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Three cheers for the Surveillance Society! "In the brave new future, Big Brother will watch our every move. But that's OK, because we'll be watching him too." So says David Brin, author of The Transparent Society. more inside

Imperious George! Time to be an opinionated bastard/bastardess. You get to eliminate one word, one category of television advertising, and one idea that makes you cranky from the Universe...which would they be? Funky (what does this word even mean now?)...Car ads (if I see yet another car slither to a dust-billowing stop in a dried up lake bed, I shall kill myself)...That The Matriarchy would somehow be better than The Patriarchy. (Ha! It would be "Lord of the Flies" in a halter top, thank you very much.)

Curious George When undercover cops or FBI agents are on a stakeout, do they really sit in a telephone company or cable TV van outside the house for days on end like they do in the movies?

Cosplayers

Bush's Attacks On Vets In 2000 & 2004 President Bush has refused to condem the Swift Boat Veteran For the Truth ads. Conservative monkeys can think that's fine because it's against Kerry and Bush isn't paying for the ads (it's actually an old crony Bob Perry who is). more inside

Meet the new terrorists! Sorry, freedom fighters. How could this ever end badly?

LBJ orders pants.

This is an invitation to play. Nothing more. That was the entirety of a craigslist posting for an open web space, a playground for web geeks of all stripes. I know that there are some rather talented monkeys here who might have some fun in a place like that. more inside

International woes for Microsoft

The War Nerd defends the French. "Well, I'm going to tell you guys something you probably don't want to hear: these sites are total bullshit, the notion that the French are cowards is total bullshit, and anybody who knows anything about European military history knows damn well that over the past thousand years, the French have the most glorious military history in Europe, maybe the world."

Man Fired for Heckling Bush On the face of it, outrageous. On the other hand it was an invitation only event with tickets provided by a client of the company.

Vote Jones! He's untainted and he enjoys roads! Besides, everyone likes pie.

My username-sake has been stolen! Again. more inside

The worst marketing strategy. Or maybe the best...? This is my first link. Be gentle! What kind of marketing manager do you think would have come up with the idea for that packet of peanuts?

Why??

Red Elvises - Kick Ass Rock'n'Roll from Siberia. If only to hear "Everybody, shake your body" sung to the tune of the Volga Boatman's song. Mp3's here. more inside

Think chess is too dull? Boxing is too dumb? Why not try Chessboxing?

Yugop. Completely pointless, yet entertaining. Oh, I mean "It's Art". Just click on it. more inside

Tracking the way we use language WordCount (TM) is an artistic experiment in the way we use language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonality. Each word is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance. more inside