Paul Krugman: The Awful Truth Politics/ Iraq/ 2004 Election/ Neocons
Our best liberal columnist reflects on the latest ultra-leftwing critics of Mr. Bush -- Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill and the Staff at the Army War College.

Linky & Dinky find the DARNdest links! Popular Culture/ Internet/ Weirdness/ Tools
This long running internet newsletter/website is the source for some of our weirdest links here at the Blatt. I've been getting the newsletter for almost three years now. It's the first thing I open whenever I check my emails.
Run by Linky (he's the nice, smart one) and Dinky (he's the bad one, obssessed with Brittany). They search for links of interest. Be sure to sign up for their twice weekly free newsletter. And if you want the REAL hardcore weirdness, join their members only clubhouse.
Choice stuff.

Appetite for Destruction Politics/ Neocons
From The American Conservative magazine comes the clear, well reasoned post on the radicalism of the neoconservative agenda and the danger it places on the survival of the American Experiment.

my cat annie - zefrank.com Pets/ Cats
I'm a sucker for cute animal antics. A swell cat.

Citizens' Association to Blow Up the Moon High Weirdness
CABUM's aim is to destroy the Moon, thereby thwarting its insidiously evil manipulation of the Earth. Tides, madness and lycanthropy are but three lunar weapons. The cruel and inhuman torture of our planet by this extraterrestrial menace must be stopped now.

Nature: Nanoparticles in the brain: Tiny particles enter the brain after being inhaled. Science/ Environment/ Health
The carbon nanoparticles from diesel trucks may accumulate in the brain, a new study shows. This bodes ill for the safety of engineered nanos.

Scientists link deodorants to breast cancer Science/ Environment/ Health
Parabens, used as preservatives in some cosmetics and deodorants, have been shown to pass right through the skin to breast tissue. These chemicals are known at mimic estrogen, which can accelerate breast tumor growth.

AlterNet: Sex and the Democrats Politics/ 2004 Election
Richard Goldstein on the sexual subtext of national politics. Quite good, once you get past the first few quip filled paragraphs.

International Federation of Competitive Eating Popular Culture/ Weirdness
This folks are really, really serious about eating competitions. Ghod are they serious.

CBC News: High heels may reduce arthritis risk: study Health
Well, this result is certainly counterintuitive, isn't it?

CBC News: First anniversary for 'Elvis Priestly' church Popular Culture/ Music/ Weirdness
I'm not making this stuff up, people.

CBC News: U.S. will investigate TV shots of 'secret' papers Politics/ Iraq/ Neocons/ Smoking Gun
Well. So Bush always wanted to attack Saddam. From Day One. Imagine that.

Fancyclopedia I Popular Culture/ Science Fiction/ Fandom/ Reference
The classic guide to fanspeak, compiled by Jack Speer, 2004 WorldCon Fan Guest of Honor. Now on the web thanks to Joe Siclari.

The Amazing and Incredible, Only-Slightly-Laughable, Politically Unassailable, PoMo English Title Generator Weirdness/ Language
Sadly, the results, while funny, are almost too close to reality for any comfort. Many thanks to Dave Bonta for the link.

If "The Lord of the Rings" had been written by someone else .... Popular Culture/ Parody/ Humor
Great concept. Bits of LotR as if written by others, (Stephen Ambrose, Anthony Burgess, Homer, James Joyce,Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, William Carlos Williams for example). Or famous popculture creators (Abbott & Costello, Dave Barry, Bob Dylan, Gilligan's Island, The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
Over 1000 attempts in all. Since it's a site made up of posts from many different writers, the result is uneven but still great fun.

NYTimes:Op-Ed The Era of Distortion Politics/ Neocons/ Antisemitism
Another blowhard assures those of us who oppose the Neocons that we are in fact just anti-semites in drag. Of course the fact that Francis Fukiyama, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and a bunch of other Neocons aren't Jewish means little. And that the fact of their ethnicity/religiosity is irrelevant to our criticisms apparently means even less. I don't give a rat's ass about Perle's private world. What pisses me off about him are his actions while in his public persona.

It's 'good' to see the 'Neocon equals Jew' campaign doing so well.

NYPost: HOWARD THE COWARD Neocons/ 2004 Election
Col. Ralph Peters, a hack writer of Tom Clancy knockoffs, has equated those of us who support Dr. Dean to Nazi brownshirts.
This is just another step in the not so subtle 'Neocon is code for Jew' campaign.
Read this maddeningly foul bit of bullshit then write to the Post demanding a retraction. My own letter is posted below.

To Whom It Should Concern:
I ask for an immediate apology and retraction of the foul libel committed in your paper by Col. Ralph Peters.
I assure you that as a strong supporter of Howard Dean for President I do not take kindly to being characterized as a "Nazi" and a "brownshirt". I yield to no one in the extent of my abhorrance of the Nazis and in my horror at the Holocaust. I'm also sure that Dr. Dean's wife and children (who are Jewish) find being labled Nazis a trifle disconcerting as well.
Col. Peters is free to disagree with me about my political choices and about my desire for change in our current government. In fact, Col. Peters, to quote Mr. Bush, "bring it on."
He is however not free to call me and millions of other Americans revolting names without being called to account for his boorish behaviour.
Loyal F. Ramsey

Medieval Sourcebook: Full Text Sources Tools/ History/ Literature/ Internet
A most useful site. Texts in the original, often accompanied by a modern English commentary or co-text. Delightful. A poet's treasure trove.

Jesus is everywhere Weirdness
Scam artists or doing the Lord's work? You decide. //snicker//

CBC News:Shatner to release new album Popular Culture/ Weirdness

Oh Dear God, No!
I Can't Take Anymore!!
George Bush, Neocons, SARS, Fake Saddams, Governators, and now
SHATNER IS GOING TO SING AGAIN!!!
I Can't Stand It!!!!
Please Make It Stop. I'll Be Good. I Promise. Please.
//whimper//

Spirit Sends Home 3D Panorama of Mars Science/ Astronomy/ Photography
Today's gosh wow damn spiffy skiffy.

Site R (Raven Rock) - Alternate Joint Communications Center (AJCC) Politics/ Terrorism/ Neocons/ Weirdness
Ever wonder where they take Cheney when he's at that 'undisclosed secure location'? Here it is. Maps, photos, commentary, courtesy of the gang at cryptome.org.

Pepys' Diary Internet/ Blogging
A charming and marvelous idea. Each day's blog entry is the text from the corresponding date in Pepys' Diaries. Heavily hyperlinked and annotated. Just delightful.

Gary Leupp: North Korea for Dummies Politics/ Neocons
A brief primer on the recent history of Korea and the folly of the Neocon refusal to consider the same.

Welcome to the Universe in color Science/ Astronomy/ Photography
Absolutely the most beautiful astrographics I have ever seen. His image of Andromeda is staggeringly wonderful. I replaced my much loved Hubble Pillars of Creation desktop with it and now I don't want to do anything that removes it from the screen. And he did this work with earth based telescopy and patient photoshopping skills. Amazing stuff.

Virginia Pilot: Drug fees for military retirees may be raised ) Politics/ Neocons/ Veterans
I guess Bush wasn't lying when he said the men come first. He certainly never seems to miss a chance to slam another one into their gut. Now he's trying to cut spending by having sick vets pay much more for their medication.

Jimmy Breslin: Politicians' New American Justice Politics/ 2004 Election
Breslin's answer to the uproar over Dr. Dean's suggestion that Osama bin Laden might deserve a trial before we stake him to an anthill, pour honey over his naked body, and televise the fun on the Faux News Channel during prime time. The Idea....

NYTimes: Bush's Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs Politics/ 2004 Election
Key fact: They plan to cut the budget on the backs of the poor, sick veterans, and medical research. This frees up money to continue to loot the government treasury for the Bushies' cronies while not "alienating any key constituencies" during the election run-up.

ChickenJoke.com - Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road? Weirdness
Ahem.

YLE Radio 1: Nuntii Latini Weirdness
Another, much more active latin news site. Includes links to the actual weekly shortwave broadcasts. Oh JOY!

Nuntii Latini Weirdness
A weekly news journal in classical Latin. Ahh, isn't the web wonderful

"End of the World" predictions in our future Paranoia
So full of tasty paranoia. This page lists "Predictions of TEOTWAWKI (The end of the world as we know it)" along with links to the religious or mythological basis for the predictions. Delightful.

Live From Chapel Perilous Popular Culture/ Paranoia
We’re living in Robert Anton Wilson’s world and the Arch Priest of Paranoia is the star of a new documentary about his world.

Magnatune: try before you buy MP3 music. Popular Culture/ Music/ Ecommerce
A noble experiment. A website to sell indie music that's both musician and consumer friendly. Uses the Creative Commons license. Music is of a high quality, tho a quite limited quantity at this point. If I had any music that was at all of a commercial quality, I'd be talking to them.

Boston Globe:The self-critic Intellectual Life
In his latest book, Terry Eggleton proclaims the death of "Theory".
At last, people are noticing that even the flies have left the skeletal remains of this particular body of work.

washingtonpost.com: Japan's Empire of Cool Popular Culture/ Business
Could Japan be challenging America's crown as king of world popular culture?

Environmental Working Group: BodyBurden Science/ Environment/ Paranoia
Hard paranoia inducing facts about the load of chemical garbage we all carry as a result of living in an industrialized world.

TheCapitol.Net: You have two cows. Politics/ Humor
Where do you fall on the bovine scale of government?

NewsHour: John Updike on why he doesn't write science fiction Popular Culture/ Writers

"JEFFREY BROWN: You didn't need grand, epic...

JOHN UPDIKE: I didn't need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid and rather liked it. But I didn't have the mentality. I also read a lot of mystery novels, and my few attempts to begin a mystery novel fell apart. So I was stuck from my own limits, really, with middle- class... middle-class life, or the mundane, let's call it, and so I was just trying to, story by story, encapsulate some aspect of life as I was experiencing it or observing it. This was a time when the American way of life was coming in for a lot of hard knocks, some of them deserved, but nevertheless I thought that somebody should be bearing witness to the kind of ordinary life that was going on. Under the revolution, under the talk of the revolution, people were living out their lives in families, by and large, growing up with their children, all that kind of thing."

Science: World's most mysterious book may be a hoax: The Voynich manuscript may be elegant gibberish. Science/ Linguistics/ Crytography
Neal Stephenson must be tearing his hair out.

Boston Globe: Century-old math problem may have been solved Science/ mathematics
The Poincare Conjecture may have been solved. If so, the proof promises to revolutionize much of mathematics.

Time Cube Extreme Weirdness
This speaks for itself. Lord knows, I'm not going to try to....

Jihad Unspun: A Clear View On The US War On "Terrorism" Politics/ Peak Oil/ Neocons
Analysis of the potential effects of peak oil on the war on terror and on the 2004 elections. Chilling.

Telegraph: Daemons leap into limelight as Pullman's dark fantasy takes life on stage Popular Culture/ Books/ Theatre
An ambitious staging of Pullman's anti-Christian/ anti-theist trilogy sparks controversy and acclaim in London

BBC: Garlic could provide cancer drug Sciences/ Health
More bad news for vampires.

Topsy Turvy: In neutrons and protons, quarks take wrong turns: Science News Science/ Physics
The world of quantum physics just gets weirder and weirder.

The 'Neocons', American foreign policy and anti-semitism Politics/ Neocons
A well reasoned essay on how to respond to the bullshit that criticism of the Neocons is only coded antisemitism.

Severed arm points to disgruntled diners Daily Weirdness
Haven't they heard of simply undertipping the guy?

Top educator slashes rival's tires Daily Weirdness
Sheesh, and we thought the academic world was cutthroat here.

Peeling apples good for the brain Science/ Weirdness
Seems that doing complex operations like food prep work is good for the mind. Just one more reason to avoid 'will you want fries with that.'

Phelps Plans Protest To Support School That Disciplined 7 Year Old With Two Mothers Politics/ Civil Rights/ Neocons
Haysus Kreestay these people make me ashamed to be human.

Images of Gays Banned From National Parks, Civil Service Group Says Politics/ Civil Rights/ Neocons
Just another example of the lengths the Bushies will go to in their headlong flight down the bigotry rat hole.

'The Studio' Author John Gregory Dunne Dies Popular Culture/ Books