The St. Paul Pioneer Press has an article about Minnesota's policy on taping of interviews of people in custody, and how it has helped catch criminals. In the most recent example, a man claimed he did not murder the person police dug up in his backyard, stating he couldn't have done it because he is blind. When prosecutors left the room after the interrogation, he was caught on camera pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket and reading it.

But police throughout Minnesota record in-custody interviews, a practice stemming from a 1994 state Supreme Court decision. At first, police and prosecutors lamented the ruling, predicting it would keep bad guys from confessing.

Now, more than a decade into mandated recording, those same critics are lauding the practice. Taped interrogations have not only proved valuable at trial, they have helped Minnesota authorities avoid accusations of forced confessions and investigative misconduct.

"It's the best tool shoved down our throats," said St. Paul police Cmdr. Neil Nelson. "We went kicking and screaming."

Sounds like this guy was watching too much Arrested Development!

Chicago Business has a cool article about McDonald's latest Chicago advertising. They've put up a sundial billboard which uses the sun to cast a shadow of the arches onto different breakfast menu items as the day progresses. It has items from 6am to noon:



Apparently the ad agency that came up with the idea, Leo Burnett, had to hire an engineer to help design it.

There has been rumor for a long time that Google was coming out with an online file storage service, but now there's some definitive proof of it and what it's capable of. By going to one of the pages on the writely.com domain, there's a test page for Platypus (GDrive). In case it disappears, here's a screenshot:


Click to enlarge Supposedly it will offer:

• Backup. If you lose your computer, grab a new one and reinstall Platypus. Your files will be on your new machine in minutes.
• Sync. Keep all your machines synchronized, even if they run different operating systems.
• VPN-less access. Not at a Google computer? View your files on the web at http://troutboard.com/p.
• Collaborate. Create shared spaces to which multiple Googlers can write.
• Disconnected access. On the plane? VPN broken? All your files are still accessible.

Awesome news.

There's a video on CNN about Dave Chappelle leaving the Chappelle show and his more recent reflections on his decision.

He's very candid about the whole thing, mostly saying that he found that the $50 million contract wasn't worth the amount of depression he felt about not having much control over what went on. It seemed like he actually had two different issues. One was that people around him changed as he became more successful. This isn't a very surprising thing though. The other was that he felt overwhelmed with things. As he described it, people become "atrophied" from practical tasks since they are handled for them by agents, managers, etc. Then when people stop doing those things, you're overwhelmed by them, since you've never dealt with them.

At any rate, Chappelle's now doing standup around the country, has a movie out called Block Party, and seems pretty happy with his decision. Comedy Central has decided to go ahead and air the footage they paid for without Chappelle in the "Lost Episodes."

What's hard to tell in all of this is if Chappelle just couldn't handle the fame, if Comedy Central became controlling after the huge success of the first two seasons, or if it was other influences - friends, agents, etc. that were the real problem.

There's an article on CNN about 3 people who were arrested for trying to steal Coca-Cola trade secrets to PepsiCo. One of the three was an employee at Coke, and provided the information that the other 2 were trying to sell. They offered both confidential documents and a sample of a new, unreleased Coke product. Coke has verified that the information was legitimate.


They were caught because Pepsi provided Coke with the initial letter they received offering them the trade secrets, at which point Coca-Cola got the FBI involved. The FBI was able to track down the sources involved by posing as another buyer of the insider information.

Apparently in Berlin there are pranksters putting concrete soccer balls around town with signs that tempt people to kick them. The prank has led to several injuries, and sent some to the hospital. The balls are chained to lampposts, trees, etc. and have signs next to them that say "Can u kick it?" Police are now looking for suspects and plan to charge them with assault.

While the movie's still a year off, they've just released a teaser trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man 3. Unlike the usual teaser though, there's actually a surprising amount of footage in this one, and it looks really damn cool. Spidey's lost the red and gone dark, Venom-style.

Here's the trailer on Apple!

...in that giant douchebag kind of way. dave submitted a great story about minor league coach Joe Mikulik completely losing it after what he considered a bad call. There's video of the whole incident on the article page.

It all started in the fifth inning when Asheville pitcher Brandon Durden tried to pick off Koby Clemens -- son of Roger Clemens -- at second base inside Lexington's Applebee's Park. Clemens was called safe, prompting Mikulik to charge toward first-base umpire Andy Russell to protest the call.

The agitated Mikulik went nose-to-nose with Russell, who showed considerable restraint before tossing the manager. Even after his ejection, Mikulik demonstrated a headfirst slide into second before he picked up the base and flung it toward the outfield. On his walk toward the visitors' dugout, Mikulik stopped at the pitcher's mound, picked up the resin bag and hurled it toward first base.

...Mikulik then stopped at home plate and kicked dirt on the plate and on the heels of retreating umpire Stephen Barga. And moments after Mikulik disappeared into the dugout, bats came flying onto the field -- much to the concern of a startled batboy standing nearby.

Mikulik wasn't done yet. He walked back to plate umpire Barga, emptied a water bottle onto the plate and then finished the tirade by spiking the bottle into the dirt -- all the while arguing the call.

"I thought the strike was over," Mikulik later told the Herald-Leader. "When will the real umpires show up? That's what I want to know. ... I just wish the umpire's association would train their young men to have a personality. I could get two mannequins at Sears and umpire better than what I saw this whole series."

Oh, the Tourists lost 5-2.

dave submitted a story about an art project about privacy when using electronic devices - computers, PDAs, etc. The pictures are hilarious:

That's right...there are going to be new episodes of Futurama on Comedy Central - at least 13 of them! All the primary voice actors are signed on, and it's scheduled to happen by 2008.

The tale of "Futurama's" dramatic revival roughly follows that same path that "Family Guy" did.

In both cases, the shows have been successfully airing on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late-night programming block. They both also turned into hot-selling DVD box sets.

"Family Guy" returned to Fox earlier this year, while last fall, Comedy Central outbid Adult Swim for the license to air all 52 episodes of "Futurama" and whatever new episodes might one day be produced.

Bite my shiny metal ass, FOX!