"The internationally famous research by two Canadian naturalists showing that grizzly bears in the snow-swept Russian wilderness can live peacefully with humans has ended in a brutal tragedy, The Globe and Mail has learned.

The dozens of massive Siberian grizzly bears whose lives were catalogued for the groundbreaking eight-year study have been slaughtered in their nature sanctuary as a message to the Canadian researchers, Charlie Russell and Maureen Enns, to abandon the project. Their research has been the subject of a PBS television documentary, a bestselling book and hundreds of news stories across three continents.

The people who killed the bears nailed the gall bladder of a baby grizzly to the research station's kitchen wall as a gruesome taunt."

via mdn

I can't stop watching this guy. (Windows Media, RealMedia)

He's mesmerizing.

The Guardian reports that the US may have made a deal with Paikstan not to capture Osama Bin Laden, who is believed to be holed up in that country's northern mountains, in order to prevent Pakistani civil unrest.

"There was a judgment made that it would be more destabilising in the longer term," [Monsoor Ijaz] said. "There would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate."

The Americans, according to Mr Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of the shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq.

"This is my rock and roll music career God gave me
God gave me this rock music career to keep me busy
Back in 1991, I used to hit old people with folding chairs
Suddenly, I moved to the north side of Chicago, Illinois, in the summer of 1992
It made a rock star out of me at last "

Wesley Willis (1963-2003)

Here's Rock and Roll McDonald's (2.2MB mp3)

If you're my friend, and you're on Friendster, and we're not "friends", it's because I don't know you're on Friendster. [this is me]

An email my co-worker just sent to the entire company:

QuickPlace is having problems indexing all the new databases and is currently unavailable. I'm working to get this fixed and will send out a notice when the server is back online.

Sorry for the incontinence.

These days, I tend to have lots of ideas for new websites. I've currently got five at various levels of development. The problem is that few of them have much potential to earn money--which is my primary focus right now, as I'm hoping to buy a home in the next few months. So I'm forced to abandon most of the ideas before I get very far.

A few months ago, after cruising through one of the threads on (don't tell anyone) Fark, I decided I wanted to create a site devoted exclusively to the photoshop "remix". Every day, I'd post a new image, and legions of visitors would take it and transform it into remix after hilarious remix. I'd have themes and contests and voting. It would be a lot of fun, I figured, but I ultimately abandoned the idea as a time sink that would keep me from pursuing more lucrative projects. Now I've found that someone has come up with that same idea, expanded it, and quite possibly discovered a way to make some money from it.

Worth1000.com provides an outlet not just for users' photoshop skills, but also their writings, animation, illustrations and 3D work. There are always several contests occurring at once, based on themes like If Goths Ruled and celebrity charicatures. There are also contests of a more technical nature, such as photo restoration and black & white colorization.

Besides selling ads, they're also selling merchandise featuring any of the art works, and taking a 50% cut. Whether they're making a serious money on this is uncertain, but one thing is clear. I gave up on a similar idea because I thought I'd spend too much time on it, without getting me any closer to my goal of home-ownership. Well, I'm still wasting time on it--I've spent hours cruising the archives over the past week--but I'm guaranteed not to make a penny. An opportunity lost, I suppose.

Now if you'll excuse me, the phone's ringing. This guy keeps bugging me to start some site where users can auction off their stuff online. I'm trying to get rid of him. That idea's a dog.

...And throw them in my face if I'm wrong.

There will be no recall election in California.

Or rather, there will be no recall election in which Gray Davis is recalled. If it comes down to the wire and polls indicate that Davis is toast, he'll resign and Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamente will take over.

Al died in his sleep this morning.

So I'm in some store this weekend. I don't know, a record store or Target or Jiffy Lube or something, and I hear this....sound. This horrible sound. This gradeschool-simple beat under this preschool-simple melody. And then the chorus. The most high-school-simple chorus I've heard since...well, since I was in high school. The kind of hook that makes you rock your head left and right like a muppet. But not in a good way. And it went on and on and, as they say, on.

"What the fuck IS this?" I thought. It sounded like some sort of mid-90s chick-rock pablum. The kind of stuff the major labels put out to show that Girls Can Rock Too. Like we didn't already know that. Except the women they chose were so incredibly lame—Jill fucking Sobule? Are you serious?—that everyone turned back to überfluff like Britney and J'Lo.

"Who is it? Meredith Brooks? No...it's definitely new. Ugh. I can't stand it. The monontony. The monotony. Is it Shania Twain? Some Shania Twain knock-off?" And then it hit me, and my heart sank.

It was the new Liz Phair.

Liz Phair used to make my soul (yeah, and my loins too) ache. Exile in Guyville was the best record of 1993 and while she never reached those heights again she's still managed to put out solid (if increasingly poppy) releases ever since. Until now. This first single from the new album is horrible.

I guess the whole album is being trashed by the critics, and so I'm scared to listen to the rest—in an I-don't-wanna-know-that-daddy's-an-opium-junky kind of way. I mean, I understand that we all gots ta eat, and she'll probably sell more records with this silly horseshit than she ever sold before. It's just a hardcore shame she had to do it this way.

Hildago, on why people and puppets can never be friends.