don't mess with boing boing

We here at SFB link to (or steal links from) Boing Boing often, and for good reason. It's probably the most well-read blog out there, and it tends to act as a pretty entertaining filter for all the ways to waste your time on the internet - an accomplishment I've tried in my own small way to mimic with this site. Its power is tremendous - if they post a link to something, that link will probably show up on a few thousand other blogs within hours. And getting Boing Boing to link to your site (an event significant enough to warrant the creation of term "boingboinged"), is often enough to crash servers.

But the contributors tend not to put their awesome powers to direct use - at most, they'll just direct your attention to whatever they think deserves it, or post an editorial on some subject or another. That's why the actions they're taking against an American company that provides internet content-filtering software to other countries might be fun to watch: all four contributors are ganging together with the stated goal of putting the company out of business.

The reason? Thanks to Secure Computing's SmartFilter software, internet users in various parts of the world (including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and some parts of Africa) can't access Boing Boing due to bogus "nudity" false-positives.

Whether or not you're a regular reader, this fight should be fun to watch. Link.

sex pistols versus the rock n roll hall o fame

apologia

Through a series of hilarious yet unsettling events, the post below is only now visible by you, the reader. You had no idea SFB was on holidays. You dutifully visited each day as we tooled around Southeastern Ontario. We are dreadfully sorry and we promise that it will probably happen again.

hi-freakin-atus

SFB (or at least its principle contributor) is going on a road trip. Please join us again Thursday for the first episode of our four-part expose on the breakfast cereal industry, entitled "Corruption, Greed, and Ruthlessness: Peddling Sugar Highs".

i woke up and my pillow was missing and stephen harper was still prime minister

In Canadian government news:

• Stockwell Day proposes national ID card - This is a pretty horrible idea. He even references the UK's national ID cards, which have been very unpopular (see Boing Boing's coverage for details), as his inspiration.
• Harper chooses Iraq war fan as US ambassador - Michael Wilson said in 2003 that Canada should have sent ships and aircraft to help with the invasion.

I'm sorry I don't have more to say about either of these, but it's Saturday. And my sense of humour about a Conservative government apparently only runs as far as a post title. (ID card story via Optimus.)

little people on food

These images are proving to be pretty popular, but I couldn't resist posting them anyway. Check out photosets one and two. Via this Boing Boing post.

daily show on cheney rampage

The Daily Show went nuts with the Cheney-hunting-accident story last night, and it was pretty hilarious. You can watch most of the show on the Comedy Central website in short streaming segments (1, 2, 3), or search around for torrents.

four riddles - now with answers!

Update: Click here for answers! Also, check out the comments for another good riddle from Ed.

You've probably heard at least some of these before, but I felt like posting them anyway, and we all need a break from the usual politics and videos. These are four of my favourite riddles, mostly because none of them are trick questions. Feel free to email us for hints or answers, and why not leave your favourite riddle(s) in the comments?

1. You have eight blocks; they are completely indistinguishable from each other, but one is slightly heavier than the others. You are also given a balance. How do you find the heavy block using the balance only twice?

2. A castle is surrounded by a moat, as shown in the image. You are given two thick boards, four meters long and about a foot wide. How do you get across to the treasure in the castle? (You can't just float on the boards because the moat is filled with huge sharks, like bigger than the one in Jaws.)

3. You come to a fork in the road. One way leads to certain death, the other leads to the next village. Two twins are standing nearby. You've been told that everything one says is a lie, and everything the other says is the truth. You can ask only one question; both twins will answer. What do you ask them to figure out which path to take?

4. You are alone on the ground floor of a house. Upstairs there are three lightbulbs, but you can't see them (or their light) from where you are. The switches for the bulbs are downstairs and unlabelled. If you can only go upstairs once, how can you figure out which switch turns on which bulb?

Click here for answers.

um?

Go and watch the trailer for the new movie by the director of Napoleon Dynamite. It's called Nacho Libre, and stars Jack Black as, um, a Mexican wrestler. I'm pretty sure this is not a joke.

lol! it's a funeral!

This photo from the coverage of Coretta Scott King's funeral is pretty bizarre. Those crazy American presidential families. I mean, it's a funeral, not a political conference. Apparently a bunch of the speakers took jabs at Dubya, too. Which I applaud in theory, but I have to question the timing. Then again, maybe it's what she would have wanted?

bush to spend $120 billion on wars, can't afford medicare

In an effort to meet his deficit-reducing goals, George W Bush wants to spend another $120 billion on the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the total amount spent on these wars past $400 billion. Meanwhile, he's having to make cuts to 141 government programs. Says AP: "Almost one-third of the targeted programs are in education including ones that provide money to support the arts, vocational education, parent resource centers and drug-free schools."

He also asked for $18 billion for hurricane relief, which I guess means that this year, fighting an unending war is about six times as important as rebuilding the shattered lives of those affected by Katrina.

wait, you're telling me you can turn the volume down?

File this one next to the woman who [successfully] sued McDonalds because the coffee she spilled on her lap was too hot: A guy in the States is suing Apple because it is possible to listen to their iPods at a volume that will cause hearing damage.

That's right, even though every iPod comes with a warning sticker that says "permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume", that's not enough for this guy. The lawsuit claims iPods are "inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings".

The weirdest part? "Mr Patterson's lawyer, Steve W Berman, told Associated Press news agency that his client did not know if he had suffered hearing loss but that that was not the issue." [Read the full article]

People like this are the reason for labels like these.

brokeback to the future (click to play movie)