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Kim Taylor's Online Art Gallery. The beautiful, mystical, and eerily fantastic artwork of Kim Taylor.
posted by gagglezoomer at 11:25 PM PST - 16 comments

The State of the Union Address was tonight. C-Span not only has the video, but transcripts of every State of the Union address starting from 1945. Howard Dean responded.
posted by I Love Tacos at 10:01 PM PST - 108 comments

Spider-man , for many of us, has been a tried and true character which many of us have grown up with. For my fellow comic geeks, I'm sure many of you will agree at having enjoyed the stories for many years. However, the recent "The Other" storyline has harped on a series of evolutions(literally, not figuratively) that our webslinger has undergone of late. Of which an upcoming costume change is the least.
posted by Doorstop at 8:34 PM PST - 62 comments

Cindy Sheehan arrested for wearing anti-war T-shirt at State of the Union Peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Tuesday in the House gallery after refusing to cover up a T-shirt bearing an anti-war slogan before President Bush's State of the Union address.

"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman, adding that Sheehan was arrested for unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor.

Remind me not to wear my "Impeach Bush" button on my next trip to D.C.
posted by frogan at 7:30 PM PST - 506 comments

Self-organization leads to swarm synthesis
posted by Rothko at 7:19 PM PST - 10 comments

One week after publicly declaring his lack of support for our troops, LA Times columnist & professional nerd humorist Joel Stein comes out in favor of Grand Theft Auto's Hot Coffee mod, which has recently been the focus of a lawsuit brought by the city of Los Angeles against Rockstar Games, the makers of GTA. "Because if these teen computer geniuses are given the opportunity to unlock a video-game sex scene, then they'll be just one step away from breaking the code that allows them to type dirty words into Google."
posted by jonson at 7:13 PM PST - 17 comments

Last winter, Sweden was blasted by the first storm in recorded history to ever deliver hurricane force winds, devastating the country's forests. Logging crews came from all over the world. This massive collection of wood is now stored at a former air strip. via Inhabitat
posted by stbalbach at 3:44 PM PST - 41 comments

OhNoRobot.com - personalized comic search and transcription. Remember that time T-Rex said that really funny thing about sandwiches? Created by qwantz.com's Ryan North and writer T. Campbell, OhNoRobot currently has a database of 28,517 comics in 336 series. Find your favorites and help transcribe. (dinosaur comics previously on mefi)
posted by krix at 3:30 PM PST - 11 comments

Muslim world goes apeshit over Danish cartoon. Saudi Arabia and Libya have withdrawn their ambassadors to Denmark, which issued safety warnings to its citizens travelling in Muslim countries after threats by militant Islamic groups and a boycott of Danish goods
posted by The Jesse Helms at 3:29 PM PST - 165 comments

Meet Rita Verdonk, shit-stirrer extraordinaire. The Dutch Immigration and Integration minister wants everybody to start speaking only Dutch in public from now on. Pity she fails at that herself, needing to resort to a foreign language to describe her constituents' feelings on the matter. After that, she flies to a refugee camp in Kenya to tell the people there that they should f*** off to their own countries. Well, maybe they'll be safer there than in Holland under the oversight of Ms. Verdonk. Or maybe not... Pity that her media forays appear to prevent Iron Rita from putting her own department in order...
posted by Skeptic at 3:18 PM PST - 29 comments

Samuel Alito was sworn in as the nation's 110th Supreme Court justice Tuesday after being confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 58-42.(CNN)

John Kerry: This morning, 42 Senators voted against Alito's nomination. That's the highest number of votes against any Supreme Court nominee since Clarence Thomas in 1991. (from Kerry's email)
posted by doctor_negative at 2:28 PM PST - 76 comments

"The Virtual Hilltribe Museum is a project of the Mirror Art Group of Chiang Rai, Thailand to document the rapidly changing cultures of hilltribe people in northern Thailand. While countless volumes have been compiled about the touristically popular hilltribe cultures, almost all of these works have been written by Thais or Westerners and, therefore, carry the bias and mistakes of an outsider. The Virtual Hilltribe Museum is the work of the tribal people themselves."
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:48 PM PST - 7 comments

State of the Union Drinking Game Its that time of year again, and it seems to get bigger (and more partisan) each time. Now Kos has one, as does Arianna Huffington. Here's another, and another.(previous)
posted by ChasFile at 12:38 PM PST - 196 comments

"In the criminal justice system, you're considered especially gorgeous!" is just one of the ten Law & Order: SVU themed Valentine's Day cards made by Brandon Bird. [via Gothamist]
posted by riffola at 12:23 PM PST - 26 comments

Operation Anthropoid. In 1942, a group of Czech and Slovak exiles parachuted into their Nazi-occupied homeland and assassinated (hi-res pictures, scroll down) SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Final Solution, the "Butcher of Prague." For the first time since the end of the World War Two, a German museum is offering a close look at "Operation Anthropoid," the codename for the only successful assassination of a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle.
posted by matteo at 11:34 AM PST - 36 comments

Have you ever had one of those times where you lose your job, then your VA benefits are cut (even though you were wounded seven times in Vietnam), then your son dies in Iraq and homophobic protesters hold up a sign at his funeral that says “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” then just after Christmas the candle you light for your dead child burns your house down and your family (including your grandchildren) is homeless, and your wife needs surgery for gallstones?
Yeah, that’s tough when that happens.
But sometimes people come through for you.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:43 AM PST - 153 comments

Televised Opera and Musical Comedy Database. A comprehensive database—or a good start, anyway—cataloging performances of operas or musicals on television, from the early, experimental days of the medium to the present.
posted by bradlands at 10:39 AM PST - 2 comments

The Family Research Council is claiming victory in their fight to have the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services remove a web site "Celebrating the Pride and Diversity Among and Within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Populations." [Google Cache Links: 1, 2, 3, 4] But the FRC are not very happy about the "derogatory and even threatening responses to the messages they sent to their own government."
posted by Otis at 10:09 AM PST - 95 comments

Spiral Scouts are the wiccan/pagan answer to Boy Scouts (and Girl Scouts, since they're not a gender specific organization). And since pagans are apparently the new black, the scouts have been getting some recent attention. Although the Spiral Scouts started through a wiccan church, they've made a point of including all religions and/or non-religions (as opposed to the Boy Scouts). And while you can imagine what the conservative response might be, the left has found enough dirt on the Boy Scouts over the years that the Spiral alternative seems to be getting a fairly warm response so far.
posted by p3t3 at 10:01 AM PST - 47 comments

Unbelievably ass kicking playlist of french pop culture hits from the 60's. Featuring the ever zany Brigitte Bardot, Jaques Dutronc, France Gall, Serge Gainsbourg, and more. (via)
posted by sourbrew at 9:39 AM PST - 30 comments

Ever think about drought? The National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) "helps people and institutions develop and implement measures to reduce societal vulnerability to drought. The NDMC, based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, stresses preparation and risk management rather than crisis management." Lots of interesting things in here, like the drought maps that stretch back to 1895, and the Standardized Precipitation Index Maps. You can also check the Drought Monitor to see how dry things are as of last Thursday. [via the excellent j-walk blog]
posted by Irontom at 8:00 AM PST - 7 comments

Macramé: the craft that spawned a million eyesores As every family has its black sheep, so must the world of crafting have its irredeemable craft. Meet macramé, the ugly stepsister of crafting. In my recent search for a basic pattern I could use to redo a couple of old lawn chairs, every click revealed some fresh new horror. I searched on, thinking surely there must be at least one or two examples of attractive macramé products somewhere on the world wide web, but apparently not. There was nothing but bad jewellery, bad home décor items, bad chairs and really bloody awful owls. I tried approaching the technique with a designer’s mindset, seeing ugly things not as an end in themselves but as a design challenge. How could the patterns be improved? How could the technique and medium be used to produce something beautiful? Perhaps it was just the macramé cord and not the technique that doomed each project to aesthetic hell? But in the end, the craft defeated me. I declared it hopeless, decided to do my two lawn chairs in a plain cream and then retreat from the field before some disaster (possibly one involving a flaming owl) struck. However, that is just my opinion. Perhaps I just don’t appreciate that some people really need that homemade Christmas tree, or the perfect belt to wear while impersonating Elvis.
posted by orange swan at 7:49 AM PST - 62 comments

Gone postal Another US postal worker shoots and kills work mates (ex workmates in this case.) As ever Wiki tells all. USPO works to eradicate the usage, but no chance. Now so much part of the culture you can game it
posted by A189Nut at 7:27 AM PST - 34 comments

Coretta Scott King passes away at age 78.
posted by googlebombed at 6:40 AM PST - 51 comments

"The mind-set of Utah". The Washington Post (BugMeNot) visits Randolph, Utah, the place where they like George W. Bush more than any other place in America.
posted by PenguinBukkake at 6:15 AM PST - 165 comments

Engineering Perfect Americans Were your immigrant ancestors considered genetically predisposed to become criminals? Were your mixed-ethnic ancestors thought to be polluting the nation's 'germ-plasm'? The Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement presents a well-put-together online exhibit/walkthrough of this disturbing vein in American history.
posted by Miko at 6:12 AM PST - 6 comments

78th Annual Academy Awards Nominations
posted by Hanover Phist at 6:10 AM PST - 93 comments

Reasons to be Cheerful : (mostly PDFs) You earn less than I do. I live in Malta. I am not single. I pay high tax rates. I believe in God. I don't watch TV. Abortion is legal where I live. And other lessons from the new science of hippiness happiness. (Sort of mentioned here.)
posted by DirtyCreature at 1:22 AM PST - 17 comments

Hussein Derakhshan [English site] is one of the leading voices of the Persian blogosphere. His blog [Persian site] manages to reach a wide audience in Iran despite being officially censored. Currently, he is fulfilling his dream of visiting Israel [Flickr pics] and breaking barriers in Israeli-Iranian relations. Lisa Goldman, his host in Israel writes about his visit in her blog, too. He is interviewed by the Israeli press in this Haaretz article. He has written "Democracy's Double Standard", an NYT op-ed piece, [bugmenot]. from Tel Aviv, and delivered a lecture on "Reform, Youth and Technology" at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Oh yeah, he's also a MeFite.
posted by ori at 12:56 AM PST - 19 comments

Three Mile Island - a study in bad human interface design. Chernobyl in text, pictures (posted previously), and eyewitness accounts. Those are two of the most famous incidents involving mishaps with radioactive material. There have been many more (see also) including suicides, homicides, assaults, and motives forever unknown. But US citizens need not worry - the NRC is on it. What do you know about radiation poisoning? Take the test.
posted by aberrant at 12:36 AM PST - 48 comments

Who watches Sunset Boulevard for Norma Desmond's 1932 Isotta Fraschini Town Car Landolet Limousine? These folks [scroll down for the film list], who also like the "VERY KOOL maroon late-1940's Ford Coupe" used by the cop-killers in The Onion Field, Steve McQueen's "milquetoast baby-blue 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook convertible" in The Blob, Fred Astaire's end-of-the-world Ferrari and lots more.
posted by mediareport at 12:32 AM PST - 7 comments

Unclaimed Baggage Center is where lost luggage goes to die...and then live again. This huge warehouse buys the stuff we leave behind by the truckload, unpacks it, and then sells it to the public in an ongoing junk sale. Items range from the mundane to the merely puzzling to the somewhat disturbing (this was found ON AN AIRPLANE, for Chrissakes.) The online store cannot compare to shopping there in person. And yes, it is located in THAT Scottsboro.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:45 PM PST - 32 comments

American Playwright Wendy Wasserstein died today of cancer at the age of 55. She was the author of plays such as The Heidi Chronicles (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Drama), The Sisters Rosenzweig, Old Money, and several books, including, Shiksa Goddess.
posted by kosem at 11:12 PM PST - 12 comments

The octopi are back and they're pissed -- or, the continuing misadventures of the one-eyed suitor. [mpg here]
posted by digaman at 10:49 PM PST - 21 comments

It takes a long time to load, but Kol-Belov's "PU's_tota" is just so creepy and bizarre and awesome with really cool music. The artist is obviously deeply weird, also highlighted in the series of shorts, "Self-Destructing Organisms." There's also a game. These are Flash animations. Nearly all of them contain a modest amount of cartoon violence/gore; may not be safe for work. Also, the guy really loves his industrial music.
posted by Gator at 10:45 PM PST - 4 comments

I knew this post would make me sound like Cassandra, or Chicken Little, or some other made-up freak, but a thinking man ought to pay it mind. All sorts of kind, intelligent (and not crazy) folks are coming to realize pagans are the new black. Suck it, seculars.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 8:14 PM PST - 48 comments

I Want to Believe--in the Double-Double Animal Style. Mefi has discussed the wonders of In-N-Out Burger before, but what fascinates this east-coaster is the "Secret Menu." Also, the cryptic biblical messages. In-N-Out HQ laughs it all off, even as its greasy-spoon archipelago falls apart, potentially.
posted by bardic at 8:10 PM PST - 66 comments

Of some concern large carrion luggage
posted by longsleeves at 8:03 PM PST - 12 comments

What Would Jimmy Carter do? Was interference in Afghanistan worth it? Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski seemed to think so.
posted by matkline at 7:19 PM PST - 25 comments

Poll Results: What the World Thinks of America BBC Report that polls various countries. More or less, the title describes itself adequately.
posted by jne1813 at 7:09 PM PST - 33 comments

CBS' 60 Minutes asks: "Hundreds of thousand of people could die in a nuclear attack, but hundreds of thousands of others could be saved. That’s because the Pentagon — after decades of searching — believes it has found a drug to treat radiation exposure. Why isn’t that drug available? "
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 6:34 PM PST - 37 comments

BustoBot, a modern pop-up book.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 5:38 PM PST - 20 comments

Google Images Censored in China A picture says 1000 words, and Google.cn is censoring them all. Check out the side-by-side screens of a search for "tiananmen+square" in Google.com and Google.cn images. Looks like a nice place, with little historical significance. You can try the search yourself. The text on the bottom left is the censorship disclaimer. Very different than our results. A far cry from Google's claim that they do not censor results. Nice to know that they stand up to the government here but not abroad.

A good spoof of the whole thing.
posted by FeldBum at 5:11 PM PST - 57 comments

editors from the range of IP addresses belonging to the United States Congress have been banned from wikipedia.
posted by delmoi at 3:45 PM PST - 59 comments

Nam June Paik passed away on Sunday. We'll read educated commentaries in the next few days, but what I most affectionately remember about him is how his work made me laugh happily during the 70s and 80s. A precursor of video art, he was the first to use plugged tv sets as building blocks in the most playful ways. His TV Buddha is arguably an unsurpassed classic (a motionless moving image, an outside observation of an inner meditation, even -why not?- a premonition of a blogger) (this last one is a joke: I told you Paik made me laugh). R.I.P.
posted by bru at 3:36 PM PST - 34 comments

Chewbacca blogs.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:46 PM PST - 36 comments

The Everything of Theory and other articles by Gates, Roachcock, Kangaroo & Gall. Contains embedded video, not to mention branes and GUTs.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:19 PM PST - 10 comments

Army officials are investigating allegations that as many as seven members of the 82nd Airborne Division appeared on a gay pornography web site. Authorities at Fort Bragg have begun an inquiry into whether the paratroopers' actions violated the military conduct code. Although the site in question has apparently now been removed, the issue has once again highlighted the military's unofficial policy of "Don't ask, don't tell." Does this incident show that it is now finally time to drop this discriminatory policy, thus finally allowing homesexual officers to serve their country without having to stay in the closet? Or is there a legitimate need for this policy to remain in use in the armed forces?
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:03 PM PST - 78 comments

Hellchicks like warm fuzzies, too. Violent bloody video game fantasies are nice, but real bloodied folks need help from places like the red cross. These Quake 4 grrrlss are knitting up nice gifts for a good cause. If you gave to Child's Play then you know that gamers are good peeps.
posted by McBain at 1:36 PM PST - 7 comments

Cody the Buffalo has passed away at the age of 19. In addition to being in "Dances with Wolves" with Kevin Costner, Cody was also in the film “Radio Flyer.” He also appeared in several commercials, and even appeared with Jay Leno. Last spring, he traveled to the U.S. Mint in Washington, D.C., to participate in the unveiling of a new buffalo-head nickel.
posted by drstein at 1:31 PM PST - 11 comments

Secret Service may be given yet further authority to arrest people. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) has added to the latest draft of the Patriot Act legislation before the Senate. As it stands now the Secret Service will get involved if you trespass in a restricted area at the same time as (or immediately before) the people they are protecting. If Sen. Specter has his way the Secret Service will have the authority to arrest any protestors violating the arbitrary restricted areas AT ANY TIME throughout the (potentially multi-day) event.
posted by taumeson at 1:25 PM PST - 70 comments

Need a patch of skin for that burn or perhaps some new brain cells? Print them. A team of British scientists have shown that cells could survive ink-jet printing. Ink-jet technology moves beyond paper.
posted by Termite at 12:59 PM PST - 21 comments

Interactive lighting design from James Clar. Play 3-D Pong with an LED cube, or turn the cube into an audio-synced 3-D screensaver (color upgrade here). Other favorites include the Audio interactive light meters and Square Eclipses 1 and 2k5. [Warning: Individual design links may include Flash movies, techno music]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:32 PM PST - 12 comments

Massive fraud, theft, corruption in Iraq rebuilding ...Iraqi money gambled away in the Philippines...spent on a swimming pool that was never used...US$700,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker...millions to companies that never submitted required competitive bids or that were paid for unfinished work...paid US$14,000 on four separate occasions for the same job...US$1.3 million wasted on overpriced or duplicate construction or equipment not delivered..."needlessly disbursed more than US$1.8 million" of the estimated US$2.3 million spent for renovating the library...from new auditor reports from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:32 AM PST - 48 comments

So, you're gonna talk about energy? Wonder if the President will mention the record profits his buddies in big oil have been earning. Exxon Mobil who made a record $25.3bn (€19.4bn) profit in 2004, earned a company record $9.9bn (€8.2bn) in the fourth quarter of 2005. In the same quarter, Condoleeza Rice's former employer Chevron, who once named an oil tanker for their former vice president, earned a record $4.14bn (€4.43bn). The third-largest US oil company, ConocoPhillips, has reported a fourth quarter profit of $3.68bn (€3.05bn), a 50% leap from the same time a year ago.The industry claims that oil companies earn 7.3 cents on a gallon, but "Exxon's profit for the year... a staggering $36.13 billion is bigger than the economies of 125 of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank. Profit rose 42 percent from 2004."

You gonna talk about that, George?
posted by three blind mice at 10:48 AM PST - 80 comments

“Poor Lois, See How Old She's Growing! Too bad she’s doesn't try to remain the girl her husband fell in love with. The change is so gradual you never see it but your friends do."

Vintage Beauty Adverts at Duke University's Rare Book and Manuscript Collection.
posted by sourbrew at 8:37 AM PST - 42 comments

Study ties political leanings to hidden biases, and reveals that partisans stubbornly discount any information that challenges their preexisting beliefs.
posted by semmi at 8:15 AM PST - 40 comments

SupersizedMeals.com - Foodstuffs of Epic Proportions. [via]
posted by rxrfrx at 7:31 AM PST - 40 comments

Media outraced by Bloggers, Kerry appeal to netroots galvanizes suprise drive against Alito On Google News, you'll read how US Democratic Senators Obama and Biden are against a filibuster. Old news. They've agreed to support it. Encouraged by direct appeals by Senators. Kerry and Kennedy to internet activists, a blizzard of calls, emails, and faxes, organized via the Daily Kos and other blogs - with tactical direction from Kennedy - have helped flip the positions of several Democratic senators, and as of Saturday some claimed the push was already within 2 votes of forcing continued Senate debate on the Alito nomination. In fact, the pro-filibuster bloc might have started with 37 votes Meanwhile, today, Morning Edition, which declined to run the filibuster push as a top story and failed to mention the internet effort, asked Senator Kennedy on Senator Hillary Clinton's opposition to the filibuster: actually, she joined the effort last Friday [ see main link ] : D'oh !
posted by troutfishing at 7:07 AM PST - 236 comments

The Ultimate Mash-up: 153 songs in 5 minutes by Dj Aquasky
posted by empath at 7:01 AM PST - 30 comments

Until recently solely targeting luddites thru the medium of nubile women with Matrix-style code flittering over their tits, AOL UK has changed tack with a batshit orgy of self-Godwinisation for their latest television advertisement. [partially Adobe Flash video]
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 4:38 AM PST - 49 comments

Earth, Sea, Mountain, Man "Here, we feature heroes of the little, everyday histories, who exceeded the bounds of their petty existence in singular, lonely acts of nobility." reg req, bugmenot.
posted by dhruva at 10:58 PM PST - 1 comment

It was an instant icon, with Dan Rather calling it "the best war photograph in recent years." About 100 newspapers ran the photo, dubbing the anonymous warrior the "Marlboro Man." The photograph hit the world on Nov. 10, 2004: a close-cropped shot of a U.S. Marine in Iraq, his face smeared with blood and dirt, a cigarette dangling from his lips, smoke curling across weary eyes. He's quieter now -- easier to anger. He turns to fight at the sound of a backfire, can't look at fireworks without thinking of fire raining down on a city. He has trouble sleeping, and when he does, his fingers twitch on invisible triggers. The diagnosis: post-traumatic stress disorder. The man in the photograph is James Blake Miller, now 21, and he is an icon, although in ways Rather probably never imagined.

Previously mentioned briefly here
posted by stenseng at 10:04 PM PST - 27 comments

He's been compared to Stephen Merritt, Jonathan Richman, Beck, and Calvin Johnston (who he's sampled). Here be Jens Lekman's Department of Forgotten Songs--a small sampling of his charming pop tunes. Not familiar with him? Try Pocketful of Money or Boisa-Bis-O-Boisa for starters. (2nd and 3rd link are mp3s)
posted by Manhasset at 9:22 PM PST - 27 comments

An awesome short commercial (quicktime) that's a sort of visual music mashup from a DJ equipment company. [via tween, a cool video effects blog]
posted by mathowie at 8:27 PM PST - 17 comments

Long before Nine Inch Nails and Pigface, Trent Reznor was in a new wave group called Option 30... Here are two videos (flash, youtube) of live performances. Trent's voice is unmistakable in this song, but this cover of "Eyes Without a Face" may make you wish you had a face without ears.
posted by hypersloth at 8:10 PM PST - 28 comments

A Case of the Crabs, and its sequel, The Goat in the Grey Fedora, are a couple of point-and-click black-and-white Flash games that parody the old Sam Spade-type noir films. You are Nick Bounty, private detective, and it's up to you to solve the mysteries of the counterfeit crabs and the miniature goat statue, respectively. Very, very jokey; guaranteed to induce eyerolling. Look at everything, talk to everyone, and pick up everything that's not nailed down. Hints are available, but they're crammed with jokes too.
posted by Gator at 7:12 PM PST - 5 comments

The Longest Poop.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:04 PM PST - 78 comments

"Who's afraid of evolutionary biology?" (I've linked Bede before, but this piece bears a much more important message to Christians who feel it their biblical duty to get hot and bothered over evolution and origin-of-life issues.) Also see a Christian response to "Young Earth" apologetics, and the Young Earth Argument Index, both from "Old Earth" Creationists who disagree with 6-Day biblical literalism. (Note that Old Earthers may still be Intelligent Design advocates. Heaping spoonsful of salt all around.) If that's still too "Christian" for you, Talk.Origins has a summary of other Genesis interpretations.
posted by brownpau at 6:59 PM PST - 46 comments

The Origin of Art in Entoptic Phenomena Relatively recent research suggests cave art is neither simply 'art for art's sake' nor 'hunting magic', rather a representation of entoptic phenomena associated with hallucinations during altered or trance states of consciousness. These images are common to modern and prehistoric humans all over the world, and can be readily found in contemporary art. (see also some further reading, cool entoptic Kutie Catcher, AskMe)
posted by MetaMonkey at 5:49 PM PST - 13 comments

Wondermark An Illustrated Weekly Jocularity. While you're there, be sure to check out Malki's Comic Script Doctor columns (in particular his Freudian interpretation of Marmaduke).
posted by brundlefly at 3:41 PM PST - 15 comments

Russian photographs 1917-1945 A collection of photographs from the Howard Schickler Gallery,including the Battle of Stalingrad, the Arctic, the collectivization of agriculture, and others. I liked the photos by Olga Lander, in particular.
posted by Gamblor at 3:16 PM PST - 17 comments

Sure, we're all aware that William Shatner is the man, but this guy takes it to new heights (Google Video) in the mockumentary Auto Destruct: One Man's Obsession With William Shatner. Our disturbing yet engaging subject engages in rock and roll (Google Video, again,) shenanigans and goes into detail about a traumatic childhood experience involving a monkey.

Of course, for those who want their Shatner undiluted and pop-tastic, there's always his version of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (again, Google video,) now featuring cameos from across the pop-culture spectrum.

_{Disclaimer: I'm used for a pull quote on the first two links, and they misspelled frisson.}
posted by beaucoupkevin at 1:40 PM PST - 12 comments

Great "non-traditional" Valentine's Day E-Cards.
posted by reverenddrjice at 12:09 PM PST - 30 comments

State of the Union address pre-taped, leaked to internets.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:55 AM PST - 33 comments

NAMM 06 oddities. Guitars as works of art. Also found on that page: the Mikey guitar which functions as a frettted or fretless instrument with the flick of a switch.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:21 AM PST - 6 comments

Fear of Girls ... a film about elite tabletop role-players, by Ryan Wood.
posted by crunchland at 10:36 AM PST - 46 comments

Photographer and photojournalist Massimo Vitali captures large-scale crowded panoramas of people at play in shared public spaces. His biography and works discussed: 1, 2. (via mira y calla)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:19 AM PST - 12 comments

With the growing trend (at least among the porn stars & strippers I sleep with) of complete genital hairlessness, it's refreshing to see that the centuries old tradition of the Merkin has been reborn for a new generation.
posted by jonson at 9:06 AM PST - 40 comments

Poor old Abe. He had an impressive medical history, as previously discussed. Will we ever figure out all his ailments? As an explanation for "his especially clumsy gait," one theory claims that he had Marfan's Syndrome (with good company). But now researchers are leaning more toward a new theory, that a gene-linked disorder called ataxia. But Lincoln also suffered from depression which could have been heriditary, for which he took "little blue pills" that gave him mercury poisoning, which could explain his insomnia, tremors and rage attacks, gait, and more. Of course, we also suspect that he was in the closet. Lincoln's DNA will continue to be a growth industry, at least until somebody can get hold of a sample of the old guy and figure him out for sure.
posted by beagle at 8:55 AM PST - 34 comments

Now, even congressmen get in on abusing Wikipedia. Marty Meehan's staffers admit editing out negative information about the congressman from his Wikipedia entry. According to the article, Rep. Meehan is not the only politician toying with the Wikipedia.
posted by caddis at 8:51 AM PST - 15 comments

Bob Woodruff is in serious condition after being hit by an IED in Iraq. Woodruff and [his cameraman] Vogt are undergoing surgery at the U.S. military hospital in Balad. Both men suffered head injuries. Woodruff sustained shrapnel wounds and Vogt was hit by shrapnel in the head and suffered a broken shoulder.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 8:17 AM PST - 37 comments

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps Instead of the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the warrantless spying on Americans, we've received only the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation and a couple of big, dangerous lies...

this is an editorial pointing out the lies given the American public about spying. In addtion some 15 legal scholars here conclude that the Bush "initiative" is clearly illegal and violates the American constitution. Declaring "war powers" simply will not do!

posted by Postroad at 6:46 AM PST - 46 comments

Grief, Gratitude and Baby Lee. She wanted to honor her son, to celebrate his life, however short. That's why she had refused an abortion, even after doctors told her that her little boy would be born without a brain.
posted by matteo at 3:14 AM PST - 73 comments

Tagebach in Bildern this very unboastful website provides a wonderful detailed view on everydays observations. Nothing spectacular you could say, but with a huge knowledge of species (zoological and botanical) she introduces us into the small but remarkable miracles of nature which surround us everywhere. This little website teaches us to train our more precise look onto nature! .
posted by hortense at 1:39 AM PST - 16 comments

Are reporters too stupid to Get Religion? Answering the question that had to be asked, via the interesting GetReligion blog.
posted by tweak at 11:29 PM PST - 70 comments

Signore e signori: Piero Piccioni! Continuing my (apparent) obsession with Italian composers of the 1960s, I present you Piero Piccioni: jazz pianist, son of a conservative Italian politico, suspected murderer, and composer of some of the hippest, grooviest soundtracks ever put down on wax. [via this unbelievable vinyl sharity blog]
posted by ford and the prefects at 10:50 PM PST - 19 comments

The news you knew, yet didn't really know Project Censored has become more and more relevant in our self-censored and compliant media. These are the top ten stories that received very little airplay or no air play at all. It makes the Baby Jesus cry. . .
posted by mk1gti at 6:10 PM PST - 28 comments

Frank Lloyd Wright's Beth Shalom Synagogue - Cool photo essay about a beautiful building
posted by Afroblanco at 5:28 PM PST - 20 comments

Beer freshness dates decoded [more inside]
posted by rxrfrx at 4:45 PM PST - 17 comments

Bush administration tries to silence NASA's chief climate expert James Hansen from granting interviews about global warming. Meanwhile, a new study by Australian researchers confirms that global sea levels are rising, and may make island nations like Tuvalu and the Maldives uninhabitable by the end of the century. [via RawStory]
posted by digaman at 4:03 PM PST - 39 comments

Naomi Wolf has amused us before with her antics, now it looks like she's found Jesus. Is this a bid for attention in the face of drooping book sales, or is this an earnest extension of a pattern of harebrained logic? [mi] [via]
posted by mowglisambo at 3:46 PM PST - 66 comments

Mexican "Old Lady" Serial Killer finally caught. After more than a decade of killing little old ladies, Mexican police believe they have finally captured the person responsible - a female serial killer. An ex-wrestler who is also a devotee of La Santa Muerte there is no mention of her motive other than the shrine in her house. Popular with the poor and destitute on either side of the law, the cult has 2 million adherents in Mexico City and is popular on the US/Mexico border. "God helps the good, the Devil helps the bad, but Death treats everyone the same."
posted by ninazer0 at 2:29 PM PST - 29 comments

The Museum of Modern Betas lists the newest in web 2.0 kinda stuff. Blog? Check. Feeds? But of course. Tags? You betcha.
posted by ph00dz at 1:11 PM PST - 24 comments

Ask a Republican. Hello! I often get asked questions about Republican policy by greasy-haired liberal hippies. Seattle was no exception in Sept of 2005. It was teeming with them. May God bless you and America. Quicktime videos [via the monkey]
posted by srboisvert at 12:48 PM PST - 25 comments

President Jonah --an essay/history lesson/bible lesson/etc by Gore Vidal. ...We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define ...
posted by amberglow at 12:25 PM PST - 33 comments

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly, specialization is for insects."

Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
posted by sourbrew at 11:55 AM PST - 86 comments

Bad tattoos. More bad tattoos. Bad tattoos - don't let this happen to you! And, uh, this. And previously: Hanzi Smatter. Some pics, though no direct links, are NSFW.
posted by milquetoast at 10:35 AM PST - 59 comments

Sometimes the best of the web is just moments. Previously linked comic hitting harshly where it hurts.
posted by Sparx at 5:19 AM PST - 41 comments

Similar to the US Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Council of Norway, or Forbrukerrådet (PDF) strives "to achieve a balance of power between the consumer and the provider of products or services." This week, the council filed a formal complaint, citing several violations of Norwegian law in the fluid terms of service attached to iTunes music file downloads.
posted by Rothko at 12:10 AM PST - 9 comments

Triglav. It's fun, it's gorgeous, it's PC and Internet Explorer only. It's also unstable as all hell, so play career mode unless you don't mind restarting your whole game frustratingly often. DHTML gaming at its finest. (from the always excellent jayisgames, which is having a fantastic week). Triglav was previously mentioned but was as of then unfinished. If you're already hip to it, play meteor busters instead.
posted by klangklangston at 12:06 AM PST - 16 comments

Meet Bill Clements, bass player. Mr. Clements lost his right hand in an industrial accident in 1989 and had to find a new way to make his music. (embedded video)
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 11:48 PM PST - 22 comments

Welcome to the churches of some spiritual nontheists.
posted by bigmusic at 10:59 PM PST - 37 comments

Ha Ha Ha America (embedded movie and a big WTF)... one of the films available for viewing on the Sundance Short Films web site.
posted by Manhasset at 10:26 PM PST - 49 comments

The Flowering Nose in Slugland adventure game. As a goblin with a flower for a nose, your ultimate goal is to find the lost sprout. Defeat enemies by throwing flowers at them; power up with hearts; teleport from level to level with such esoteric trinkets as donuts and cherries. (Java.)
posted by Gator at 8:46 PM PST - 15 comments

Give us your pot smokers, your marriage-seeking gays, your wretched ... file sharers? "A major Canadian record company has taken the unusual step of hiring a defense lawyer for a man accused by the U.S. record industry of downloading hundreds of songs illegally. ... 'Suing music fans is not the solution; it's the problem,' Terry McBride, chief executive of Nettwork, said in a statement this week."
posted by maudlin at 7:03 PM PST - 30 comments

LGBT gamers not welcome in World of Warcraft - Despite praise from queer gamers' groups, a feature in the July 2005 issue of Out magazine (sadly not archived online, reader responses 1, 2) lauding the game's gay community, and the presence of hundreds-strong LGBT-positive player groups, developer Blizzard has decided the presence of out gay subscribers would "allow for discussion that we feel has no place in our game". Of course, this isn't the first time Blizzard has angered its paying fans...
posted by terpsichoria at 6:54 PM PST - 65 comments

Lord, forgive me but here is Part 2 of the phoney Mensa-Test.
posted by snsranch at 5:22 PM PST - 37 comments

Spoilsbury Toast Boy -2 (nsfw)
posted by Citizen Premier at 4:10 PM PST - 27 comments

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed "Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
posted by Postroad at 3:29 PM PST - 24 comments

Cellfilms. Ithica College in New York is hosting the Cellflix Film Festival, and has asked students between 13 and 20 to submit 30-second movies shot entirely with their cell phones. They have narrowed down the nearly 200 entries they received to 10 finalists that can be found here. (My votes to the shadow puppets and the progression of life.)
posted by onlyconnect at 2:58 PM PST - 11 comments

The world’s first tidal powered Moon Clock Created as her final year thesis at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, Laura Williams' Aluna project has come a long way in the last few years. Supported by Brian Eno (Long Now Foundation, previously discussed here and here), Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees and popular (BBC) astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, and originally planned, but ultimately turned down, for Potter's Field Park outside London's City Hall, Aluna - the world’s first tidal powered Moon Clock - is still looking for a home.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:00 PM PST - 10 comments

Where No Home Theater Has Gone Before. The ultimate home theater for hopeless nerds: The bridge of the Enterprise. (Warning: site does not travel at warp speed.)
posted by frykitty at 1:34 PM PST - 25 comments

While researching my future, I ran across a few sites about combovers.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:52 PM PST - 22 comments

Best of the Web American Idol: Going to Greensboro was a gamble for the pop TV show American Idol, but one that has paid off in spades for tart-tongued tornado Rhonetta Johnson, who is billed as a "terrible singer but with a mouth straight out of a pool hall and an ego bigger than Alaska." Rhonetta, who sports a rap sheet as long as her blonde wig, claimed she would become famous, and with the aid of the blogosphere and web sites such as rhonettajohnson.com, she has delivered on her promise, even gaining the attention of Entertainment Weekly, and going overnight from zip to in excess of a hundred pages on Google.
posted by nlindstrom at 12:51 PM PST - 21 comments

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win: SDS is reborn. Founded in 1959 and imploded ten tumultous years later, the Students for Democratic Society was one of the most dynamic and controversial forces at work in organizing a mass movement against the Vietnam war, particularly among draft-age kids. The group's original manifesto, Tom Hayden's Port Huron statement, still rings prophetic in Bush's America. Now SDS is relaunching and planning its first national convention since 1969, with a new crew of young radicals issuing calls to action to their own supposedly apathetic generation: "We seek liberation from the dominant business interests that have degraded our cities, paved over our communities, drowned out small business, and commodified our culture... Cooperative self-reliance is the only moral and material salvation of our nation, and the only release from a system that demands each of us be an accomplice to its heinous crimes."
posted by digaman at 12:42 PM PST - 45 comments

Plan59's Demoinc Tots and Deeply Disturbing Cusine: Plan59 has a bunch of overdone goodness (in a white bread sort of way) but this is the best. Link to their main page
posted by edgeways at 12:29 PM PST - 17 comments

Strange two-tone rock found on Mars.
posted by sohcahtoa at 12:24 PM PST - 39 comments

In 1872, influenced by the Impressionists at the Exposition Universelle, Italian painter Giovanni Boldini permanently settled in Paris. There, he quickly developed a reputation for his elegant depictions of fashionable society women executed with bold, fluid brushstrokes that made the model appear to be thrown onto the canvas -- the "Master of Swish". By the turn of the century Boldini had become the most sought after portrait painter of the 'La Belle Epoque'. More inside.
posted by matteo at 12:04 PM PST - 9 comments

Five Reasons Torture Is Always Wrong. From the magazine "Christianity Today", David P. Gushee, a professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, is against torture. Period. No exceptions. Complete with Bible verses to prove it.
posted by willmize at 12:02 PM PST - 42 comments

Answer three simple tricky questions and predict your sensitivity to risk. via Washington Monthly
posted by alms at 12:02 PM PST - 72 comments

Best Buy to offer CDs by indie artists for $7.99. "Choose from 20 impress-your-friends selections" at below wholesale price. What does this mean to you and me? Responses from Carrot Top Distribution and Merge Records.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:50 AM PST - 39 comments

Beutiful art made with knitting - (via buzz)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:09 AM PST - 32 comments

The Great American Health Check
Cancer.org has a great online resource to figure out what your individual health risks are, to help get into better shape or to help quit smoking. Its free and kicks out a personalized list of concerns to print out and bring to your doctor.
posted by fenriq at 11:07 AM PST - 20 comments

I got 99 problems ...but a witch ain't one. Witches are everywhere nowadays. No need to spend your days trying to hunt 'em down. Some are for the kids. Some are focused on manual labor. Perhaps most importantly, some are in britches, while others are in bikinis. Want to join the coven? Take an online course!
posted by eatyourlunch at 9:59 AM PST - 27 comments

From Skepticism to Worship. "I made a resolution to read the entire Bible again, only this time I was going to read it as I would poetry or fiction, and not as a proposal of fact." An ex-atheist's story.
posted by brownpau at 9:53 AM PST - 105 comments

Images of roadrage. A Toronto motorist litters out of his car window and a bike courier calls him out on it.
posted by phirleh at 9:46 AM PST - 89 comments

Sly Stone--not dead, might perform again. [from WaPo] A great musician and a complicated life.
posted by bardic at 9:30 AM PST - 37 comments

Doug Anglin, a high school senior in Massachusetts is suing his school district because it favors girls over boys. He claims, "'From the elementary level, they establish a philosophy that if you sit down, follow orders, and listen to what they say, you'll do well and get good grades. Men naturally rebel against this." Research does indicate that boys are, indeed, lagging educationally. Is it the system's fault? Are boys naturally disinclined to succeed in an educational setting?
posted by John of Michigan at 9:14 AM PST - 102 comments

NPR’s Live Concert Series site offers recordings of recent live performances by James Brown, Sinead O’Connor, Iron & Wine and Calexico, Son Volt, My Morning Jacket, The White Stripes, M. Ward, Sigur Ros, Bloc Party, The Decemberists, and live tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. ET, Colin Meloy.
posted by ND¢ at 8:05 AM PST - 45 comments

The Great Zucchini Eric Knaus, aka "The Great Zucchini," is a 35-year-old community college dropout who works only two days a week. But he takes home over $100,000 a year because he knows how to make preschool children laugh. His "act" is largely improvised, his "props" are old, dirty, and in desperate need of repair. So how (and maybe more importantly, why) does he do it? As Gene Weingarten, the author of this extremely funny, moving piece, says: "if you want to know why … it's going to take some time." He’s not kidding – the story runs almost 10,000 words. Do yourself a favor and read every one. (via Lileks)
posted by pardonyou? at 8:00 AM PST - 45 comments

What Do You Know About The Separation of Church and State ? The Freedom From Religion Foundation has created this handy 21 question online multiple choice test. How good are your church/state separation Constitutional knowledge chops ? Could influential GOP member, Bush 2004 campaign consultant, and "America was founded as a Christian Nation" cheerleader David Barton pass ?
posted by troutfishing at 7:58 AM PST - 70 comments

Come Home, America: Pat Buchanan's magazine, The American Conservative, prints a passionate defense of George McGovern. (via)
posted by pandaharma at 7:56 AM PST - 8 comments

Steven Colbert gets serious (sort of) in this Onion AV Club interview. His set is modeled after DaVinci's "Last Supper". His jabs make the local news. He fixed Canada. He coined the Word of the Year¹: "Truthiness". Did not. Did too! And the word becomes mainstream². (It explains the "craptastic state of politics"³) Some say Colbert's just hitting his stride.
posted by spock at 7:44 AM PST - 57 comments

Student Loan Justice. c/o Village Voice. (cf.)
posted by xowie at 7:35 AM PST - 72 comments

Good Dog AIBO.
Arf, Arf, he goes, a merry sight
Our little hairy friend
Arf, Arf, upon the lampost bright
Arfing round the bend.
Nice dog! Goo boy,
Waggie tail and beg, Clever AIBO, jump for joy,

Because we are putting you to sleep at three of the clock, AIBO.

with apologies to john lennon (thanks piratebowling )
posted by three blind mice at 4:17 AM PST - 24 comments

Digital Artform is a fascinating resource for those interested in 3D graphics, digital painting, and the like. How about turning 2D stills into 3D animations, the truth about motion blur and colour mixing, or outlines in action? Also, a recipe for making your own Viewmaster reels, and the politics of colour saturation.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 2:52 AM PST - 13 comments

50 Books for Thinking About the Future Human Condition, a list by the RAND corporation.
posted by stbalbach at 10:50 PM PST - 24 comments

University of Pittsburgh scientists say they've genetically engineered an avian flu vaccine that has proven 100 percent effective in mice and chickens. Let's hope this is for real and we can go back to worrying about global warming and the American police-state.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:38 PM PST - 46 comments

"Someone messed it up bad. The world went to pieces. It was dog eat dog and everyone for himself. Along came an unlikely hero. You....The future can be saved. The knowledge is inside the Four Rooms of Kharon." From the info page: "Kharon 4a is an online adventure game dealing with biotech issues. The makers of the game have worked closely with the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board during the creative process - to ensure the scientific validity of the game content. So, having played Kharon 4a, you will be left with not only an interesting and entertaining online experience, but you will also be familiar with the most imporant aspects of bio technology." They also warn that it's "the hardest Flash game ever made" and that you'll probably give up after five minutes.
posted by Gator at 8:37 PM PST - 12 comments

Asteroid to graze past Earth this summer...but how close? If you liked 2004 MN4, you're bound to enjoy 2006 BQ6. Very small but real chance it could even hit around the end of July, beginning of August this year. NASA isn't officially tracking it yet, but they are including it in their report of upcoming close approaches, where the minimum possible distance is...zero. The space.com discussion puts everything into perspective, including graphs and charts and such.
posted by gimonca at 8:16 PM PST - 47 comments

Blaze Foley, Drunken Angel. An iconoclastic country singer and songwriter who was shot dead in 1989, Blaze Foley is probably best known as the subject of Lucinda Williams' song 'Drunken Angel' and the author of 'If I Could Only Fly' which was covered by both Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. He also wrote the anti-Reagan 'Oval Room' which was unusually leftist for early-1980's Nashville. A documentary is in the works. Here's some video of Foley singing with Townes Van Zandt, himself once a cult figure but now considered somewhat last week.
posted by liam at 8:13 PM PST - 8 comments

Fancy way to build a satellite -- spend millions of dollars hiring engineers to carefully construct your orbital gem, then millions more on a massive rocket to loft it into space. BORING. Easy way to build a satellite -- shove a radio into a spacesuit and toss it off a space station. Meet SuitSat 1.
posted by eriko at 7:14 PM PST - 30 comments

Temples of democracy A long time ago, Matt apparently stated that state capitols look phallic in order to advertise that the Man does business there. Now you can judge for yourself. Here are all 50 capitol buildings, including artistic renderings, photos and histories. And Alaska's is decidedly non-phallic--the same goes for the proposed Gehry-like giant air conditioner-esque one too. And get a load of North Dakota's Ed Wood-ish house chamber.

So . . . what makes a good capitol building (or state house or what have you) to you? (For the record, I favor the more capitol-ey capitol, the traditional; like those of California, Mississippi, Colorado, Missouri and Wisconsin, etc. Then there's the impressive simplicity of the Jefferson-designed Virginia capitol. But I also like Oregon's art deco capitol, from what I see in the photos.)
posted by raysmj at 6:52 PM PST - 40 comments

A fake stone packed with sophisticated British spy devices sparks a UK / Russian controversy. More articles via Google News
posted by jfrancis at 5:04 PM PST - 55 comments

The Girl Scout Cookie Equivalency Chart sorts out the products from the official suppliers - ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers. gimonca says they'll be out sometime soon. I'll take two boxes of each please. Oh! no you don't... you're not in the USA.
posted by tellurian at 3:58 PM PST - 31 comments

...or why I wish I lived in England, part 6. The Mancunians return gravitas to Christianity's most holy holiday.
posted by klangklangston at 3:42 PM PST - 43 comments

FTC imposes $10M fine against ChoicePoint for data breach The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has fined ChoicePoint $10 million for a data breach that allowed identity thieves posing as legitimate businesses to steal social security numbers, credit reports, and other data from nearly 140,000 people. This is the largest fine ever levied by the FTC. ChoicePoint also has to set up a 'trust fund' for people victimized by identity thieves. From the article: 'As part of its agreement with the FTC, ChoicePoint will also have to submit to comprehensive security audits every two years for the next 20 years.'" BusinessWeek has additional info. Perhaps there might be hope for individual privacy after all. Let's all keep our fingers crossed.
posted by mk1gti at 2:41 PM PST - 22 comments

The Works of Nino Rota My roommate rolls his eyes. My friends are fed up. It's a mania, really, and I just had to share it: all I want to do nowadays is listen to Nino Rota scores. Giulietta Degli Spirit, Il Casanova, La Strada, Boccacio '70...man oh manishevitz, was he good. What say you, Blue? [Favorite soundtrack music previously discussed here and here]
posted by ford and the prefects at 2:20 PM PST - 20 comments

Santorum, a lying sack of Senator: Seems Pennsylvania's junior senator, who as recently as November told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that "K Street Project" was merely a "good government thing" is now saying: What K Street project? And Grover Norquist? Who he? Oh right, the guy who appeared at the Santorum fund-raiser just last June...
posted by kgasmart at 2:16 PM PST - 39 comments

First it was the remixed Shining trailer and now there's Brokeback Top Gun and a remixed Sleepless in Seattle trailer. [via kottke]
posted by londontube at 1:11 PM PST - 29 comments

We Negotiate With Terrorists. With an abrupt move opposite of stated policy, abducted American journalist Jill Carroll's life may have been saved by the US military yielding to the demands of her captors. Have gender, politics, and media coverage become factors erroding the mantra that the US Government formally states?
posted by trick at 12:29 PM PST - 44 comments

Norah "Ned" Vincent, releases "Self-Made Man", (NYT) in which she goes in disguise as a man and realizes what most of us already knew without playing drag queen for 18 months. Interestingly, "she also found women to be distrustful, ever ready to criticize men for being emotionally distant yet clearly preferring men who met stereotypical images of strength and virility." (Booklist via Amazon) It's making all the literary rounds (ABC News, Salon, The Independent). Previously, Vincent on Oprah's bookclub, Vincent on blogging.
posted by geoff. at 12:26 PM PST - 50 comments

Visualising Networks is fun. So are Monkey Networks (ppt). Dolphin Networks (pdf). Ant networks can aide network design. Does the Brain Work Like the Internet? Can the Internet Think? The Social Superorganism and its Global Brain? Webog Inequality. A City Is Not a Tree. The I Ching, a network of 384 pathways. The Whole, the Parts, and the Holes. Heterarchy, the secret of Japan, Inc.? Sense/non-sense;hierarchy/heterarchy... Heterachy and Heirarchy: Two Complimenatary categorises of description (pdf). Summary: "Our most significant problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking at which we produced them." (attributed to Einstein)
posted by MetaMonkey at 12:24 PM PST - 5 comments

Shades of Stalin's pre-Photoshop erasing of Trotsky from history: Joanne Amos admits to Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall that her GOP-friendly company, Reflections Photography, scrubbed images of President Bush with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff from both their online archive and CD record of official events. [Photos previously discussed here.]
posted by digaman at 12:14 PM PST - 44 comments

Irritation: A radio saga. NSFW (language) Dead Air Dave is a New York Disc Jockey, (in)famous for being the man who hit the dump button on the Howard Stern show. An interesting look at a day in the life of an overnight radio DJ.
posted by super_not at 11:56 AM PST - 4 comments

Bad Landlords, across the US Recently, the tale of Gloria Trembicky, bad landlord extraordinaire made its way around blogs. The author got enough emails of other bad landlord stories, he's now collecting them at Trembicky.com. Send in your own stories of woe, to help out future renters in your area (and entertain those of us no longer renting).
posted by davebug at 10:33 AM PST - 27 comments

'He's God's gift to today's political cartoonist': Misunderestimating the President through Cartoons, an exhibition of the work of leading political cartoonists from both the UK and the United States focusing on their depictions of George Bush, opens today in London at the Political Cartoon Gallery. Watch the video report from Channel 4 and read essays on the history of political cartoons.
posted by funambulist at 10:12 AM PST - 8 comments

BBC News: British unconvinced on evolution "More than half the British population does not accept the theory of evolution, according to a survey. Furthermore, more than 40% of those questioned believe that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in school science lessons." Nice to know that the maxim for the UK being five years behind the US still holds true, more or less.
posted by badlydubbedboy at 10:00 AM PST - 63 comments

Terminally Weird But Godly Right by Gary S. Paxton. (info and bio) With abortion politics in the news, enjoy The Big "A" = The Big "M" in both mp3 and very recommended animated video format.
posted by Peter H at 9:41 AM PST - 15 comments

The other philosophy: Eastern
posted by Gyan at 8:41 AM PST - 31 comments

Redneck get busy. Video clip presenting the collapse of celebrity culture.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 8:30 AM PST - 30 comments

Can we have an intelligent non-religion-bashing discussion about this article? ". . . perhaps the most shocking implication of my inquiry into the role religion plays in our lives" : ". . . those who have an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings of their religion are a problem: If they haven't conscientiously considered, on their own, whether their pastors or priests or rabbis or imams are worthy of such delegated authority over their lives, then they are taking a personally immoral stand. Please RTFA before commenting.
posted by spock at 7:41 AM PST - 175 comments

Web Authoring Statistics from Google. An analysis of a sample of slightly over a billion documents, extracting information about popular class names, elements, attributes, and related metadata.
posted by signal at 6:48 AM PST - 29 comments

davos 2006: Is Red the new blue? GAP, NIKE, American Express and Bono get together to save Africa from Aids. Bono, asked if he was being used by big business, replied that he was not a "cheap date."
posted by twistedonion at 6:17 AM PST - 55 comments

The Adaption to my Generation - daily portraits of Jonathan Keller...from 1998 to the present (as he states, "The project will continue until the day I die. Only then will it be complete, and worth its true value."). Also of note...his links page, which includes links to other "passage of time" (like the Portrait of Louise Anna Kubelka from birth to adulthood and Nicholas Nixon's "25 Years of the Brown Sisters") and "obsessive" (like Eat22 and 365 Plrds) photo projects...via Information Aesthetics.
posted by tpl1212 at 5:15 AM PST - 14 comments

Hamas wins majority in Palestinian elections. In a surprise upset, Hamas has unseated Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party. This after initial results indicated that Fatah would win, and both the Bush administration and Israel indicated that Abbas shouldn't form a coalition government with members of Hamas, but should keep them entirely in opposition. Prominent Hamas leader Ismail Haneya said, "America and Israel wanted to vote against Hamas, so the Palestinian people voted for the Hamas . . . and voted against the occupation." He reiterated that Hamas would resist Israel's occupation until all Palestinian rights were regained.
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:21 AM PST - 74 comments

They fight OUR WARS Revenge of The Mutt People", by Joe Bageant is a striking essay about the hopelessness and pride of the impoverished decendants of Scots/Irish stock found in rural America. More information here. -from rigourous intuition-
posted by thedailygrowl at 12:06 AM PST - 67 comments

"The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof...." The Seventeeth Amendement provides for the direct election of U.S. Senators. Originally, Article I Section 3 of the United States Constition provided that each state's senators be chosen by that state's legislature.

The Populist Party platform from 1892 on, called for direct senatorial election; and the Progressive movment made it, along with Prohibition (18th Amendment) and Women's Suffrage (19th), a cornerstone of reform. The 17th was ratified 8 April 1913, when the required 36th of 48 states, Connecticut, approved it. Utah, however, had rejected it 41 days earlier, on 26 February 1913. Although Utah never subsequently ratified it, the 17th Amendment, as part of the Federal Constitution, applies in Utah as in all U.S. States.

But in the name of re-invigorating States' Rights, some on the Right -- and some less easy to label -- have called for the repeal of the 17th Amendement. In 2003 Montana's Senate, after passing it out of committee, indefinitely postponed by floor vote a bill calling on Congress to repeal the 17th. Now, the President of Utah's 29-member State Senate [pdf], with 19 co-sponsers, thinks he's figured out a way around the Constitution's 17th Amendment. Debate on the S.B. 156 began yesterday.
posted by orthogonality at 9:32 PM PST - 52 comments

The strange story of Henry M. Henry was able to hold information in storage for very short periods of time. Most people can retain about seven pieces of information (a telephone number, for example) in memory for about thirty seconds, and Henry scored normally on these kinds of tasks. Thus, his working memory (or scratch-pad memory) seemed unaffected by the loss of his hippocampus. The main problem for Henry was converting short-term memories into permanent storage, a process called consolidation. Henry's case is one of the most studied brain-damage cases [PDF] ever. A fascinating story about one man's struggle with brain surgery.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 9:20 PM PST - 17 comments

Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? Who is changing the world more for the better? Some people believe Bill Gates and Microsoft are the Spawn of Satan, while others praise him for his philanthropy. [subs. req'd] Steve Jobs has more buzz on the internets than Bill Gates and a near religious following for his products with Apple. One might not give like the other, but one definitely is much more Zen-like.
posted by Mijo Bijo at 8:57 PM PST - 83 comments

The PacMan Frog! What is it about this most saffronly rotund of amphibians that has inspired so many hideous web sites? (Don't even bother clicking on this one. It goes right to a geocities site.) Perhaps it's their tendency to try to eat anything they could get their oversized mouths on. They are, in fact, so ready and willing to consume anything within biting distance that it is recommended that owners feed these frogs with spoons. Pac man frogs will tend to bite anything that moves. Never use you [sic] bare hands when feeding to avoid bites. Many frogs are killed when a hand is quickly drawn away from a bite and the horned frog is flung against a wall. This one, apparently, just put a bounty out on Han Solo.

Whether you love them or hate them, all pacman frog owners agree: there's no tidy way to wrap up a post about pacman frogs. (Warning: almost inhumanly annoying website behind link. embedded qt midi music (really, though. what if God WERE one of us?) and horrific purple color scheme.)
posted by shmegegge at 8:45 PM PST - 16 comments

Captain Jackson (not to be confused with the other one), along with his teammates Crimefighter Girl and the Queen of Hearts, patrolled the streets of Jackson, Michigan and made celebrity appearances and public service announcements while working in hand with Jackson police. But it's time to turn in the cape: after a DWI, the Captain's identity is revealed. While not exactly Batman, Captain Jackson was one of the few real-life superheroes working to help the public in costume. Will someone take up the tights? A few tips for aspiring superheroes.
posted by luftmensch at 8:07 PM PST - 13 comments

BRAAAIIINNNSSSS!
posted by quonsar at 7:38 PM PST - 49 comments

Business 2.0's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for 2005
Remember this gem? "Women should be all dressed in white, like all other domestic appliances." Personal favorites are #36 and #40 but there's plenty more to enjoy. And the smartest company of 2005.
An update from long ago.
posted by fenriq at 7:09 PM PST - 18 comments

Cursor Love Bunny - a love bunny game... via b3ta
posted by Frasermoo at 5:34 PM PST - 17 comments

Cash, credit, or fingerprint? Biometrics are hot. Since we've already tired of our RFID credit cards, Wal-Mart and Costco are exploring fingerprint scanners as a means of payment in their stores. Pay by Touch, which has already installed its technology in various Cub Foods, bigg's, Piggly Wiggly, and Farm Fresh stores, is proud to change the way we all say "I am me". But didn't we already decide that sometimes fingerprints say "I am someone else"? [via]
posted by youarenothere at 5:31 PM PST - 18 comments

faster - a flickr game [via mefi projects and just about everywhere else today]
posted by togdon at 2:58 PM PST - 52 comments

While Not All librarians are "militant radicals" apparently we're not all your "stereotypical librarians" either. Incensed by the USA Patriot Act and irate over a memo between FBI agents, the American Library Association debuted a button at its annual midwinter meeting, which winds up in Texas today at the Convention Center. Boasting that its wearers are "Radical Militant Librarians," the button was one of the convention's biggest sellers.
posted by Blake at 1:19 PM PST - 68 comments

Mr. Gonzales + Future Lawyers = Crazy Delicious Civil Disobedience
posted by shoepal at 12:46 PM PST - 101 comments

The images on the ceramics were thought to be mythical narratives, imagery the priestly class used to underscore its coercive power. Without proper archaeological evidence, the representations were too horrific to take literally. They depicted gruesome scenes of torture: captives skinned alive, drained of blood (which was drunk by priests in front of them), throats slit, bodies decapitated and left to the vultures, bones meticulously defleshed and hung from ropes.

Unfortunately for the victims, these bloody rites actually happened. They took place in an otherwise vibrant and highly advanced culture, a culture renowned for its artists and builders. These were a people who developed advanced agricultural knowledge, extremely sophisticated metallurgy, and built the largest pre-Columbian adobe structure in the Americas. Because they had no written language, though, it is by their ceramics that we know them best.

The Moche.
posted by crumbly at 11:40 AM PST - 27 comments

American Idol 5 on Popmatters. "There are two pre-audition selection rounds before contestants are allowed to meet the judges. Clearly then, the show's army of "talent" spotters deliberately sent Derek, Crystal and the others crashing and burning onto national television, in the sure and certain knowledge that humiliation means ratings." Some insights into the corporate machinery behind American Idol, as well as thoughts on the current season.
posted by ludwig_van at 10:46 AM PST - 146 comments

The exhaustive and extensively annotated Columbia University Computing History, from Brunsviga calculators to NORC to the IBM 7090 and beyond. Also, take the virtual tour of the Computer History Exhibits at Stanford's Gates Computer Science building, including stops at the Apollo Guidance Computer (DIY) and the mechanical calculators exhibit.
posted by milquetoast at 10:41 AM PST - 5 comments

The Clergy Letter Project has completed acquiring 10,000 signatures from clergy around the country. Their stated goal: For too long, the misperception that science and religion are inevitably in conflict has created unnecessary division and confusion, especially concerning the teaching of evolution. I wanted to let the public know that numerous clergy from most denominations have tremendous respect for evolutionary theory and have embraced it as a core component of human knowledge, fully harmonious with religious faith. They've declared February 12, 2006 as Evolution Sunday, a day when "hundreds of Christian churches from all portions of the country and a host of denominations will come together to discuss the compatibility of religion and science."
posted by thanotopsis at 10:26 AM PST - 55 comments

Monogamists have bigger brains. More precisely, female monogamy in bats makes their male partner's brains bigger and their balls smaller, while female promiscuity in another bat species caused males to have huge balls and teeny brains. Can trusting your partner not to cheat lead to greater intellectual greatness? Via.
posted by onlyconnect at 9:35 AM PST - 57 comments

Tired of standing in line at the airport? Worried that you might share a name with a known terrorist or subversive on the TSA's mysterious no-fly lists? Relax. Get fingerprinted and/or iris scanned. And pay $79.95 a year to become a Registered Traveler, and fly Clear in the fast lane. (And note how quickly conceptual art projects become indistinguishable from reality.) Meanwhile, the Feds settle an ACLU lawsuit over the no-fly lists... while revealing no information about them. [Lists recently discussed here].
posted by digaman at 9:24 AM PST - 52 comments

Pork soup becomes political in France. Small groups linked to the extreme right are ladling pork soup to France's homeless. Critics and some officials denounce the charity as discriminatory: because it contains pork, the soup is off-limits for Muslims.
posted by rxrfrx at 8:59 AM PST - 104 comments

Beefalo is a feritle hybrid of cattle and buffalo (bison bison). It's story cannot be told without mentioning the irascible "Buffalo" Jones, the man who helped save the American buffalo and tried to cross-breed cattle and buffalo. He called it cattalo. Later successful hybridizations gave way to the beefalo. Some cite the near-extinction and later ultimate repopulation of the buffalo to free-market forces such as the private herds kept by Buffalo Jones for creating sustainable cattalo .
posted by ozomatli at 8:56 AM PST - 16 comments

Tips from the Blue Devils - Dunking the ball is a flashy move. In some instances, it can be the wrong move. Pot and cocaine are wrong moves. They mess up your thinking and can kill you instantly.
posted by sdrawkcab at 8:54 AM PST - 41 comments

Were you influenced by Thurber or James Joyce. (Real Media link) "Ah none of them. James Stewart. James Stewart and Betty Grable." An interview with a very young and brash John Lennon on Swedish Television from 1964. (English interview begins at ca. 2 min into the clip.) Media player link here.
posted by three blind mice at 7:58 AM PST - 15 comments

Ripple Tank Simulation is a delightful, mesmeric java applet simulation of a ripple tank. It demonstrates two dimensional wave phenomena such as interference, diffraction, refraction, resonance, phased arrays, and the Doppler effect (do try the 3D view). From Paul Falstad's fantastic collection of Math, Physics and Engineering Applets.
posted by MetaMonkey at 7:41 AM PST - 14 comments

Section 605 of the House's Patriot Act renewal bill is entitled THE UNIFORMED DIVISION, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE. The Secret Service has broad authority (included arrest powers without warrants) when it comes to protecting the President. The "uniformed division" (previously the "Executive Protective Service") handles most of the grunt work. Talkleft has been analyzing this text and has come to the conclusion that the President can, upon passage of this bill, use his "Uniformed Divison" (aka private army) on a whim: (11) An event designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance.Section 3056(e)(1) of title 18 reads simply: When directed by the President, the United States Secret Service is authorized to participate, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, in the planning, coordination, and implementation of security operations at special events of national significance, as determined by the President.
posted by taumeson at 7:34 AM PST - 130 comments

Sometimes movies don't finish the way we'd like. Short, off-beat, animated re-imaginings of selected movie endings, in torrent and .wmv format. The archives are yet young, but might be worth keeping an eye on for future chuckles.
posted by Gator at 7:32 AM PST - 9 comments

The landscape photography of Leping Zha: mountainscapes, visual harmony, nature's melody, and panoramas.
posted by driveler at 6:46 AM PST - 10 comments

The ashes of the recently deceased contains high amounts of nutrient rich phosphates, just perfect for sprucing up that garden of yours. On the iconic peaks of Scotland though Mountaineers have decided that enough is enough.
posted by 0bvious at 6:18 AM PST - 26 comments

The Real Story of John Walker Lindh as told by his father.
posted by leapingsheep at 5:21 AM PST - 149 comments

The Art of Writing a Story About Walking Across Andorra.
posted by Ljubljana at 4:43 AM PST - 9 comments

The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics. As Augustine once said, a State which is not governed according to justice would be just a bunch of thieves: “Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?”.
Eros and Agape, Justice, Charity, Marxism, and the separation of Church and State in Pope Benedictus XVI's first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est.
posted by matteo at 4:08 AM PST - 14 comments

Terror Network Visualization. An interactive flash visualiztion of known terrorist links
posted by srboisvert at 2:30 AM PST - 15 comments

The ParticipACTION Archive Project "The average 30 year old Canadian is in about the same physical shape as the average 60 year old Swede." That was the wake-up call provided by ParticipACTION, a non-profit organization created in the early 70's to nudge Canadians into getting into shape. Its history is chronicled in this site, including the story of how Saskatoon became ParticiPACTION City, competing with Umea, Sweden. You can also relive those memorable PSAs that ended with the distinctive logo and sounder. (Embedded QT in links)
posted by evilcolonel at 10:41 PM PST - 29 comments

Internet: Freedom or Privilege? David Isenberg: "Just as Freedom of Speech means that, with very few limitations, nobody has the right to tell somebody else what to say, so should Internet freedom mean that gatekeepers should not control Internet applications or content. This is essential not just as a matter of freedom, but also as a matter of commerce, because the Internet’s success is directly due to its content-blindness. If the United States fails to understand this, U.S. Internet leadership will follow U.S. leadership in agriculture, in steel, in autos, and in consumer electronics to other countries that do."
posted by sswiller at 7:36 PM PST - 14 comments

Don't be evil. Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market. Google will roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," on Wednesday.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:19 PM PST - 92 comments

Beautiful China...
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 7:09 PM PST - 49 comments

"They're willing to sacrifice their lives for this great country. What I'm asking all of you tonight is not to put on a uniform. Put on a bumper sticker. Is it that much to ask? Is it that much to ask to step up and serve your country?"
posted by EarBucket at 6:57 PM PST - 34 comments

Chris Penn found dead. The 43 year old actor was found dead in a Santa Monica residence.
posted by super_not at 6:56 PM PST - 84 comments

Colloquial phrases endure, even after their meaning is no longer understood. Some are surprising and others are surprisingly malevolent. Some of my favorites are of exactly that theme. Do you have any favorites?
posted by uni verse at 6:39 PM PST - 47 comments

Ever wanted to play The Rapture: The Board Game? Well, thanks to Kirk Cameron, now you can. And it's now on sale!
posted by huskerdont at 6:24 PM PST - 11 comments

KlueLess [Flash game] I can't even get past level 4 after reading the hints.
posted by tellurian at 5:35 PM PST - 60 comments

YUCK! A camel spider eats a lizard.
posted by obeygiant at 5:19 PM PST - 43 comments

Aurore, a renewable energy (RE) service provider in South India has been designing and developing RE products like solar lanterns and street lights, arranging for microfinance to support installation in remote villages and winning prestigious awards for their work. Cleaner, safer and cheaper than fossil fuels, their business philosophy is grounded in a greater vision than mere profit.
posted by infini at 4:29 PM PST - 15 comments

R e v i e w s o f N e w F o o d    <– Quite entertaining
posted by spock at 3:52 PM PST - 44 comments

The Bush administration is bracing for impeachment hearings in Congress. "A coalition in Congress is being formed to support impeachment," an administration source said.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 2:41 PM PST - 108 comments

Breaking the Science-Atheism Bond. "When I was growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1960s, I came to the view that God was an infantile illusion, suitable for the elderly, the intellectually feeble, and the fraudulently religious."
posted by brownpau at 2:39 PM PST - 157 comments

Mike Jeffries, of Abercrombie and Fitch, (Salon, Premium Pass, Greasemonkey Script) comes across as an eccentric, vain, popularity-infatuated fashion industry genius you probably figured he was. "That's why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don't market to anyone other than that." An interview with the writer on Gawker. Think he'll stop at Midwestern frat boys? He's coming for you NYC (Ruehl).
posted by geoff. at 1:10 PM PST - 108 comments

"It was another slow shift tonight. And though there weren't many people taking cabs, there were more than enough asshole drivers on the streets." New York Hack, the blog of a NYC female cabbie. "Another girl I drove tonight had an emergency of her own, though of a different caliber. I overheard her on the phone explaining to a friend how she was rushing over to her boyfriend's house to have "make-up sex." It sounded urgent enough to me, so I got her there as quickly as I could." Pictures included.
posted by OmieWise at 12:39 PM PST - 25 comments

As a followup to this post about Sew Fast, Sew Easy's cease and desist orders for using the phrase "Stitch and Bitch" et.al. to a variety of merchants, Yahoo groups, and knitting groups, it seems that a boycott movement is gaining momentum. They also have a CafePress store to support the cause. Additionally, I think SFSE may have underestimated the enormous growth in knitting blogs and how quickly they band together when given a cause.
posted by like_neon at 12:17 PM PST - 18 comments

Political thinking isn't really 'thinking'. Neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected. Via Slate. This jives with past research about the difference between democrat’s and republican’s brains.
posted by ND¢ at 10:52 AM PST - 50 comments

Because graph paper wants to be free ... Free downloadable graph paper ... plain, lined, multi width, hexagonal, even semi-bisected trapezoid. All free, in PDF format, for all your open source graphing needs. (Let's just hope the PIAA doesn't catch on.)
posted by crunchland at 10:50 AM PST - 42 comments

The Northern Territories & Provinces of Canada have a unique winter trucking program that is unparalleled in the world. In the harsh environment of -30 to -70 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, (not counting any wind chill factor) men build highways of ice into the Arctic tundra.
posted by taschenrechner at 10:37 AM PST - 32 comments

Tickr scrolls flickr photos across your (mac) screen.
posted by Tlogmer at 10:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Mark Holthusen Photography [Flash]
posted by sciurus at 9:32 AM PST - 6 comments

Moqtada Sadr promises to help defend Iran. The Iraqi Shi'ite leader promised to defend Iran -- presumably in Iraq -- if Iran is attacked by the US. Moqtada Sadr is the commander of the Mahdi Army, which fought US troops for weeks in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, threatening to unite poor, discontented Iraqi Shi'ites in common cause with Sunni insurgents. Sadr and his followers are known to have close ideological and logistical links to clerics inside Iran. In the event of a conflict with Iraq, their assistance to the Iranians could greatly increase instability within Iraq, possibly assisting elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force in infiltrating Iraq, and orchestrating attacks upon American interests.
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:27 AM PST - 72 comments

Indianapolis is getting a Whole Foods Market. Great, right? Whole Foods Market is a recognized leader in the ecologically friendly organic foods business and includes in its "Core Values" Wise Environmental Practices & Community Citizenship. The location where this new market will be built will require the leveling of 17 acres of wooded land adjacent to a 50 year old residential neighborhood of 350 homes. This wooded area is one of the last homes for wild animals in the area. Oh yeah, nobody that lives in the area wants it built either. So much for core values.
posted by internal at 8:43 AM PST - 172 comments

Opera Mini is now available worldwide, for free. A quality web browser for your Java enabled cellphone.
posted by mr.marx at 8:23 AM PST - 34 comments

Bush has put the production of coal above the safety of coal miners. As is sadly demonstrated in the two recent mining disasters. They even went so far as to remove Clinton era safety regulations and then had the audacity to claim that resource production and "other priorities" took precedence. These budget cuts come at a time when coal prices have gone up 30% and led to huge profits for the coal industry. Sound like any other resource industry you know. /*hint OIL! hint*/ Once again the government has favored the big corporation over the little guy to disastrous results. Is the death of miners and the death of soldiers worth our reliance on fossil fuels?
posted by stilgar at 7:48 AM PST - 89 comments

Ancient jades: Fascinating, beautiful, intricate carvings. Utilitarian, decorative, and of course historical.
posted by Gator at 7:26 AM PST - 7 comments

Whale puke may not sound like the sort of thing that could make you money, but a 15kg lump of it found on a beach has made Australian Leon Wright and his wife more than a quarter of a million dollars overnight. Perviously discussed here, ambergris is essentially the vomit of a sperm whale. It has a scent like nothing else on earth and is used in perfume or as an aphrodisiac.
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 7:04 AM PST - 52 comments

Because He Fight To Live… And He Fights Dirty As Hell! Bob developed his unique style of "dirty fighting" during his 40 years of formal training, bar brawls and street fights, bounty hunting and busting up narcotics gangs. He served his country well as a "hot-zone" combat soldier in Vietnam, worked as a private eye, a personal armed bodyguard to superstar rock groups (like Aerosmith, the Who and Led Zepplin), and a canine handler for 11 separate jurisdictions. He's also a recognized "Chi Master" - at an infamous Soldier of Fortune convention, he drove a steel rod through his forearm, tied it to a new Ford Mustang, and dragged the car 287 feet... without blood, without pain, without scarring. (Don't try this at home.)
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:30 AM PST - 57 comments

Perspectives of Russian Art Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 Americans had limited opportunities to view Russian art of the 20th century. The political pressures of the Cold War era resulted in the mutual cultural isolation of Russia from western Europe and the United States that also created an atmosphere of aesthetic mystery regarding Russian art . .
posted by hortense at 12:53 AM PST - 23 comments

Nazi's relative turns Israel lover. Matias Goering is a direct descendant of Hitler's right-hand man. He also keeps Shabbat, wears a kippa, and identifies with the Greater Israel vision of West Bank settlers. (via jewlicious)
posted by matteo at 12:20 AM PST - 26 comments

E-voting systems hacker sees ‘particularly bad’ security issues ...On Tuesday, Dec. 13, we conducted a hack of the Diebold AccuVote optical scan device. I wrote a five-line script in Visual Basic that would allow you to go into the central tabulator and change any vote total you wanted, leaving no logs.... More from the Washington Post here, where ... Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. ..."Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?" Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no. ... Verified Voting and Black Box Voting have much much more on all of this.
posted by amberglow at 11:14 PM PST - 58 comments

Did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a nuclear bomb? The Guardian offers an extract from New York Times reporter James Risen's new book that reveals the miscalculation that led to a spectacular CIA intelligence fiasco.
posted by semmi at 9:40 PM PST - 47 comments

"Culture of life" vs. Culture of Profit ? Today, by phone, George W. Bush addressed the anti - Roe v. Wade protestors gathered at the Washington D.C. mall : in support of the crowd gathered in expectation that Samuel Alito - if nominated - would vote to overturn Roe. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's administration is proposing EPA rules that would allow testing of pesticides on pregnant women and children. How very curious.
posted by troutfishing at 8:18 PM PST - 48 comments

iTunes Signature Maker! It analyzes your itunes music collection and creates a short audio signature to represent who you are and what you listen to. Here is mine.
posted by onkelchrispy at 8:03 PM PST - 58 comments

Harper wins Tory minority government. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will become Canada's next prime minister, as Canadians have elected a Tory minority government and ended a 12-year reign of Liberal rule.
posted by Robot Johnny at 7:56 PM PST - 171 comments

Over one thosand online masturbation confessions (nsfw): Categorized for your convinence. I thought grouphug had the market cornered. I guess not when it comes masturbation. I doubt Josh would approve. These links go to potentially bad places -- don't let your mom catch you
posted by bigmusic at 7:45 PM PST - 19 comments

Josh is a very thorough man. Josh seeks a godly wife.
posted by xmutex at 6:44 PM PST - 179 comments

Where can a company that owns nothing but legal documents force another company that actually does make products to pay them? In the USA! You too can be a patent troll. Just patent any dumb idea you have -- you'll certainly be awarded the patent -- then sue anyone who makes a product that looks remotely like it could be based on your idea. Congratulations! You made money by punishing people who actually make things! Hooray!
posted by raaka at 4:56 PM PST - 21 comments

Every summer, Southern Australia burns. 2005 was the hottest year on record. Over the last weekend, two days of extreme heat, low humidity and high winds sparked the first of the year’s bushfires. Pictures here. With forecasts of temperatures in the low 40s (over 105F) in a few days, firefighters are racing to bring the fires under control.

As the temperature rises, people respond by buying and using air-conditioners resulting in near record energy consumption. Where does the energy come from?

And yet Australia - a country with a lot to lose from global warming - remains a Kyoto dissenter. [aspects of this previously discussed here]
posted by tim_in_oz at 3:46 PM PST - 35 comments

Le Papillon is quintessential heartwarming French cinema. [Windows Media]
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 3:41 PM PST - 29 comments

The Futurliners are imposing vehicles, 33 feet long, 8 feet wide and standing 11 feet 7 inches tall at the top of the driver's canopy. The driver's eyes are about 10 feet off the ground and in front of the steering wheels. This site updates a 2002 post on the restoration of one of these magnificent vehicles. via Boing Boing
posted by 327.ca at 2:56 PM PST - 34 comments

Worship in Lifting Holy Hands. Lifting hands over the head and waving them is a taught religious practice. It does not normally happen (except in utter lostness and hopelessness) unless it is in response to a charismatic leader with whom the worshipers have developed a too-close connection.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 12:47 PM PST - 42 comments

Reconstructing Aunt Sally's Secret Recipe. Addressing the Retranslations Fallacy, a common misconception about how the Bible we read has been handed down to us. [via]
posted by brownpau at 12:38 PM PST - 64 comments

On Sunday, June 25, 1961, New York's famous Village Vanguard witnessed one of the greatest live jazz performances ever recorded: the afternoon and evening sets by the Bill Evans Trio (review). Evans was one of the great jazz pianists and Paul Motian has been playing superb drums for half a century now, but it was bassist Scott LaFaro who made the group something new; where other bassists kept time, he played the bass "as though he were playing a large guitar," and inspired a kind of "simultaneous composition" that left everyone who heard it awed when he joined up with Evans (after working with Stan Getz, Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman).

On June of 1961 the Evans trio had a memorable week at New York’s Village Vanguard; the final day of the engagement, June 25th, was taped in its entirety. On July 3, he played Newport with Stan Getz; it would be the final performance of Scott LaFaro. On July 5 he visited his mother in Geneva [NY], and stayed until it was very late. He was invited to spend the night, but said no; he had to get back to New York. In the early hours of July 6, Frank Ottley and Scott LaFaro died when Scott’s car left the road, hit a tree, and caught fire. Bill Evans was so distraught he did not perform publicly for nearly a year...

[More inside.]
posted by languagehat at 11:59 AM PST - 56 comments

The Beast - 50 most loathsome Americans, 2005 edition Also, see discussion from last year, and 2002. So Buffalo has given us wings, and this list, thanks upper NY! Deride it as petty vindictive shooting fish in a barrel if you must, but any publication that claims Terry Schivo feels the same way about her case today as she did a year ago is okay in my estimation.
posted by Keith Talent at 10:55 AM PST - 76 comments

c64s is a pretty amazing site. Much of the popularity of the old c64 was in its wide array of games and this site offers a way to play most of the popular ones all in your browser (in java). Waste time today by reliving those old early 80s memories.
posted by mathowie at 10:02 AM PST - 44 comments

BillMonk is a new way of tracking informal debts with your friends. Web 2.0 nonsense or a viable solution to those awkward 13-way restaurant bills? Not to be confused with Zopa, another social money project...
posted by runkelfinker at 9:25 AM PST - 24 comments

Devo is back! But in kid form.
posted by bonefish at 9:16 AM PST - 61 comments

Ear Hair Cell Rocks Around the Clock
posted by buriednexttoyou at 9:08 AM PST - 5 comments

Sympathy for a Lawyer ? His father sustains he should sell screwdrivers, he takes attention deficit disorder drugs, his ex probably keyed his Toyota Corolla and he takes pleasure in tormenting prosecutors while wondering if they like him. Not a reality tv show [Via Fark]
posted by elpapacito at 8:58 AM PST - 48 comments

Someone drives away from the cops in Los Angeles County about fifteen times a day—much more often than anywhere else in the US. But how do you find out when a chase is being broadcast live on TV? With PursuitAlert™ service, you'll be alerted by a phone call or through a text message to your cell-phone or pager to live high speed chase broadcasts from Los Angeles TV stations. You can expect to see about 4 chases per month on live television.
posted by PenguinBukkake at 8:51 AM PST - 22 comments

Online election results will be available after the polls close in British Columbia at 7pm PST. Bloggers have been warned not to post early results from the east before the polls close in British Columbia. CBC explains.

It appears that US-hosted websites ProAlberta and Captain's Quarters will be wilfully violating the Canada Elections Act and posting early results. Andew Coyne has suggested that posters to his website "[pretend] to report the results from some election in a foreign or imaginary land."

Paul Bryan was fined $1000 for posting early results from the 2000 election and is currently appealing to the Supreme Court. Previously discussed here and here.
posted by angrybeaver at 7:25 AM PST - 126 comments

The Hitachi Hard Disk Drive Knowledge Base does very little to distinguish itself from other knowledge bases, except that it includes some fantastic examples of what your hard drive may sound like when it's dying or dead. Note: all links except first are .wav (via)
posted by furtive at 6:27 AM PST - 18 comments

"It's often hard to convince people that Olivo Barbieri's aerial photographs are real." Amazing aerial photographs by Olivo Barbieri, who uses a tilt-shift lens to create the startling effect of looking at a city model. Article by metropolismag.com
posted by zardoz at 6:02 AM PST - 65 comments

Iran may be trying to get nuclear weapons. In the process potentially starting a new war with Israel, fun times. America on the other hand isn't going to do all that much because Iran controls a large amount of the worlds oil, and with prices already high, they don't want to spark another oil crisis.
posted by stilgar at 5:37 AM PST - 95 comments

Mike Russell's CulturePulp is a rare example of journalism through comics. Driven by a love of obsessive, slightly geeky subcultures, the Portland-based reporter/cartoonist offers probing answers to such vital questions as Are pirates the new ninjas? What would Tom Jones do? How do you feed a penguin? And which donut shop is best-suited for a voodoo-themed wedding
posted by yankeefog at 3:23 AM PST - 11 comments

How cocky was your great^10 grandfather? Up to 3 million men may be descended from an Irish King. Impressive but still well short of the estimated 16 million ancestors of Genghis Khan. Does the alpha male mojo that drives leadership also make a man a horndog or does being a high status male simply give one the opportunity that all men would gladly have? If you aren't constantly on the lookout for a new hen, perhaps you're not presidential material.
posted by missbossy at 2:30 AM PST - 23 comments

Crush My 307. A British buyer of a crummy French car (when clearly he should of bought a German car) wants to raise enough money to buy a sensible car so that he can crush his car into a cube and give it back the manufacturer, Peugeot, after a long list of problems. Been sold a lemon? Maybe this is for you.
posted by 13twelve at 1:26 AM PST - 27 comments

Songs of Brazilian Birds A fantastically diverse collection of .au files, including the beautifully evocative Organ Wren or Uirapuru, the mooing of the Capuchinbird, the sci-fi minimalism of the Short-tailed Antthrush and a duet of Laughing Falcons (they'll make you laugh at the end).
posted by mediareport at 12:07 AM PST - 14 comments

Eye Talk [embedded video] is better than this. [via]
posted by tellurian at 11:14 PM PST - 14 comments

the first African sponsored World Social Forum has just come to an end... images (in French)
posted by pwedza at 10:27 PM PST - 6 comments

Can you score your way out of disgrace? Kobe Bryant's 81 points tonight were the second most points ever scored by a single player in the 59 year history of the NBA, and the most scored since Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point night 44 years ago (when the league was much whiter than it is today). With a new campaign from one time sponsor Nike and sports writers increasingly touting Bryant as a leading MVP candidate, two of the three elements of modern sports superstardom (sponsorship, good press) have returned to Kobe since the rape allegations that threatened to end his career. Will the final piece of the puzzle (public sympathy) be next?
posted by jonson at 9:38 PM PST - 119 comments

Company bets on woman to die quickly. Woman lives, company sues. "It's ghoulish, but all insurance is a bit ghoulish," says Goldfein, who oversaw "tons" of deals like Smith's in the early 1990s. "AIDS was a sure thing."
posted by NorthernSky at 7:06 PM PST - 56 comments

And the winner is . . . irrelevant, as NBC has canceled The West Wing after seven seasons. Sagging ratings—not John Spencer's death—have been blamed for the axe falling on the unconsummated ascendancy of Matt Santos or Arnold Vinick.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:39 PM PST - 50 comments

Roe v. Wade, 33 years old today. With abortion back in the news due to the Supreme Court nomination of Alito, will the Ideological Rumble over the issue ever be settled or are we doomed to see questionable declarations like today's recognition of "National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 2006"? ...creating a society where every life has meaning...-- every life? Really?
posted by amberglow at 5:47 PM PST - 200 comments

"History is filled with legends of Demons: evil creatures with dark powers and horrifying strength. There is Astaroth, who turns invisible; Beelzebub, master of flies and all Earthly diseases; Mephistopheles, Prince of Deceit; Asmodeus, Lord of Corruption; and Leviathan, great monster of the Deep. You are Bill." It's a Flash game.
posted by Gator at 4:14 PM PST - 17 comments

Iraq - All oil, no gas. A consortium of 34 Turkish companies have joined together to stop all exports of petrol / refined oil products to Iraq, because Iraq's government owes them over $1 billion that they have so far been unable to pay. Iraq's largest refinery was forced to shut down in December, after its truck drivers walked off the job due to insurgent threats. They reopened ten days later, only to shut down again after an insurgent swarm attack killed and wounded more drivers. The refinery has once more ceased activity, as their reserves of refined fuel are full and there is no way to get them to their customers. Iraq's diesel-driven power plants are undersupplied too, leading to worsening outages.
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:46 PM PST - 37 comments

C.L.O.P.S - Filmed on location..... Warning: Bad puns and some clay nudity/violence. [Google video].
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:47 PM PST - 11 comments

When George Met Jack As details poured out about the illegal and unseemly activities of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, White House officials sought to portray the scandal as a Capitol Hill affair with little relevance to them..."The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him," McClellan said....The President's memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed.
posted by Postroad at 12:42 PM PST - 42 comments

The Subway Challenge! Can one man get off the Glasgow underground at one stop, race the train to the next and get back on the same train? Mebbes aye, mebbes naw. (What? Want more underground? Here are some great photographs from before and after its 1970s restoration)
posted by bonaldi at 12:06 PM PST - 61 comments

Universal Studios is making a movie of Flight 93 (the 9/11 plane that crashed in Pennsylvania). The funny thing is, this movie is not the one by Oliver Stone (which is going to be about police officers). Also, from what I can tell, this venture is going to be a commercial one although it has "full support" of the families of that Flight. It seems like we'll have to brace for a decent amount of 9/11 related TV shows and movies only a couple years after the attacks.
posted by narebuc at 9:43 AM PST - 74 comments

A brief history of the oldest profession institution. via Explorator.
posted by stbalbach at 9:09 AM PST - 16 comments

(Knock, knock) "Candygram!" We don't know if ZDF has shown early SNL skits (nostalgic photo here), but German Greenpeace made a dramatic delivery to the Japanese Embassy in Berlin: a 55-foot-long fin whale that had been stranded in the Baltic. The dramatic gesture underscored the organization's contention that Japan's whaling, long defended as research, is in fact unnecessary: sufficient numbers of beached whales are available for research. The leviathan — 20 tonnes of blubber — was craned onto a truck and driven 150 miles from Rostock-Warnemünde to Berlin, and was due to be returned to the coast for study. (German-language stories on Greenpeace.de website here, here, and here, including logistical details for those curious about arranging their own special deliveries.)
posted by rob511 at 1:10 AM PST - 12 comments

Maude Maggart-- Fiona Apple's sister-- does cabaret. She doesn't sound anything like her though, her voice is more soprano than alto.
posted by brujita at 12:20 AM PST - 13 comments

Subtitle Bollywood movie clips - Sunday Flash fun!
posted by wannabehippie at 11:21 PM PST - 5 comments

Recent video of exploding UFO shot in Sonora, CA. I'm not a UFO nut, but this sighting's different. Thought y'all might enjoy it. Did I mention the UFO explodes? And it's definitely not a meteor.
posted by tritisan at 10:58 PM PST - 58 comments

Academics question the official explanation for the WTC collapse. This paper, with internal links to assorted videos and stills, argues that WTC 7, the 45-story companion building to the towers, appears to have been demolished by planted explosives, not the fire from the twin towers.
posted by craniac at 10:53 PM PST - 249 comments

Nine rules for trolling - David Pogue has advice on how to troll effectively. (NY Times site requires that you accept its cookies)
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:17 PM PST - 79 comments

Flickeur, infinite random movies from Flickr images
posted by onkelchrispy at 3:13 PM PST - 46 comments

If you liked those Yeti vs. penguin games, you might enjoy the C4 Hamster Challenge. You are Death Jr. (of PlayStation fame). You have a hamster. The hamster is strapped with C4. If you release the hamster with just the proper strength and speed, and detonate the hamster at just the right spot, you can really send that demon's head flying. (Flash.)
posted by Gator at 12:39 PM PST - 28 comments

Canada is about to head into its 39’th general election. Current Poles have the Bloc Quebecois at 8-12% of the national vote. Because it is concentrated in Quebec, this translates to 53 seats. The NDP, on the other hand, with 17-21% national support, is projected at only 23 seats as its support is spread across the entire country. With the main race between the Conservative and Liberal Parties, we’ve heard little about proportional representation. Even the NDP, which stands to gain most from throwing out the current plurality First Past the Post system, has been oddly silent about this plank in its platform. The question is, why?
posted by generichuman at 12:10 PM PST - 71 comments

It's not the war in Iraq that's revolutionizing the Middle East -- it's the media. "Surprisingly, it may be this new public sphere, rather than the war in Iraq or the Bush's administration's democracy rhetoric, that does the most to promote liberalization and reform in the Arab world. " Marc Lynch, an associate professor of political science at Williams College and the (until recently) anonymous writer behind the popular blog Abu Aardvark, talked to Mother Jones about how the new Arab public is transforming the Middle East.
posted by storybored at 11:19 AM PST - 12 comments

The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation: A Web Witness to Iranian Brutality.
posted by homunculus at 11:06 AM PST - 8 comments

Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people?
posted by moonbird at 11:00 AM PST - 55 comments

Find out what's in it before it's in you ... using free software provided by the US Department of Agriculture's database. The information, which can be kept on a PC (Windows) or PDA (Palm OS), provides a detailed listing of nutrients (calories, protein, fat, carbs, sugars, vitamins, minerals) on almost 7,000 foods, including processed and fast foods.
posted by crunchland at 10:32 AM PST - 19 comments

Algorithm detects politicians' spin.
posted by semmi at 9:39 AM PST - 11 comments

A new meaning for Drug War ? It seems that accepting some Free Trade Agreement conditions may become a life or death decision to some people in Thailand. Some Thai People vehemently disagree with that.
posted by elpapacito at 7:49 AM PST - 14 comments

@149st is a comprehensive study of classic NYC subway graffiti. It features profiles of many legendary artists, including an interview with Rammellzee who has some strange theories. The site for the definitive '82 PBS documentary Style Wars has some great galleries and video clips as well.
posted by hyperizer at 7:20 AM PST - 13 comments

Autopsy: Life & Death. Following on from Anatomy for Beginners which concentrated on the anatomy of life, anatomist Dr Gunther von Hagens and pathologist Professor John Lee now turn to the process of understanding death. Full video clips.
posted by srboisvert at 6:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Here are some pictures of ruined cities and a few sanctuaries. (3rd link is to geocities)
posted by Tullius at 5:45 AM PST - 12 comments

Judge rules same-sex marriage ban in Maryland unconstitutional. The progression towards equal rights moves ever on--NPR offers further coverage and an overview of current gay rights cases in the US. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma a reminder of why this fight must be won.
posted by Anonymous at 11:16 PM PST - 71 comments

The Idiotarod is NYC's version of the Iditarod. (check spelling closely, idiot) - seen here last year. This year's route will be released on Monday. Happy drinking / sabotaging / racing. But maybe that's not your thing. Or maybe you just can't wait to do something a little crazy in NYC. Ok, well, this weekend you can take your pants off on the subway.
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:06 PM PST - 18 comments

The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art. Another view of a fabric brain.
posted by kenko at 8:59 PM PST - 12 comments

Reefer Madness Redux. One man's story about how cannabis will RUIN YOUR LIFE. Despite the fact that there's, you know, tons of scientific evidence to the contrary.
posted by borkingchikapa at 6:33 PM PST - 70 comments

Nefarious deeds in Haiti by the Consultants Advisory Group. Kathryn Cramer exposes n'er do wells acting in Haiti, operating out of Panama. Given the recent goings on in Haiti, one can only speculate as to the extent of their involvement...
posted by pucklermuskau at 5:46 PM PST - 10 comments

Protrude, Flow uses magnetic fluid, sound, and moving images. Affected by the sounds and spectators' voices in the exhibition place, the three-dimensional patterns of magnetic fluid transform in various ways, and are simultaneously projected on the wide screen. (note: Japanese site with WMV files) Related MeFi post. [via]
posted by dhruva at 5:08 PM PST - 19 comments

What is "12 S of the Z?" Hell I don't know. Try this Mensa Test.
posted by snsranch at 4:47 PM PST - 123 comments

NSA,FISA, and Privacy It is of course the president who finally approves of actions that may or may not be deemed legal but before 9/11, this is what he had been advised to consider "The largest U.S. spy agency warned the incoming Bush administration in its "Transition 2001" report that the Information Age required rethinking the policies and authorities that kept the National Security Agency in compliance with the Constitution's 4th Amendment prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures" without warrant and "probable cause," according to an updated briefing book of declassified NSA documents posted today on the World Wide Web. If this is the sort of reading you enjoy, then by all means dig about here: But then Windows allowed NSA to have a sure access to your machine . And by now we all know that Google will fight the government on making its search data base available in order to protect your privacy.(Reality: to protect Google stuff). And if you worry about search engines tracking you and making data available, then here is a workaround
posted by Postroad at 3:31 PM PST - 15 comments

As of today, world oil reserves are five percent lower than previously thought. Well informed early toppers like Jeremy Leggett (previously discussed here) won't be surprised by the news, though they may be disappointed that it didn't make bigger headlines.
posted by alms at 2:05 PM PST - 41 comments

Wikipedia wrangling once more: the entire German edition was shut down this week over the contents of a single entry. The parents of the article's subject, a German hacker who died in 1998 under mysterious circumstances, are displeased with his real name being disclosed in the encyclopedia. It is now back online; however, the future of the family's efforts is currently unclear, not only due to the German order's debatable validity in the US - but also because the order was, initially at least, mistakenly addressed to St. Petersburg, Russia, instead of St. Petersburg, Florida.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 1:35 PM PST - 18 comments

Genocide in Slow Motion. "[For every Genocide this century], we have wrung our hands afterward and offered the lame excuse that it all happened too fast, or that we didn't fully comprehend the carnage when it was still under way. And now the same tragedy is unfolding in Darfur, but this time we don't even have any sort of excuse. In Darfur genocide is taking place in slow motion, and there is vast documentary proof of the atrocities."
posted by dgaicun at 1:15 PM PST - 25 comments

Dan Hsu's interview of Microsoft's Home Entertainment VP about the XBox 360 is far from the usual "Tell us how great everything is" found in games journalism. Hsu hammers the startled marketing exec with serious questions about the 360's build quality and heat issues, lack of quality launch games and backwards compatibility, questionable "next generation content," and more. Good to see at least ONE journalist with a little hair on his chest, even if it is just regarding games. Via Penny Arcade (today's comic... and yesterday's cause it was funny)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:07 PM PST - 40 comments

U.S. Congress Votes Database The Washington Post's U.S. Congress Votes Database has every vote in the U.S. Congress since 1991. The votes are sliced and diced in a variety of ways, including late-night votes in the House and Senate, and lists of congresspeople and senators who've missed votes. Each member of Congress has a web page and RSS feed. There's also an RSS feed of the 10 most recent votes. (More info, and details from the developers).
posted by kirkaracha at 12:45 PM PST - 17 comments

"You awaken from an uneasy dream.You are in a small, bare apartment. You are alone. You have no idea how you got there. You don’t even know who you are." Fans of Franz Kafka may appreciate Kafkamesto, a bleak and bizarre point-and-click Flash game.
posted by Gator at 12:24 PM PST - 27 comments

A conservative Metafilter loves to hate weighs in on the issue of intelligent design being incorporated into the classroom. Some of Orson Scott Card's views have been linked to before (see here; here; and most notably here.) This time, he seems to be less reactionary and more thoughtful. This is related to many prior Mefi threads on this issue some of which include this; this; and this.
posted by bove at 11:10 AM PST - 177 comments

OK, so some professional sports players have less-than-usual first names. Certainly not ones that are likely to appear on the top ten list. But if you really want weirdness in names (and, quite possibly, other things) you need to head over to Utah. (Frameset page; click on 'The Cream of The Crop'.) Personal favorite: VulvaMae
posted by littleme at 9:29 AM PST - 144 comments

"Were there U.K. publications?" Hilton responded: "No... there is stuff in London." Hilton's lawyer, Larry Stein, jumped in: "London is a U.K. publication." Her retort: "Right. U.K. Whatever."
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:21 AM PST - 58 comments

Many of you have probably heard of "Superfly" with its classic poster, and iconic soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield. However, you might not have heard of some other Blaxploitation films. For Instance "The Black Gestapo" which mixes NAZI aesthetics with the roving bass of a tight funk beat, or perhaps even more ludicrously the 1992 underground Blaxploitation tribute film "Gayniggers From Outer Space".
posted by sourbrew at 8:49 AM PST - 26 comments

Bush is cutting the reconstruction funds for Iraq. After wasting 20 billion in reconstruction money with little to show for it Bush is going to "cut and run." The worst part is that Bush now wants the coalition of the willing suckers to pick up the bill. Even though Bush promised to make the infrastructure the "best in the region" and has said in recent speeches that "On the economic side, we will continue reconstruction efforts and help Iraq's new government implement difficult reforms that are necessary to build a modern economy and a better life." So we went to war on false intelligence, and now that we have bombed the country into the ground, we are not even going to try and rebuild it? Guess the national debt is just getting a bit too large for Bush and Co to handle. Or maybe, just maybe, we never cared that much, and it was all lies.
posted by stilgar at 8:10 AM PST - 109 comments

Rick Moranis - Alt Country Balladeer. Whatever happened to Rick? The former SCTV star and 80s/90s movie comedian apparently doesn't miss "acting." His new album of humorous country songs is nominated for a Grammy.
posted by Parlour Tricks at 7:43 AM PST - 49 comments

Ron Kovic writes about returning wounded vets There are things here you can never forget, images and sounds and smells that you will never see on TV or read about in the newspapers.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:58 AM PST - 47 comments

Hollywood fights back: is this the year Hollywood finally nails its political colours to the mast, or are we seeing just the latest salvo in a battle for the political heart of the industry? [NYT registration required.] In the red corner, "uninformed, misleading, money-hungry, two-faced, elitists" making films about gays, feminists and commies. In the blue corner, "towering intellectuals, hard-core conservatives, supermen and superwomen, and just good common people" making films about god, democracy and family values. And if you wonder what difference it makes anyway, just ask eBay founder Jeff Skoll. He thinks films have the power to shape public opinion, and has launched a website to galvanise support for social change.
posted by londonmark at 5:32 AM PST - 41 comments

"I saw it blow..." Whale spotted near Westminster Bridge
posted by atticus at 4:22 AM PST - 64 comments

Geru Geru Panic (Gel Gel Panic) - the Japanese flash game where you must fend off attacking (wait for it) jellies. Also by the same author: about a billion more flash games featuring Panzo the panda. Note: first link is to a game with background music.
posted by whir at 3:58 AM PST - 14 comments

Last night in my rock pub of choice I heard a girl get overly excited about "the hottest thing, ever"; Whole sites dedicated to Emo boys kissing Emo boys. This is totally a MySpace thing I (gladly) missed out on.
posted by 13twelve at 3:45 AM PST - 120 comments

Tin foil hats no longer required! Apparently mobile phone use *doesn't* cause cancer. We'd like to thank the MMF and the GSMA for funding this study along with the EU. I'll still not get one though...
posted by Dio at 2:19 AM PST - 12 comments

MC Jelly D freestyle rapping donut. (video inside)
posted by mitocan at 2:13 AM PST - 7 comments

I, for one, welcome our new jellyfish overlords.
posted by mr.marx at 12:39 AM PST - 35 comments

Medieval Irish warlord boasts three million descendants.
posted by semmi at 10:31 PM PST - 28 comments

Disney eats crow. Disney, whose former CEO Michael Eisner rejected the idea of Disney being hired to market Pixar's movies, who insisted on owning their sequel rights, and who apparently hoped Finding Nemo would flop so that he could get better negotiating terms with Pixar, is now in talks for buying Pixar outright for approximately $6.7 billion in stock. Steve Jobs gets his revenge... again. How much revenge? 50.1% of $6.7 billion dollars, apparently.
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:24 PM PST - 49 comments

"We tacitly agree to accept a certain level of carnage in order to use the highways in ways we value." [pdf, 750kB] Three particle physicists analyze data from crash tests and crash statistics, and show that pickup trucks pose a much greater risk to other drivers than any other type of vehicle, even SUVs. [pdf, 880kB] Also, I found some totally rad videos of airplane crash tests from nasa. Sweet!!
posted by sergeant sandwich at 9:20 PM PST - 23 comments

The Movie Deaths Database. 273 movie deaths, categorized and rated by greatness.
posted by washburn at 6:24 PM PST - 52 comments

NYC2123: The first full-length graphic novel for the PSP (also readable on all Internet browsers). Now comes complete with a futurama mash-up and a behind-the-scenes video of the illustration process (last two links go to youtube).
posted by Staggering Jack at 4:11 PM PST - 9 comments

Wilson Picket passes on. Pickett, one of greatest stars in the Stax stable, the singer of such classics as "In The Midnight Hour," and "Mustang Sally," (the latter a standard for just about every R&B singer and garage band in the world) has died of a heart attack. he was 64.
posted by jonmc at 3:57 PM PST - 62 comments

"Each day, tens of thousands of our precious domain names are bought by greedy corporations and squandered for non-sustainable commercial development." But the Domain Name Preservation Society wants to help. Donate your names after you no longer need them, and they will retire protected within the sanctuary. Otherwise, what domains will our children be left with if we do not protect the endangered domain names of today?
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:31 PM PST - 29 comments

Its that time of year again, don't be un-Australian this Australia Day. You know it makes sense. (1st link is .wmv)
posted by fullysic at 1:55 PM PST - 35 comments

Ideas In Food. Beautiful photographs of totally surreal cuisine.
posted by rxrfrx at 1:42 PM PST - 23 comments

"Ala ZongGoNin! Ala YouTaNin!". Jerry Moses last walked on Gaoyang Road in 1947. It was called Chaoufoong Road then, and it was home to many of the 18,000 European Jewish refugees who had sought refuge from Nazi Germany in Shanghai's Hongkew District (today known as Hongkou) during the run-up to World War II. He casts his gaze at the lane, his brow loosens and he begins to nod. "This is it, this is it," he says softly. "I know this is it." One week into his first visit to Shanghai in almost 60 years, Moses has found his third home in an exile that lasted from 1941 to 1947. He strides into the space, his manner now much closer to that of the 12-year-old boy who had left than the 70-year-old man who has returned. More inside.
posted by matteo at 12:59 PM PST - 13 comments

Defense of Bill Cosby [...]My crimes that afternoon were two. I committed the transgression of wearing a tweed jacket, black sweater, black slacks and glasses, a no-no for the “ thug barbers" there because to be an appropriate African American by their standards was to wear saggy pants, sport jerseys and doo-rag caps. My second transgression was to bring a book, James Baldwin’s Notes of A Native Son.
posted by Postroad at 12:20 PM PST - 88 comments

"Oh, Detroit! Detroit, how hast thou fallen! No power in noonday to defend the helpless women and children from outlaws, till they have fully glutted their hellish appetites on the weak and defenseless." This full-text version of A Thrilling Narrative From the Lips of the Sufferers of the Late Detroit Riot, March 6, 1863, with the Hair Breadth Escapes of Men, Women and Children, and Destruction of Colored Men's Property, Not Less Than $15,000 contains firsthand testimonies from African American victims of this forgotten race/draft riot, which was overshadowed by a much larger one in New York City. [more inside]
posted by goatdog at 11:47 AM PST - 8 comments

The Atlantic Ideas Tour It's been almost 150 years since a group of writers that included a group of writers that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and James Russell Lowell founded The Atlantic Monthly. The magazine is klcking off a year–long celebration of its upcoming 150th anniversary by having each issue this year based around articles from their archives. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:26 AM PST - 15 comments

Cubeoban -- Arrange the colored blocks so that they cover the colored dots. (Flash.)
posted by Gator at 11:22 AM PST - 37 comments

On January 19, 1986, the first PC virus — Brain — was detected. It was virtually harmless, and the Pakistani creators claim that it was only intended to protect their copyrights. (They did, after all, include their own address and phone number in the machine code.) In the past 20 years, though, both creating viruses and destroying them have become billion-dollar industries.
posted by Plutor at 11:03 AM PST - 47 comments

Choose your own adventure! You are the manufacturer of a premium product. Wal*Mart wants it. They want it cheap. Do you buckle to their demands and out-source, reduce the build quality, and make money on volume? Turn to page 67. Or do you keep your American employees, increase quality, and make money by targeting the higher-end market? Turn to page 28. The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:59 AM PST - 55 comments

The Girl of Your Dreams. "Jesus had a dream girl. Jesus had a girl that He wanted to marry for several thousand years. But she treated him like shit."
posted by brownpau at 10:54 AM PST - 29 comments

Top Ten Sources takes posts from RSS feeds and aggregates them in full for the public to see. Some take offence; some say it goes beyond expected usage; some call it plagiarism - others say it's legal, that detractors should get a life or are even thinking about investing. Some people don't appear to want their RSS feeds to be aggregated at all. Will this discussion set blogging policy for the future? Or will it block the web 2.0 pipe?
posted by bwerdmuller at 8:34 AM PST - 50 comments

Osama threatens attacks, offers truce Now THIS should be interesting. Do we deal with terrorists or take a chance of another 9/11?
posted by kgasmart at 7:48 AM PST - 141 comments

What is the "Oil Spot Strategy", and is the U.S. following it in Iraq? Scholars, pundits [reg. required] and politicians have been calling for a strategy in Iraq based on the one the British used during the Malayan Emergency for awhile now. There have been indications that the U.S. has been listening. It sounds like a good idea, the only problem being that it is estimated to take about ten years to work [2nd section].
posted by ND¢ at 7:40 AM PST - 11 comments

Kearl's Guide to Sociological Thanatology, covering such topics as How We Die, The Politics of Death, Bids for Immortality and Longevity, and so much more!
posted by OmieWise at 6:31 AM PST - 7 comments

Smash and grab, the hi-tech way. Are the Chinese government responsible for recent sophisticated hacking attempts on such targets as the British parliament and the US Army's Aviation and Missile Command?
posted by Hartster at 5:07 AM PST - 16 comments

Protest and Peachblow! Many hands make (neon) light work at Dan Flavin exhibition.
posted by ascullion at 5:06 AM PST - 7 comments

Lee Evans plays a one man jazz trio - with no instruments. [video with sound]
posted by Lotto at 4:11 AM PST - 14 comments

The Scanner Photography Project takes images with a large-format camera that uses flat-bed scanners instead of paper. The results can be interesting.
posted by I Love Tacos at 12:03 AM PST - 31 comments

Feds want Google search records according to Mercury News. John Batelle has some analysis as well. This isn't looking too good. Google promises to fight it, but even if they do, does a loss still hurt them the same amount?
posted by rhyax at 10:53 PM PST - 53 comments

Listen to the Many Moods of the Manatee: annoyed, frightened, hungry, and flatulent.
posted by ottereroticist at 10:06 PM PST - 21 comments

Vern Fonk wants to sell you insurance. Seattlites have been enjoying his quirky late night TV advertisements for years. This latest one had me spitting chardonnay out my nose [embedded video].
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:47 PM PST - 36 comments

What Would Tyler Durden Do is the latest home for Brendon, the one time head writer over at celebrity gossip sites thesuperficial.com & idontlikeyouinthatway.com (while his writing remains sharp & inventive, the domain names of the sites he writes for are getting longer & less original with each move). The usual content (updated several times daily) involves photographic embarassing invasions of celebrity privacy and absurdist writing.

Oh, I almost forgot - for the undoubtedly small percentage of the reading audience interested in watching Colin Farrel have sex with a playboy playmate, a digital copy of the illegal tape stolen from Farrel's house is the lead post on wwtdd.com currently.
posted by jonson at 9:44 PM PST - 35 comments

T'aint the House and t'aint the Senate, it's really kinda in between.
posted by homunculus at 7:17 PM PST - 46 comments

Happy Birthday . Trogdor is 3 today.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 5:40 PM PST - 48 comments

Korea to unveil Police Robots in 5 years. This project is being spearheaded by KAIST. Whom the team at engadget visited early last year. Some of KAIST's earlier robots, Ahra and Maru.
posted by sourbrew at 5:23 PM PST - 27 comments

The conference at Wannsee occurred on January 20, 1942.
The Holocaust had been going on for at least one year; the camp at Dachau had been in operation for several years. The Final Solution was already underway. At issue at Wannsee, in the relaxed and distinctively upper middle-class atmosphere of that SS guest-house for the fifteen highly placed Nazis was the best strategy for genocide. Less than one year after the conference a little girl who had been hiding in Holland is sent to the Bergen camp in northern Germany. She spends more than six years looking for four perfect pebbles
posted by Smedleyman at 5:13 PM PST - 16 comments

The Monster at the end of this e-Book. Grover, it turns out, is among the best of the web. And since we're already here, little Robert's and Haley's reimaginings via "Kay's Home Page" (Grover lesson plan included).
posted by nobody at 3:54 PM PST - 53 comments

The 100 Best Companies to Work For. The Top Ten starting with #1: Genentech, Wegmans, Valero Energy, Griffin Hospital, W.L. Gore, Container Store, Vision Service Plan, J.M. Smucker, REI, S.C. Johnson & Son. But The Complete List has some surprises. It puts Microsoft at #42 behind Starbucks at #29. (Starbucks pays $500 towards tuition to part-timers who work there for more than a year). By clicking on the company links on the List you get stats on employee salaries, turnover, minority hiring etc, learning for instance, that the most common job at Microsoft pays $107,000/year.
posted by storybored at 3:36 PM PST - 51 comments

If you're into that sort of thing, I guess, more (male) facial hair than you can shake a stick at. [other MeFi reading material while your barber strops...]
posted by Rothko at 2:59 PM PST - 25 comments

THE ORIGINAL GAY REPUBLICANS A homosexual prostitution ring was under investigation by federal and district authorities that included among its clients Key officials of the reagan and Bush (senior) officials. The story received some newspaper coverage but there was a TV News Media blackout on the subject. For this reason, most Americans have never heard of it. Former republican Senator John Decamp was involved in the production a documentary about called "Conspiracy of Silence".
posted by sundaymag at 2:55 PM PST - 51 comments

The Anti-Cute "Oh it is mother fucking on. Round up the troops. Arm yourselves. It's time to show your loyalty to JALG and fight for once in your puny little life goddamnit. Some very popular blogs which shall remain nameless(boingboing and metafilter) have recently posted to some bullshit cute "animal" blog. I'm not going to embarass anybody here by telling you what this bullshit blog is. It's cuteoverload [previously], more like overload of bull." Compare and contrast with the ultimate in cute.
posted by ereshkigal45 at 1:50 PM PST - 44 comments

Townes van Zandt. In some theaters now is a new documentary about his life called Be Here to Love Me--a life that followed the all-too-typical path of a star that burns too bright: the promise of talent, addiction, and untimely death. (see the trailer here or here). Townes van Zandt was a singer/songwriter, often included in the folk or country genres, whose biggest accomplishment was when Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard took his song Poncho and Lefty to the top of the charts. But even though he never was famous, he has achieved legendary status. Steve Earle once said "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."
posted by dios at 1:18 PM PST - 40 comments

Are Conservative Republicans Now America's Permanent Ruling Class?
posted by The Jesse Helms at 12:37 PM PST - 61 comments

We don't not make deals with terrorists. Yesterday, the Guardian reported: "Kidnappers threatened to kill the abducted US journalist Jill Carroll unless the Bush administration ordered the release of Iraqi women prisoners within 72 hours, according to a report on al-Jazeera television yesterday." Today, the BBC reports "Iraq's ministry of justice has told the BBC that six of the eight women being held by coalition forces in Iraq have been released early. The six were freed because there was insufficient evidence to charge them, a justice ministry spokesman said." Cause, meet effect. Effect, this is cause.
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:33 PM PST - 48 comments

The Niagara Fortissimo. “Mahler was to conduct in Buffalo, New York, and we took advantage of the trip to visit Niagara Falls. We spent hours near and even under the roaring falls... and then with that roar still in his ears Mahler went to conduct Beethoven’s ‘Pastorale’. I was waiting for him as he stepped off the podium. ‘Endlich ein fortissimo!,’ he said, ‘At last a fortissimo!’” The fortissimo in question is Beethoven's, not Niagara's. The point, as Alma elaborates it in her memoirs, is that music can offer experiences more overpowering than Nature itself — a kind of extreme aestheticism that Oscar Wilde also propounded in "The Decay of Lying" when he said that most sunsets are attempts at second-rate Turners. More inside.
posted by matteo at 12:15 PM PST - 8 comments

"Radical" UCLA professors targeted by alumni group.
An alumni group is offering students up to $100 per class to supply tapes and notes exposing University of California, Los Angeles professors who allegedly express extreme left-wing political views.
posted by ericb at 11:30 AM PST - 72 comments

Bruce Haack Grandfather of Techno. "Bruce was always somewhat prophetic in his works and in predictions to friends - he once described a future age in which all music would be shared by everyone..."

MP3.com samples. Wikipedia. Incomplete discography. Weird interview. And the video documentary, Bruce Haack: King of Techno. (Warning: Flash, audio.)
posted by loquacious at 10:52 AM PST - 18 comments

If you can't be there in person, at least you can read the blogs of those lucky attendees. Share your preferred Sundance news sources here and/or by del.icio.us tag. If you are attending for the first time, you'll want to read the Virgin's Guide. Some think "Sundance shows too many "indie" films that are loaded with well-established talent in front of and behind the camera and ample budgets. It's not the place to go for new opportunities much anymore". (comment on page) See also: This year's titles sorted for your convenience.
posted by spock at 10:37 AM PST - 12 comments

The Supreme Court decided Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood today, vacating the lower court's ruling that the parental notification statute was unconstitional. Instead, the Court instructed the lower court to consider narrower relief. The Court, in an opinion [pdf] written by Justice O'Connor, held that if enforcing a statute that regulates access to abortion would be unconstitutional in medical emergencies, invalidating the statute entirely is not always necessary or justified, for lower courts may be able to render narrower declaratory and injunctive relief. [more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:06 AM PST - 33 comments

Minor Tweaks. No biggie, it's just some guy's little blog, with some hit-or-miss funny stuff and a few running features that are vaguely reminiscent of McSweeney's. The Ikea Dialogues and the Coke Dialogue are worth a chuckle. Note: Anna and Hank really do talk like that; I encourage you to go and harrass them (click "Ask Anna") yourselves. Start by asking if they're married, and take it from there.
posted by Gator at 9:00 AM PST - 19 comments

Ancient rice festival has reputation smeared by 'therapeutic' facial cream claims. [link SFW]
A Fukuoka festival dating back to ancient times is growing increasingly popular with Japan's adult movie fans because it involves smearing gooey, white liquid all over the faces of participants.
posted by PenguinBukkake at 8:26 AM PST - 15 comments

Corporate Interest Plot to Overthrow US Government. Approximately 72-years ago, the predecessor to the House Un-American Affairs Committee, known as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, investigated claims made by Marine Corps General Smedley Butler that a vast right-wing conspiracy funded by the American Liberty League (Wiki) (funded by US Steel, Goodyear, DuPont, Morgan-Stanley, Chase-Manhattan, Remington Arms, and others) with backing from some of America's wealthiest citizens (such as Al Smith and Irene DuPont) and various Wall Street interests (1930s American Business seemed to be pro-fascism as a hedge against communists and socialists to protect their own wealth in the face of the Great Depression).  Their goal was to overthrow Franklin Delano Roosevelt and install a military dictatorship in order to stop FDR's New Deal and its "redistribution of wealth" and to enact fascist policies to protect the economy and their investments. [more inside]
posted by rzklkng at 7:17 AM PST - 51 comments

Medblogfilter: medGadget has announced the winners of the 2005 Medical Weblog Awards. (more inside)
posted by slimepuppy at 7:10 AM PST - 3 comments

First draft of 'On the Road' arrives in San Francisco. With pic of Jami and Carolyn Cassady viewing the scroll.
posted by xowie at 7:05 AM PST - 24 comments

Ever since the Million Dollar Homepage, the web world's advertisers and quick buckateers have gone PixelAdvertising mad. Buy building bricks and fill a room, buy desktop icons and buy even more pixels. Now roofs are the next target (literally) - where will it end?

I would offer adspace on my head, but that's already been done to death. Whatever's next? I can turn the internet off, but its starting to look like I'll have to pull the blind down next time I fly.
posted by RhidianJ at 6:06 AM PST - 36 comments

Near Ovulation, Your Cheatin' Heart Will Tell on You "New research from UCLA and the University of New Mexico suggests that members of "the gentler sex" may have evolved to cheat on their mates during the most fertile part of their cycle — but only when those mates are less sexually attractive than other men."
posted by anyokerin at 2:56 AM PST - 57 comments

You are the President. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:42 PM PST - 44 comments

The photographic collages of Cédric Tanguy (via Suzanne G.)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:42 PM PST - 14 comments

Body, volume, style and shine with long-lasting power. Clonycavan Styling Gel, along with mummification in Irish peat, works together with your freshly disemboweled corpse to protect hair from the disruptive power of 2000 years of rigor-mortis.
posted by 0bvious at 9:06 PM PST - 14 comments

The Ambassador Hotel is no longer standing. Recorded here.
posted by tellurian at 6:11 PM PST - 23 comments

A curious religious debate is raging in Egypt The question is: should you keep your clothes on when having sex?
posted by halekon at 6:01 PM PST - 74 comments

"Epigenetics : the lives of your grandparents – the air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw – can directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing these things yourself. This work is at the forefront of a paradigm shift in scientific thinking, in which the environment can impact our health for generations to come."
posted by stbalbach at 3:22 PM PST - 40 comments

Gloria Trembicky is a bad landlord. Ever wish you knew more about your new landlord before signing the lease? Hopefully Gloria Trembicky won't have any more unsuspecting tenants. This well-documented story of disrepair, deceit and disorder should keep any landlord-Googler away (especially with the growing contributions emailed from former tenants). Also, it provides some great Schadenfreude for those of us not renting in NYC.
posted by davebug at 1:54 PM PST - 66 comments

You're a leader of a tiny village whose chief scientists and elders are telling you that the laws of science dictate that your village and all its people will soon be wiped from existence. Solution? How about just change the laws of science? That was this man 's plan and in doing so he created an empire as large as the Romans' and in a fraction of the time through largely peaceful negotiations. Sacrificing your finest children for your ancestors to change those laws was a solemn price to pay.

Can you really blame Peru for suing Yale University to get their hero's private treasures back?
posted by DirtyCreature at 1:52 PM PST - 17 comments

God mad at America, black people.
posted by I Love Tacos at 12:31 PM PST - 83 comments

Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment.
posted by Postroad at 11:10 AM PST - 104 comments

Its not a tumor. Russian man has tumor removed from his back….but it’s really a 35-year-old embryo that should have been his twin brother.
posted by goldism at 10:42 AM PST - 82 comments

Having a filthy mind, I'm able to come up with several non-medical uses for the Digital Rectal Examination Simulator. However, when I noticed that the company selling the device was Japanese, I realized that the intended use is most likely as a way to hone your skills away from the arcade for the video game Boon-Ga Boon-Ga.
posted by jonson at 10:11 AM PST - 24 comments

Supreme Court upholds Oregon's assisted suicide law. Justice Kenedy wrote the opinion for the majority, concluding that Ashcroft did not have the authority to sanction doctors under the Controlled Substances Act. Justice Scalia dissented, joined by Justice Thomas and Chief Justice Roberts. Thomas also wrote a separate dissent. The Washington Post has the opinions, and you can get the pdf from the Supreme Court's website.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:51 AM PST - 44 comments

2006 Canadian vote selector quiz! Politics Watch brings us the new Vote Selector Quiz for the Canadian election, which is less than a week away. 18 questions that should pin down your candidate for you. But sadly, this too is Green free.
posted by Hanover Phist at 9:02 AM PST - 159 comments

Toss your espresso machine? An "entirely new way to brew coffee" for $30?! Yessssssss. From the same guy that invented the Aerobie flying disk (which holds the world throwing record of more than a quarter mile). Articles/reviews at SingleServeCoffee and the official product page. Download the instructions (pdf). A Coffeegeek discussion and also some customer reviews at LocalsOnlyCoffee. </CoffeeFilter>
posted by spock at 8:39 AM PST - 101 comments

World Correspondence: I have always wanted to properly pull off a project by which I would correspond with each of the 200+ world leaders. I would compliment them on a fine job well done and request a autographed photo of themselves. I'm happy to report that I have finally embarked on this long-awaited project.

Current status: 23 down and counting...
posted by Ljubljana at 8:39 AM PST - 38 comments

"Photographs of signs that transcend their objectivity to reveal our humanity." Signs of Life, in the grand tradition of "Hey, check out these funny/odd/sad/possibly Photoshopped signs from around the world" sites.
posted by Gator at 8:35 AM PST - 8 comments

"Hitch was always trying to push the limits on techniques and to be different".
Cary Grant chased by a crop-duster plane in a corn field; Janet Leigh screaming in the shower; Tippi Hedren attacked by killer seagulls. The man behind lens? Leonard J. South (1914-2006) , Hitchcock's camera operator. More inside.
posted by PenguinBukkake at 8:10 AM PST - 13 comments

Alan Turner makes Pikachus out of cheese. And eats them.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:51 AM PST - 27 comments

Long sought after, Kale Automotive finally provides a source for quality replacement muffler bearings. They also offer performance parts like crossdrilled brake lines. Now if only someone would offer this sort of service for aviation: I'm still trying to find prop wash in 5 gallon buckets.
posted by 445supermag at 7:49 AM PST - 35 comments

Jeff Wall - The Tate Modern just closed up a "major retrospective" of Wall's (more info about Wall) work, but has saved the experience in this rich online presence, including a timeline of his works and influence, interviews, archived discussions of his works, and more (via ArtKrush)
posted by tpl1212 at 5:44 AM PST - 3 comments

Cruiser Scout WW2 veteran's account of fighting in the Guadalcanal campaign.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:01 AM PST - 11 comments

The New Horizons spacecraft will be the first man-made object to visit our controversial sibling planet. An Atlas V will be used to launch the craft to the fastest speed that man has ever hurled an object to the heavens. Due to this and the small size of Pluto, the probe will only be capable of one flyby. Today is the first day in the launch window that the rocket is hoped to be launched.
posted by Phantomx at 2:53 AM PST - 69 comments

The Austin-Rover web resource A complete resource of the cars of British car manufacturer Austin Rover. Read the history of such design classics as the Morris Marina, the Austin Maxi, and my own first car, the Austin Allegro. No wonder Britain no longer has much of a car industry.
posted by salmacis at 2:50 AM PST - 16 comments

Virtual slide rules , a gallery and some hoaxes.
posted by dhruva at 12:31 AM PST - 13 comments

Have extra Indian food around your house? Trade it once a month for free Wi-Fi access. Sharing WiFi via Google Maps [via mefi projects] If you've got WiFi and are willing to share it - or you can can 'see' someone else's WiFi and would like to use it - you're in the right place.
posted by tozturk at 7:02 PM PST - 16 comments

Challenging Christian Zionism "We are a group of evangelical pastors, academics and mission executives who have been disturbed by the growing influence of Christian Zionism on the political scene in America..." Detailed critique of the Christian Zionist movement includes a look at Hal Lindsey, "the Father of Apocalyptic Christian Zionism."
posted by mediareport at 5:48 PM PST - 47 comments

Baby, I'm gonna make you happy tonight. ...yeah, turn the lights down low. Turn the lights down low. It helps me feel like I'm in a spaceship!
posted by loquacious at 5:47 PM PST - 55 comments

Student Reporters Expose 'Royal' Sex Offender Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV
Student reporters at a Minnesota high school have exposed a prospective transfer who said he was a member of the British royal family as a fraud, a 22-year-old adult, and a registered sex offender. His outlandish claims raised immediate suspicion among the staff of Stillwater Area High School's "The Pony Express" student newspaper.

The student reporters used search engines and the web to unmask the fraud. Joshua Adam Gardner (aka Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, the Fifth Duke of Cleveland) now sits in Mower County Jail for violating the terms of his supervised release related to the sex-offender charges.
posted by ericb at 3:43 PM PST - 54 comments

Cities is a cross between Urban Dead and Kingdom of Loathing.
posted by ChasFile at 2:14 PM PST - 23 comments

I've been hearing rumors for a few days that Nikon was planning to stop manufacturing 35mm film cameras. Apparently there is some truth to this, although it does appear that they will continue making their professional F6 and student-oriented FM10 models, as well as some 35mm point-and-shoots for the consumer market.
posted by atavistech at 2:06 PM PST - 48 comments

"Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist," prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan earlier this year. "Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes in the use of violence." So why is Yousry now awaiting sentencing in March, when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman to Rahman's lawyer in Egypt?
posted by dash_slot- at 1:50 PM PST - 63 comments

Jack Bauer is back... in Japan, and he wants some Calorie Mate. Watch Kiefer Sutherland maintain character in a series of Japanese snack food commercials (with hour by hour backstory). Parts one, two, and three.
posted by bobo123 at 1:02 PM PST - 50 comments

Treasures from the kingdom of fungi Taylor F Lockwood's artsy, well lit photos of fungi in their natural habitats have gotten very little attention outside of mycologists, but his eye for detail and composition shows a skilled photographer performing in a very specific niche. Some favorites
posted by klik99 at 12:51 PM PST - 22 comments

Beyond the Playing Field: Jackie Robinson, Civil Rights Advocate. (more inside)
posted by matteo at 12:26 PM PST - 12 comments

Sharkey's wife/friend may not be able to do her job anymore. You remember Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey, the undead, bloodsucking candidate for Minnesota governor, don't you? Julie Carpenter's association with her husband/friend and Wicca affiliation makes her unsuited to drive the school bus, according to the Princeton Schools Superintendent. [by]
posted by Captaintripps at 10:42 AM PST - 85 comments

"We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."
posted by empath at 10:35 AM PST - 257 comments

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank A developing online resource for the collection and interpretation of photos, stories, maps, audio files, and other information related to the hurricanes of 2005. The project was created as a partnership between the University of New Orleans, the Smithsonian/American History and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the same people who created the September 11 Digital Archive.
posted by Miko at 9:44 AM PST - 3 comments

James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis believes that global warming has passed the point of no return. The feedback mechanisms that have regulated the planet are now working against us, accelerating the warming process. Can civilisation survive? Not according to Lovelock. The celebrated planetary scientist believes billions will die leaving the human race reduced to a few breeding pairs living in the Artic. Gloomy stuff.
posted by piscatorius at 9:34 AM PST - 94 comments

The New York Times reports that community forum sites like Digital Point Solutions' have created a system whereby forum participants share in the Google AdSense revenue (Revenue sharing FAQ). Digital Point claims that no gaming of the system has occurred so far. A google search turns up at least a handful of other sites that are doing the same (but no major sites, it seems), and the latest drupal adsense module apparently makes it easy to set up. Curious. [Full disclosure: I know nothing about any of this. I mean, I barely know what a 'blog is (and I'm sticking to that leading apostrophe -- it's the only thing standing between us and Babelian anarchy and we're not even sure 'Babelian' is a legitimate word so now we're really mired in the hypocrisy, huh?).]
posted by nobody at 9:26 AM PST - 9 comments

Steal little steal big. After nine months on the lam, reputed mob boss Joey "The Clown" Lombardo was captured Friday night in Elmwood Park. He was one of the “guys back home” who took part in skimming $2 million from the Stardust hotel in the movie Casino. He gets the spider hole treatment. (”Moving from place to place is very stressful, as Saddam Hussein will tell you.") While folks who took part in stealing over $42 billion from California alone are photographed in suits and described as “polite.”
posted by Smedleyman at 9:05 AM PST - 22 comments

The Root of All Evil? is Richard Dawkins' new programme on Channel 4 in the UK, where the noted scholar says we must abandon all religion to advance human kind. RD notes that he is technically an agnostic, but his bold show suggests that declared atheism is the correct political stand. Reminds me of the recent NPR piece on what Penn believes. Are popular-media pieces of this sort a bellweather for a new anti-theism?
posted by re6smith at 8:06 AM PST - 191 comments

A fantastic gallery of perfectly timed photos, and a more detailed treatment of the phenomenon. [via Ursi and itinerate surfer]
posted by 31d1 at 7:28 AM PST - 24 comments

The Art of Chris Turnham. Vivid, highly-stylized illustrations. The first four 2D images are part of a series that depict scenes from Decemberists songs.
posted by ludwig_van at 5:47 AM PST - 7 comments

Your papers please, komrade. Australian Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock is now determined to introduce a national ID card. He has gone on the record saying that it's not a matter of if it will be introduced but what information it will carry and how much it will cost the government. Given that recent "anti-terror" laws were recently rammed through parliament minus any debate one can only speculate when this will be rammed through and whether there will be any debate.
posted by Talez at 2:58 AM PST - 57 comments

Ndiyo systems consist of a central PC running Linux, serving a bunch of ultra-cheap, ultra-thin VNC-ish clients over 100Mbit Ethernet connections. The developers hope that mass production will soon make the clients cost as little as a typical video cable.
posted by flabdablet at 2:53 AM PST - 32 comments

Riding the Maglev: The japanese super-train has been undergoing tests for a number of years (previous MeFi-post). The Shanghai Maglev Train is already in service. What is now just a run on the test track could become the second maglev route in service and perhaps eventually replace the famous Shinkansen bullet train? 500 km/h: from Tokyo to Osaka in an hour?
posted by bering at 12:58 AM PST - 37 comments

Remember Segregation - Founded in the core belief that segregation is, was and has always been wrong, this campaign is intended to make people stop, think and perhaps get a little uncomfortable in the process of realizing the modern day importance of Dr. King's life.
posted by bluedaniel at 12:37 AM PST - 28 comments

Fantastically obsessive & detailed recreation of Bag End (Bilbo's home from The Hobbit) in dollhouse scale. Pictures from the start of the project here.
posted by jonson at 11:19 PM PST - 14 comments

Feeding Minds - the impact of food on mental health
posted by Gyan at 9:38 PM PST - 24 comments

How to Improve.... Everything A great motivational e-diary that is perfect for MLK Day.
posted by matkline at 9:05 PM PST - 11 comments

Working harder, feeling poorer? You're not alone. A summary report on the performance of the US economy in the past four years.
posted by wilful at 7:29 PM PST - 80 comments

Cupcakes are so damn cute. Almost weirdly so.
(Previously on MeFi (and now with its own Flickr group))
posted by BoringPostcards at 7:12 PM PST - 22 comments

Hooked on a Feeling? Enter the Hasselhoff.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:52 PM PST - 31 comments

Crisis in SinceSlicedBread land. Some of you may remember this from some months back. Service Employees International (SEIU), the union, announced a contest several months ago, looking for ideas that might 'save the country' by putting the U.S. on a corrective course with respect to growing the economy and creating good-paying jobs. [more inside]
posted by vhsiv at 6:12 PM PST - 15 comments

Why we have a Martin Luther King Day. What an amazing speech. [Coral cache][via]
posted by Malor at 6:02 PM PST - 48 comments

Doug TenNapel reviews "The God Who Wasn't There" in three parts: [1,2,3]. (Religion not your thing? He also does comics. And video games.)
posted by brownpau at 5:09 PM PST - 36 comments

Michelle Bachelet wins the Chilean presidential election, the first woman to do so. She's also a socialist, a single mom and an agnostic. Santiago is starting to fill up with car horns, and her opponent, rightist millionaire Sebastián Piñera, is supposed to concede any minute now.
posted by signal at 2:00 PM PST - 87 comments

Beyond metaphysics, there is 'pataphysics. Beyond metaphor, there is pataphor.
posted by painquale at 1:10 PM PST - 49 comments

Theatre History is the Theatre Museum of London's vast online collection of ephemera, containing more than 1500 objects that record the history of the performing arts in Britain since the 1600s. There's lots of goodies, but don't miss the goldmine of fabulous photos, posters, and prints.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:54 PM PST - 5 comments

Dead Man Eating: THOMAS GRASSO, OKLAHOMA, 1995-- a dozen steamed mussels, a Burger King double cheeseburger with mustard, mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato, a can of Franco-American spaghetti with meatballs, a mango, half of a pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and a strawberry milkshake. But, there was a problem. Mr. Grasso had been served spaghetti and meatballs, but had actually requested Spaghetti-O's. He did not take this slight lightly, his last words included this complaint, "I did not get my Spaghetti-O's. I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this!"
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:49 AM PST - 71 comments

Two completely dissimilar yet nifty artists: The twisted ink drawings of Jon Kuta (big enough to make desktops; Flash interface), and the fabulously lifelike driftwood and bronze sculptures of Heather Jansch (she really likes horses. Warning: you'll have to side-scroll).
posted by Gator at 9:36 AM PST - 11 comments

Dr. Emanuel H. Bronner: refugee chemist turned madman-prophet-homophobe? Let us journey beyond the (pdf) bottle.
posted by The White Hat at 1:56 AM PST - 27 comments

The Bancroft Library unveils a new 1906 San Francisco Earthquake site featuring a really cool clickable map that features photos from each section of town. Haight Street didn't look too bad, but just down the road, City Hall was leveled. The exhibit offers a guide to the event that look place nearly 100 years ago.
posted by mathowie at 7:14 PM PST - 20 comments

need help with breakfast? mr breakfast has product reviews, recipes, and lots of other things dedicated to the most important meal of the day
posted by pyramid termite at 5:59 PM PST - 20 comments

Shelley Winters Dead and Trolls Appear It was pretty sad today to see that Shelley Winters died. She was a better actress than most of her movies and a bit of a hottie before she outlived her peers and lost her physical appeal. Nice to see that the trolls used the occasion to bash her pretty mercilessly, mostly focusing on her weight and overwhelming a condolence board. Is there any topic people can be civil on? How long before someone loses their shirt and unmoderated forums/comments become a thing of the past?
posted by jbielby at 2:57 PM PST - 69 comments

The Internet Is For Porn is a song from the Broadway comedy Avenue Q (an adult version of Sesame Street) that I found myself humming for quite a while after watching this homemade machinima video using World of Warcraft characters. (warning first link goes to a Google Video with audio).
posted by jonson at 1:16 PM PST - 39 comments

How will we be prepped for war with Iran?

Winter/Spring - The clone army of foreign policy "experts" from conservative foreign policy outfits nobody ever heard of before suddenly appear on all the cable news programs all the time, frowning furiously and expressing concerns about the "grave threat" that Iran poses. Never before heard of Iranian exile group members start appearing regularly, talking about their role in the nuclear program and talking up Iran's human rights violations....
posted by kgasmart at 12:30 PM PST - 266 comments

The World in Pieces. During the early 1960s, Mimmo Rotella (who just died in Milan at age 87) went around Europe collecting strips of advertising posters that had been pasted over and torn away many times. He also tore at posters (warning: big file) himself in a rebellious act of desecration to create the works he called decollages. More inside.
posted by matteo at 12:20 PM PST - 4 comments

The site design is somewhat unfortunate, but The Virtual Cave features lots of photos and information on, well, caves and cave formations. We've all heard of stalagmites and stalactites, but I'd never heard of cave draperies or cave pearls before. Then you've got your helictites, your aragonite, and your splash stalactites (found in lava tubes). And they've got a Show Caves Directory of caves in the United States that are open to the public, with addresses and contact information by state.
posted by Gator at 9:19 AM PST - 23 comments

Henry Rollins Blogs - Henry Rollins, lead singer of Black Flag & The Rollins Band, Spoken Word performer, and one of the USO's most frequent travelers, is now blogging daily.
posted by Argyle at 9:15 AM PST - 70 comments

It's the Australian Blog Awards! Once again organized by Keks and not those clueless Smartyhost guys.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 8:42 AM PST - 17 comments

Moore's Wall: Technology Advances and Online Game Design is a thought-provoking transcript of a talk on the state of and future of computer gaming, from the blog of Raph 'Theory of Fun' Koster, now Chief Creative Officer for Sony Online Entertainment. Conclusion: The future lies in more interesting games. You can also view a pdf picture book version of his Theory of Fun. Or see some reviews and discussion on Raph's Theory.
posted by MetaMonkey at 8:27 AM PST - 20 comments

Shock and gore. The people behind "the world's goriest website", why they do it, and what it says about us.
posted by ascullion at 7:22 AM PST - 47 comments

The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks. For "Stupid in America," a special report ABC will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and in Belgium. [...] The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid." Interesting insights into the different school systems employed in both countries.
posted by slater at 7:03 AM PST - 121 comments

Kyrgyzstan, ever heard of it? The place is quickly going down the toilet, so no worries, you aren't missing much.
posted by Meatbomb at 4:55 AM PST - 16 comments

A reward for being great... Don't close your eyes to the wonders of the lord... he's made them all for you..now try some chocolate cake.
posted by olbiadle at 2:40 AM PST - 21 comments

"The Talking Statues" of Staglieno. Beautiful photographs of the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno in Genova, Italy. These statues were immortalized on two Joy Division covers, and of note, Oscar Wilde's wife is buried there. (mentioned in this story linked in this previous thread)
posted by NorthernSky at 11:56 PM PST - 6 comments

Orion Nebula in very high resolution gorgeous
posted by obeygiant at 11:51 PM PST - 30 comments

Draw Batgirl. Jamie Dee Galey decided to draw Batgirl and post it on his livejournal site. And thus a meme was born. The list of LiveJournalers who have joined him keeps growing and growing. Many of them are pretty good!
posted by jazon at 10:42 PM PST - 41 comments

Alibaba regularly ranks as one of the top destination web sites in the world, currently higher than Wikipedia or CNN, it is a mind boggling Bazaar of bulk items available for import and export, mainly from China. A popular site rarely heard about, it is for those who buy by the shipping container or become lost in the bewildering variety and possibilities of generic bulk commodities.
posted by stbalbach at 10:26 PM PST - 28 comments

Black sergeant was 'loyal Klansman' Those ironic quotes are central to this story of Krazy Konehead Klowns. Stunning proof that white supremacy is for the truely stupid.
posted by warbaby at 7:12 PM PST - 20 comments

NSFW: Not sure if this is an extension of crush, but if you dig seeing women in fancy shoes destroying real automobiles with sledge hammers and such, the Crash Car Girls are here!
posted by bonefish at 5:15 PM PST - 20 comments

Can God make a rock so heavy that he could not lift it?
posted by brownpau at 2:46 PM PST - 161 comments

The vision: a federally funded 5-acre enclosed rainforest, supposedly the world's largest, will make Coralville, Iowa into a world-class destination city and ignite the imagination of its heretofore benighted citizens. The problem: a federally funded rainforest. In Iowa. Read some entertaining background and analysis on the inspiring project here and here.
posted by thirteenkiller at 2:12 PM PST - 36 comments

Study finds that 40% of Ashkenazi Jews come from four Jewish mothers. Previously discussed on Metafilter: the peculiar genetics of Ashkenazi Jews and their impressive intellect.
posted by billysumday at 1:35 PM PST - 153 comments

Grasses and other green growth may produce 10 to 30 percent of Earth's annual methane output. German researcher Frank Keppler reports in Nature [reg req] that living plants give off between 60 and 240 million tonnes of methane per year, which may mean that the use of carbon sinks to offset CO2 emissions may need to be rethought. [Also: audio on NPR ]
posted by F Mackenzie at 10:25 AM PST - 25 comments

Bush authorized domestic spying before 9/11. What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information. But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.
posted by rxrfrx at 10:17 AM PST - 118 comments

On January 30, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise ship packed full with refugees fleeing the Russian advance into Poland was sunk by a Russian submariane. Nearly 10,000 people died and it remains the world's worst single maritime disaster. Radio National's Late Night Live recently devoted a programme to this little-known tragedy. Well worth listening to (mp3).
posted by Huw at 10:17 AM PST - 13 comments

Flash Friday. Find the bombs and save the hotel.
posted by caddis at 10:09 AM PST - 16 comments

Graphs, Maps, Trees. The Valve is hosting a literary event for professor Franco Moretti's new book, Graphs, Maps, Trees. Moretti aims to reinvigorate literary studies by constructing abstract models based upon quantitative history, geography, and evolutionary theory. PDFs of the original articles: Graphs, Maps, Trees. A review at n+1 is here.
posted by painquale at 9:54 AM PST - 10 comments

The Impeachment of George W. Bush It's been called for again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, and some MeFites have been praying for it for almost 6 years now. When I saw it pop up in del.icio.us/popular/ this morning I had to read it. An upcoming Nation article written by Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who was there for the Nixon impeachment. Will anyone come to the defense of our President? Let the debate begin!
posted by daHIFI at 9:46 AM PST - 172 comments

China may actually have discovered the Americas first. Two years ago, Gavin Menzies released a book entitled 1421: The Year China Discovered America. The book was widely read, but its contents were controversial and the evidence not strong enough to convince everyone. Now, a two hundred and fifty year old map, apparently copied from one made in 1418, will be revealed to the public and may permanently change the way we think about the Americas.
posted by borkingchikapa at 9:06 AM PST - 76 comments

And the award for best video game reenactment goes to...
posted by kosem at 8:54 AM PST - 22 comments

The (Broken) Triangle: Progressive Bloggers in the Wilderness. The Huffington Post's Peter Daou, whose dour forecast of how Bush and lazy media would spin away the NSA scandal proved prescient, on why "netroots activists" can't get traction: "It's slow-motion-car-wreck painful, and most certainly NOT where the left's triangle should be a half decade into the new millennium, as the Bush-propping machine hums and whirrs, poll numbers rise and fall, Iraq bleeds, scandal dissolves into scandal, terror speech blends into terror speech. The landscape is there for everyone to see, to analyze. Enough time has elapsed to make the system transparent. It is dismaying for netroots activists to see the same mistakes repeated..."
posted by digaman at 8:53 AM PST - 19 comments

A subjective comparison of Germany and the United States. A sober and interesting look at some of the differences between the two countries, written by a man who grew up in Germany and now lives and teaches in the United States. (via @rgumente)
posted by Ljubljana at 8:48 AM PST - 62 comments

Trinidad's pitch lake has been called the Caribbean's ugliest tourist attraction.
posted by 31d1 at 8:27 AM PST - 31 comments

So by 2006, tattoos and piercings are so mainstream that it's hard for a genuine bad-ass to stand out anymore. While some options still exist, for my money nothing beats embedding a set of brass knuckles directly under your skin.
posted by jonson at 7:35 AM PST - 77 comments

For interrupting an NFL game, weathercaster George Flickinger was fired last week by Clear Channel owned KOKI Fox 23 of Tulsa. The reason? Breaking into the Seahawks-Giants game to warn the public during the wildfires [PDF] of November 27. The fires engulfed 50 homes and prompted the governor to declare an emergency the next day. Flickinger's termination was confirmed in the Tulsa World newspaper, unfortunately they want $7 for the article.
posted by rolypolyman at 7:06 AM PST - 36 comments

This is great, California is going to be dropping some serious money on solar programs 3 BILLION!! dollars. Once you get past the idea that we spend about 6 billion A MONTH in Iraq, you will notice that this is a lot of money for a solar program. With 2005 being the hottest year on record worldwide, its about time someone (anyone) start doing something to get us off our oil addiction.
posted by stilgar at 6:53 AM PST - 29 comments

Death Race 2000. Eric Red isn't the only celebrity to have killed someone in a car accident. But his story may be the most bizarre.
posted by you just lost the game at 6:29 AM PST - 19 comments

The jolly green Hummer? The growing band of environmental offset companies which give you the chance to offload your SUV driving, energy squandering guilt onto an annual subscription and a fancy bumper sticker looks like one way that we'll be able to live with ourselves in the power hungry 21st century. Is this the placebo we've all been waiting for?
posted by Duug at 5:33 AM PST - 20 comments

what is the point of it all
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 5:15 AM PST - 39 comments

I'm quitting my job so that I can go and be a pirate... Angel, a graphic designer from Orlando, is putting his life on hold to go to the Bahamas and play an 'Asian pirate' in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. At the moment, he's soliciting donations on his web site, but plans to run a blog on the experience of being a extra as soon as filming starts.
posted by jedrek at 12:46 AM PST - 44 comments

I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you
NYTimes (reg. req'd)
posted by found missing at 8:19 PM PST - 145 comments

National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Sometimes, its the unheralded steps, that take you most quickly to your destination. On October 7, 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and their associated domains announced the first release of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Version 0.1. NIEM "establishes a single standard XML foundation for exchanging information between DHS, DOJ, and supporting domains, such as Justice, Emergency Management, and Intelligence." The release of this specification, and the development of the systems that utilize it may actually be the cataylst for more 'progress' in information mining on the individual than most other, well publicized efforts. NIEM Mission: "To assist in developing a unified strategy, partnerships, and technical implementations for national information sharing — laying the foundation for local, state, tribal, and federal interoperability by joining together communities of interest." When you say it like that, it sounds sort of cool!
posted by sfts2 at 7:10 PM PST - 18 comments

Networks are everywhere. Connectionists think of our brains as neural networks. Some people think networks are changing society. Some people would like to use networks to change society. Others think of the earth as a self-organising network.
posted by MetaMonkey at 6:52 PM PST - 9 comments

Voters in the US state of Minnesota may find a self-proclaimed vampire on the ballot for the office this year when Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey of the Vampyres, Witches and Pagans Party announces his plan to run for Governor, expected later today. Acknowledging that "politics is a cut-throat business", Sharkey has let voters know that whilst he is a Satanist, he dosen't hate Jesus, "just God, the Father."
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:16 PM PST - 39 comments

The past can be a fascinating place. An Anthropologist by training and finder of interesting things by avocation, Hugh Blackmer, began rescuing old photos from antique shops on Nova Scotia (the former Acadia) several decades ago. He's now posting them on-line for his Nova Scotia Faces project. He's using Flickr and experimenting with a wiki. He's finding some wonderful old moments.
posted by mmahaffie at 5:16 PM PST - 16 comments

Everybody knows that gangsta rap promotes sexism, homophobia... and fascism. Take Bushido, for instance - the Berlin rapper of Tunisian descent that all the neo-Nazis love. Confused? (nyt) Well, so are the Germans. And then we're not even talking about Fler, whose "This is black-red-gold, hard and proud!" nationalist lyrics never fail to piss off the German papers (in German), and who likes to pose in his videos with a nice symbolic eagle. (Then again, Helmut Kohl didn't mind.) Still, Fler's flag-waving, eagle-loving rhymes are no match for Bushido's "Salute, stand to attention, I am the leader like 'A'". The A stands for Adolf, you know.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:15 PM PST - 28 comments

The Doctor is in! After passing on the series last year, the Sci-Fi Channel has decided to bring the BBC's new version of Doctor Who to American viewers. Neither the Beeb's news release or Sci-Fi's explain the turnaround. In any case, good news for stateside Whovians, as well as those who have not yet made the good Doctor's acquaintance.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:55 PM PST - 33 comments

We gave him crap. I'm not going to deny it. "An AOL chatroom named 'Romance — Older Men' was the scene of unbearable humiliation for one chatter, according to a new lawsuit."
posted by vetiver at 4:50 PM PST - 35 comments

Dogs trained to sniff out cancer. In this study which will be published in the March 2006 issue of the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies published by SAGE Publications, researchers reveal scientific evidence that a dog's extraordinary scenting ability can distinguish people with both early and late stage lung and breast cancers from healthy controls. A BBC Four documentary will be aired soon in the US, an article and a clip from the documentary can be found here.
posted by Meredith at 3:55 PM PST - 20 comments

Neil Diamond’s long, serious career: Whether rockin' the sold-out Garden, sitting alone writing his lyrics, or among his 19,033 friends at MySpace, Neil Diamond might be more serious than most people give him credit for. (previous thread)
posted by nevercalm at 2:43 PM PST - 39 comments

Diego Garcia, a heavenly spot you can not go to. Take your time and go through a large batch of links at this site: drinking, hot babes, great beaches.(see, too, Other links on this page) Just what is this place? Well, this is how we got it and this is a brief sketch of the place and this is the official Navy page at which you will find some odd stuff if you put your mind to it. Note, for example, employment opportunities. Ok. Now you know it is strategically located place for Amrican planes. For further information, read (see index) James Bamford, Body of Secrets.
posted by Postroad at 1:57 PM PST - 24 comments

A mesmerizing photo of a vicitim of Holoprosencephaly . The kitten Cy didn't survive but for a few days.
posted by Candide at 1:31 PM PST - 54 comments

Home heating prices getting you down? Turn off your oven and cook with lava instead. Sure, try this at home, what the hell.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 1:30 PM PST - 12 comments

Glowing green pigs. Scientists from Taiwan have successfully created a bioluminescent pigs with genes from a jellyfish.
posted by delmoi at 12:44 PM PST - 33 comments

The "Battle of Los Angeles" occurred on February 24/25, 1942, when a large object was picked up on radar approximately 120 miles off the southern California coastline. Fearing another Japanese attack, a general blackout was called and fighter planes were dispatched to combat the unknown assailant.

Three hours later, the planes were recalled. Witnesses reported furious fighting but no sightings of downed planes were noted. The Navy claimed there were no enemy planes; the Army put out the story (embedded sound) that Japanese spy planes were indeed present. Subsequent investigations revealed that the invasion was most likely a weather balloon. Other opinions were also expressed.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 11:44 AM PST - 25 comments

For only $89.95 it seems anyone can buy the phone records of a retired four-star general and Presidential candidate. Who needs the NSA when you have the internets?
posted by thirdparty at 11:14 AM PST - 21 comments

Mark Spoon , best known as half of German trance duo Jam & Spoon, was found dead today, apparently of a heart attack at age 41. Jam and Spoon aren't well known in the mainstream, but they almost single handedly invented the dance music genre today known as "Progressive Trance" with their early 90s singles "Stella" and "Age of Love" (Short MP3 samples).
posted by empath at 10:07 AM PST - 38 comments

Why does the Supreme Court Make Justices More Liberal? Does it? If so, why, and why more liberal not more conservative?
posted by caddis at 10:04 AM PST - 61 comments

NewsFlashFilter: Hundreds killed in Hajj stampede in what is known as the Stoning of the Devil ritual earlier today. Sadly, this type of tragedy at a Muslim hajj is quite common given the huge crowds.
posted by OpinioNate at 9:09 AM PST - 115 comments

The USDA is working on a plan to enforce registration and identification of all livestock animals in the US. [More Inside]
posted by turtlegirl at 6:45 AM PST - 55 comments

Mozart's musical diary - kept between 1784 and 1791 - goes online today courtesy of the British Library. There is a helpful audio commentary if you can't decipher his handwriting, plus excerpts from some of his music. The same site also has works by artists and authors such as Jane Austen, Leonardo da Vinci and Lewis Carroll.
posted by greycap at 1:36 AM PST - 5 comments

My awesomeness is at an all time high, as this chart will clearly demonstrate. And thanks to the magical people at Bellygraph.com, I can create & update charts to illustrate all the trends that matter to me, from my own personal awesomeness to total number of pugs owned or whatever other metric I choose.
posted by jonson at 1:05 AM PST - 29 comments

Iraq is full of fabled ancient ruins, many in bad shape, but which still fire the imagination. Some highlights: Ur, birthplace of Abraham, still contained many beautiful artifacts when it was last excavated in the 1920s. Then there is vanished Cunaxa, near Baghdad's airport, where the Ten Thousand, a group of Greek mercenaries, fought their way back to Greece in a 1,000 mile, two-year-long retreat described by Xenophon in the Anabasis (and which served as the inspiration for cult films/games and bad science fiction alike). The ruins of the city of Nineveh were discovered in the 19th century just across the river from Mosul, containing art confirming elements of the Biblical account of the conquests of King Sennacherib. Most famously, the ruins of Babylon (not much to look at, the best bit being in Berlin) have seen much abuse, from Saddam's awful rebuilding of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar to reports of recent damage by coalition troops.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:22 PM PST - 15 comments

It's Roller Derby, and it's back in a big way. Especially appreciated: Their literary tastes.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:58 PM PST - 55 comments

So with global warming being linked to all sorts of bad things lately, and our illustrious leaders doing nothing about the problem because they don't want to slow down the economy, its good to see someone doing something about the problem, Whole Foods is the first fortune 500 company to go 100% green. And I for one am happy as a clam. This just goes to show you that you can have a wonderful, profitable business, without raping the earth, your customers, or your employees.
posted by stilgar at 8:39 PM PST - 54 comments

Country Boys is Donald Sutherland's latest film documentary being hosted by PBS. Like his previous film on PBS, this one too is a tough but real story of American life. It focuses on the coming of age of two boys in rural Kentucky. You can watch the full program online (the third part will be released tomorrow).
posted by allkindsoftime at 7:48 PM PST - 53 comments

"On the day Memoirs of a Geisha premiers in London, a flashback to January 1974 when Donald Rumsfeld, then President Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff, entertained a geisha during an official visit to Kyoto." More candid shots of the occasion courtesy of Pulitzer Prize winning photographer David Hume Kennerly.
posted by milquetoast at 6:35 PM PST - 24 comments

Writing in the most recent Military Review, British Army Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster very politely points out some observed cultural difficulties inherent in the US Army, such as rigid heirarchies, "institutional racism" and destructive aggression.
posted by wilful at 5:51 PM PST - 46 comments

"Open Source Radio" was what I found at 1550 AM when I was tuning around on the radio.
It didn't sound at all like AM radio, and it wasn't a pirate.
It's Infinity Broadcasting/CBS Radio/VIACOM, but it's also klezmer weddings, motivational spam, Rhino Records, current Japanese music, self promotion, unsigned bands, and things that I can't identify.
posted by the Real Dan at 3:38 PM PST - 23 comments

What if Canada's ruling party was ousted because of copyright reform? Sarmite Bulte, Canadian MP and incumbent in the January 23 election, has been getting a lot of press in the "blogosphere" as of late - too bad it's all negative. Ms. Bulte, the primary backer of Bill C-60, a copyright reform bill, is accused of taking a lot of money from industry lobbyists. She may not be Tom Delay, but in a minority government where every seat counts, Bulte's loss could swing the minority government from the Liberals to the Conservatives - based on an issue that has hardly any newspaper coverage.
posted by GuyZero at 3:22 PM PST - 256 comments

Stardust@home. The Stardust spacecraft (discussed recently here) should land in Utah early Saturday, carrying in its hold a sprinkling of grains of interstellar dust. Researchers are seeking the public's help in pinpointing the submicroscopic bits of dust. Participants will sift through the hundreds of thousands of pictures of the roughly square-foot collector plate.
posted by ND¢ at 1:26 PM PST - 21 comments

Ooo es muy macho libertariadadista? (Ricardo Mantelban es muy macho! Pero es libertariadadista? Yo no se. Quién sabe? ) El Presidente Bushista esay: “Queiro preguntas muy macho” Quein es ooo preforma en la supportidad de la guerra en terror?Diez preguntas.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:37 PM PST - 55 comments

In the early 1990s Mark Weiser at Xerox PARC coined the term ubiquitous computing or "ubicomp" to describe the way he thought computing ought to look in the post-PC era: computers would be invisible, "in the woodwork everywhere around us." Ubicomp has been discussed here a few times before (in fact a MeFite went on to write a book about it)...but with a flood of manufacturers racing to offer up their versions of the so-called digital home, is Weiser's vision moving closer to reality?
posted by Shanachie at 11:41 AM PST - 23 comments

Readers who bought A Million Little Pieces from Random House get refunded. In what is called an "unprecedented" move, the publisher of the controversial memoir is refunding the book in full. Does this mean that Random House will be suing Frey for damages? Is this truly unprecedented or has this happened before? Catch Frey on TV tonight, if you're interested, as he'll be appearing on Larry King Live.
posted by billysumday at 11:36 AM PST - 171 comments

Newsfilter: Remember how Pat Robertson said god struck down Ariel Sharon because he divided Israel? Remember how Pat Robertson was going to build a $50 million dollar theme park in Israel with a Christian theme? Yeah. Not so much anymore.
posted by delmoi at 11:35 AM PST - 57 comments

The Almighty Gaylords "...To our first time visitors or people with little understanding of street gangs in general, the web site probably appears a little weird or creepy at first glance..." Gang violence - Chicago Gaylord style...
posted by longbaugh at 10:23 AM PST - 42 comments

The aerodynamic qualities of Bert's head. G-cluster rockets constructed out of vintage Muppet toys compete for glory in the semi-annual Evil Bert Rocket Race. (Video available from 2002, 2004, and 2005) And of course, when you're ready for it, you can make your own. (via PuppetVision)
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:45 AM PST - 11 comments

folder. [QT 7] An animated video with paper cut-out characters and falling y-fronts, by Pete Circuitt aka bitstate. [via tween]
posted by Armitage Shanks at 9:29 AM PST - 13 comments

Song Tapper lets you to use your space bar as an instrument. Tap in a song rhythm and Song Tapper will identify it for you with its internety black magic.
posted by Zosia Blue at 9:05 AM PST - 46 comments

Uncle Neptune's Song Factory is a treasure trove of old time music preformed by Mr. Neptune himself with his ukulele. The blog also sometimes features mp3s of the original 78s. From the Uncle's introduction "I have only to offer to you the songs that help make my world more sweet, and it is my hope that it may do so for you."
posted by wheelieman at 7:54 AM PST - 8 comments

The Indus Script Mystery: The ancient people of the Indus Valley left behind a mystery in their trash heaps -- the Indus script: a set of stylized characters (possibly a logophonetic script), which may or may not have been recently deciphered. (Probably not.) Some now believe (.pdf file) it is not even a written 'language' as we understand the term.
posted by anastasiav at 7:23 AM PST - 11 comments

FRVADE Is this really the hardest game on the internets? (via Grow-a-Brain)
posted by caddis at 7:09 AM PST - 35 comments

Lobby Giant Is Scandal Casualty One of Washington's top lobbying operations will shut down at the end of the month because of its ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former House majority leader Tom DeLay. Who do they represent? Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Microsoft, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Courtesy the Washington Post.
posted by whozyerdaddy at 7:43 PM PST - 64 comments

Tour d' Afrique, the other Tour. Ninety-nine stages, 120 days, almost 8,000 miles, racing on bicycles riding across the continent of Africa... the long way... from the pyramids of Giza to Cape Town. Registration's still open! Come on, it'll be fun!
posted by RockyChrysler at 5:35 PM PST - 14 comments

Watch what you say. Russell Tice, the NSA whistleblower who was the source for the NYT, has alleged that the the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use. "If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing." What else are they listening for?
posted by bukharin at 5:06 PM PST - 85 comments

INTERNET AS HYPER-LIBERALISM: By the limitations of common sense and consensus. Sometime wacky ideas can help us look at things much clearer than a technical manual description of them by rational and well argued people. Paul Treanor is a one-of-a-kind writer. don't try to argue with him about being wrong. he does not believe in communication and therefore there is no CONTACT link anywhere on his site. He writes and lives in Amsterdam, Holland.
posted by sundaymag at 4:50 PM PST - 50 comments

The follow-up to Clerks, the imaginatively-titled Clerks 2. After trying to kill off Jay and Silent Bob with the poorly received Jersey Girl, director Kevin Smith relented (more here) and has made a follow-up to his debut, Clerks. Clerks 2 (still about 8 months away) sees a lot of the old cast reunite for no-doubt weed, dick and gay jokes along with numerous Star Wars references. There's a trailer with Anthrax's "Among The Living" blasting nicely over the top and, as is the norm with Smith, loads of other web "stuff". Oh, and he also has his own blog. Snoogans, etc...
posted by TheDonF at 3:30 PM PST - 118 comments

A new study indicates that giving homeless alcoholics controlled access to one drink and hour may reduce their alcohol consumption and cut down on emergency hospital visits. This harm reduction approach, and the related housing-first model, although controversial and in need of further study, appears to be one of the more hopeful developments in homelessness policy of the past few years.
posted by footnote at 3:08 PM PST - 35 comments

Dell to partner with AMD.
posted by boo_radley at 3:06 PM PST - 26 comments

Joe Bageant's observations on people and politics in today's America are insightful, savage, and hilarious.
posted by nevercalm at 2:15 PM PST - 41 comments

Yet another Flash puzzle game: Shift. Very beautiful, with low-key music.
posted by Gator at 1:43 PM PST - 28 comments

Obese and overweight people do not want to lose weight.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 1:42 PM PST - 148 comments

Hot on the heels of the JT Leroy and James Frey fracases, here's a list of other literary frauds. Writing is lying, indeed. [via Bookslut]
posted by xmutex at 12:34 PM PST - 33 comments

The David Foster Wallace Bibliography (in BibTex format) is ridiculously complete. The site also includes a zip file of DFW's essays and mp3s of a round table discussion. [via]
posted by painquale at 12:28 PM PST - 55 comments

Flickr set of people seeing Goatse photo for the first time : I would not have so blatantly copied this link from Boing Boing but this Flickr set is just way too funny to pass up.
posted by StarForce5 at 12:05 PM PST - 86 comments

Uh, look, dude, it's not entirely impossible for you to get laid. (NSFW, I guess, as far as text can be)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:51 AM PST - 41 comments

Maine's favorite drink is Allen's Coffee Brandy and milk. No, really, it is Maine's favorite drink. Let's go get a sombrero, brother!
posted by Mayor Curley at 9:54 AM PST - 26 comments

It's the demography, stupid: "The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birth rate to sustain it. ... Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there’s an excellent chance they can drag things out until western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default."
posted by shivohum at 9:49 AM PST - 72 comments

Live coverage of the 2006 Apple Keynote is not available in video form. Since the stop of live broadcasts on the web, we now rely on folks actually there to give us up to date news, and here it is (in text form). It will be available later (as always, in QuickTime) from apple.com.
posted by gren at 9:29 AM PST - 291 comments

What parasite is a meter across, weighs 10 kg, and stinks to high heaven? None other than Rafflesia arnoldii, a remarkable parasitic plant. As amazing and smelly as it is, it's not the only funky flower. There's plenty of stinky fruit to go around too, such as the much-maligned ginkgo nut and the infamous king of fruits, the durian.
posted by Marit at 9:16 AM PST - 27 comments

Hubble reveals that the North Star is not one, not two, but THREE stars. Dear god, we've all been living a lie. I feel so disillusioned.
posted by 40 Watt at 8:51 AM PST - 34 comments

Organic Foods ... Consumer Reports spells out which organic foods are worth buying, and which you should skip.
posted by crunchland at 8:49 AM PST - 34 comments

woot.com One item per day, until midnight, or until they run out of stock. Innovative ecommerce at its best.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:00 AM PST - 64 comments

Last night, in the middle of the leaders debate (transcript, realmedia) Paul Martin announced a plan to amend the Canadian Constitution to remove Parliament's ability to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause.<more inside>
posted by Chuckles at 7:43 AM PST - 54 comments

Learn a bit about Alito, and then go along on an audio joy ride as Alito is grilled by our representatives. Listen now.
posted by stilgar at 6:59 AM PST - 546 comments

Meet the Bloggers is a group of Ohio citizen journalists who have been interviewing state political candidates, podcasting the interviews and taking questions from anyone who is interested in the candidate's policies. [more inside]
posted by sciurus at 6:18 AM PST - 3 comments

The Ricksha Arts of Bangladesh "This website is dedicated to celebrating one of Bangladesh's unique popular arts, the paintings and decorations on the three-wheeled cycle rickshaw"
posted by dhruva at 12:53 AM PST - 10 comments

10 reasons not to accept a diamond. Something to think about if you are tieing the knot. I'm sure this list doesn't make these folks very happy - more reason to spread the word.
posted by Dag Maggot at 11:27 PM PST - 248 comments

Oddly obsessive statistical analysis of the rates paid by customers of legal Nevada prostitutes, broken down by sex act, attractiveness, body type and presence or absence of a jacuzzi, among other topics. [via Cynical-C, who swears he found it by accident]
posted by mediareport at 9:33 PM PST - 30 comments

Kintaro Walks Japan A Google Video featuring an American who walks from Kyushu to Hokkaido in the hopes of learning about Japanese Culture and finding his father's birthplace. (Running time ~ 1hr)
posted by matkline at 8:58 PM PST - 15 comments

Fun in the photo booth I don't usually post anything like this, but you might laugh a bit. Slightly NSFW at the end.
posted by snsranch at 6:40 PM PST - 55 comments

Ninjas vs. Pirates: The Movie You asked for it, now see the epic battle in four acts. {qt} [via linkfilter ]
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 6:02 PM PST - 16 comments

Earthquake rocks Greece and felt as far away as Italy, Egypt and Israel. [NewsFilter, except not in the US]
posted by phaedon at 5:29 PM PST - 22 comments

"One could go on, and one will -- praising (...) the National Center for Jewish Film for releasing all four of Edgar Ulmer's Yiddish films in restored editions. But the DVD player is beckoning, and I think it is time for me to get back to the couch".
The National Center for Jewish Film (NCJF) is a unique nonprofit motion picture archive, distributor and resource center housing the largest, most comprehensive collection of Jewish-theme film and video in the world. In their archives you can discover the works of Leo Fuchs, the "Yiddish Fred Astaire", restored gems (scroll down) like "Motl the Operator" and re-releases like "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg". (More on Greenberg, the Jewish kid who challenged Babe Ruth’s homerun record here, more on the NCJF inside).
posted by matteo at 3:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Did Jesus Really Exist? Also some notes on the doubtful existence of Hannibal.
posted by brownpau at 3:41 PM PST - 122 comments

Were you a minger, sporting a mullet, looking a bit naff when you were getting mullered while out on the pull, anytime before 1988? Or were you posh and minted, looking snazzy after spending your dosh to get a nip and tuck before 1980? If so, the Oxford English Dictionary and the BBC need you for their Wordhunt – a call to help find the earliest verifiable usages of a list of words from the past decades whose origin is still uncertain.
posted by funambulist at 3:13 PM PST - 28 comments

Hyperdrive and a possible Unified Theory. New Scientist article about a paper and proposal to NASA outlining development parameters and possiblities for a faster-than-light anti-gravity propulsion system, based on some rather interesting physics theories originated by a guy named Heim. You mean you've never heard of the Millenium Falcon? (via)
posted by zoogleplex at 3:07 PM PST - 69 comments

Re-Introducing the Real Windows Vista Bill Gates' demo of Vista from the CES show dubbed over footage of OS X. Apple told Microsoft to start their photocopiers and it looks like they did. [via]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:24 PM PST - 81 comments

Osama bin Laden is dead?
And, according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 1:22 PM PST - 100 comments

What’s "Sacred" about Violence in Early America? Susan Juster discusses the "oversized colonial martyr complex" with its attendant paradox: "colonial martyrs were everywhere, religious violence... in short supply." She begins:

One of the most chilling images in early American history is the deliberate firing of Fort Mystic during the Pequot War of 1637. Five hundred Indian men, women, and children died that day, burned alive along with their homes and possessions by a vengeful Puritan militia intent on doing God’s will. "We must burn them!" the militia captain famously insisted to his troops on the eve of the massacre, in words that echo the classic early modern response to heretics. Just five months before, the Puritan minister at Salem had exhorted his congregation in strikingly similar terms to destroy a more familiar enemy, Satan; "We must burne him," John Wheelwright told his parishioners. Indians and devils may have been scarcely distinguishable to many a Puritan, but their rhetorical conflation in these two calls to arms raises a question: Was the burning of Fort Mystic a racial or a religious killing?

She avoids easy answers and makes some interesting connections. If you want to find out more about the Pequot War, there's good material in the History section of this site. (Main link via wood s lot.)
posted by languagehat at 12:30 PM PST - 34 comments

New York transit history, slides and commentary Audio-visual presentations on various aspects of New York's transit history. I particularly liked the third one, 'Subway style - Design & Architecture in the New York City Subway.'
posted by carter at 12:30 PM PST - 7 comments

US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist li Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later. Dr Fadhil is working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated. Question: Coincidence or Coercion?
posted by Mr Bluesky at 12:28 PM PST - 21 comments

This weekend, NASA will order the Stardust spacecraft to jettison its 100-pound capsule that contains comet dust. The capsule will hurdle through earth’s atmosphere and make a soft landing in the Utah desert. Not directly connected to last summer’s Deep Impact, Stardust’s mission is to bring comet debris back to earth for study. Here’s hoping we don’t need the Wildfire lab.
posted by mania at 12:07 PM PST - 17 comments

Sodaconstructor. "Looking at the fluid, lifelike way these creatures walk and roll and slink across the screen you might think that there must be some very complicated stuff going on behind the scenes. well fear not, it's actually very simple. it only looks complicated because lots of simple bits are working together." Be sure to stop at the sodazoo to see others' creations.
posted by AstroGuy at 11:42 AM PST - 26 comments

Things Came Up To My Brain...Museum? A little Flash game, from the same Samorostian/Goldbergian mind that brought us Find The Treasure. Warning: There doesn't appear to be any way to toggle the sound off.
posted by Gator at 10:15 AM PST - 10 comments

How is life for accused war criminals (see e.g. drag-down list at top) awaiting trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia? Stimulating if they enjoy chess or model ships, according to this brief Slate dispatch. How well do such alleged monsters need to be accommodated?
posted by grobstein at 8:55 AM PST - 38 comments

Flaming anonymously is now a federal crime.
posted by unSane at 8:30 AM PST - 122 comments

Grandiloquent Dictionary For all the logophiles. Not intended for those afflicted with ultracrepidarianism or logorrhea.
posted by caddis at 7:59 AM PST - 23 comments

A revolution is the solution We talked about how Ebaum's World sucks before in the Blue, but it's looks like things have been taken a step futher with Eric Bauman's latest theft of an animated GIF of Lindsey Lohan. While script kiddies have already been concentrating on wiping Ebaum's World off the net completely, the latest swipe from ytmnd.com (NSFW?) has caused a 'massive' DoS war against Bauman as this wonderful writeup from Vitalsecurity.org explains.
posted by daHIFI at 7:40 AM PST - 55 comments

Space Suits
posted by anastasiav at 7:30 AM PST - 18 comments

Deep End Dining. The greatest thing since duck fetus and live octopus tentacles combined and slathered in mayo on rye. [via a comment made at MetaChat by edible energy]
posted by panoptican at 7:18 AM PST - 15 comments

Angry and Furious at the Collaborationist Democrats I [Martin Garbus] don't understand. An hour after I saw the Times "scoop" on the Bush illegal wiretapping plan, I wrote that it was clearly illegal and unconstitutional. But as it now turns out, dozens of politicians, as well as the New York Times knew about the surveillance plan and did nothing. Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, and Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, a man known for some sensitivity to civil liberties infringements, and a substantial number of congressmen, plus the New York Times, all knew of Bush's illegal spying.
posted by Postroad at 7:05 AM PST - 56 comments

Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets: “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam”
posted by sundaymag at 1:32 AM PST - 46 comments

"The Hand That Time Forgot" - Richard Brandt interviews two men who worked on the now-classic train wreck of a film, Manos: The Hands of Fate. Find out what drives someone to gather $19,000 and make what is by many accounts the worst film ever made! Also available is the followup, "Growing Up Manos," in which we gain another perspective ("It was so obviously bad that even a seven-year-old could see it") from Jackey Jones, who played the little girl.
posted by Monster_Zero at 10:37 PM PST - 111 comments

What makes a prank great ? The Economist (of all places) is looking for the finest prank in history. I'd be happy just to hear your finest. "For the most impressively elaborate pranks, however, go to a university campus. Take thousands of bright young things with too much time on their hands, itching to achieve, amuse and misbehave, and splendid acts of delinquency will follow." See also: Shenanigans
posted by spock at 9:45 PM PST - 53 comments

Burning Man 2005 ... 100 photos by Scott London. (note: some nudity. may not be safe for work.)
posted by crunchland at 9:41 PM PST - 65 comments

What is the cost of the war on Iraq? [more inside]
posted by edverb at 8:40 PM PST - 48 comments

A million little peices of BS.
posted by delmoi at 8:04 PM PST - 119 comments

Terrorists not allowed in space (the FAA would like to regulate commercial space flights)
posted by gunthersghost at 7:39 PM PST - 21 comments

Teju Cole is a Nigerian who is returning home after years in the US. His writing is some of the best online prose I have ever read. Good photographs too.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:13 PM PST - 12 comments

Begging the Question, Defined Thank you, Anthropomorphic T. Rex, for explained exactly what "begging the question" means, in an easily accessible format.
posted by John of Michigan at 2:47 PM PST - 143 comments

Will the real JT Leroy please stand up? (ny times link) The public face of JT Leroy is confirmed as Savannah Knoop, the half-sister of the man who claimed to be JT Leroy's caretaker. The authenticity of JT Leroy was previously discussed on Metafilter here, in which a New York magazine article portrayed Ms. Albert, 40, and Mr. Knoop, 39, as unfulfilled rock musicians who concocted the character of JT Leroy to gain access first to literary circles and, later, to celebrities. Have JT Leroy fans now officially been punk'd?
posted by billysumday at 2:21 PM PST - 47 comments

Similar in implementation to the Fensler films, but not connected to him in anyway, Johnny Whoop Ass is a funny overdub of the former Saturday morning cartoon (or half-hour long toy commercial) He-Man. Start at Episode 1 (Embedded QT). Audio is most definitely NSFW.
posted by toftflin at 12:47 PM PST - 9 comments

File under "LazyWeb 2.0": expialidocio.us. Maps your del.icio.us tagging habits over time. Not mindblowingly useful, but nifty nonetheless.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:22 PM PST - 9 comments

Looks like mah horse has left ... From 1974, a 35 minute montage of Elvis’s on-stage banter, non-segues, non-sequiturs, bad jokes, requests for scarves, and whole lotta “Well…well…well”’s.
posted by carter at 12:00 PM PST - 18 comments

"Why is it that students can graduate from MIT and Harvard, yet not know how to solve a simple third-grade problem in science: lighting a light bulb with a battery and wire?" "Minds of Our Own shows that many of the things we assume about how children learn are simply not true." Three one hour streaming video programs on teaching science. (low hassle reg. required, or try login:metafilter@mailinator.com, password:metafilter)
posted by Chuckles at 10:25 AM PST - 39 comments

Guaranteed to hear the voice of God or your money back! (via Effect Measure.)
posted by docgonzo at 9:20 AM PST - 39 comments

Philo-Semitism: Just another form of Anti-Semitism? Interesting Wash Post article on Evangelicals turning away from supersessionism -- the centuries-old belief that with the coming of Jesus, God ended his covenant with the Jews and transferred it to the Christian church, and the concerns it is raising. ..."That hope is felt and expressed by Christians as a kind, benevolent hope," ... "But believing that someday Jews will stop being Jews and become Christians is still a form of hoping that someday there will be no more Jews." ... Is it that philosemitism is just as dehumanizing as antisemitism and, because it masquerades as its opposite, more insidious, or just the most recent manifestation of the longstanding appropriation of us Jews as symbols, whether it helps or hurts us?
posted by amberglow at 8:54 AM PST - 138 comments

Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, now has a weblog.
posted by nthdegx at 3:55 AM PST - 33 comments

Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu.
Rolled Palm Leaf Manuscripts in Nepal.
Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library & Renaissance Culture.
Lots of beautiful images and fascinating information, courtesy of the wonderful plep.
posted by mediareport at 9:29 PM PST - 12 comments

The Cute Factor: "Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say..." (NY Times registration req'd)
posted by shivohum at 9:03 PM PST - 27 comments

The American Dialect Society has announced the 2005 word of the year. Sadly, muffin top, crotchfruit, Cruizasy (PDF file), and the obviously wonderful popesquatting were big old losers.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 8:38 PM PST - 36 comments

cool, but slow loading particle physics trick using interaction between your mouse & the Google logo. Software is in Java, page isn't related to Google in any specific way other than that the logo was chosen for its recognizability.
posted by jonson at 7:14 PM PST - 37 comments

What is it, Mulder? This website claims to feature many of the best UFO photographs ever taken. They are dated as far back as 1870 to present day. ET phone home!
posted by sjvilla79 at 6:09 PM PST - 63 comments

Lifeboat ethics. "Terror had assumed the throne of reason, and passion had become judgment." After the ship William Brown sank on a voyage from England to America in 1841, its longboat with 41 passengers and crew aboard leaked badly and began sinking. To stay afloat, the first mate ordered sailors to throw men and women overboard: those remaining were saved and eventually rescued. One sailor who followed orders, Alexander Holmes, was convicted of manslaughter after he returned to Philadelphia in 1842. This true story inspired a famous fictional case, many legal opinions, two movies, and a recent book. What would you have done in the same life-or-death situation?
posted by cenoxo at 5:09 PM PST - 55 comments

Quake done Chopped. Courtesy of Speed Demos Archive. From those obsessive FPSers at Quake done Quick, this is a complete runthrough of the original Quake 7 years in the making, dispatching all enemies but zombies with only the axe. If you have Quake you can get the demo files here, otherwise you'll have to download the huge .avi from archive.org (main link). If you're interested in other QdQ movies - or simply shorter ones, may I recommend QdQ With a Vengeance (12:23 on Nightmare, avi here) as a fantastic introduction, Scourge Done Slick (an expansion, considered the best - avi here) or find others at Machinima.com.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:58 PM PST - 13 comments

A brief look into the making of a Simpsons episode. (Newsfilter)
posted by HiveMind at 4:58 PM PST - 34 comments

A canonical list of Monopoly house rules.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 2:50 PM PST - 36 comments

The Celestron SkyScout (Flash page) is an amazingly cool portable device combining an celestial object database with GPS abilities. It's not quite the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but it's definitely one of the most compelling applications I've yet to see of GPS - it takes note of your viewing location, and uses text and audio to guide you around the night sky. Announced at the CES show, there's no pricing info yet, but dang, I want this badly.
posted by dbiedny at 12:44 PM PST - 17 comments

Aargh!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:45 AM PST - 37 comments

The evolution of handhelds, the evolution of the game controller, the many stages of Shenmue; hell, even the evolution of Mario.
It would seem everyone but the far-right is evolving these days.
posted by Lockeownzj00 at 10:21 AM PST - 31 comments

Fsaturday Flash Fun: CryptoQuote. Other word games featured at East of the Web are the Tetris-like PopWord (and its multiplayer companion [beginner and advanced, respectively]), the MasterMind-like CodeWord, and the vaguely Scrabble-ish 8 Letters in Search of a Word.
posted by Gator at 10:09 AM PST - 6 comments

The Year in Culture: a different kind of 2005 roundup—influentials are asked to mention significant cultural points of the year. Hitchens on intelligent design ruling: "Just for once…one can hear the lucid tones of reason, detachment, culture, and irony"; Gladwell on the Streets: "the British take an African-American musical form and wonderfully reinvent it" (again); others muse about rare high points in South Park, or of Brokeback Mountain and the future of movies, or the Rove-esqueness of Cindy Sheehan, et cetera.
posted by Firas at 10:05 AM PST - 17 comments

Cooking Behind Bars. In 1986, upon my arrival at the county jail, my cooking lessons began. There, I witnessed men using empty toothpaste tubes as spoons, and burning toilet paper to heat up coffee or reheat the food served. Complete with recipes.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:04 AM PST - 34 comments

Psst... I know you called your girlfriend last night. No, not the one you live with. The naughty hottie that she doesn't know about. I know this because I paid a website $110 to buy your cell-phone records, which they delivered in two hours. Did you know that your private phone records are for sale?
posted by digaman at 9:58 AM PST - 49 comments

Prone to Violence FROM THE French Revolution to contemporary Iraq, the beginning phase of democratization in unsettled circumstances has often spurred a rise in militant nationalism. Democracy means rule by the people, but when territorial control and popular loyalties are in flux, a prior question has to be settled: Which people will form the nation? Nationalist politicians vie for popular support to answer that question in a way that suits their purposes. When groups are at loggerheads and the rules guiding domestic politics are unclear, the answer is more often based on a test of force and political manipulation than on democratic procedures.
posted by Postroad at 4:38 AM PST - 17 comments

A blog for everyone in Davos. "Every participant of the Annual Meeting – ranging from business leaders to political leaders, heads of NGOs, religious leaders academics and journalists – will be asked to join the Forum blog...All of the more than 2,000 participants, including presidents and prime ministers, will be asked to provide at least one posting for the blog."
posted by nyterrant at 11:21 PM PST - 13 comments

Lou Rawls dies You'll never find... A "velvety baritone" like Lou Rawls, who died Friday of lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai in LA. He moved with his mother from Chicago in the 1950s, was a friend of Sam Cooke, and sang the National Anthem at Game 2 of the 2005 World Series in Chicago. Rawls sang with Sam Cooke, was awarded three Grammys, sold one platinum and five gold albums. He said: There are no limits to music, so why should I limit myself?"
posted by SeeAych4 at 11:00 PM PST - 31 comments

The Passivator. A passive verb and adverb flagger for Mozilla-derived browsers, Safari, and Opera 7.5, with caveats.
posted by semmi at 9:12 PM PST - 54 comments

Bob Park mourns Triana in his "What's New" newletter: NASA has quietly terminated what may have been its most important science mission. Critics of programs to limit emissions argue that climate change is caused by solar variation, not by atmospheric changes. There is one unambiguous way to tell: locate an observatory at L-1, the neutral-gravity point between Earth and Sun. It would have a continuous view of the sunlit face of Earth in one direction, and the Sun in the other, thus constantly monitoring Earth's albedo. Originally called Triana, the Deep Space Climate Observatory has already been built and is sitting in storage.
posted by 445supermag at 8:55 PM PST - 23 comments

Private Mail--Not. ...Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. ...the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it’s deemed necessary. ...
posted by amberglow at 6:48 PM PST - 54 comments

PictureAustralia lets you search across the image collections of a bunch of (mostly Australian, but a few international) cultural agencies. It's been running in various forms since 1998 and has just started accepting contributions through the Flickr groups PictureAustralia: Australia Day and PictureAustralia: People, Places and Events. [via Stuff v.3]
posted by d-no at 6:23 PM PST - 4 comments

A novel method for the removal of ear cerumen.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:15 PM PST - 58 comments

The Beast is coming. Director Brian Flemming prepares to bring to the silver screen what might be the most controversial film of the year (if not all time). The cast and crew are all sworn to secrecy regarding the film's actual content, and the central premise easily explains why: What if there was a massive conspiracy in the Christian Church to conceal the fact that Jesus Christ never existed?
posted by deusdiabolus at 6:05 PM PST - 72 comments

Hugh Thompson Jr., dies at 62.

My Lai. (NSFW photo) "'We had conspired with the government of South Vietnam to literally destroy the hopes, aspirations and emotional stability of thirteen thousand human beings....This was not war it is genocide....'."

"Thompson landed his chopper between the troops and the shelter, then jumped out and confronted the lieutenant in charge of the chase...Furious, Thompson announced he was taking the civilians out. He went back to Colburn and Andreotta and told them if the Americans fired, to shoot them."
posted by Smedleyman at 6:02 PM PST - 69 comments

Ring of Letters
The Einstein-Freud Correspondence (Einstein furthers the cause of peace)
The Freud-Jung Correspondence (Freud is Jung's father-figure)
The Jung-Pauli Correspondence (A QM founder buys into Jung's synchronicity)
The Pauli-Heisenberg Correspondence (The Uncertainty Principle was a letter to Pauli)
The Heisenberg-Bohr Correspondence (Was Heisenberg a Nazi?)
The Bohr-Einstein Correspondence (What is the fundamental nature of reality?)
posted by vacapinta at 4:32 PM PST - 33 comments

Your tax dollars at work this Sunday in Philadelphia, where luminaries such as Dr. Jerry Falwell, Dr. James Dobson, and Senator Rick Santorum will gather to rally support for the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. The Greater Exodus Baptist Church, which is graciously hosting the event, has received over $1 million taxpayer dollars in the form of “faith-based” grants from the Bush administration.
posted by Otis at 4:14 PM PST - 45 comments

A student has been charged with felony for posting a link to his school's web site and telling others to hit the F5 button to refresh and crash it. Irony ensues as Fark, Digg, and Slashdot crash the high school's web site by linking to it. A news video with more information here.
posted by banished at 3:11 PM PST - 67 comments

Indian Country Today is the national newspaper for American Indians. With news from tribes across the United States and around the world and articles like "Qitsualik: The last great polar bear hunt." And they were down on Ward Churchill before it was cool. Don't have time to add another newspaper to your reading list? Try the podcast.
posted by LarryC at 3:02 PM PST - 10 comments

Stablized Zapruder Film of Kennedy Assassination (link to .mov) Clearer than you've ever seen before. Amazing and disturbing (from kottke).
posted by kdern at 2:32 PM PST - 93 comments

Rotating RAdio Transients (RRATs) are one of the newest things in radio astronomy. According to Sky and Telescope magazine, a team of astronomers analyzing data from the Parkes Radio Telescope have seen a number of neutron stars that have emitted sporadic but powerful radio bursts. RRATs (pdf) have spin properties that resemble magnetars. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) could help find many new RRATs.
posted by Fat Guy at 12:21 PM PST - 12 comments

"I didn't know Jack London was such a good photographer." Jack London and his wife Charmian took photos several hours after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, and he wrote an eyewitness account for Collier's (it was the most he was ever paid per word--25 cents--for his writing). [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:25 AM PST - 17 comments

George Galloway is in the Celebrity Big Brother house. My jaw dropped when I read it. He's a prominent member of the Respect Coalition, an antiwar figure and a frequent target of corruption claims. He claims his strategy is to reach a new audience of young people and to offer the public a "chance to show a large and different audience what I'm really like". There's already a debate about the war on the official show message boards.
posted by By The Grace of God at 10:56 AM PST - 73 comments

Washington Redskin running back Clinton Portis has been having a host of "friends" do his press conferences this season, featuring such notables as Dollah Bill, Bro Sweets, Southeast Jerome (who sadly passed away), and others. This week we met Coach Janky Spanky. Watch his press conference or catch the cliff notes and meet the entire cast.
posted by xmutex at 10:02 AM PST - 30 comments

Tempbot (QuickTime) is a new short by Neill Blomkamp. This piece combines the ultra-realistic robot CGI seen in Tetra Vaal and Alive in Joburg (QT) with a softer story of everyday alienation very reminiscent to Greg Pak's Robot Stories.
posted by justkevin at 9:29 AM PST - 26 comments

"Tell all I see them on the other side JR; I love you; It wasn't bad just went to sleep"
Sad, powerful and touching scribble.
posted by jikel_morten at 9:19 AM PST - 49 comments

Christian PepsiBlue. "Reviews" of a book with very similar content are all over the place. The author says she had to get special permission from God to write parts of the book. Is this definitive proof that God condones blogspamming?
posted by schustafa at 9:12 AM PST - 37 comments

How to write about Africa. Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Most travel books about Africa open with the author alone, carried along by some vehicle, looking down over some landscape and feeling anxious. Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:49 AM PST - 17 comments

Fancy watching Star Wars? Foldsfive started and pushed forward the fantastic Pixelmash Experiment. Sit tight and also choose from The Empire Strike Back, Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and now Ghostbusters. (via B3ta)
posted by Frasermoo at 8:49 AM PST - 19 comments

Robert Fripp sells out to Microsoft, but at least we get to watch him build up a beautiful Frippertronics piece (wmp req'd).
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:22 AM PST - 54 comments

More Flash Friday. Dynasty Street is an awesomely intricate, gory, stick-figure beat-'em-up. Make sure to practice your moves in the dojo before you play. For mayhem that's a little more low-key, immerse yourself in the world of Skull Kid and his chainsaw. If you're not in the mood for blood & guts, just go with good old Battleship. FlashPlayer.com features many, many Flash games with which to while away the hours.
posted by Gator at 8:16 AM PST - 6 comments

The Hidden State Steps Forward by (infamous Nation author) Jonathan Schell. A quote says it best: The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured.
posted by taumeson at 7:54 AM PST - 119 comments

Flash Friday. Several little amusements which are short enough not to wreck your whole work day (sorry about that). Help the boy, Mr. Zhong and the mouse in their endeavors.
posted by caddis at 7:33 AM PST - 28 comments

Virgin Comics. You've sold records, broke records (sort of), flown balloons (and planes), furthered communication, worked on a railroad, launched an airline and promised to send us to space*, not to mention several other forays into fashion, restauranteuring, books and film. So what do you do next? Sell comic books with Deepak Chopra, obviously. (via Warren Ellis's Bad Signal)
posted by grabbingsand at 6:43 AM PST - 22 comments