On appeal, the MPAA has decided that the depiction of George Clooney’s bare bottom in Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming film Solaris does not justify an R rating after all. CNN’s version of the headline: George Clooney Butt Gets PG-13.

Reason’s Charles Paul Freund has a nice piece on Hashem Aghajari, an Iranian academic who gave a lecture in June calling for political reform and religious renewal, and asking his fellow Iranians not to blindly follow the religious authorities. As a result, he has been jailed, convicted of apostasy, and sentenced to be hanged. Thanks to Hiro for the link.

Mad Magazine, it looks like, should get credit for the original creation, but in the meantime Hiro’s hosting a copy of the very scary/funny movie poster for Gulf War II: Clone of the Attack. Coming soon to a Persian Gulf near you!

Apparently Clinton’s critical mistake was failing to be president of Taiwan. A group of sixty Taiwanese judges has met and concluded that oral sex is not sex, and does not constitute adultery.

I am reminded of the words of the late J. Edgar Hoover: “I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.”

Define Irony: Bill Wyman suing Bill Wyman for using the name Bill Wyman. The catch is, ‘Bill Wyman’ isn’t Bill Wyman’s real name — Bill Wyman was born with it before Bill Wyman started using it. (as seen on slashdot)

Between serial viewings of the FOTR extended edition DVD, and crossing off days until TTT debuts on December 18, I somehow found time to check out Lord of the Peeps: The Fellowship of the Peep.

William Safire has a New York Times op-ed piece called You Are a Suspect, in which he screams bloody murder about one of the riders tacked onto the President’s Homeland Security Act. Specifically, a rider that gives the Strangelove-ian John Poindexter, late of the Iran-Contra scandal and now head of the Defense Department’s “Information Awareness Office,” a large wheelbarrow-full of money to set up a master database linking every conceivable piece of information about every American, for convenient data-mining by the government.

Appearing in a packed courtroom to testify about his failure to perform a 1999 concert, Michael Jackson must have elicited audible gasps from the gallery when he removed a surgical mask to reveal the latest incarnation of his face. And no, I will not be devoting a wiki page to subsequent appearances.

The Onion continues to be a beacon of sanity in an insanse world. Thanks to Jason for the link.

Geov Parrish offers some interesting observations on TomPaine.com’s Uncle oSAMa poster, which depicts a finger-pointing bin Laden encouraging the U.S. to invade Iraq.

Courtesy of Hiro: “This information is only for kids who are smart and mature enough to respect the dangers involved with injecting heroin…”

Michael Pollan has a cool piece in the latest New York Times Magazine, called An Animal’s Place (stupid mandatory login required, cypherpunk98/cypherpunk works for now). In it he talks about factory farming, the animal rights movement, and the various ways in which one can try to combine meat-eating with a moral existence in early twenty-first century America. Cool followup reading I stumbled upon while Googling for the author’s name includes Power Steer, an earlier NYT Magazine piece where the author follows the life of a particular bovine, and factoryfarm.org, where you can arm yourself to take on the CAFOs of the world (that’s “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation”). Bon appetit.

Those Norwegians are smart cobbers. They’ve snapped up so many advance tickets to the as-yet-agonizingly-unreleased The Two Towers that it is the #1 film in the country, beating out all the crappy stuff currently showing in the cinemas. Bring it on!

Just because a) I can’t resist posting a Lord of the Rings link that jbc missed and b) jbc has been distracted from his TT obsession by a well-dressed criminal — I now bring you a nice picture of Treebeard courtesy of elbakin.com, what appears to be a french-language fantasy news site. Surprisingly, I actually think he looks pretty respectable.

The relentless encroachment of corporate intellectual property rights hit a snag Monday when a New York judge ruled that Mattel cannot block a British woman from selling “Dungeon Barbie” on a web site that specializes in adult paraphernalia, because the use clearly is intended as parody. Nice.

Another round in the culture wars: Director Steven Soderbergh wants a PG-13 rating from the MPAA for his upcoming sci-fi film Solaris; they counter that a scene showing George Clooney’s ass earns the film an R. So Soderbergh is taking his case to the public, arguing that the ratings board is employing a double standard (since women’s butts don’t result in R ratings). How about it, ladies? How significant is a 40-foot-wide image of George Clooney’s bare bottom?

I would have figured this story was completely fictional, but I dunno; ABC News? Anyway, do not miss the tale of Terrifica, a pretty New Yorker who puts on a red leotard and hits the city’s bar and party scene, helping protect young, drunk women from the men who would take advantage of them. And then there’s her arch-nemesis, a suave sexual predator who likes to wear velvet and calls himself “Fantastico.” It just gets better and better.

Arianna Huffington, continuing to make me, against all my better judgement, like her, offers this insightful commentary on the beleagured head of the Democratic National Committee: Bring me the head of Terry McAuliffe!.

Winona’s in dark maroon today, with some odd-looking shoes; see photos on the wiki’s WinonaRyderOnTrial page. We’ve also got a verdict, reportedly, to be announced by late morning. Update: Guilty on the grand theft and vandalism charges; not guilty on burglary. Sentencing set for December 6.

I continue to be entertained by the British. From The Straits Times, via Hiro, comes an article about an apparently dead-serious study on “Violence, Disorder and Incivility in British Hospitals.” Titled Sex on the Wards, the article focuses on the racier stuff from the report, but it also includes such shocking revelations as a female patient who took a call on her cell phone in the midst of a gynecological exam. The horror!