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Curious Skype replacement George Now that Skype has ended its free PC-to-phone service to anywhere in North America, this cheap monkey is looking for an alternative. Any monkeys out there found a good one? Anyone using FreeCall?

Posh waiter (YouTube)

Antiques dealer files a million dollar lawsuit ... against the homeless... Good luck collecting on that...

Bill Moyers Speaks on Media Conglomerates' Threat to Democracy "The lobby representing the broadcast, cable, and newspapers industries was extremely powerful, with an iron grip on lawmakers and regulators alike. Both parties bowed to their will when the Republican Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That monstrous assault on democracy, with malignant consequences for journalism, was nothing but a welfare giveaway to the largest, richest, and most powerful media conglomerations in the world. Goliaths, whose handful of owners controlled, commodified, and monetized everyone and everything in sight." video, audio links here via Ol' Bluey

Death on the High Seas. Fascinating article about mysterious deaths and missing persons on holiday cruises.

1918 flu recovered from frozen Arctic corpse kills monkeys in the lab. WE'RE DOOMED. more inside

Pictaps - make your own dancing man. Click on paint to start. (flash) more inside

Why you procrastinate.

That's so Book! In an interesting technical flavor to linguistics, T9 predictive text on mobile phones is now starting to have an effect on language. For example, 'book' now means 'cool' because when either is entered (2665) into a T9 predictive phone, 'book' is offered before 'cool,' and is now used in place of the latter. via.

The Greatest becomes a senior citizen. Happy Birthday to Muhammad Ali! Now go sit down, and feel old.

Live near the Monticello reactor? Get your free potassium iodide! Announcement made 1/3/2007. Pills will be available "in February". On 1/16/2007 "federal officials" announced that the previous Tuesday (1/10/2007) a 35,000-pound control box fell off a steel beam inside the plant, (but outside the reactor) leading to a plant shutdown. Earlier reports (1/11/2007) said it occurred "during turbine valve testing". A 2nd update that day said: more inside

Chimp born at Chimp Haven. But all the males had vasectomies. Added goodness: her name is Tracy. more inside

Marching Penguins. A short ad for a French TV station. via: SE & Meta.

Adventure Time - a charming childrens cartoon (youtube)

Monkey Salon Saw this, thought of you guys. Some neat stuff in the galleries, though for some reason my links keep getting munged in preview, so I'll let you find them yourselves.

Curious George: rebound or real? How can you tell if your shiny new relationship is everything you think it is? more inside

Curious George: Charging for freelance writing? I do occasional work as a music critic and interviewer for a few street press mags and papers in Australia. I've been asked to put together a company profile for some small time promoters, but I'm not sure how much I should be charging. I've written a press release for them in the past and woefully underquoted them ($30AUD) for the amount of time and headache it took. They ended up giving me $30 plus tickets to a concert, and bus fare for myself and my partner to attend. All up that would have cost them about $230-250. Can anyone offer some practical advice on what a standard charge would be in this situation? My friend has suggested charging them $300 but this sounds a bit pushy to me. Also, it's my first post, eek.

Trainwrecks Wrecked That cute little cesspool of gossip and mockery trainwrecks.net has apparently shut itself down at the behest of its ISP after considerable harassment by members of rival site Heaven Nose (nsfw text). But Heaven Nose claims they started the war against Trainwrecks just for fun. Oh, Internet drama... a force whose power is eclipsed only by its uncontrollability.

Matt Damon to be the next Kirk? Damon may be slated to play the young Captain Kirk in the upcoming "prequel". more inside