Borat

Waterboarding

Mister Rogers Plays Donkey Kong

The Taxonomy of Torture

What is torture? Euphemisms like "stress position" cover a wide range of practices, from the merely uncomfortable to the wickedly cruel and painful. At Slate, we have wrestled with the definitions of abuse and torture and how best to present these morally and legally complicated terms. The taxonomy follows the legal maxim of res ipsa loquiturlet the thing speak for itself. The tactics below are listed in order from least to most severe.

The Detainee Bill

Terror Detainee Bill

Today's Senate vote on President Bush's detainee legislation, after House approval yesterday, marks a defining moment for this nation.

How far from our historic and Constitutional values are we willing to stray? How mercilessly are we willing to treat those we suspect to be our enemies? How much raw, unchecked power are we willing to hand over to the executive?

The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters.

It's a red-letter day for the country. It's also a telling day for our political system.

The people have lost confidence in their president. Despite that small recent uptick in the polls, Bush remains deeply unpopular with the American public, mistrusted by a majority, widely considered out of touch with the nation's real priorities.

But he's still got Congress wrapped around his little finger.

Today's vote will show more clearly than ever before that, when push comes to shove, the Republicans who control Congress are in lock step behind the president, and the Democrats -- who could block him, if they chose to do so -- are too afraid to put up a real fight.

Top 10 Weird Al Videos

UCS Satellite Database

The UCS Satellite Database is a listing of operational satellites currently in orbit around Earth. It is available as both a downloadable Excel file and in a tab-delimited text format, and in a version (tab-delimited text) in which the "Name" column contains only the official name of the satellite in the case of government and military satellites, and the most commonly used name in the case of commercial and civil satellites. The database is updated roughly quarterly. Our intent in producing the database is to create a research tool for specialists and non-specialists alike by collecting open-source information on operational satellites and presenting it in a format that can be easily manipulated for research and analysis. The database includes basic information about more than 800 satellites and their orbits, but does not contain the detailed information necessary to locate individual satellites.

PERA Passes

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republicans, carrying out their election-year values agenda, on Tuesday pushed through legislation cutting off financial awards for lawsuits successfully filed against expressions of religion such as Christmas displays on government grounds.

The bill, passed 244-173, denies the awarding of attorney's fees or monetary damages to a party that wins a court case based on the establishment clause in the Constitution that is used to argue a separation of church and state.

There is no companion Senate bill and little chance the Senate would consider it in the waning days of this session, but the House vote was a reminder to the GOP's conservative base that their issues are not being ignored.

"We cannot continue to allow frivolous and, frankly, unwarranted lawsuits to stifle the beliefs and self-determination of our great communities," said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga.

Democratic opponents saw the bill as a serious infringement of constitutional rights.

"This bill would make it more difficult for ordinary Americans to defend their religious freedom against intrusion by government," said Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas. "There's nothing benign about this bill."

"Singling out one class of cases for the denial of attorney's fees when every other one gets them does seem to me an odd way to run a constitution," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Backers of the legislation cited cases contesting the use of religious symbols, such as crosses in veterans' cemeteries, the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings or using public land to host the Boy Scouts, who require participants to declare belief in God.

They said local and state governments, unable to match the financial resources of civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and unwilling to pay costly attorney's fees in losing cases, often accede to demands to remove religious symbols.

"This is an issue of allowing the cases to go to court and not to have the threat or intimidation by the ACLU and their minions to hang over all of these heads," said Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., sponsor of the bill.

"With this bill we will close a loophole that has allowed liberal groups like the ACLU to prey on taxpayers for far too long," said Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office, said passage of the bill "would isolate and discourage enforcement of a specific piece of our Bill of Rights." The legislation, she said, "would, in fact, weaken the very freedom they claim to be protecting."

Beat Week Continues.....again

MSNBC on Clinton's Fox News Appearance: His Leg Was Showing

Today MSNBC decided to forego substantive discussion of terrorism and instead focused on the fact that former President Bill Clinton’s sock had slipped and part of his “white” leg was showing during his interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. The MSNBC host asked her guests, “Is this a travesty or what?”

Bohemian Rhapsody Performed by 25 Most Annoying Singers

Locked Your Keys In The Car? Get Out Your Cell Phone

There has been a rumor going around in one of those dreadful e-mails that your friends and co-workers feel compelled to forward to you all the time. If you lock your keys in your car and you have a remote keyless entry system, you can get outside help to open the car if you have your cell phone with you. Just call someone that has a duplicate key fob that will open your car. Then, hold you cell phone near the door lock and have the person with the key fob call you back. The person with the key fob should then put the key near their phone and push the unlock button. The door should open.

I was skeptical, to say the least, about this rumor, and was about to dismiss it as one more Internet hoax. But I thought I better try it out first. Well, low and behold, it works. I tried it with both GSM and cdma cell phones, and it reliably opens (and relocks) the car.

Accept Jesus, Forever Forgiven

25 Signs That, Sadly, You've Grown Up

1 Your house plants are alive, and you can't smoke any of them.
2 Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.
3 You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
4 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
5 You hear your favorite song on an elevator.
6 You watch the Weather Channel.
7 Your friends marry and divorce instead of hook up and break up.
8 You go from 130 days of vacation time to 14.
9 Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as "dressed up."
10 You're the one calling the police because those damn kids next door won't turn down the stereo.

Fun With Flashing Lights

A hack and a social experiment all in one... or "How to build a Morse code signaler and see how long it takes before someone figures it out."

William S. Burroughs - Thanksgiving Prayer

Olberman's Commentary on Clinton vs. Fox News

Website Intro for the New Birth Baptist Church

Hogwarts Model Built Using Matchsticks

Matchstick Marvels will be taking you on an enchanted trip to J. K. Rowling's world of Harry Potter this year. Acton will be displaying his matchstick version of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at the Matchstick Marvels museum in Gladbrook, IA. The model is based on Hollywood's version of Hogwarts seen in the Harry Potter blockbuster movies. When finished in December of this year, it will contain over a half-million matchsticks held together with 15 gallons of carpenter's wood glue.

NoteMesh

NoteMesh is a free service that allows college students in the same classes to share notes with each other. It works by creating a wiki for individual classes that users can edit. Users are free to post their own lecture notes or contribute to existing lecture notes. The idea is that users in the same class can collaboratively create a definitive source for lecture notes.

Beat Week Continues With

Why Do Atheists Care About Religion?

The Shopping Cart Bike

This bike was sitting outside of my new place when I moved in. The front is a Kroger shopping cart, the back is an old Schwinn bike.

Hypnic Jerk

A hypnic or hypnagogic jerk is an involuntary muscle twitch (more generally known as myoclonus or a myoclonic twitch) which often occurs during the transition from wakefulness to sleep (see hypnagogia). It is often described as an electric shock or falling sensation, and can cause movement of the body in bed. Hypnic jerks are completely normal, and are experienced by most people, especially when over-tired or sleeping uncomfortably. The exact cause of the sudden jerks is not clear, but there are hypotheses:

Dog Whistle Politics or Why Bush Said Iraq is "Just a Comma"

A lot of people have been slamming Bush for his comment that Iraq is "just a comma". As an e-mail correspondent pointed out, this is another case where Bush is using code words to speak directly to his Christian right base.

The phrase is: "Never put a period where God has put a comma." Which is to say - it ain't over yet, and God may well make it better. So Iraq's bad, but if we trust in God, he'll make it better.

This is the thing about Bush - he is constantly littering his speeches with code words and phrases meant for the religious right. Other people don't hear them, but they do, and most of the time it allows Bush both to say what those who aren't evangelical or born again want to hear, while still reassuring the religious right wants to hear.

For example, one of the most famous episodes of this was Bush's reference in the 2004 debates to the Dred Scott decision. Most people couldn't figure out what the heck he was talking about - it seemed like a non-sequitur. But, as Paperwight pointed out at the time, anti-abortion activists see themselves as similar to anti-slavery activists. And they take heart that eventually Dred Scott v. Sandford was overthrown.

So when asked about Supreme Court justices, Bush was reassuring his base that he would appoint justices prone to overturn Roe vs. Wade. And as far as that goes, both Roberts and Alito are very likely to do so.

The other name for this is dog whistle politics. When you blow a dog whistle humans can't hear it, but the dogs sure can. It's a pitch higher than humans can hear. When you speak in code like this, most of the time the only people who hear and understand what you just said are the intended group, who have an understanding of the world and a use of words that is not shared by the majority of the population. So it allows you to send out two messages at once - one pitched for the majority of Americans, the other pitched for a subgroup. This goes on all the time, and usually it isn't caught - most people don't hear it, and the media is made up of people who can't make the connections because they don't belong to these subgroups. So they can't point out the subtext either.

Dawkins Interviewed About The God Delusion

Geek-a-cycle

Astronaut's Flickr Account

The Shaving Cream Racket

But someone has to say it: shaving cream is a racket.

Why don't people know this? It's just part of the lost knowledge of our time. Wean yourself from it for a week, and you will find that your shaves will be closer, unbloody, and quick. Imagine a full shave in less than a minute, with no cuts, gashes, or discomfort. It is within your grasp.

You won't have the face of a tenderized chicken breast. Your skin will be solid and robust. You will feel the same revulsion I do as you encounter that long row of shaving products at the drug store. You too will feel pity on the seventh eights of the human race that does not understand this simple point.

Why is the world hooked on this stuff? Here's what happens. Early on in a person's life, when whiskers and stubble begin to appear on the skin, the young teen is presented a razor and a can – a can with a squirting top that releases a foam. It is a charming little foam. The child is taught to rub it on and then shave it off.

Good Morning

Kerouac

Russian Highway

This is Russian Federal highway Moscow city - Yakutsk City, named “Lena”, nowadays.

The road doesn’t have asfalt surface, though it is a Federal, vital highway.

Everytime it rains the road gets paralized, these shots are made a few days before the traffic jam for 600 cars got stuck there. Hunger and lack of the fuel followed, according to the witnesses. One woman gave a born to a child right in the public bus she was riding.

The God Who Was Not There

American Taliban Takes on Contraception

Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it's time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.

Their voices were raised in Rosemont on Friday and Saturday at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.

"Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything else," Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion veteran whose Pro-Life Action League sponsored the conference, said in an interview.

No one knows how many supporters Scheidler and his colleagues have, but conservative leaders are watching to see if the anti-contraception rhetoric gains traction.

Of special interest is how closely evangelical Christians are willing to align themselves with traditional Catholics on the issue. The Catholic Church long has opposed contraception, but evangelicals generally embraced its use--until recently, some argue.

Like a Rolling Stone - 1966 Newcastle Performance

Bill Clinton Smacks Down Fox News

How To Travel With Expensive Camera Equipment

A "weapons" is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols - those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets - are considered weapons...and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.

I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare...I'm given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.

That's the procedure. The case is extra-tracked...TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.

It's a great way to travel with camera gear...I've been doing this since Dec 2001 and have had no problems whatsoever.

Has the U.S. Become a Dictatorship

The Battle of Los Angeles

On the night of 24 February 1942 the Air Raid sirens sounded, and the Coast Guard Anti-aircraft guns were ordered to "green alert," putting them in readiness to fire. From the time the battle began until it ended in the early hours of the morning, thousands of people had witnessed the search lights around Los Angeles fix on a target hovering above the city, and anti-aircraft rounds detonate in the sky. Reputable news agencies reported the attack, complete with eye-witness accounts. But the Japanese claim that they never attacked, and there was no wreckage to indicate that anyone actually did. These conflicting accounts cast uncertainty on the nature of the unidentified aircraft that caused the Battle of Los Angeles.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Picture History

Robert Smalls

Robert grew up a slave, and experienced the full measure of that corrupt institution. In April of 1862 Robert was assigned work on a Rebel Warship. The "Planter" was a high-pressure, side-wheel steamer, one hundred and forty feet in length, and about fifty feet beam, and drew about five feet of water. She was built in Charleston. She was built to be a Cotton transport boat, but with the outbreak of the unpleasantness of 1861, she was commissioned by the Rebel Navy as a gunboat. She became the prized vessel of the confederate Navy. Her armament consisted of one 32-pound rifle gun forward, and a 24-pound howitzer in the rear. She also sported an eight-inch Columbiad, one eight-inch howitzer, and one long 32-pounder. She was commanded by Captain Relay, of the Confederate navy.

Robert hatched a plan that was so daring it was almost unthinkable . . . he would commandeer the Planter, and use it to steam himself, the crew, and all their families to safety in the North. He shared his plans with the slave crew, and cautioned them against alluding to the matter in any way on board the boat, but asked them, if they wanted to talk it up in sober earnestness, to meet at his house, where they would devise and determine upon a plan to place themselves under the protection of the Stars and Stripes instead of the Stars and Bars.

Carl Sagan's Cosmos Series on Google Video

Carl Sagan’s "Cosmos" series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until 1990.

It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 600 million people, according to the Science Channel.

Is This Painting Worth $1 or $1,000,000

Have a look at each of the paintings below. Is the painting worth one million dollars or above (that is, what was the last and highest price paid for the painting), or one dollar (based on the fact that the artist was a child, who has never sold a painting)? Just highlight the text to reveal the answer.

Capsized Cruise Ship in Google Earth/Maps

This is a cool discovery which was actually found a few months ago by 'Neutje' at the Google Earth Community. A satellite photo of the port of Pusan, Korea shows a capsized cruise ship laying on its side after it was hit by the 2003 Typhoon Maemi.

Images of Ceylon

The institution of photography in Ceylon was first established in the mid 1840's and was practiced quite extensively towards the end of the 19th Century. During that period there were dozens of local and foreign artist who took up the challenge to record the daily events which took place in the beautiful and mysterious island of Ceylon in the form of a photographic image.

Exotic Origami Fortune Teller

Mouse Taxidermy

World's Largest Slide Rule

It has been a generation since most people even thought about a slide rule, but Fort Worth became home Wednesday to the biggest one there is. It measures 352 feet long, weighs 300 pounds and takes three men to slide. Skip Solberg and Jay Francis said it will calculate to "six significant digits," which apparently is a good thing. Some other engineers smiled and nodded when hearing of the "significant digits."

Chase Scene from Bullitt

1970s Charger Commercial

Rejoice

Angus MacDougall is a three-year-old terrier mix that has recently been blessed with the revered and holy image of Jesus Christ on his hindquarters. Is this manifestation of The Prince of Peace a coincidence or a bona fide miracle?

Nintendo Stole a Super Mario Theme from 6 years ealier?

A while back, while digging through LA’s now closed Aaron’s Records, I ran across a Record from “Friendship”, and I recognized the bassists name, “Abraham Laboriel”. I remembered a buddy of mine telling me that Abe was a “sick bassist”, and at 99 cents, i couldn’t resist. So I bring my loot home, and pop it on my technics. The very first track I played is called “The Real Thing”. I was instantly floored. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was listening to a funked out version of Super Mario Brothers “Underworld” theme.

Friday Cat Blogging

Biblical Justice: Everybody Must Get Stoned

Well, they'll stone you if you touch the holy things.

Whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death. Exodus 19:13

They'll stone you if you take accursed things.

Achan ... took of the accursed thing. ... And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones. ... So the LORD turned from the fierceness of his anger. Joshua 7:1-26

They'll stone you if you if you curse or blaspheme.

And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him. Leviticus 24:16

They'll stone you if you're raped and do not scream.

If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city. Deuteronomy 22:23-24...

My Generation

David Hahn (The Radioactive Boyscout)

David Hahn (born October 1976) attempted to build a nuclear breeder reactor in 1994 in his backyard shed in Commerce Township, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at the age of 17.

Hahn, nicknamed the "Radioactive Boy Scout", is an Eagle Scout who had previously earned a merit badge in Atomic Energy and had spent years tinkering with basement chemistry which included small explosions. Furthering his experiments, Hahn diligently amassed radioactive material by collecting small amounts from (occasionally stolen) household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, and radium from clocks and gunsights. His "reactor" was a large, cored-out block of lead, and he used $1000 worth of lithium from batteries to purify the thorium ash in a bunsen burner.

Hahn posed as a legitimate adult scientist or teacher to gain the trust of many professionals, despite the presence of misspellings and obvious errors in his letters. Hahn ultimately hoped to create a breeder reactor, using low-level isotopes to transform samples of thorium and uranium into fissionable isotopes.

Although his home-made reactor never achieved criticality, it ended up emitting toxic levels of radioactivity, around 1000 times normal background radiation. Alarmed, Hahn began to dismantle his experiments, but a chance encounter with police led to the discovery of his activities, which triggered a Federal Radiological Emergency involving the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Environmental Protection Agency, having designated Hahn's mother's property as a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, dismantled the shed and its contents and buried them as low-level radioactive waste in Utah. Hahn refused medical evaluation for radiation exposure.

The Golden Book of Chemistry Online

Back in the late 60's this book, written for Children, was pulled from all public libraries and store shelves by the government. It was said that the experiments and information contained herein were too dangerous for the general public...

Used copies on Amazon are rare and are currently priced between $237 and $690 for very used copies. However, because it was published in 1960, before the US copyright laws were rewritten, and because its original copyright was never renewed (yes, I checked myself), it's legal for me to share with you online.

Who Drew This Painting.. Elephant, artist or preschooler?

A Blogger's Nightmare Experience of Being Denied Emergency Contraceptive

"Well, ummm....*clears throat*...So you haven't been raped?" he asks again.

"No. I have not been raped. The condom broke". I state, becoming very frustrated at this point and wondering what the hell is going on.

"Ok, well ummm....Are you married?" he mumbles the words so low I can barely hear them.

Suddenly I get this image of the poor nurse standing at the hospital reading from a cue card that was given to him by a doctor.

"No." I state plainly. "I am not married. I've been in a relationship for several years and I have three children, I don't want a fourth." I respond tersely.

"Oh, I see." He says and then he hurries on, "Well, see. *I* understand. I want you to know that I understand what you're saying. But see, the problem is that we have 4 doctors here right now but only one of them ever writes EC prescriptions. But see, the thing is that he'll interview you and see if you meet his criteria. Now, I called the pharmacy but I also talked to him and well....*clears throat*....you can come down and try to get it. You know, if you meet his criteria he'll give you a prescription, I mean, there's really no harm in trying." the nurse trails off, his voice falters as I realize what I'm being told.

He continues, almost over eager at this point to distance himself from the hospital, "See, I understand what you're saying and all. I think it's a good thing that it's going over the counter. I just thought I should tell you what he told me. You know, you'll just have to have an interview with him and he'll see if you meet his criteria. He'll only be on duty until 2pm today though and you should ask for him if you decide to come down because he's really your only chance."

I sigh and thank him before hanging up. I know exactly what he was telling me. If I wasn't raped and wasn't married then too damn bad for me.

I opened the phone book again and called the Urgent Care in my county. Who knows, maybe they'll do it for me. "No," the nurse said, "We don't prescribe the abortion pill here".

"No, wait I'm not asking for the abortion pill. I'm asking for EC!" I say, "It's not the same thing."

"Well, we use the words interchangeably here. Sorry, we don't prescribe it". She all but races to get off the phone with me.

Illusional Acrobatics

Isaac Asimov on Computers and Robots

War on Terror, The Board Game

It's got suicide bombers, political kidnaps and intercontinental war. It's got filthy propaganda, rampant paranoia and secret treaties ...

... and the Axis of Evil is a spinner in the middle of the board. You can fight terrorism, you can fund terrorism, you can even be the terrorists. The only thing that matters is global domination - err, liberation.

Cubicle Decorations

Luminous Sky Ceilings

SkyCeilings are photographic illusions of real skies that fit into standard ceiling grid systems. Luminous SkyCeilings feature fluorescent or LED lighting that illuminate the translucent images from behind. Ambient SkyCeilings are made from opaque image tiles that are lit by room or cove lighting.

American Heritage Article on Tiki

Victor Jules Bergeron was born in San Francisco in 1903, the son of a French Canadian waiter and grocery-store operator. Before he was six he had survived the great earthquake of 1906 and a ravaging bout of tuberculosis that claimed his left leg. In 1934, with $300 of his own and $800 borrowed from an aunt, he opened a small beer joint and luncheonette in Oakland. It was called Hinky Dinks, and it would likely have come and gone like so many other largely forgettable restaurants, but Bergeron, like Donn Beach, didn’t set low expectations for himself. Prohibition had recently ended, and Bergeron’s customers displayed an uncommon curiosity about cocktails—the more outlandish and inventive, the better. In 1937 Bergeron took a vacation to New Orleans, Trinidad, and Havana and sampled some of the famous cocktails then in fashion, like rum punch in Trinidad and daiquiris made at the legendary El Floridita in Havana. Back in California, Bergeron visited a tropical-themed restaurant called the South Seas that had recently opened in Los Angeles, then went on to visit a place everyone was talking about. It was Don the Beachcomber.

Bergeron headed back to Oakland and set about reinventing his restaurant and himself. He got rid of the name Hinky Dinks (which he concluded was “junky”) and cast around for a new one. His wife pointed out that he was always involved in some deal or trade. Why not Trader Vic’s?

The God Delusion

Picture of ISS and Shuttle Solar Transit

Cuban Posters

Christ guerrilla
Alfredo Rostgaard, 1969

This poster illustrates a quotation of the Columbian priest Camilo Torres: If Jesus were alive today, he would be a guerrillero. Torres, one of the most forceful spokesmen of the so-called liberation theology, joins the armed struggle and gets killed in 1969.

Chavez Calls Bush "The Devil"

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tore into his U.S. counterpart and his U.N. hosts Wednesday, likening President Bush to the devil and telling the General Assembly that its system is "worthless."

"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. "And it smells of sulfur still today."

Anti-US Soviet Propaganda Posters

Topless Sunbathing

College Student Graduates in One Year

With college tuition rising to record levels across the country, one University of Virginia student figured out a way to save himself from the crush of student-loan debt.

The solution? He finished college in just one year.

David Banh, of Annandale, is the first person ever to complete UVa's traditional four-year bachelor's program in a single year.

"I was impressed ... I would say amazed," said Donald Ramirez, vice chairman of the mathematics department.

Banh, who turns 19 later this month, graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria in 2005. A year and a summer later, he was a UVa alumnus.

Thanks to a mountain of advanced placement credits, Banh was already ahead of the game.

"I flirted with the idea back in high school, and thought I could finish college in a year and a half, in three semesters," Banh said. "But after my first semester [at UVa], I realized I had all this extra time, and that if I stayed for a second year I didn't have a way to pay for it without taking out loans."

Religious Stupidity

Latin Profanity

Back to back to back to back homeruns

The Ultimate Guide to Halloween Candy for 2006

Your taste buds have been dying to know what spooky treats might be headed their way come Halloween, right? Well look no further my friends, for I have been collecting a ton o' Halloween candies to show you this season so you can cut out all the guesswork and go straight for the good stuff! There's over 30 varieties reviewed here so you're bound to find something you like! All of the candies featured here are rated on a 1-5 scale: 1 being worse than a zombie eating you alive, and 5 being better than escaping from that very same zombie who wanted to eat you alive.

The Kryptonese Alphabet

Head-in-the-Sand Liberals

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.

Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

Weird Houses From Around the World

Project Nova

Engineering students from Cambridge University have sent a camera to the edge of space for less than £1,000.

Carl Morland, Henry Hallam and Robert Fryers attached the tiny camera to a helium balloon, which flew to nearly four times the height of Everest.

Throughout the flight it took images which show the curvature of the earth.

The students hope Project Nova will allow small rockets to be sent into space for just several hundred pounds, instead of a six-figure sums.

Pope vs. Muslim Cartoons

The Bible vs. The Quran

The House That Flips the Bird

I thought each of you could use a little comic relief today. Here's the story. A city councilman, Mark Easton, lives in this neighborhood. He had a beautiful view of the east mountains, until a new neighbor purchased the lot below his house and built.

Apparently, the new home was 18 inches higher than the ordinances would allow, so Mark Easton, mad about his lost view, went to the city to make sure they enforced the lower roof line ordinance. Mark and his new neighbor had some great arguments about this as you can imagine — not great feelings. The new neighbor had to drop the roof line — no doubt at great expense.

Recently, Mark Easton called the city and informed them that his new neighbor had installed some vents on the side of his home. Mark didn't like the look of these vents and asked the city to investigate. When they went to Mark's home to see the vent view, this is what they found ...

QuoteDB

Welcome to Famous Quotes at QuoteDB - Interactive Database of Famous Quotations

Pope Asked to Convert to Islam

Tripoli - The elder son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has called on Pope Benedict XVI to convert to Islam immediately, dismissing last week's apology from the pontiff for offending Muslims.

"If this person were really someone reasonable, he would not agree to remain at his post one minute, but would convert to Islam immediately," Mohammed Gaddafi told an awards ceremony on Monday evening for an international competition to memorise the Qur'an.

"We say to the pope - whether you apologise or not is irrelevant, as apologies make no difference to us."

Gaddafi junior also hit out at "those Muslims who look for comfort in the words of a non-Muslim".

He said Muslims "should not look for charity from the infidel... but should fight Islam's enemies who attack the faith and the Prophet Muhammad".

On Sunday, the pope said he was "deeply sorry" for the reaction to a speech he made last week in which he quoted an obscure medieval text that criticised some teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman".

$30 Micro Copter

The following is a review for the Picco-Z RC helicopter. It's an amazing device, and at $30.00, incredibly cheap compared to the usual cost of simmilar devices. Although marketed under a different brand the Aero Ace is an RC plane of simmilar caliber that was created by the same firm.

Why Paris Hilton is Famous

When Paris first came on the scene with her own user generated sex video she used that attention to create a career. Here’s how she did it.

Though she hired a publisist to get her on Page 6 She never really talked about herself. She talked about other people. She would mention the designers of her clothes, the club she was going to, who made the sweater for her dog, all without any guarantee of any return. She just threw out links.

It didn’t take long for designers and club owners to realize that Paris Hilton was a walking billboard. So they embraced her. She paid attention to them, so they paid attention to her...

...Whenever she tries to promote herself, it falls flat. Books, records, movies, etc. don’t work for Paris. Because she’s actually a platform. Like Digg and YouTube.

Dubai As The Arabian Vegas?

The glittering fantasy land from the travel brochures is only one of those cities, a beautiful optical illusion arranged by the the world's public relations managers. Whoever believes in it must think of Dubai as a kind of fairy tale, a place of Arab magic, an oasis of camels and sheiks and a cluster of luxury hotels where no day goes by without a golf tournament or swanky horse races.

But Dubai these days is mostly a noisy, rough, unkempt city -- one of the world's largest construction sites. Construction work is going on throughout most of the urbanized coastal strip, and the jackhammers can still be heard from the terraces of seaside hotels at night.

In five or six years, the around-the-clock construction work will produce a patchwork metropolis, a place with many town centers, divided up into theme parks for living, working, shopping, going out -- a post-urban city the likes of which has never existed before. And it will be an architectural mess: an aesthetic blend of Shanghai, Las Vegas, Disney World and southern Tenerife.

Super Mario Bros. Wedding Cake

This cake was entirely edible except for the Mario and Princess on top. It even tasted good. It was seriously the coolest wedding cake I have ever seen.

Homemade Scope Gallery

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." is a grammatically valid sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs. It was featured in Steven Pinker's 1994 book The Language Instinct, but is known to have been around before February 1992 when it was posted to Linguist List by William J. Rapaport, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.

The Gay Scare of '57

On Feb. 4, 1957, a Guilford County grand jury emerged from its closed session and issued a bundle of indictments of a scope unlike any before or since — against 32 men accused of being homosexual.

After witnesses named the men during police interrogations, the suspects were tried one by one in a Greensboro courtroom for crimes against nature, almost exclusively with consenting adults.

The now-obscure episode, which some longtime residents came to call "the purge," was the largest attempted roundup of homosexuals in Greensboro history and marked one of the most intense gay scares of the 1950s.

Unlike sweeps of subsequent decades, involving raids on public parks and gay bars, Greensboro’s 1957 trials focused on private acts behind closed doors.

The purpose, in the words of the police chief, was to "remove these individuals from society who would prey upon our youth," and to protect the town from what a presiding judge called "a menace."

Some 32 trials in the winter and spring of 1957 would end in guilty verdicts, 24 of them resulting in prison terms of five to 20 years, with some defendants assigned to highway chain gangs.

Based on dozens of interviews over a four-week period with those who recall it, this is the story of what happened.

More QVC Bloopers

5 Great Comedians Who've Lost It

In the pages that follow, we've put forward five comedians who, at one point in their otherwise stellar careers, started to age, as tends to happen. There was a time when their names were spoken in hushed, revered tones. Then, at some point, they became That Old Guy Who Voices The Groundhog in That Shitty Kid's Movie.

Bush Tells Group He Sees a 'Third Awakening'

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me," Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here," he added. "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening."

QVC Sword Blooper

Super Mario Bros. 3 in LEGO

The first video to grace BitFlicks will in a way set the tone and standard for the ones to follow. In that spirit it seemed appropriate to launch with a homage to one of the greatest platformers of all time: Super Mario World 3 on the NES. The BitFlicks style is a mix of stop motion animation, LEGO and CGI, all mixed up until the lines between each element begin to blur.

A Professor's Response When Somebody Answers a Cellphone in Class

Daily Lit

Why read books by email?

Because if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don't find the time to read books. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read. This works incredibly well not just on your computer but also on a Treo, Blackberry, Sidekick or whatever the PDA of your choice.

How To Make a Cat Tail Brush

My fans often wonder how I manage to paint such fine details in my paintings, and now I can't stand the pressure any longer and will thus expose the among artists well kept secret behind that, namely the cat tail brush - and even how you can manufacture one yourself.

First you grab a cat, then carefully cut off the hairs at the tip of the cat's tail. Make sure the cut is absolutely straight.

Top 10 Notorious Prisons

Prisons are society’s punishment. While the theory of incarceration remains similar the world over, the methods of enforcement can change drastically. The following is a list of the 10 most notorious jails on earth; they are the worst of the worst and the lowest of the low.

Annoying Coworker

If you’re using the office microwave, COVER your food! Not only is your food spattering all over the inside of the microwave, but dripping all over the turntable. You alone are turning the microwave into a biohazard. No one wants to have to clean up after you, and your mess makes it impossible for someone to quickly heat their food, without having to first disinfect the inside of the microwave. Who raised you, anyway?

White and Nerdy

Jesus in Japan

A Japanese legend claims that Jesus escaped Jerusalem and made his way to Aomori in Japan where he became a rice farmer. Christians say the story is nonsense. However, a monument there known as the Grave of Christ attracts curious visitors from all over the world.

The Predatory Behavior of Wild Chimpanzees

When Jane Goodall first observed wild chimpanzees hunting and eating meat nearly 40 years ago, skeptics suggested that their behavior was aberrant and that the amount of meat eaten was trivial. Today, we know that chimpanzees everywhere eat mainly fruit, but are also predators in their forest ecosystems. In some sites the quantity of meat eaten by a chimpanzee community may approach one ton annually. Recently revealed aspects of predation by chimpanzees, such as its frequency and the use of meat as a political and reproductive tool, have important implications for research on the origins of human behavior. These findings come at a time when many anthropologists argue for scavenging rather than hunting as a way of life for early human ancestors. Research into the hunting ecology of wild chimpanzees may therefore shed new light on the current debate about the origins of human behavior.

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Friday Cat Blogging

Friday Cat Blogging

WWII Posters

WWII Posters

Pictures of a WW2 Era Soviet Tank Being Dredged From a Lake

Pictures of a WW2 Era Soviet Tank Being Dredged From a Lake