Everyone else is linking to the 101 dumbest business ideas thing, I may as well join in. Some of these are pretty good, actually, I didn't know a lot of them. Some glorious moments of idiocy to be had here.
8:39 PM | link
Why Netscape lost the browser wars. Though it never considers that Netscape might've lost out cos, frankly, it sucked.
8:11 PM | link
Police shoot and kill masturbating man. Hilariously, the officer involved received a minor hand injury in the process.
8:04 PM | link
Even worse: a computer games company wants to put advertising on gravestones. That does it. I'm getting my ashes scattered and no plaque or monument. I don't want sponsors' messages on my memorial.
7:58 PM | link
And here's something to make you sick. When shit like this happens, it's no wonder people refuse to believe there can be a God if he/she/it permits such things. That the supposed servants of said deity are responsible makes it worse...
7:53 PM | link
The US Army wants super powers. Now. To paraphrase Goya, "the sleep of reason produces fuckwits"... But the research unit who've been paid $50m to develop it reckon they can actually pull it off. I'll believe it when I see it... or don't see it, as the case may be.
7:05 PM | link
This cartoon has pissed many people off. Though I myself reckon one of the functions of a cartoonist is to risk offending people with their work, I'll agree it is indeed in pretty bad taste, and I perfectly understand why people such as this woman are livid over it; if I were in their position I likely would be as well. Tom Tomorrow, though, offers the following notion: that tactless as it is, it's still not the mega-story it's being hyped as: "There are battles raging in Afghanistan, we're clearly headed for Iraq, and the admistration won't rule out the use of nuclear weapons—and our top story tonight is about a cartoon that made people mad."
6:59 PM | link
Further to the story from a few days ago of John Ashcroft's propensity for song: seems he actually released a cassette of himself doing gospel music back in 1995. The Smoking Gun link takes you to the lyrics of one of his works, plus RealAudio and mp3 files of it, should you want to actually hear it.
6:51 PM | link
Is the War on Terror™ really being won by that Osama character? Harry Browne reckons so. A few other bloggers I've read strenuously disagree, so decide for yourself. I'm not entirely convinced one way or the other...
6:39 PM | link
To celebrate the rerelease of the new improved version of ET, Tim Carvell suggests modifications for other Spielberg films. Cruel, yet quite hilarious. I particularly like the bit where he says the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark should all be turned into hippies...
6:29 PM | link
Interesting item on the push to render computers incapable of digitally copying video, audio, etc.
5:59 PM | link
Oklahoma City bomb survivors and victims' relatives sue Iraq. No one seems to be unduly bothered that Timbo McVeigh has already been tried and executed for the bombing. Obviously Iraq must really be to blame for it and McVeigh was just some Muslim extremists' stooge.
5:55 PM | link
Mail plane crashes into TV tower. Remarkably, no one has yet declared this to be the work of terrorists.
5:48 PM | link
Nice article on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Would've been good, too, if someone had bothered to rerelease the thing here last year like they should've done to capitalise on the date...
9:34 PM | link
"Faith healers" relying on other folks' faith for sexual favours and other things. Like the man in the article says, "where is the common sense of these people?"
9:12 PM | link
New version of the Torah and commentary for US Jews. Interesting article showing them trying to get to grips with the idea that much of the stuff in the Bible is probably historically wrong.
9:05 PM | link
Korea's suicide rate actually goes up in summer, down in winter. Very odd indeed, since you'd expect it'd be the other way round. Or do they just do things differently in Korea?
9:02 PM | link
Stephen Jay Gould's got a new book on evolution on the way. Unfortunately, I fear the fact that it's nearly 1500 pages long and being published by a university press will push it well out of my price range...
8:51 PM | link
2500 year old brothel found on planned Olympic site. I'm glad Sydney never had that problem when it was gearing up for the 2000 Games...
8:37 PM | link
Man ordered to get rid of ATHEIST car licence plate. Nietzsche may or may not have been correct when he proclaimed the death of God; sadly, his more bigoted and idiotic followers seem to be alive and well...
8:35 PM | link
The Keanu awards! Voting open until March 21st. So be like me and vote, or if you're too lazy to exercise your democratic right, at least check out the results so far.
8:27 PM | link
Former Yugoslavia looking for new name. I propose I be installed as benevolent dictator and that it be named after me.
8:10 PM | link
The return of the airship to military service. These people never heard of the Hindenburg, I take it. Going from brand-new types of bomb back to old types of flying machine; it's some world we inhabit these days...
8:07 PM | link
The biggest object in the solar system. And we're not talking the overinflated feelings of self-worth and manifest destiny some people I've attacked here in the past suffer from.
8:04 PM | link
Finally, a short obit notice for Robin Anderson, who died last week. The Internet Movie Database record is scandalously inadequate, and seems to have completely forgotten the second film she and husband Bob Connolly made, Joe Leahy's Neighbours. Never accuse IMDB of being infallible. Remember her for the splendid Rats In The Ranks; their last film, Facing The Music, is being screened again by the ABC next Wednesday night.
8:18 PM | link
Australian politics evidently has more tendencies to weirdness than I suspected. If any of this is true, then perhaps it's no wonder One Nation freaked so many people out.
7:15 PM | link
An astonishingly bizarre murder case. I have a feeling someone here's read one too many David Icke books...
7:12 PM | link
Pop and politics: Wayne Saunders ponders the meaning of "freedom" in Paul McCartney's little song of that name. Incidentally, someone should inform him Lennon wrote "Revolution" on his own, not in tandem with McCartney; reckon I may do so myself...
6:56 PM | link
Australian quarantine units bring out extra sniffer dogs in clampdown on illegal shamrock imports.
6:15 PM | link
Meant to post this the other day, but forgot: remember that Afghan girl on the cover of National Geographic back in 1984 or so? The one with the big green eyes? It's a famous shot, you'll recognise it when you click the link. Anyway, they've found her again, finally discovered who she is, and are featuring her again. When you see the before and after comparisons, it's kind of amazing to realise this woman is only about 30... then again, I think just living in Afghanistan, especially in the Taliban era, would age anybody...
6:11 PM | link
American immigration service extends Mohammed Atta's visa. It might've been nice, before they did so, if someone had told them Mohammed Atta was one of the folks flying those planes into the World Trade Centre last September. It's funny, in a black way, but I'm not surprised that people in the US are outraged, especially given the timing...
6:04 PM | link
Official insists an acid leak at a reactor in Ohio was not a public safety hazard. The world is filled with confidence, especially when the man in question said that leak could have been going on for years. No wonder people here fear the Lucas Heights reactor being so close to town, and no wonder they don't want another.
5:51 PM | link
Man who applied for job in 1968 finally called in for an interview. A damnable shame, then, that he's now too old for the job. That almost makes Centrelink here look good...
5:45 PM | link
Simulate a nuclear blast in your town. Just in case you were wondering how it might go if Dubya presses that nuclear button any harder than he already is.
5:41 PM | link
I don't have a link as such for this one, but there was a story in today's Telegraph that attracted me... seems the National Party MP for Port Macquarie has resigned, and Liberal Party leader Kerry Chikarovski has come out in the press basically saying who gives a fuck. (Last time I looked, Liberal and National were still in Coalition together. That's a nice way to talk about someone supposedly on your side.) If she were to do a poll of people in Sydney, she says, asking what they thought of his resignation, none of them would know who he was. Which begs the following questions, to me: 1) why the hell should the people of Sydney know who the MP for Port Macquarie (some 420km north of Sydney) is, given that most of them probably don't know the parliamentary member for the seat adjacent to theirs, or even who their own member is?; 2) did Chika know who he was before he resigned? and 3) how many people does she think know or care who she is, and how many of those will miss her when she goes?
6:30 PM | link
Funny, too, how in the midst of the War on Terror™, we only now learn that an American pilot downed during the Gulf War in '91 may actually still be alive and held captive in Baghdad. I'm not the only person who finds this revelation very bloody conveniently timed indeed.
6:09 PM | link
Dubya thanks Australia for letting one of its boys be killed in his conflict. And I know it was tragic and all that, the media got much emotional mileage out of the fact that he had a child on the way who he'd now never see, but what did he do that was particularly heroic? Other than going there, which I suppose was kind of heroic, but that was his job, he was a professional SAS man... had an accident where his jeep went over a landmine, yes? I mean, shit, if he'd died in a battle, that'd be one thing... but I don't see what's heroic about motor vehicle accidents. My brother died in one, after all. Tragic, yes, but there's no bravery in it...
5:55 PM | link
The right-wing bleating about the need for the War on Terrorism™ continues. Now the AVOT are coming to, and I quote, "take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing." What's to misunderstand? A bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists flew planes into buildings. The US is taking retaliatory action, as even I agree it was entitled to do. But somewhere along the way someone forgot the objective was to get that Bin Laden character, not to bomb Afghanistan to hell; getting rid of the Taliban was not the goal. It was a nice bonus, but as long as Bin Laden remains at large, then the operation is a failure. That is the nature of the war at present, no? What's to misunderstand?
5:41 PM | link
American troops pulled from ground battle in Afghanistan. Are we to presume, then, that the American military learned nothing about guerrilla tactics after Vietnam?
5:30 PM | link
Amen to this. "Yep, God's just looking out for Stanley, damn the other 3,000 people still trapped inside. God held it up just long enough for Stan to get out. A greater miracle would have been if God's hands had held the building up long enough so everyone could get out." The original piece the good sergeant is tearing strips off may be read here.
3:18 PM | link
Bush might also be interested to know these guys were Americans as well. I just wonder, though, what political advantage they thought killing the town dogcatcher was going to achieve for them...
3:01 PM | link
Man caught stockpiling cyanide in Chicago's mass-transit system. The Bush administration may be discomfited to discover the man's not Middle Eastern, either.
2:54 PM | link
Australian police can take heart: it's not just them who shoot and kill mentally ill people. I know you could say the guy with the machete could've attacked and killed one of them if they hadn't done it, but whatever happened to shooting to wound? Or don't they get trained to disarm people instead of just killing them?
2:50 PM | link
Newly discovered legal hallucinogen causing quite a stir. Not to mention some weird dreams, I'll bet.
2:42 PM | link
There are some profoundly disturbed people out there, and they have image manipulation software. "Please... think of the kittens."
2:39 PM | link
New Zealand town terrorised by car-sized wasp swarm; man plans to take it out using a helicopter. This brings back not altogether pleasant memories of the time we had people who kept bees living next door to us. When I say "kept", I mean let the fucking things roam free to nest in our bushes rather than their hives.
2:35 PM | link
Britney Spears pelted by piss. Seems people living in the area where she was shooting a video clip were not impressed by her presence at 4 in the morning. Lucky for her, though, that they didn't have shit to throw, or else we'd be calling her Shitney...
2:28 PM | link
Do you get the feeling these folks don't like Robert Mugabe very much? And do you entirely blame them?
10:16 PM | link
Lord of the realm admits he's really just a window-cleaner. "All is vanity", all right...
10:11 PM | link
New York restaurant haunted by Mafia victims' ghosts. Um, yes. Next: WTC site haunted by Sept. 11 victims' ghosts...
10:07 PM | link
Satanic vandalism of English church? Well, in this case they reckon so. This saddens me, if it is indeed "Satanically" motivated. I have a certain amount of sympathetic feeling towards Satanism myself, problematic though it be, but I weary of this sort of behaviour. After all, as someone said to me once at university, if you persecute Christians it only makes them more certain that they're right.
10:03 PM | link
The mystery of American Airlines Flight 77. Yes, it's more Sept. 11 conspiracy stuff, but if there's anything to this then it's damnably odd...
9:58 PM | link
Ancient supernova may have fucked with the Earth's ozone layer two million or so years ago. I don't get it, though. Just how close to the Earth would this star have had to come in order to have had that sort of effect on it?
9:52 PM | link
To commemorate Sept. 11 like everyone else is doing, here's a story from inside the World Trade Centre.
9:45 PM | link
So all that talk about nukes was just to provide a warning. Not an imminent plan of attack. Uh-huh. Surely I can't be the only person in the world who'll feel a lot safer in it when that fuckhead Bush leaves office and someone less interested in restarting the Cold War moves into the White House?
9:31 PM | link
Gay pride causing climatic problems in Florida. Pat Buchanan says so, therefore it must be true. Oh, and Trent Lott says the Clinton-Lewinsky affair left the US vulnerable to the Sept. 11 attacks. What was I just saying about heinous fools?
9:26 PM | link
Student missing after swimming in croc-infested African lake. Apparently the student had been informed that the lake was safe despite being home to the deadliest crocodiles on Earth. One has to wonder who's the most heinous fool in this story...
9:23 PM | link
Newly discovered galaxy is out there. Way out there. 15.5. billion light years, in fact, that's how far out there it is.
12:04 PM | link
The US' nuclear contingency list. Any shit from these people, the US will nuke their asses. And some pundits reckon the rest of the world has no call to dislike or fear the US?
11:50 AM | link
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I have various reasons for linking the sites below (a link rarely constitutes a 100% endorsement, of course). I'm usually happy to link to anyone who specifically asks, or anyone who links to me. I reserve the right to remove any link at any time for any reason.
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