Category: News Briefs

US State Department “charm” offensive hits bumps.  Yeah, the bumps on GW’s head.

U.S. troops death toll hit 2000 today.

So much for light bulbs burning out.  Imagine, it only took 100+ years.  At this rate we’ll have a cure for the cold in 3005, I can’t wait.

Gamers, you may enjoy the Experimental Gameplay Project, Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University.

Speaking of games, neat artilcle on gamers addiction.

Kook Sites – A self proclaimed, “tasteless foray into the web’s fringe” has tons of nutty, campy, and offensive sites. – NSFW *

BlinkBits is kind of like a wiki, but with a cloud-like structure?  Looks promising.

Relationships suffer when lines are crossed.  Of course?

Apple Homepages – a Flickr set of caps of the apple.com site through the years.

Trench Art: An Illustrated History, by Jane Kimball.  Explore the rest of this site as well, very compelling stuff all over it.

DataTiles is what I imagined computing/information management would be like by now.

The large penis support group has either a lot of wishful thinking, or perhaps there is a gold mine of anomolistic males? – NSFW *

Sara’s evil wedding planner is hilarious

Why torture is OK

Teagames.com – Zombie Romp game.

Protecting the presidential Seal is no joke.

Worth1000.com – Geek stamps

Tributes left for a dead chicken.

Advertising/Design Goodness: Playboy

Robert Winston: Why do we believe in God?

Dig uncovers past of Cherokee in North Carolina.

The Gospel According to Anne Rice – yep, she got god.

Make a police sketch.  You’ll have fun, it’s harder than you’d think.

The Ad Conceptor is interesting, mildly.  I guess.

Loretta Hui-Shan Yang – Artist in crystal glass (for toe).

Film rolls as troops burn dead in Afghanistan.  More “Troops Gone Wild” stuff.  The world is shocked by this, we seem to be, well… amused.

10 worst shows on television.  Of which I watch none.

18 grandmothers arrested at Iraq war protest as they showed up at recruiters to enlist.

A decade of underrated movies.  For your next trip to the video store.

Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes by Jakob Nielsen.  This weblog breaks almost all of them.  Paxtonland is much better.

An Aptronym is when a name fits a thing.

Google.org is the philantrhopic arm of Google.  Didn’t know that.

REMEMBER INTRNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY IS OCTOBER 22

I took pleasure in The Pixel Museum

Candykiller is bizarre, horror, cartoon-like art.

Finally, a Tom DeLay mug shot.  Thanks to The Smoking Gun.

Brandi Swindell For Boise City Council – Conservatives are running a very telegenic female for the position.  Ehmmm….  yeah.

Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

No Winter by 2105? New Study Offers Grim Forecast for U.S.  Some say this will affect Michigan within our livetimes now.

minigraphiti – Watch the video.

How to cut quill pens from feathers and impress your officemates.

Hurricane Wilma is now the most intense Atlantic storm, evar!

A year later and the CIA is still in turmoil.

World is a safer place despite people’s fears.  I’m afraid of fear.

How to cook rats.  Just in case, you never know…. remember y2k.

The illustrated principles of pool and billiards, is a very interesting place.  What the web was intended for.  I still say billiards is just spheres and planes.

Romanian prisoner sues God.  That tears it.  Pack up the entire planet and put it away… it’s over.

ps.  Yes I’m actually listening to Fiona Apple and liking it.  Now back off.

Time magazine’s all time 100 great novels.  What?  No Rivethead?  The injustice…

Vlad III Dracula was a bad-ass mofo.

Johnny Rotten’s website. Oh yeah…. it’s rotten.

The political cartoons of Dr. Seuss

f r a n g i p a n i | gallery :: Manholes of Japan

“…a company sent me their employee cookbook. It sucks, but in a completely awesome way….”

I love stencil art.

Anything But iPod.com  I couldn’t agree more.  Parents don’t drink the iPod coolaid this Christmas.

knitty.com is a cool online store.  A great example of e-commerce, in my opinion.

Flash fun

Strange products, indeed.

Remember The Milk is a listmaking widget, you’ll like it.

How to make 1 million friends on MySpace. Here’s the original story as told by the guy.  I know some of you got caught by this.

MySpace User Found Dead.  As of this post, her site was running and she had 600+ comments on her last blog.

Microsoft, Yahoo to link IM networks.  Mainly they are worried about Google instant messenger.

Cool musicians who blog: My friend BeatnikPad’s excellent list.

Bush 911 speech – Google Video

Inside the white house: A train wreck.

Remember the chick done in Flash that was all loose limbed and falling?  Here’s Bush in motion.

Bore Me Rigid – Disrobics – Disco aerobics with dicks.  NSFW (not safe for work)

The best headline EVAR! “North Carolina: Missing Man Found Dressed Like Doctor With Dead Deer In Stolen Ambulance.”
2005 . Reynald Drouhin

Mise à nu.  – Definately NSFW.  Click for a rear-view image.

Holy relic of pastafarianism!: Chinese scientists uncover 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles.  Someone forgot and left it in the fridge.

Mom delivers 16th child, thinking of more.

Gallery of Bellydancing Librarians.  As advertised.

LiveMarks – Watch people update their del.icio.us bookmarks in real time.

One final “fuck you” to Bush.

Game: Escape from Rhetundo Island

Now you too can get relationship advice from Gene Simmons.  Man, where was he when I needed him all these years?

Doctors denounce abstinence-only education.  Actually, going way out on a limb, I doubt Jesus would think much of it either.

Just what I’ve been looking for for years…  a recipe Green Eggs and Ham.  That makes me very happy.

Returning to the popular news briefs has been an exercise in frustration for me. So many people have requested more of these but, I have hardly been able to find the time to do any browsing lately. Much less collecting these. Perhaps there will be more time for these in the future.

• Pregnant woman, after being raped by prison guards, faces firing squad
• Learn Object oriented programming, the Microsoft way (which really isn’t all that bad and may even get you a job)
• Browse open wireless networks that war drivers have found. Perhaps you’re on the list?
• Crafty Chica, the Latino Martha Stewart
• Remember those guys that found the loot in their backyard last week? Turns out they stole the loot from someone else while doing a roofing job
• Man who tries to pay for pizza with pot is arrested. In other news, there’s a pizza driver out there that won’t take pot as payment
• This is supposed to be a legit download of Paint Shop Pro 9.01. I can’t get it to work, perhaps you can

• Newsfilter reminds us that Abandoned Places has a myriad of places to for the urban explorer in us.  Still tempted to take a few hikes in the gutted G.M. facilities here in Flint.  Just have to make friends with some Pinkertons..
• Someone donated a grenade to a thrift store. The terrorism alert status has been downgraded back down to "watch your back."
• Oil from pig manure. Related story: Soylet Green is people!
• There are a lot of new people spilling their guts out then, there is the old ones, still the best.
• Meanwhile the 9/11 commission continues to wax in perfect hindsight supervision (TM).
• More hoopla from the mindless hoarde as it continues to react the big scary internet.  This time, it’s Gmail they’re after.  Of which no one knows a damn thing about.  Well, in the Bush Bunch tradition preemption is proaction.
• Fark invites us to "Spot the American!"
• Not to usurp Dan’s Deathwatch but, Weird Al Yankovic’s parents were found dead, sadly. He has a statement on his website.

• Google tried to announce it’s new web mail service, on April 1. Of course, the entire intarweb speculated it was an April fools joke.
  Some still think it’s a joke, others aren’t fessing up if it is. Anyway, here’s their real April fools joke
• In case you’re interested, here is a list of sites that pulled April fools jokes for 2004.
• This does not appear to be an April Fool’s joke: Ashcroft creates task force for copyright violations.
• World’s flags given letter grades. Japan and Vietnam get “A’s” the US gets a “C.”
• Looks like Lynee Cheney’s lesbian novel will be published. Guess we can stop complaining about religious-right, fundamentalist and judgmental Christian values from the White House.
• For her son’s birthday party, 35-year-old Patricia Johnson got a hotel room, bought beer, and stripped for the party guests. Serious charges you think? Misdemeanor corruption and providing alcohol to minors.
• Judge declares mistrail in Tyco case. I guess the sole nodding, winking juror waving a giant foam rubber “Number 1” with the word “Tyco” printed across influenced his decision.
• John “a cancer growing on the presidency” Dean is hitting more talk shows lately than Condi Rice. Pitching his new book, of course.

On an interesting side note, the pbs.org link lists Dean as the founder of the Prison Fellowship Ministries but, on their website, they list Chuck Colson as it’s founder. In fact, if you search for the phrase "John Dean" on their site, (or Google for that matter) you find nothing. You will find an interesting, ancient and cached article by Colson himself where he doesn’t have much nice to say about Dean Either pbs.org’s fact checkers missed this small tidbit or, well… you get the idea.

• Individuals who share personal copies of music files on the internet in Canada are safe after a Canadian federal court rejected a motion on Wednesday that would have allowed the music industry to sue them.
• Teen who posted own nude photos charged with distributing child porn.
• We See That Now A heartfelt — no — abject — no — craven apology to the right from the left for our campaign of hate, anger and malice against God’s own president.
• Found at Starbucks: The Pentagon’s Papers
• Tax cuts boost joblessness, encourage outsourcing.

(Yes, the News Briefs have made a brief comeback. Not war-related this time.)

• Haliburton scores again
• Today, the UN Security Council calls an open meeting on Iraq
• CNN shuts down Kevin Sites weblog. Kevin impressed me greatly and I’m sorry to see him shut down. If he pops up anonymously somewhere, I’ll find it and let you know.
• Iraqi sailors sip espresso on Italy’s Riviera? I would.
• Marine killed in Iraq was orphan immigrant who enlisted to thank U.S. for his new life.
• More nonsense that makes me ashamed of my countrymen.
• PNAC is well pleased to see that the plan is progressing nicely. If it weren’t for the damned weather… Meanwhile, Bush implores us to pray about the matter, to send him guidance. While Saddam prays for other things.
• Meanwhile, it’s business as usual in the West Bank and Kashmir.
• The Onion chimes in.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I have a timely quote for you to read:

“Why of course the people don’t want war. … That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Hermann Goering

• Micheal Moore post Oscar interview. He holds the line even firmer here.
• Haliburton. Huge profits possible? Of course…
• The US is trying desperately to keep Turkey at bay… it doesn’t look good.
• Most of the people, in Iraq are happy to see us. Iraqi’s still surrendering in large numbers.
• Bush and Russia’s Putin are at extreme odds… Russia won’t budge, neither will we. Cold war style sentiments are forming, once again as we view Soviets as aiding our enemies.
• Allies may risk up to 3000 casualties in Baghdad, says former general. Great, let’s hope he dead off on this.

Yahoo! settled it’s case quickly and fairly with the yodeler yesterday. A steam roller crushed a bus in Russia, killing 14 people. A 5 year old was caught with 1.2 kilos of heroin at JFK, she was traveling alone. Relations between Cuba and Mexico are at al all time low as Castro slips further into senile dementia. Finally Cristie Kerr LPGA professional golfer gives thanks for victory… feminists are angry.