Cruel and Unusual

Jon Ronson explores the secret world of Black Ops, psychic warriors, and loud music as torture in this article. (via Metafilter)

Birdtsrike

So, just after lunch today I'm sitting with my back to the wall on the 8th floor and I hear this thud behind me. I swivel my chair arounnd, and not 3 feet away from my face staring at me from the other side of the window is this huge brown and gray hawk with fierce bright yellow eyes. He stares at me for a couple beats then flies away. He looked like he was sitting on a ledge but there isn't one. If the window was open I imagine he would have flown right in.

So then I'm walking back to my car after work and when I get to it there's no less than four presents left for me from some anonymous bird (or birds). I was parked under a lampost. It wasn't the first time that I had parked there but it was the first time that my car got tagged.

Mind-blender

I'm still trying to process how things went down. Ignore this post if you don't like spoilers. This seems to be a basic summary of what happend. Why was Aaron's ear bleeding? Why can't they write right? Who left the mysterious phone message? And who recieved it? And when? maybe I could buy one myself. You can watch ten minutes of the movie online if you don't know what this post is about.

Did He Really Say That?

In today's segment, Gibson also asked if terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi "pray to the same god you and I do."

"I think they pray to a false god," Bush said. "Otherwise they wouldn't be killing innocent lives like they have been."

Feline Follies

Cat tossing in microgravity. Also from BoingBoing, animals made from drinking straws.

The Big Picture

Giant photomosaics of Hawaii. (via Metafilter)

We almost did it again

The Huygens probe which is set to land on Saturn's moon, Titan, on January 14th, 2005 had a critical design failure which would have made the probe worthless. If it wasn't for one diligent engineer this fatal flaw would never have been discovered. (via Alterslash/Slashdot)

Triumph of Triumph

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog takes a poop on some spinners after the second presidential debate.

Into the Heart of the Beast

A man puts on a Bush/Cheney shirt and heads into deep Blue territory. He does the opposite with a John/John shirt. (via Defamer)

I enter the faux-rustic Brentwood Country Mart, a collection of shops intended to look like an olde-time barnyard. On the central patio, I pass a woman who looks up from her gaggle of children to see me passing and exclaims, "Ick! God!" A group of teen skater boys waiting on line to buy the Mart's famed "Chicken Basket" discuss whether Bush will be removed from office by the time they turn 18, thus saving them from the draft. I sit down to eat. Dining nearby is a young girl who looks to be about 6-years-old; she gazes at my shirt with a look so forlorn, I expect to learn that Dick Cheney just stole her crayons. Her mother arrives and gives her a hug of consolation. The girl starts to talk, but I can only make out "Bush shirt," which she says to her mother as she points my way. The mother turns and glares, shaking her head at me. I start to wonder what sort of person I am to inflict this on a poor child.

Satire

Lie Girls. Fellowship 9/11. (via Metafilter)

Following the Flu

The National Flu Surveillance Network maps flu threats at the state and zipcode levels. They also have an animated map of previous seasons. The CDC also has a map of activity included in the weekly updates at their flu site.

Back to the Mystery

This page seems to have the most definative set of pictures of the mysterious Bush bulge that I've seen on all the internets. The most likely answer is that it is a medical device, possibly a defibrillator although he is psyhically fit as far as anyone knows. Of course he could always use a defibrillator to scrub all thsoe lies he tells. Get it? Defibrillator? OK that wasn't funny. To make it up to you here are the results of an informal poll on best guesses for what the heck that thing is from the comments at Polical Animal.

19 Defibrillator called the LifeVest by Lifecor.
10 Medical device.
9 Bulletproof vest.
6 Backbrace
4 Puppetmaster alien
3 TENS unit
2 Protruding bones
2 Rove or Cheney's shock machine
2 Secret Service device
2 Transmitter

One opinion each for:
Wedgie
Devil wings
Self destruct mechanism
Bondage gear
T-bone steak
Misplaced codpiece.
Windup keyhole
James Bond 007 device
Box of chocolates
Copy of "My Pet Goat"
Portable hot air pump
Control box
Where his batteries go
"Gaydar" gear

Life On the Front

WWI in color. (via Metafilter)

Turtle Art

Koopa paints. (via Metafilter)

It is NOT safe to paint with untrained turtles (especially box turtles) because they will instinctively pull into their shells when afraid. Without a trusting relationship, most turtles would sit in the paint and do nothing, or fly across the canvas, ingesting paint in the process.

But remember "TurtleKiss.com does not endorse the kissing of snapping turtles"

At the Top of Their Game

Black Sky: The Race for Space chronicles the victory of SpaceShipOne and the entire design and flight test team. They had cameras everywhere for the entire process and did some quality work bringing out the difficulty, danger, and thrill of the entire endevour. The show had extensive footage from a camera mounted in the cockpit and one in the tail of the rocket-propelled craft. They really were able to take the you along with pilot all the way up and down again. I was impressed.

Web Neighbors

Touch Graph presents linkage data from Google as a graph. They have a similar application for Amazon's What's Related. (via Topsight)

A Senator's Favorite Movie

This month TCM is doing a series called Party Politics and the Movies. They're featuring four Senators, Edwards, McCain, Biden and Hatch, who choose a movie and give a short interview about it.

Orin Hatch chose To Kill a Mockingbird because, "...its story of an idealistic country lawyer (Gregory Peck) reverberates with memories of Hatch's own past as a struggling law student and a young lawyer who took on pro-bono cases in Pennsylvania and Utah before being elected to the Senate." Who knew? I'll bet that would have been Trent Lott's choice too.

I just watched the first movie, hosted by Edwards and I'll bet you will never guess what it was.

Worlds Within Worlds

The Zoomquilt. (via Metafilter)

Masters of the Mash Up

Masters of the Lebowski, a He-Man remix. More here. (via Metafilter)

Breaking News

You remember those aluminum tubes destined for an Iraqi centrifuge that was the single most important evidence that there was an ongoing nuclear program there? Can you believe that they were for rocket tubes? The New York Times is probably just about the last set of people on the planet to figure out that the Bush administration pulled a con game on that issue. Thanks you guys. Where were you before it was fashionable to be critical of the war? Here is what the NY Times was saying back in 2002:

More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.

In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.

Can you guess who wrote that article?

In spite of being two years late to the party anew article does shine some light on how we were decieved and pulls some choice Cheney quotes that highlight his ridiculous assertions. It also points out how dissenting views were ignored and suppressed.

As a senior Oak Ridge official pointed out to the Intelligence Committee, "the vast majority of scientists and nuclear experts'' in the Energy Department's laboratories in fact disagreed with the agency. But on Sept. 13, the day the article appeared, the Energy Department sent a directive forbidding employees from discussing the subject with reporters.

The Energy Department, in a written statement, said that it was "completely appropriate'' to remind employees of the need to protect nuclear secrets and that it had made no effort "to quash dissent.''

They get props for honesty for this new article but they've already done their damage so at this point it's a bit late.