ghostlibrary sends a note about Sean Tevis, an information architect in Kansas, who is running for state representative with the help of an xkcd lookalike cartoon and grassroots Net-based fundraising. Tevis had garnered more than 6,000 contributions, most of them small, from around the country, far out-fundraising his opponent. Major news outlets have picked up the story as a harbinger of 21st-century Net-based political campaigning. Reader ghostlibrary adds, "As a bonus, Tevis cites xkcd intentionally (rather than just ripping it off without crediting it) and, well, it's actually funny."

An anonymous reader writes "The board game The War On Terror is a satirical game in which George Bush's 'Axis of Evil' is reduced to a spinner in the middle of the board, which determines which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word 'Evil' stitched onto it. Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava 'could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act.' Balaclavas are freely sold all over the place in the area." Schneier has blogged this stupidity, of course.

For the last few months we've been beta testing Idle.slashdot.org, our offtopic humor/meme/viral video/pictures section. Like many of you, we spend most of our waking hours on-line seeking stuff to entertain our brains, but most replicators out there pick so much content that it's incredibly boring filtering through the mediocrity to find the funny. We intend to fill our idle section with a very small collection of the very best the net has to offer, making it the most efficient way to waste your time. Some of this content will make it back to the Slashdot mainpage, but much of it will be new content that we wouldn't dare soil the precious Slashdot mainpage with. We are also using it as a test bed for new functionality on Slashdot — currently the page is a reasonably dynamic/interactive experience with various voting controls and filtering options. Finally you will see occasional original content, starting with a recurring special feature today where Samzenpus shares some real tech support email from some of our most intelligent readers. We hope you will enjoy wasting a slice of your day with us, and in addition will submit content through the usual channels, but put it into the 'Idle' section so we know not to take it seriously. Now go about your day — it's mid August, so I'm sure everything you do is urgent, exciting, and oh-so-interesting.

An anonymous reader writes "George Lucas CGI 'Clone Wars' movie has premiered to reviews ranging from MSNBC's 'Ugly animation and an uninspired storyline drag down the film' to AintItCool's 'I hated the film. HATED IT. REALLY HATED IT.' Critics have noted the animation style, music and slapstick humor had more than a passing similarity to Pixar's Toy Story, and wondered if the introduction of new action figures (sorry, characters) like Baby Jabba Hutt and Jabba the Hutt's Gay Uncle may have taken the franchise a bridge too far. Lucas responding by enforcing an embargo, forcing the reviews to be taken down. While sites like AintItCool.com responded, by then it was just a little too late. Still, the CGI eye candy will make it popular with kids. If the 'Clone Wars' movie can't save the galaxy, can it at least save the franchise?"

Engadget has pointed out a small band of people even we can consider nerdy that decided to cut loose and demo CERN's fancy new toy, the Large Hadron Collider. The resulting music video is certainly enough to "rock you in the head," and maybe even enough to cause a rip in space-time. Between Alpinekat and Dr Spatzo, I think my iPod just got a new entry.

narcberry writes "The BBC reports on a scientific community still holding to flat earth theories. From their article: 'Are there any genuine flat-earthers left? Surely in our era of space exploration — where satellites take photos of our blue and clearly globular planet from space, and robots send back info about soil and water from Mars — no one can seriously still believe that the Earth is flat? Wrong. Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the 'conspiracy' that the Earth is round.'"

theodp writes "If you checked out Google-wannabe Cuil, you learned that mapping search results to relevant images isn't a trivial task. But even Big Dog Google isn't immune to embarrassing graphics gaffes. Readers of Google News were shown that Russian troops are thrusting into the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia, thanks to the Google Maps graphic accompanying a story about Russian incursions into Georgia — the nation-state in the Caucasus, not the Caucasian-pride-ridden state in the southern US. Yahoo! Answers also had some fun with the GA-Georgia mix-up — 'I live in georegia but i dont see rusia no where not even sound but they says theres tanks should i be worrie' (Google cache) — before a spoilsport deleted the question."

rickb928 and several others have written to inform us that three reporters for the French publication "Global Security Magazine" were booted out of the Black Hat convention for uncovering the login information of other reporters. Quoting the AP: "The separate, wired Internet connections set up for reporters are supposed to be off-limits to hacking and the Wall of Sheep. Even so reporters who didn't take the extra step and log onto the Internet through an additional secure connection like a virtual private network, risked having their data exposed to colleagues sitting just feet away. It didn't appear to be a complicated hack. The network was working properly, but it wasn't set up to shield each journalist's computer from one another."

TechDirt is reporting that one airline is planning on canceling all flights booked through third-party systems. This isn't the first time that an airline has fought against the inevitable wave of easier-to-search third party websites, but certainly tops the stupid scale. "We were already confused enough by American Airlines' desire not to be listed on the sites where people search for airfare, and easyJet's plan to sue the sites that send it customers, but Irish-based airline Ryanair is taking this all to a new level. Beyond just being upset about those 3rd party sites (i.e., sites that send it business!), it's planning to cancel the flights for everyone who booked through one of those services."

CNet pointed out a great use of timeline creation site "Dipity" that has resulted a timeline of internet fads and memes. While there are some subtle inaccuracies and a few notable omissions, it seems to have touched on most of the big stuff. Everything from GOTO being considered harmful to "the website is down," it's a great trip down memory lane if you don't mind a few speedbumps like the goatse guy.

FsG writes "In the first 24 hours that it was available, eight people bought a completely useless iPhone app for $1,000 a pop. This app does nothing except alert onlookers that you have a lot of money. The developer priced it at $999.99, which is the most you can charge on Apple's store. Apple has since yanked the app (without explanation as usual), while the inventive programmer walked away with $5,600."

jfruhlinger writes "In the upcoming Olympics, competitors will take part in the 'modern' pentathlon, designed in 1912 to simulate the skills a cavalry officer would need when trapped behind enemy lines. ITworld.com has developed a new set of competitions — untangling cables! code obfuscation! — that are a bit more relevant to the modern geek." Don't be too smug, though: Naturalist points out a story indicating that "Exercisers learn faster, remember more, think clearer and bounce back more easily from brain injuries such as a stroke."

Adrian writes "Zack Anderson, an MIT student, created a solution to wardriving on a budget: warcarting. The Warcart is a shopping cart retrofitted with just about every sort of wireless sniffing device available. It has pivoting antennas and a smoke grenade launcher. It can even dispense infected USB flash drives. It's part of a talk about subway fare-collection-system vulnerabilities that will be given at Defcon 16 in a few days." "Mostly as a joke," says the site — but only mostly.

mjasay writes "Microsoft's most recent annual report suggests that the company is increasingly coming to grips with open source, yet also seems determined to perpetuate myths about open source that poorly serve it and its shareholders. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has suggested before that 'free software means no free soda' for Microsoft employees; but this is perhaps the first time that Microsoft has managed to enshrine its ignorance in a public document. In the annual report, Microsoft makes two primary false claims about open source: 1) Open source companies don't invest in research and development and instead largely free-ride on Microsoft's patents and copyrights; and 2) Open source projects don't innovate and instead mimic Microsoft's products. Perhaps Microsoft has forgotten its own 'innovative' past copying of markets and technologies created by Apple and others. But at least Microsoft gets one thing right: 'To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline.'"

mikek2 writes "When retired Philadelphia-area doctor and Vietnam veteran Dr. Herman I. Libshitz went to upgrade his dial-up connection to Verizon DSL, he was informed they wouldn't complete the order because his last name contained an expletive. Repeated calls to several levels of management at Verizon failed to resolve the problem, with several managers suggesting he change his last name. It all worked out in the end, after the Philadelphia Enquirer intervened."

linuxwrangler writes "Preparing for English-speaking visitors, a restaurant in China recently ran its name through an online translator, took the result, then purchased and mounted a large sign displaying the English version of their name: Translate Server Error." This one has been around for a couple of weeks but it's destined to become a classic.

An anonymous reader writes "The recently concluded 2008 Mozilla Summit, held in Whistler, Canada, was impacted by a rock slide that cut off the main highway between Whistler and Vancouver, where most attendees planned to depart via airplane. In true open-source fashion, summit attendees collaborated on a solution, opening a Bugzilla bug (severity: "blocker"), posting crash dumps, and proposing solutions, including chartering a flight (which would land first in TRUNK, then BRANCH). Eventually, attendees settled on a workaround which seems to have been successful. For next year's summit, organizers might want to consider a location with more redundancy."

A Cow writes "When the hard rock band Buckcherry found out their latest single had leaked on BitTorrent, they didn't try to cover it up or take the file down. No, instead, they issued a press release. After a bit of research, TorrentFreak found out the track wasn't leaked by pirates, but by Josh Klemme, the manager of the band. In an attempt to cover their tracks, the press release was pulled, but it's still available through Reuters and Google's cache."

Politico is reporting that while GOP leaders opposed a motion to adjourn the House, the Democrats have closed up shop and even turned out the lights. While the lights and microphones have since been turned back on, it makes for an amusing mental image and possibly even a few dark YouTube video spoofs. "Only about a half-dozen Republicans were on the floor when this began, but the crowd has grown to about 20 now, according to Patrick O'Connor. 'This is the people's House,' Rep, Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) said. 'This is not Pelosi's politiburo.' Democratic aides were furious at the GOP stunt, and reporters were kicked out of the Speaker's Lobby, the space next to the House floor where they normally interview lawmakers."

The world's oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and it appears that toilet humor was popular with the ancients just like it is today. The Sumerian saying goes like this, "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." The people who brought you written language and the wheel also brought you the fart joke. Dr Paul McDonald, senior lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton said, "Jokes have varied over the years, with some taking the question and answer format while others are witty proverbs or riddles. What they all share however, is a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion. Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humor can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this research."