept fake articles.

How Windschuttle swallowed a hoax to publish a fake story in Quadrant
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090106-How-Quadrant-swallowed-a-giant-hoax-.html
Keith Windschuttle, the editor of the conservative magazine Quadrant, has been taken in by a hoax intended to show that he will print outrageous propositions... The Gould hoax is designed to be a companion and a counter to the famous Sokal hoax, in which the physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper to a postmodern cultural studies journal to show that post modernists would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions.... The Sokal affair became part of the "science wars" which were a series of intellectual battles between post modernists and realists, and a companion to Australia?s "history wars", in which Windschuttle has been a leading contender...

"You're Dumped!" Yahoo! Personals Research Shows National Break-Up Season Has Arrived
http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=225349
Valentine's Day is just over a month away but according to new research from Yahoo! Personals, the most visited online dating service(a), Cupid is charting a tricky course for the next few weeks. The study shows we are now in National Break-Up Season, the period between the December holidays and Valentine's Day when people are more than twice as likely to think about breaking up than at any other time of the year...

The Relationship Bill
http://therelationshipbill.blogspot.com/
Once upon a time I had a boyfriend who lived with me. Together we had 3 cats and a couple birds and he was a douchebag. Finally one day I kicked him out and two weeks later he came back, with his large father, and took his stuff. Before he finished taking everything; he handed me this and made me sign it...

Psychologists find gene that helps you look on the bright side of life
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/25/optimism-brightside-gene-mental-health
Those unfortunate enough to lack the 'brightside gene' are more likely to suffer from mental health problems such as depression

Neurologists Explain Why You Hate George Lucas
http://io9.com/5158897/neurologists-explain-why-you-hate-george-lucas
In just a few short decades, George Lucas has gone from renegade entertainer who filled children's lives with wonder, to the object of wrath and ridicule. Now scientists can explain why.

(They don't mention the obvious: a movie which enchants children is not necessarily a good movie. Star Wars -- the first Star Wars, the one that's called "Episode 4" and "A New Hope"? Yeah, that Star Wars -- isn't actually very good. And that's okay. It's okay that 7-14 year-olds liked it. It's okay that 7-14 year-olds like Phantom Menace. But now, that first lot of 7-14 year olds are adults, and they've got this whole dichotomy in their heads where they can see that Phantom Menace blows goats, but can't see that A New Hope is a load of old horsesh1t...--ED)

MaulStanley.Com
http://www.maulstanley.com/myth.html
The Man. The Sith. The Legend.

9 Ways That Humor Heals
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/02/17/9-ways-that-humor-heals/
Here are just a few ways our bodies, minds, and spirits begin to mend with a dose of humor.

(People wonder why I'm always cracking jokes. I wonder why they're always trying to make life worse...--ED)

10 sure-fire signs you're about to be made redundant
http://www.personneltoday.com/blogs/human-resources-guru/2008/11/10-surefire-signs-youre-about.html
Particularly for those relative youngsters who have yet to live through some hard times, Yours Truly presents his list, in reverse order of impending doom, of 10 signs that you, or if you're lucky just some of your colleagues, are about to receive "some bad news"...

The Taqwacores breathes life into Muslim punk
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2009/02/24/taqwacore-book.html?ref=rss
The book brought out so many Muslim punks, it created an opening for bands like The Kominas, out of Boston, or Vancouver's all-girl punk outfit, Secret Trial Five. In fact, the Muslim punk scene has become known as Taqwacore.

Fanzines enter pages of history
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7908705.stm
They were invented by fans of trashy science fiction novels in the 1930s before their hand-written Xeroxed pages chronicled the birth of punk. But as the internet threatens to condemn them to history's shredder, traditional music fanzines - amateur magazines written, edited and produced by fans - have found an unlikely saviour. The National Library of Scotland is to embark on the laborious task of tracking down and cataloguing the countless thousands of fanzines published in the UK over the past 70 years.

10 mind-bogglingly awesome robot costume pictures!
http://dvice.com/archives/2008/10/pictorial_world.php
In the following pictorial list of the 10 best robot costumes, we found that rather than using industrial manufacturing techniques, a few of our favorites brought industrious humor and ingenuity to the task. Others, well, they were built by the professionals...

Full Service Robo-Urinal Makes Me Scared For The Future
http://io9.com/5145077/full-service-robo+urinal-makes-me-scared-for-the-future
Talk about getting a bad case of stage fright: this robo-urinal allegedly holds your man bits while you relieve yourself. Aren't we just giving them excuses to go forward with the robot revolution?

Bambi demands justice for bears
http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/32550484.html
Jamie Bamber has long been a firm favourite on the sci-fi scene, with his ever-exciting role as Lee "Apollo" Adama in Battlestar Galactica... It didn't surprise us one bit that Jamie is like that in real life too. That's why he bared his skin in PETA's newest ad to help save black bears killed for their fur...

Size Matters?
http://www.yourerdoc.com/size-matters/
Recently, a man was brought in to the ER to see me, who had been in a car crash and was pretty banged up. His pickup truck was hit head on by another vehicle...

Monkeys Have Morals After All
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/monkeys-have-morals-after-all/8037
Darwin himself might have raised a bushy eyebrow at the idea that monkeys and apes have a sense of morality and the capacity to tell right from wrong. Such moral qualities have been widely held to be part and parcel of what distinguishes us from our furrier simian relatives--but fresh research implies otherwise...

Orangutan from Borneo photographed using a spear tool to fish
http://primatology.net/2008/04/29/orangutan-photographed-using-tool-as-spear-to-fish/
...a male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish... This individual had seen locals fishing with spears on the Gohong River...

Is 'Orangutan Fishing With Spear' A FAKE?
http://blondebynature.com/was-orangutan-fishing-with-spear-a-fake/
Recently, I've found a couple of sites that are questioning the legitimacy of the photo above and asking if they believe the picture has been altered...

43 Monkey Photos That Will Change Your Life
http://www.buzzfeed.com/urlsgonewild/43-monkey-photos-that-will-change-your-life-1k1
Have a tissue handy when looking at these amazing monkey photos.

Pictures of the day
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoftheday/3812054/Pictures-of-the-day-17-December-2008.html?image=1
Angry monkeys turn on their cruel trainer and beat him senseless with his own stick after he handed out a vicious beating to one of the trio during a performance riding mini bicycles in a market in Sizhou, China

The Ape Who Loved a Cat
http://www.progressivepuppy.com/the_progressive_puppy/2008/12/the-ape-who-loved-a-cat.html
Tonda, an elderly and ailing orangutan at a Florida zoo, has been given a new lease on life with the help of a tabby cat named T.K. ...

Baby chimps are smarter than kids
http://www.themedguru.com/articles/baby_chimps_are_smarter_than_kids-86120411.html
For long, chimpanzees have been known to be good at mimicking humans. Now, they have scientists to back them, who declare that they are even smatter than human infants.

Man Of Steel, Woman Of Bondage? [NSFW]
http://io9.com/5128494/man-of-steel-woman-of-bondage-%5Bnsfw%5D
It's not looking good for the Man of Steel. Just days after we revealed his racist past comes news of a book that unveils his sordid fetish life, as chronicled by his creator... They are undoubtedly the work of Joe Shuster, but nobody connected the dots at the time to say this looks like Superman, or Lois Lane, or Jimmy Olsen, or Lex Luthor... The material was banned by the U.S. Supreme Court, and although the publisher and the printer both went to jail, nobody came after Shuster because somehow they never made the connection to Superman or to Shuster as the artist...

Exposed: teens take to sexting
http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-life/mobiles--handhelds/articles/exposed-teens-take-to-sexting/2009/02/05/1233423368484.html
Though youth is fleeting, images sent on a mobile phone or posted online may not be, especially if they're naughty... Whatever the outcome, the mere fact that child pornography charges were filed at all is stirring debate among students and adults.

222 facts about sex
http://www.welt.de/english-news/article2992433/222-facts-about-sex.html
Where, when, how often and who with?

(Warning: 222 pages long...--ED)

LifeSaver Paternal Relief Kit
http://porn.net/corporate/lifesaver/
Don't Let Her Selfishness Destroy Your Life

(WARNING: SATIRE!!!....--ED)

Macho Products
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/macho/
Forget all those wussy "lifestyle" products. What we'd like to see in these straightened times are the proper, manly things that Andy McNabb and Chuck Norris would buy, and how they'd be used....

Blackwater changing its name, logo
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/15/Blackwater_changing_its_name_logo/UPI-75581234737183
The North Carolina security contractor Blackwater Worldwide has changed its name to Xe, a company memo says...Blackwater was involved in several controversies over its security work in Iraq on behalf of the U.S. government. There were high-profile investigations into alleged gun smuggling and the shooting of civilians in Baghdad. ...it is not uncommon for companies to rebrand themselves to distance their companies from bad publicity.

Confessions of a Guantanamo guard
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/confessions-of-a-guantanamo-guard-1624749.html
Detention. Humiliation. Torture. The world can only guess atthe horrors of Camp X-Ray. But now Brandon Neely, a former guard, wants to tell the shocking story of what happened there--and why it shames America.

How low can we go?
http://www.septicisle.info/2009/02/how-low-can-we-go.html
It's quite quickly becoming apparent why the (UK...--ED) government has been so desperate to prevent the full details coming out regarding the torture of Binyam Mohamed, with it attempting to pass the buck onto the United States, claiming that to release the documents would threaten our intelligence links with that country - the truth now appears to be that we have been directly complicit in the torture of British citizens in Pakistan since after 9/11.

Washington Post: Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush: 'Call boys' took midnight tour of White House
http://community.livejournal.com/randompictures/5704654.html
http://pics.livejournal.com/billylickalolly/pic/000epr8r
Male prostitutes toured Bush 41 White House before federal agents were sent into the streets to collect and destroy copies of this Thursday, June 29, 1989 Washington Times headline story by Paul M. Rodriguez and George Archibald which led to multiple follow-up stories.

Probably Won't See This On FOX News
http://jblaque.livejournal.com/633887.html?nc=4&style=mine
FOX News producer Aaron Bruns, who covered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign for the cable network, is facing child pornography charges after federal agents discovered photos and videos on his computer depicting "children under the age of ten being sexually abused by adult men and women."

When hating in the abstract collides with real human beings
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1627706.html
Your wife is dying... you're in the hospital -- Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami -- waiting for word, and it's not coming. They tell you, Joe (we'll call you Joe), you can't be with her. You plead with them, to no avail. No, Joe, sorry, Joe, we can't tell you anything. One hour turns to two, two to four, four to six. Your wife is dying, and no one she loves is there. Finally, in the eighth hour, you reach her bedside. You are just in time to stand beside the priest as he administers last rites.

New York Post Chimp Cartoon Compares Stimulus Author To Dead Primate
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/18/new-york-post-chimp-carto_n_167841.html
A cartoon likening the author of the stimulus bill, perhaps President Barack Obama, with a rabid chimpanzee graced the pages of the New York Post on Wednesday. The drawing, from famed cartoonist Sean Delonas, is rife with violent imagery and racial undertones...

NY Post cartoon is racist and careless
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/18/martin.cartoon/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
President Obama earned kudos from the media when he said he screwed up in nominating Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services despite his problem with paying taxes. Too bad the leadership of the New York Post didn't follow the lead of the president in admitting that an editorial cartoon they ran today by Sean Delonas was offensive, careless and racist.

Ten Cartoons from Sean Delonas
http://gawker.com/5155855/ten-masterpieces-from-sean-delonas
The outcry over New York Post cartoonist Sean Delonas' dead monkey cartoon today is growing louder. But he has such a rich history! We assembled ten of his all-time classics of hate...

Not a joke
http://colorofchange.org/nypost/?id=2347-541674
The decision to run this cartoon was irresponsible at best, and hurtful and malicious at worst. It seems unthinkable that an editor of a newspaper would not understand the history of Black folks being depicted as monkeys and apes or the recent spate of death threats against President Obama. Worse, when confronted, Post editor Col Allan dismissed people's concerns as baseless.

New York Post's Cartoon Apology
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/19/new-york-posts-cartoon-ap_n_168427.html
This evening, the New York Post issued a half-apology for Wednesday's notorious stimulus/chimp cartoon which inspired outraged among many readers.

Lemony Snicket Redesign
http://mscorley.blogspot.com/2009/02/lemony-snicket-redesign.html
The Series of Unfortunate Events books redesigned to look like classic Penguin covers.

The "I Can Read Movies" Series by Spacesick
http://spacesickart.com/books.html
A growing collection of film-based book covers.

(In a wonderful 60's art style...--ED)

A bridge too far in sub judice contempt
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20090203-A-bridge-too-far-in-sub-judice-contempt.html
What is happening with the law of sub judice contempt? Take the reporting of the case of Arthur Phillip Freeman, the man charged with the murder of his four-year-old daughter after allegedly throwing her from the Westgate Bridge. News reports have identified him by photograph -- and in some cases, address -- identified the family as parties in a family court dispute, identified his remaining children, who may be witnesses in the case, speculated on his mental state... All this despite the fact that the man has been charged -- so the case is sub judice -- involves someone who is clearly suffering a mental illness and involves children who have a particular right to privacy.

Bloggers (and others) getting the legal recognition they deserve over #bushfires
http://siliconfederation.com/?p=259
We, the people, do not have the right to do more than journalists do. If we as a society believe reporting certain information about a crime will affect the fairness of any trial, we have to shut up about it.

Chair Kills Boy by Anal Penetration
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/02/20/chair-kills-boy-by-anal-penetration/
A fourteen-year-old boy was killed after the chair he was sitting on exploded, propelling sharp chair parts into his rectum, causing extensive bleeding, which he succumbed to before medical attention could stem the flow... The chair in question was a standard gas cylinder type, where the height is regulated by an adjustable cylinder containing highly pressurised gas, and it was this which exploded, sending high velocity chair parts into the posterior of the unfortunate youth.

Within Any Possible Universe, No Intellect Can Ever Know It All
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=limits-on-human-comprehension
A mathematical theory places limits on how much a physical entity can know about the past, present or future... David H. Wolpert, a physics-trained computer scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, has chimed in with his version of a knowledge limit... no matter what laws of physics govern a universe, there are inevitably facts about the universe that its inhabitants cannot learn by experiment or predict with a computation. Philippe M. Binder, a physicist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, suggests that the theory implies researchers seeking unified laws cannot hope for anything better than a theory of almost everything.

James Joyce' dirty letters
http://www.johnhamilton.us/2/jamesjoyceletters.htm
"Frank as these letters are, their psychology can easily be misunderstood. They were intended to accomplish sexual gratification in him and inspire the same in her, and at moments they fasten intently on peculiarities of sexual behaviour, some of which might be technically called perverse..."

GOGIRL
http://www.go-girl.com
Female Urination Device for Travel and Active Women:

The SHENIS [NSFW picture of a 12" golden dong]
http://www.shenis.com/
It's the female answer to standing to pee for ladies!

The return of the Amazons
http://www.oeilpublic.com/diaporama.php?r=396&l=agence.php&l_name=TOUS%20LES%20SUJETS
Katerina Tarnouska looks at me in the eyes. She is a thirty-year-old blonde with a ponytail, wearing a white dress. "Time has come to get separated from the men", she says. She dreams of a walled world where women would live among themselve. A world like the one of the Amazon tribes. She founded a movement called Asgarda. 150 women of all age get trained to fight and learn the Amazons' spirit. "Glory to you, Master, Glory to Asgarda, Glory to the Amazons!" It is said that the Amazons were tribes of women warriors in the East of Ukraine, in the Donesk area. They are back nowadays in the Carpathian mountains.

Tribe of Ukrainian Fighting Women
http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22360/65946-tribe-ukrainian-fighting--pics-
The portraits are inspiring, bizarre, and strangely beautiful

Two sexes 'sin in different ways'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7897034.stm?lss
Women are prouder than men, but men are more lustful, according to a Vatican report which states that the two sexes sin differently. ...The report was based on a study of confessions carried out by Fr Roberto Busa, a 95-year-old Jesuit scholar.

Knitting 'can delay' memory loss
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7896441.stm?lss
Engaging in a hobby like reading a book, making a patchwork quilt or even playing computer games can delay the onset of dementia, a US study suggests.

No prosecution in 13-year-old father case
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4611350/No-prosecution-in-13-year-old-father-case.html
Police will not be looking to prosecute anyone in the case of a 13-year-old boy who has become a father.

(An outcome which, had the situation been reversed, doubtless would nto have occured...--ED)

Why aren't ebooks taking off? Not enough pirates
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/feb/09/kindle-ipod-books-piracy
Amazon's Kindle wants to break the electronic book market, but their biggest enemy could be the lack of criminally-minded readers

MP3 From YouTube Flash Video
http://www.listentoyoutube.com/
ListenToYouTube.com is the most convenient online application for converting YouTube flash video to MP3 audio. This service is fast, free, and requires no signup. All you need is a YouTube URL, and our software will transfer the video to our server, extract the MP3, and give you a link to download the audio file.

Not All Information Wants To Be Free
http://www.slate.com/id/2211486/
The idea that people won't pay for content online has become ...a part of the Web orthodoxy... These failures tell us much about what customers refused to pay for on the Web. But they tell us little about what customers will pay for. Not all successful paid sites are alike, but they all share at least one of these attributes: 1) They are so amazing as to be irreplaceable. 2) They are beautifully designed and executed and extremely easy to use. 3) They are stupendously authoritative.

Sketchbook for web designers
http://www.vcarrer.com/2009/02/sketchbook-for-web-designers.html
Recently I saw one cool sketchbook for designing web site mockups. The problem was I couldn't find out how to order one copy. The idea of that sketchbook was to simulate web browser on paper. So I decided to build one.

Alien life 'may exist among us'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7893414.stm
Our planet may harbour forms of "weird life" unrelated to life as we know it, according to Professor Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State University. This "shadow life" may be hidden in toxic arsenic lakes or in boiling deep sea hydrothermal vents, he says.

Cosmologist Paul Davies explores notion of 'alien' life on Earth
http://www.physorg.com/news153903714.html
Astrobiologists have often pondered "life as we do not know it" in the context of extraterrestrial life, says Paul Davies, an internationally acclaimed theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University. "But," he asks, "has there been a blind spot to the possibility of 'alien' life on Earth?"

The Extended Phenotype - How Richard Dawkins Got It Wrong Twice
http://www.scientificblogging.com/gadfly/extended_phenotype_how_richard_dawkins_got_it_wrong_twice
It purports to be about science, for scientists, yet at the very beginning there is a quite remarkable disclaimer; Dawkins warns the reader that the book contains nothing new, that it is "unabashed advocacy", and that it contains no hypotheses that are testable. In short, the book is declared from the outset to be non-scientific.

Darwinian Fundamentalism
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1151
Charles Darwin must have been the most genial of geniuses. He was kind to a fault, even to the undeserving, and he never uttered a harsh word--or hardly ever, as his countryman Captain Corcoran once said. Darwin's disciple, George Romanes, expressed surprise at the only sharply critical Darwinian statement he had ever encountered...

Vatican endorses Darwin, slights intelligent design
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/11/vatican_on_darwin/
The Vatican gave the Creationist lobby a left right sign of the cross today, announcing it would stage a conference on Darwinism next month and declaring that it was one of the Fathers of the Church that thought up the idea in the first place.

Getting Things Done with Twitter
http://www.emilychang.com/go/ehub/app/getting-things-done-with-twitter/

A [Windows] Computer Repair Utility Kit You Can Run From a Thumb Drive
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/a_computer_repair_utility_kit.php

Phone makers agree to universal chargers after European Commission pressure
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=9801
The world's biggest mobile phone makers have agreed to standardise chargers in a bid to reduce waste. The new universal chargers will be on the market by 2012

Homemade Titanium
http://www.popsci.com.au/node/30347
With heat and common chemicals, the author turned ore into metal

DNA Shaped Nebula Observed At Center Of Milky Way
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20060216005544data_trunc_sys.shtml
Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope have observed an astonishing double helix shaped nebula near the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The astronomers, writing in Nature, estimate the nebula to be around 80 light years in length and situated only 300 light years away from the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Will Ripley Rise Again? Sigourney Weaver On 'Alien' Saga: 'I Just Don't Feel That It's Quite Finished"
http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/02/20/will-ripley-rise-again-sigourney-weaver-on-alien-saga-i-just-dont-feel-that-its-quite-finished/
"You know, Fox was going to do another one," Sigourney Weaver said to us recently... "They had it written. Joss Whedon wrote it." As Weaver remembered it, however, the script from the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" mastermind just didn't rock her world...

The Metamorphoses of Alien III
http://www.impossiblefunky.com/archives/issue_12/12_alien3.asp?IshNum=12&Headline=The%20Metamorphoses%20of%20Alien%20III
Hoping to push the creative boundaries of the Alien series even farther, Hill & Giler sought the talent of cyberpunk author William Gibson... Cold War politics permeate William Gibson's draft of ALIEN III. Gibson's screenplay pits humans against Aliens, and "The Company" against The Union of Progressive Peoples..

ALIEN PAST
http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/alien-past/
For a month or so in the summer of 1990, I was hired to work as a ?conceptual architect? on the movie project Alien III... the drawings made by me that I reproduce with this post, and their copyrights, are the property of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; I reproduce them here under my rights of fair use... These drawings were made?in Hollywood and Pinewood Studios, England?for a movie that was never made...

Curiouser: American McGee, EA returning with PC, PS3, Xbox 360 Alice
http://www.offworld.com/2009/02/curiouser-american-mcgee-ea-re.html
The original Alice game, developed by Dallas studio Rogue Entertainment, was released by EA in 2000, and saw the Wonderland star platforming her way through a gothic version of Carroll's story.

911 tape captures chimpanzee owner's horror as 200-pound ape mauls friend
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/02/17/2009-02-17_911_tape_captures_chimpanzee_owners_horr-2.html
The chilling screams of a crazed chimp mauling a Connecticut woman were captured on a 911 tape - along with the animal's owner begging, "Send police with guns!"

New photos show friendly side of young chimp
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02182009/news/regionalnews/new_photos_show_friendly_side_of_young_c_155795.htm
The out-of-control chimp who went bananas and mauled a Connecticut woman was once a playful little monkey who loved hugging people.

Why would a chimpanzee attack a human?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-would-a-chimpanzee-at
After a chimp mutilated a Connecticut woman's face, some are questioning the wisdom of keeping wild animals as pets... To find out more about chimpanzee attacks, we spoke with Frans de Waal, lead biologist from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center...

Pornography, Rape and Sex Crimes in Japan
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/pornography/prngrphy_rape_jp.html
Within Japan itself, the dramatic increase in available pornography and sexually explicit materials is apparent to even a casual observer. ...Also readily apparent from the information presented is that, over this period of change, sex crimes in every category, from rape to public indecency, sexual offenses from both ends of the criminal spectrum, significantly decreased in incidence.

A Virtual Unknown
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601565.html?hpid=sec-tech
Meet 'Moot,' the Secretive Internet Celeb Who Still Lives With Mom.

New Company Looks to Produce Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/02/18/new-company-looks-to-produce-space-based-solar-power-within-a-decade/
Is space-based solar power (SBSP) a technology whose time has come? The concept and even some of the hardware for harnessing energy from the sun with orbiting solar arrays has been around for some time...

(...and of course, I read that, and immediately thought of the previously-linkfrenzied piece below...--ED)

The Third Reich's Diabolical Orbiting Superweapon
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=940
But the military masterminds' most sinister ambitions were embodied in their behemoth Sonnengewehr, or "Sun Gun"... a specially engineered 100-meter-wide concave mirror could be used to reflect sunlight into a concentrated point on the Earth... the nefarious Nazis envisioned a colossal heat ray which could vanquish humanity.

Nazi Moonbase Launches Stealth Attack
http://io9.com/387775/nazi-moonbase-launches-stealth-attack
In 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon. In 2018, they are coming back.

Everyone Deserves A Roof
http://www.edar.org/
...a charity that provides unique mobile shelters to those living on the streets all around us. Each EDAR is a four-wheeled mobile unit which carries belongings and facilitates recycling during the day and which unfolds into a special, framed tent-like sleeping enclosure with a bed at night.

and Яolcats
http://rolcats.com/
English Translations of Eastern Bloc Lolcats

Final arguments in trial against 12-year-old girl mistaken for hooker
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/09/final-arguments-in-t.html
The Houston Press reports that final arguments are being held in the criminal assault trial against Dymond Milburn who was 12 years old when four Galveston police officers (David Roark, Justin Popovich, Sean Stewart, and Sgt. Gilbert Gomez) allegedly beat her up with a flashlight and threatened to shoot her puppy, while she was in her yard attending to tripped circuit breaker.

(We're the Police: Prepare to be served and protected.--ED)

Jail for photographing police?
http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=836675
The relationship between photographers and police could worsen next month when new laws are introduced that allow for the arrest - and imprisonment - of anyone who takes pictures of officers 'likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism'... 'Who is to say that police officers won't abuse these powers,' asks freelance photographer Justin Tallis, who was threatened by an officer last week.

President Obama and Extraordinary Rendition
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/02/president-oba-4.html
A hearing tomorrow in San Francisco before the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals could provide some insight into the Obama administration's policy on extraordinary rendition -- secretly flying terrorist suspects to countries or secret CIA camps where torture is allegedly practiced.

Under Obama, same stance on rendition suit
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/MNGS15QB5B.DTL
President Obama's Justice Department signaled in a San Francisco courtroom Monday that the change in administrations has not changed the government's position on secrecy and the rights of foreign prisoners - and that lawsuits by alleged victims of CIA kidnappings and torture must be dismissed on national security grounds.

(Yup. This is not good...--ED)

What Would We Do Without Helen Thomas?
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/423732.html
Is there some reason only Helen Thomas asks the really interesting, really hard, really unpleasant questions, the ones that didn't come off of some party's talking points or out of some think tank? Is there some reason that the rest of the White House Press Corps can't ask those questions? Do they not think of them? Do their editors not let them ask, is it only Helen Thomas who has the guts to ask them because she has so little to lose? Or is she the "designated a-hole," the whole group's designated person to take the heat for asking the hard questions? Do they not ask the hard questions because they can count on her to do so?

(Read that whole damned thing. And ask yourself... What Would We Do Without Brad Hicks? He's like Heinlein... whether you think he's right or wrong--and gods know I think both of them can be plenty wrong on occasion--you can't ignore him, and he cuts to the heart of the issue...--ED)

Staring into the abyss
http://www.metafilter.com/79012/Staring-into-the-abyss
...Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, chair of the Capital Markets Subcommittee, discusses a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars" that occurred in the matter of an hour or two in September 2008... "It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it."

Rep. Kanjorski: $550 Billion Disappeared in "Electronic Run On the Banks"
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/09/rep-kanjorski-550-bi.html
"The Treasury opened its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed."

The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/the-once-and-future-e-book.ars
A veteran of a former turning of the e-book wheel looks at the past, present, and future of reading books on things that are not books.

(Some good points, and some fails... --ED)

Why do books cost so much?
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/12/03/prices/index.html
Thirty bucks for a new hardcover! How book prices got so out of hand, who's responsible and what it will take to make reading more affordable in the future... Nonetheless, for those who remember the 1970s, the escalation in prices does appear substantial ...adjust these figures for inflation and you get a different story ...the cost of hardcover fiction in real dollars had actually gone down 2 percent, while poetry and drama and juvenile categories had risen only a few percentage points. Nonfiction hardcovers had decreased in real price by 27 percent...

(The reason for that is in large part the money saved in production costs... these days, the pages in a Hardcover are glued together, which is much cheaper than stitching...--ED)

Eight people arrested in connection to Phelps bong picture
http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports/stories/2009/02/10/michael_phelps_picture.html
The Richland County Sheriff?s Department arrested seven of the suspects for possession of marijuana and the eighth for dealing, according to the station. One arrest included the suspected owner of the bong--who was allegedly trying to sell the pipe on eBay for $100,000.

Study clears cannabis of schizophrenia rap
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/06/cannabis_psychosis_study/
No greater risk than general non-tokers

Why do they hate us? This is why!
http://lord-caramac.livejournal.com/413590.html
This article in German language explains what the "War on Terror" really means: Ever since 9/11, the entire NATO has officially been at war with a nondescript collective of Muslim terrorists, whoever that may be. Most citizens of NATO member nations are unaware of that, while most citizens of predominantly Muslim nations have been aware all the time. Just keep that in mind: We are at war, officially. The entire NATO is at war. If you wonder why radical Muslims hate us so much - since 9/11, they've been our enemies, that's why.

The Geitner Plan
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/423640.html
It's the Bush (the Younger) administration plan, almost line for line. It spends roughly another trillion dollars. It's got far too many moving parts... And it doesn't solve the problem, because none of the solutions that made it into the plan include the only one that would actually work.

The 10 big energy myths
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/27/renewableenergy-energy
There has never been a more important time to invest in green technologies, yet many of us believe these efforts are doomed to failure. What nonsense, writes Chris Goodall

The biggest "dirty secret" of WW2 [TRIGGER WARNING: Nazi Poster]
community.livejournal.com/heated_debate/442505.html?thread=15074441#t15074441

(I'm just posting this as an example of the filth and abominal drecks which you can find stuck to your shoes as you stroll the seedier parts of the Intertoobs. I had sad reason to be passing through Stormfront, the Australian Fascist Tossers site, the other day. Sick, Sad World indeed. Scum like these are why many white liberals react emotionally violently to being called "rascist"...--ED)

Hippies, Mind Control and the death of Jimi Hendrix
http://tinyurl.com/d226hc
The "peaceful revolution" of the flower children could not work because it was, as we know now, nothing more than a giant lab experiment...

1st US case of Marburg fever confirmed in Colorado
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2008719225_apmarburgfever.html
The disease, caused by a virus indigenous to Africa, spreads through contact with infected animals or the bodily fluids of infected humans... Marburg hemorrhagic fever is extremely rare. The CDC's Web site counts fewer than 500 confirmed cases since the virus was first recognized in 1967. More than 80 percent of the known cases are fatal.

AIG Implodes: The Two Cows Version
http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/2/aig-implodes-the-two-cows-version
Still confused about how AIG lost its shirt by going into the securities lending business big time? ...You have two cows. John Paulson borrows one cow so he can sell it for $100. He gives you $10 as collateral...

(A wonderful little parable about the banking industry. Say, remember Tucows?--ED)

In Three Years' Time People In LA Will Be Having Sex With Real Dolls Made Out Of Cancer
http://warren-ellis.livejournal.com/387048.html
A "living doll" made from human liver cancer cells could allow new drugs to be tested in conditions closer to those inside the body. ...everyone knows that medical need doesn't drive new technology -- porn does. You know what's going to happen...

openCanvas 1.1
http://wistinga.online.fr/opencanvas/
English version of the popular drawing program... openCanvas is a popular computer graphics software... It was specifically designed for use with pressure-sensitive drawing tablets...

The Medium is the Message: Shepard Fairey and the Art of Appropriation
http://www.supertouchart.com/2009/02/02/editorial-the-medium-is-the-message-shepard-fairey-and-the-art-of-appropriation/
...a widespread and baseless internet campaign to smear Shepard Fairey has been going on for some time now. It primarily revolves around a widely circulated article by artist Mark Vallen, whose evident distaste for Shepard?s work--and obvious lack of modern art world knowledge--led him to jump to a handful of hollow conclusions questioning the originality legitimacy of Fairey?s art. If this writing were simply a balanced, albeit negative critique, or even an educated "gotcha" piece no one would care, but the article in question is an unabashed and well-disseminated character-assassination attempt...

Entangled particles face sudden death
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/02/02/2478343.htm
Teleportation and quantum encryption could be a more distant reality with the discovery that entanglement can unexpectedly disappear.

Oldest Animal Fossils Discovered
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/earliestanimal.html
OmansedimentFossil traces found in an oil field on the Arabian Peninsula are the oldest evidence yet of animals, pushing back the known origins of higher life to more than 635 million years ago...

Is this the largest invasive species in the world? Hippos in Colombia
http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/colombia-hippos.html
The original four founded a herd that now numbers 19, and no one knows what to do with them. They are becoming a pest as they roam the local countryside at night looking for food - One was recently shot by a local farmer some 3 miles away. The hacienda is not securely fenced and the park management does not have the funds to erect a suitable fence, or to feed the animals...

The Valentine's Frog
http://thorninthefoot.livejournal.com/26217.html
We have had recognition of the Easter Bunny for a long time. its about time someone gave credit to... The Valentine Frog. ...the bunny comes at Easter, the Frog delivers stuff for Valentine's day. ...don't you remember the story about the princess kissing the frog to turn him into a prince? Well, every year, the Valentine's Frog goes out into the world looking for a little girl to kiss him and turn him into a prince too, and he leaves chocolates and flowers and things like that to bribe them into thinking he is a prince...

Golden Pages: product, business and service search directory for Ireland
http://www.goldenpages.ie/search/justin_timberlake/talent.html
No "talent" found in Justin Timberlake

The Elfish Gene shoots up like Trainspotting?only with orcs instead of heroin
http://scifiwire.com/2009/02/a-trainspotting-like-addiction-to-dd-rules-the-elfish-gene.php
With its menacing red dragon peering over Mark Barrowcliffe's byline, the D&D character-sheet background, the word "Elfish" in the title, and the "Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange" subtitle, it would be easy for a non-fantasy reader to stroll past this one in the bookstore, judge the book by its cover and dismiss it without a second look as nothing more than a cookie-cutter sword-and-sorcery novel.

(...which is a good reason why it was a damn-fool way to design the cover, the stupid idiots...--ED)

More of London from above, at night
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/more_of_london_from_above_at_n.html

How to not fail at life (quit bitching about the bitches edition)
http://www.mnvibe.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=66333
I found this on 4chan and thought some of you may get a kick out of it. Maybe others will learn a thing or two...

Trench coats for men: how to wear them
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article5653872.ece
The classic trench is a coat for heroes, from Humphrey Bogart to David Tennant. And there are plenty of cool options

Webcomics Kiva team - helping entrepreneurs in the developing world
http://wondermark.com/webcomics-kiva-team-helping-entrepreneurs-in-the-developing-world/
I've donated to charity before, but I've always been bugged by the fact that I don't know where my money's really going... But Kiva is different on both counts. Your money goes to a specific individual that you choose, with a specific need that is outlined in detail. You can decide to fund a Tanzanian charcoal vendor or an Azerbaijani taxi driver. Also, these are loans that earn interest -- the money is used to help the individuals develop and grow businesses, and they are expected to repay the loan. Historically, 97.5% of recipients do...

Print this file, your printer will jam
http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200811/print_this_file_your_printer_will_jam.html
While working on the LPS-20 PostScript software, a bug was filed that said roughly, Print the attached file. The LPS-20 will jam. You'll have to open the printer to remove the scrunched up paper. We were no strangers to jammed printers, but a particular file that could jam the printer? Yeah, right. It was crazy.

(Shades of Hofstaeder...--ED)

How To Cheat In Every Computer Game With Poke
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/cheat-in-every-computer-game-with-poke/
For those games that don?t have any cheats, or to make the cheating easier, there?s Poke. This nifty application gives you the ability to cheat in nearly every game!

Secret Geek A-Team Hacks Back, Defends Worldwide Web
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_kaminsky
As his arm healed, the details of that Starbucks hack kept nagging at him. He remembered that he had gotten into Starbucks' locked network using the domain name system, or DNS... Maybe the painkillers loosened something in his mind, because as Kaminsky began to think more deeply about DNS he became convinced that something wasn't right. He couldn't quite figure it out, but the feeling stuck with him even after he stopped taking the pain pills...

Funny WiFi Network Names
http://www.oddee.com/item_96525.aspx
So you turn on your laptop, check the available WiFi networks, and find...

State of Decay
http://www.ddj.com/184405140
A rolling computer gathers "cruft." When you spot a class interface that is no longer used by any client, but that nobody dare delete, that's cruft. It is also the word "seperate," added to a spellchecker's private dictionary in a moment of careless haste, and now waiting for a suitably important document. Cruft is the cruel corruption and confusion inevitably wrought by time upon all petty efforts of humankind...

Student uses technology to find stolen Xbox
http://tinyurl.com/68ha8u
A Missouri State student was able to recover his stolen Xbox 360 by use of the console's wireless technology, the student said. The console unit's wireless controller was still registered to the specific console, allowing the stolen merchandise to be tracked down,

Canon Vacuum Cleaners
http://englishrussia.com/?p=2260
Recently Russian service centers of Canon have started receiving complains from the people having the troubles with their Canon... vacuum cleaners. It seems that one large electronics supplier in Russia has bought somewhere what they truely believed to be Canon Vacuum Cleaners...

Coming to terms with our inner Cylon
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/01/28/f-vp-handler.html
BSG asks: How can humans cope with an apocalyptic future? What do they hope for? And when do machines, our creations, come alive with their own special consciousness? Do they have free will? Do humans? Can machines and humans defy their internal programming as they stumble into whatever future awaits them?

Joss Whedon's Plan to Monetize Internet Content (Watch Out, Hollywood)
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2152
TV and movie writer-director Joss Whedon wants to change the way Hollywood does business....

Fox's Entertainment Chairman discusses Joss and Dollhouse.
http://whedonesque.com/comments/18636
Peter Liguori tells Broadcasting and Cable "I'm not burying him in the Friday graveyard. I'm giving him a little bit of a reprieve by being on Friday".

(So. They're burying Dollhouse in the Friday graveyard. --ED)

Dollhouse: Dolls Gone Wild Paperdolls
http://dollhousewiki.fox.com/page/Dollhouse%3A+Dolls+Gone+Wild+Paperdolls?t=anon
Hide the highly illegal, underground group of Dolls in your very own home! ... We'll be revealing a new doll every week until the premiere, so keep checking in!

Cue the Ewoks: Star Wars Hits the Stage
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b74477_Cue_the_Ewoks_Star_Wars_Hits_the_Stage.html
A long time from now, in a galaxy far, far away...the Star Wars money machine will still be cranking. Not content with seven feature films or myriad TV spinoffs ranging from the current Clone Wars cartoon series to the dreaded Star Wars Holiday Special, the Jedi masterminds are readying a stage show. George Lucas has signed off on Star Wars: A Musical Journey, a two-hour live musical event featuring a Stormtrooper kick line and singing Wookiees John Williams' Oscar-winning score...

(And, for those who've no idea what they're talking about...--ED)

Star Wars Holiday Special:
http://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/
and everything you always wanted (or didn't want) to know about it!

The Han Solo Comedy Hour!
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/star_wars_special200812
Wookiees and Bea Arthur? Luke Skywalker and Harvey Korman? Singing and dancing and storm troopers? If George Lucas had his way, no one would remember, but yes, Virginia, there was a Star Wars Holiday Special.

8 Forgotten Kids Shows Sure to Give You Nightmares
http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/16069.html
Looking back, it boggles the mind that adult television executives thought these shows would appeal to children; I think they?re some of the creepiest clips ever aired. See if you don?t agree.

Surprising stories behind 20 Muppet characters
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/02/10/mf.muppet.favorites.stories/index.html
Like a lot of people, I grew up on Sesame Street and the Muppets. But did you ever stop to wonder where they came from?

and "ELMO'S AN ARM!"
http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=5583
I was on Sesame Street as a child. No one told me beforehand that puppets weren't real...

Gitmo Detainee's "Genitals Were Sliced With A Scalpel," Waterboarding "Far Down The List Of Things They Did"
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/09/mohamed-torture-uk-us/
The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed?s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said. Another source familiar with the case said: "British intelligence officers knew about the torture and didn?t do anything about it."

(And it begins. Things done in the dark come out in the morning light... prepare yourself, there's much worse to come, and it's going to be a rocky ride...--ED)

The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture
http://www.counterpunch.org/nairn01262009.html
If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee. When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it. Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.

Odds of Dying in a Terrorist Attack
http://eyewashstation.blogspot.com/2007/11/odds-of-dying-in-terrorist-attack.html
You are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist...

The Real Victor in Iraq: Monsanto
http://thepanelist.com/Opinions/Opinions/The_Real_Victor_in_Iraq%3A_Monsanto_200810281252/
Five years of occupation, more than $558 billion spent, 4,182 U.S. soldiers and 655,000 Iraqi civilians dead, and it now looks like Monsanto is going to be the real victor in Iraq thanks to a postwar document known as Order 81. Part of the infamous 100 Orders, Order 81 mandates that Iraq?s commercial-scale farmers must now purchase "registered"seeds.

(Congratulations, USAnians! One more Commercial Success!--ED)

IBM to laid-off: Want a job in India?
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/05/news/companies/ibm_jobs/
Employees who would otherwise face layoffs from their North American jobs at IBM are being given the chance to work abroad through 'Project Match.'

Infoporn: Today's Playmates Are More Like Anime Figures Than Real Humans
http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2009/st_infoporn_1702
Oh, Playboy, why do you want your "readers" to lust after androids? That's the only explanation we can think of for the proportions of your lovely ladybots. We culled the stats for every centerfold from December 1953 (Marilyn Monroe) to January 2009 (Dasha Astafieva), then calculated each woman's body-mass index. A clear trend emerged: While real American women have steadily eaten their way up the BMI slope -- just like American men -- Playmates have gone from a sylphlike 19.4 to an anime-ideal 17.6.

(I might note here that what Playboy wishes its readers to lust after would be gynoids, not androids...--ED)

Kids Charged for Child Porn
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/01/29/violetblue0129.DTL
Violet Blue: When Teens Make Their Own Porn, Who's Being Exploited?

doing the math on MySpace and registered sex offenders
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/02/06/doing_the_math.html
Why are we so obsessed with the Internet side of the puzzle when so many more kids are abused in their own homes?

Teacher offers motive in teen sex case, officials say
http://tinyurl.com/cyhedr
A 49-year-old Phoenix schoolteacher told investigators he lured a 14-year-old student into a Tempe hotel room and had sex with her to keep the girl from sleeping with his godson... The girl stated Brown lured her into a darkened Tempe hotel room where the pair had sex. Afterward, the girl said that when she opened her cellphone the light from the phone revealed that the other person in the room was her teacher...

New Berlin student charged with blackmailing students into sex acts in Facebook deception
http://www.jsonline.com/news/39091967.html
Describing a pattern of manipulation and deception using the social networking site Facebook, the Waukesha County district attorney today announced sexual assault charges against a New Berlin Eisenhower student who authorities say coerced male students into sexual encounters ...persuaded at least 31 boys to send naked pictures and then blackmailed some of the boys into performing sex acts under the threat that the pictures would be released to the rest of the high school...

Drugs 'legal in 10 years' claim
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7166748.stm
The legalisation of all drugs is "inevitable", according to the Chief Constable of North Wales... The chief constable said repealing the Misuse of Drugs Act would destroy a major source of organised crime. He also said he thinks ecstasy is safer than aspirin.

(And of course it isn't. But only because Asprin isn't illegal...--ED)

The 10 Most Successful Potheads on the Planet... Who Admit it
http://www.bspcn.com/2009/02/07/the-10-most-successful-potheads-on-the-planet%E2%80%A6who-admit-it/
In a recent piece we published on pot farms, a debate erupted in the comments section, with some arguing that if you smoke pot, you?ll be poor, gay, and "washing dishes until you?re dead." Where these stereotypes originated remains a mystery to us. In reality, they couldn?t be further from the truth. Not only have 42% of Americans admitted to trying pot, but pot smokers have gone on to become some of the most successful people in our society.

(The word "drug" affects over 60% of people's brains, sending them into a rage-fueled slathering incoherent fury! Ban the word "drug" today! --ED)

Online Discourse Frustrations
http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2009/02/online-discourse-frustrations.html
Too many times when POC bloggers write about various issues, some peeps get defensive about it. ...'If it ain't about you, don't make it about you.' If you don't exhibit the behaviors we're complaining about, then don't take it personally.

The One where he got The New Life
http://vimeo.com/3005595
Casual racism's not funny! If you want to be funny with racism you've gotta formalise it.

think that racism is okay if you're being ironic about it
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/01/think-that-racism-is-okay-if-youre.html
Do you remember Pauly Shore? I don't find him especially worth remembering, but I think his new project, a movie called Adopted, deserves attention. Critical attention. It seems to me that in the trailer below, Shore enacts a common white tendency: acting racist in a way that's supposed to signal that you know you're acting racist. And thinking as you do so that because you're being ironic, you don't really mean to be racist, so the racism you're enacting is okay. And kinda cool and funny too.

(Of course, it's easy for me to say that using irony to make anti-racist comments is effective as well as funny, because I have all my fingers and this is my blog...--ED)

Hacker wins court review
http://ibtimes.com/articles/20090123/hacker-wins-court-review.htm
A British court ruled on Friday that a man who hacked into US military computers will be giving permission for a judicial review against his extradition to the United States.

Freaky Claw-Headed Fossil Could Explain Scorpion Origins
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/freakarthropod.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp
If great appendage-bearing creatures survived 100 million years longer than we realized, then maybe they didn't die out. aybe they evolved -- and come to think of it, scorpion claws look an awful lot like great appendages.

Make Rheopectic slime in less than 15 minutes!
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-Rheopectic-slime-in-less-than-15-minutes!-It/
I'll show how to make your own high-quality slime (this slime is not Oobleck; it is not made with starch) in less than 15 minutes (the timing starts once you have gathered the materials). Of course, you will learn about two topics related to slime structure and behavior: polymers and non-Newtonian fluids. To learn what "rheopectic" means, keep reading.

Introducing Aviary
http://aviary.com/home
Edit images, create mind-blowing effects, design logos, find colors, collaborate, and more. All you need is a web browser. Try it now for free!

Steampunk Cylon: Design your own and win!
http://dvice.com/archives/2009/01/steampunk_cylon.php
Imagine a Cylon Heavy Raider crashes in the 1800s somewhere on Earth. Only a single Centurion survives, and it's heavily damaged. Realizing its only chance at survival is to use the tools available, it repairs itself with the materials of the era. Or just imagine yourself designing a Steampunk Cylon because it's frakkin' cool.

Docklands hypocrisy
http://www.grods.com/post/5284/
Is this spittle-spraying tannoy with a heart of lead and a brain of saltpetre not able to comprehend the extent of his own hypocrisy?

(That would be Andrew Bolt he's talking about there.--ED)

Fake acupuncture 'aids migraines'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4508597.stm
In a study of more than 300 patients, both genuine and sham acupuncture reduced the intensity of headache compared with no treatment at all. But real acupuncture was no better than needles placed at non-acupuncture points on the body, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports. It goes against recent research showing acupuncture works in its own right.

(More research is obviously needed... Hooray Science! It beats ignorant or disingenuous scorn anyday...--ED)

Genetic diversity
http://www.cheetah.org/?nd=41
The cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, is the sole member of its genus... About 10,000 years ago - because of climate changes - all but one species of the cheetah, jubatus, became extinct. With the drastic reduction in their numbers, close relatives were forced to breed, and the cheetah became genetically inbred, meaning all cheetahs are closely related... When you look at the proteins in the blood of cheetahs, they are very similar; it looks as if they are identical twins of one another, meaning they are closely related...

Climatic Heresy on Boing Boing
http://www.dailygrail.com/news/climatic-heresy
I was dismayed by the anger response from two of the people involved, which made me wonder what else I might say that would trigger a similar reaction. Since I couldn't predict it, and I didn't want to provoke it, and I didn't want to start censoring myself, it was easiest to stop.

(The cure for Bad Speech is More Speech, not Curtailing Free Speech. This is a good example of bad behaviour on Boing Boing's part.--ED

Randi's Wrong Again...
http://www.dailygrail.com/news/randi-wrong-on-parapsychology-research
Randi goes on to illustrate the lack of positive results in parapsychology... Randi is either uninformed on the issue, or being deceptive - he can choose either horn of that dilemma.

Rand-Aid
http://www.dailygrail.com/news/randi-charity-work
Last Friday night magic duo Penn & Teller were the 'celebrity contestants' on game show "Don't Forget the Lyrics"... Celebrities play on behalf of their favourite charity. P&T's choice? The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)! ...they crashed back to earth with an incorrect lyric to a Doors song (Jim's no doubt got a big smile on his face on the 'other side'), resigning the JREF to a 'paltry' $25,000 donation. Although that will surely come in handy, paying a good 14% of James Randi's wage for the coming year ($US175,000).

Copyfight Erupts Over Fairey's 'Hope' Poster of Obama
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/02/copyfight-erupt.html
The Associated Press says it wants credit and compensation for use of a copyright-protected photo in the creation of Shepard Fairey's widely imitated "Hope" campaign poster for Barack Obama... Fairey's lawyer said the artist's use of the image is covered by fair use, and refused to comment further on the matter...

New York Man Arrested for Posing as Doctor and Convincing People To Given Themselves Rectal Examinations
http://tinyurl.com/7rg8g6
Brady was finally apprehended after a 34-year-old woman became suspicious after giving herself a rectal examination when she realized later that Brady "did not represent a medical establishment." She then called police.

The Shire, under bank ownership, is for sale for $1.3M
http://bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090204/BIZ0102/902040353
A development that was conceived during the height of Bend?s housing boom but failed during its bust has gone back to the bank. The Shire, a 15-lot, village-themed concept in the southeastern part of the city, was marked by its Old World housing styles and fantasy setting styled after J.R.R. Tolkien?s Lord of the Rings series.

Atheists bond during 'debaptism'
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/08/03/baptism.ART_ART_08-03-08_B4_61AU3UV.html?sid=101
Belief in God symbolically evaporated when more than a hundred atheists were "de-baptized" with a blow dryer yesterday...

Heavy Metal Laundry Tips
http://abmkitchen.blogspot.com/2007/10/heavy-metal-laundry-tips.html
"A friend of mine, a true headbanger of triumphant steel and fellow traveller on the quest of destiny through the vale of evermore (we shall call him "Tim"), once asked me, "Scott, how do you get your metal shirts to stay so black?" What Tim had astutely observed was that my metal kit maintains its abyssic darkness..

Cold Brewed Coffee on the Cheap
http://www.ineedcoffee.com/06/coldhome/
This is simply a how-to for people who would like to try cold-brewed coffee before shelling out the money for a commercially available system -- or for those who, like myself, are just to cheap to break down and spend $30 when they don't have to.

and So I guess I got kicked off another My Little Pony Forum...
http://robotmantheblog.com/2006/10/25/so-i-guess-i-got-kicked-off-another-my-little-pony-forum/