Deep in the basement of an ancient house in Sonobe (tucked in the fields of Kyoto, Japan), an amazing discovery has been made: real 1up Mushrooms.

ThinkGeek :: Grow Your Own 1up Mushroom Kit

Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 if the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has his way.

Remember when Democrats were fearmongering that Bush would enstate a draft if reelected... Um...

Top Democrat: Bring back the draft - CNN.com

In this activity combining outdoor exertion and ironing, athletes do ironing in "extreme" situations, such as on the top of a mountain, halfway down a cliff or even while bungee-jumping... The sport "is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an 'extreme' sport with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt."

Life imitates the onion...

New X-Games Event?

flynn23 wrote:
You could provide universal health care but you'd have to radically re-align the system so that stakeholders compete based upon outcomes (ie results) instead of treating based upon episode and billing fee for service. This would not provide a system where every citizen would get the same "level" of health care service, but it would provide that every citizen would get quality affordable service based upon a tiering of cost per outcome. So the poor would get results, but the rich would get them faster, with more bells and whistles, and more conveniently at a higher price. Much like any other product or service you procure today.

Flynn23 provides some interesting insight into tackling the problems with our healthcare system.

RE: Nobel economist Milton Friedman dead at 94 - Nov. 16, 2006

As you can see we revamped the UI this evening. Hopefully you'll find this nicer to look at... There is only one functional change. The "Compose an Article" "feature" is gone. You simply click "Post." If you don't include a URL it will do the appropriate stuff. We've also opened up access to the "activity" meter. We've had that for a while but only admins could see it. The UI change opens up a bunch of screen real estate for us, which we plan to make use of soon... stay tuned...

You'll notice a new box on the topic pages that shows you "popular topics." These topics are shown in order on a weekly basis. This is a minor thing but I think it will make the site a lot more usable for people who don't have accounts and may have trouble finding the content by drilling around in the topic higharchy...

More to come...

"Its definition of freedom -- one utterly divorced from civic responsibility -- is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Apparently asking the executive to comply with acts of Congress is "utterly divorced from civic responsibility."

Gonzales attacks ruling against domestic spying - CNN.com

According to a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001, a charge of three to five seconds can result in immobilization for five to 15 minutes, which would mean that Tabatabainejad could have been physically unable to stand when the officers demanded that he do so.

"It is a real mistake to treat a Taser as some benign thing that painlessly brings people under control," said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.

"The Taser can be incredibly violent and result in death," Eliasberg said.

According to an ACLU report, 148 people in the United States and Canada have died as a result of the use of Tasers since 1999.

During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would "get Tased too." At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.

Such a threat of the use of force by a law enforcement officer in response to a request for a badge number is an "illegal assault," Eliasberg said.

"It is absolutely illegal to threaten anyone who asks for a badge - that's assault," he said.

Until tonight I hadn't watched the video of the taser incident. Its linked here. Its hard to watch. In fact, I didn't make it through and I was very angry for a while after seeing it. I actually don't recommend watching it.

These cops are tasering this kid and then demanding that he stand. They are demanding over and over again that he stand up and then tasering him when he refuses to stand. Its fucked up. Would you want to stand after getting electrocuted? Worse, they threaten to taser the other students that are watching the incident because they express concern with the situation. I do not understand how people can watch this video and not get that this is a bunch of guys who enjoy hurting people and have found a victim. How warped can you possibly be? What sort of authoritarian brain washing leads you to look at this and wonder whether or not it was justified?

Community responds to Taser use in Powell

..the media, which he described as "a conspiracy to maintain the population in a perpetual state of self-righteous rage".

Whether media was left wing or right wing, the message was always that "leaders are out there to shaft you".

The internet, he told the conference, was part of that "crisis".

"The internet has immense potential but we face a real problem if the main way in which that potential expresses itself is through allowing citizens to participate in a shrill discourse of demands.

Part of the problem, he added, was the "net-head" culture itself, which was rooted in libertarianism and "anti-establishment" attitudes.

He told delegates: "You have to be part of changing that culture. It's important for people who understand technology, to move from that frame of mind, which is about attacking the establishment into one which is about problem-solving and social enterprise."

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Web 'fuelling crisis in politics'

UK security experts have cracked the sooper sekure new UK biometric passports. It took 48 hours. With 174 worth of sniffer hardware, attackers can read all the personal information off of any of the three million new UK passports in circulation

Boing Boing: UK RFID passports cracked