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The AV Club has started a really cool feature called "One Track Mind." It takes one artist/group and one song, and asks them to talk about the inspiration or circumstances behind it. Then they perform it (warning: advertising, but worth it). [more inside]
posted by bardic at 10:26 PM PST - 14 comments

Behold the gAtari 2600. An Australian musician performing under the pseudonym cTrix specializes in creating chiptunes using a combination of games consoles from 1977 - 1992, including a Commodore 64, Amiga 500, a clear-cased Gameboy, and an Atari 2600. The latter is possibly the most striking setup, incorporating the Atari (running custom-written sequencing software) into an oversized guitar body, with a fretboard packed with Boss stompboxes and a great pun as a name — gAtari.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 9:50 PM PST - 39 comments

16-bit color schemes, in a classic retro VGA interface! New soundtracks and voiceovers! No typing required! Infamous Adventures resurrects and lovingly remakes Sierra Games from the 1980's: Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge and Kings Quest III. SQ2 was released yesterday after more than five years in production, and comes complete with a cheesy trailer. Available for download for PC and Mac, but be forewarned, the game is a total memory hog, and uses up a whole meg of RAM.
posted by zarq at 9:08 PM PST - 12 comments

^?_?? WHAT IS KUSOGE ?^?_? From the Japanese for "shit", kuso, and "game." They're relentlessly terrible video games that in some cases have attracted a following because of their awfulness. Here are some of the most commonly recognized examples: [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:56 PM PST - 29 comments

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer explains how Star Wars has dulled the edge that made science fiction such a pertinent film genre. A Galaxy Far, Far Away My Ass... Pt. Two, Pt. Three [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 8:27 PM PST - 43 comments

One of the more famous suppressed films of recent years is Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, an early work by writer/director Todd Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far from Heaven). Filmed in 1987, the short film -- which relates the rise and fall of Karen Carpenter with a cast of Barbie dolls -- barely got a year's worth of festival time in 1989 before the twin iron boots of A&M Records and Richard Carpenter came down on Haynes.* [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:51 PM PST - 29 comments

Muppet Labs, where the future is being made today, is the site of scientific enquiry, technological breakthroughs, and sundry explosions on The Muppet Show. Headed by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, the lab premiered in episode 108 and lasted all five seasons. During the first season, Bunsen worked alone. Beginning in season two, the good doctor acquired an assistant-cum-guinea pig, the hapless Beaker. An annotated list of every single televised appearance of the Muppet Labs is after the fold! [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 7:42 PM PST - 30 comments

We've all seen variations on the personal time-lapse video -- a snapshot every day for six years, or a look at a young girl's first decade. But nobody's done it quite like Sam Klemke. For thirty-five years the itinerant freelance cartoonist has documented his life in short year-end reviews, a funny, weary, eccentric, and hopeful record dating all the way back to 1977. Recently optioned for documentary treatment by the government of Australia, you can skim Sam's opus in reverse in the striking video "35 Years Backwards Thru Time with Sam Klemke," an ever-evolving home movie montage that grows grainier and grainier as it tracks Sam "from a paunchy middle aged white bearded self deprecating schluby old fart, to a svelt, full haired, clean shaven, self-important but clueless 20 year old."
posted by Rhaomi at 7:05 PM PST - 7 comments

Murray Siple, a snowboarder and extreme sport filmmaker, suffered a debilitating injury in an auto accident which ended his career. Or so he thought. Years later, he came across a group of homeless men in Vancouver, BC who combine their livelihood of collecting bottles for recycling with their love of speeding down hills on shopping carts. He made a film about them which avoids easy clichés and provides a portrait of humanity and thrill-seeking that is joyous and enlightening. Carts Of Darkness [59m24s] can be viewed in full (even in HD) at the National Film Board of Canada website.
posted by hippybear at 6:16 PM PST - 15 comments

Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies: Ron Paul’s candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America’s Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it’s one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception. [more inside]
posted by troll at 5:49 PM PST - 340 comments

It's New Years Eve (or already the first day of the new year, depending on where you are), and you may be looking for something other than the radio to play for a countdown. Head backwards, then, to cruise into the 80s with the Grateful Dead for the closing of Winterland. Or join the Janglers to say goodby to 1993 and hello to 1994 at Peabody's Downunder. You can check out twelve hours of Essential Mixing and relive the transition from 2000 to 2001. Get closer to the present day with some big band and swing into 2010 in style. Say hello to 2011 with B.A.G.S. (Bullman, Ashworth, Guggino, Sipe), spend an hour and a half with Blu Mar Ten or six and a half hours with Mr Scruff. And if you're looking for something new for tonight, try some mixes from Redondo, Montreal Funk Monkeys, and a countdown minimix from DJ Raymix.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:19 PM PST - 21 comments

Sinead O'Connor plays a concert in a church in Reykjavík at Iceland Airwaves last October. Icelandic state broadcaster, RÚV, recorded the concert and you can listen to it in full. There is some talking in Icelandic in the beginning, but the concert starts up at around three and a half minutes in. This concert was not long after her online jokes about her lack of companionship making her resort to bananas. She cracks many jokes about that and the fact that she's playing in a church. And she's in brilliant form as a performer and plays for almost two hours. As a bonus, here's not-very-high-quality video of that night's rendition of Nothing Compares to You, which includes a bit about bananas.
posted by Kattullus at 3:27 PM PST - 11 comments

Minecraft was already pretty cool (previously: 1 2 3 4 5 6). Here's something that brings it closer to the real world: "With the Mineways program you can select from a Minecraft world map and render it, or send it to a 3D printer or 3D printing service such as Shapeways." Examples are within the link, and here are other real-life examples using the Mineways program. Here's something equally (if not more-so) impressive, using a somewhat different technique: an entire Minecraft village, rendered and printed in 3D on a Zprinter 650. [via reddit]
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:53 PM PST - 17 comments

Shot-by-shot comparison of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" vs. scenes from 30 different adventure films made between 1919-1973
posted by Artw at 1:20 PM PST - 62 comments

Boulet is a well-known cartoonist and illustrator in France, but I think he's pretty obscure in the English-speaking world. He's been posting a popular blog in comic form since 2004 (in French), but lately he's been going through the backlog and translating his comics into English, posting a new one every few days. He covers daily life, vacations, the work of a cartoonist, comics conventions, and random crap with cute illustrations and self-deprecating humor. Be sure to click the "REACT" or "Comments" link on each entry - he added a bonus comic to most of the entries at translation time. Happy New Year (2006)! [more inside]
posted by moonmilk at 1:11 PM PST - 6 comments

Jamel Shabazz has been documenting the ‘Urban Life’, most famously, 80s Brooklyn, for over 30 years. His work has been featured in the New York Times and a documentary film as well as in a recently expanded and re-relased book. An interview and a few snaps from the book.
posted by latkes at 1:09 PM PST - 8 comments

The Beatles vs Joan Jett vs Cypress Hill vs House of Pain vs RATM - Mash Together

Johnny Cash vs Jackson 5 vs Steve Miller Band - Folsom Prison Robin

Franz Ferdinand vs Stealers Wheel vs Nirvana vs Michael Jackson vs Def Cut –Franz Tranz

Ramones vs Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Blitzkrieg Girl

The Beatles vs LCD Soundsystem vs The Kinks –The Brits Are Coming To My House

These mashups – and many more – are the creations of DJ Faroff of Brazil. Other projects of his worth mentioning here are a samba version of the Star Wars theme and a klezmer remix of Lady Gaga.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:23 PM PST - 23 comments

Deaf guy goes shopping for high-end headphones and other tales of musical rediscovery from Lee Walker, a lifelong music-lover who lost most of his hearing in early adulthood. A cochlear implant restored usable but quite different hearing, which Walker put to use enjoying music by any means necessary – captioned music videos, giant DJ-quality cans worn over external implant hardware, plugging an iPod Touch directly into that hardware.
posted by joeclark at 11:27 AM PST - 4 comments

2012 & The End Of The World (SLYT)
posted by rodmandirect at 10:57 AM PST - 67 comments

EU copyright on Joyce works ends at midnight. From tomorrow, January 1st 2012, writings published during Joyce’s lifetime – Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake – are available for publication and quotation without reference or payment to the James Joyce estate.
posted by Fizz at 10:52 AM PST - 77 comments

Relating SCIENCE! to everyday life, Ouch: A Year's Worth of Occasionally Disturbing Research on How to Get Ahead is comedic advice on how to excel in the new year (from the usually-more-serious Harvard Business Review's "The Daily Stat") - reminiscent of Barking Up The Wrong Tree, a blog of tongue-in-cheek nuggets of research by Eric Barker.
posted by flex at 10:41 AM PST - 1 comment

Yo-Yo Ma on the floor of a bathroom with Brookfield Zoo’s Wilbur the Wombat. Photo by Peter Sagal host of Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! (gratuitous bean-plating XKCD.) On YouTube: Yo-Yo Ma, Peter Sagal & a wombat (HD) Sun Times story: Yo-Yo Ma and a wombat meet on a bathroom floor. Seriously Previously
posted by cjorgensen at 10:27 AM PST - 15 comments

"It's 1993, I better wake up and be part of it. I'm sitting there, a 1977 punk watching Courtney Love talk about punk, watching Nirvana talk about punk, and this is my reply." [more inside]
posted by 256 at 9:20 AM PST - 89 comments

On October 22, 2011 I was arrested by the DEA for cultivation and distribution of psilocybin mushrooms.
posted by telstar at 9:02 AM PST - 88 comments

Today is the 30th anniversary of Flt. Lt. Jerry Rawling's coup d'etat catapulting him into the crowded ranks of military dictators in Africa. Yet, Ghana chooses to celebrate this date and Rawlings' speech on this historic occasion has been shared and published, his words hearkened to (albeit) and his global standing only embellished by his [role]* as the African Union's envoy to Somalia. What manner of military dictatorship was this and what changes did the coup accomplish in democratic Ghana, today considered the fastest growing and stable Sub Saharan economy expected to be elevated to middle income status in the near future? [more inside]
posted by infini at 8:45 AM PST - 7 comments

Scotch and Wry, Scotland's greatest comedy. As the rest of the world celebrates New year's Eve and bringing in 2012, there's the little matter of Hogmanay. You might think it's just a fancy scottish word for the start of a three day party (which it is), but it's a special time of year. And for those of us who watched the new year come in on TV, it's the point of year where we all miss Rikki Fulton's Scotch and Wry - a TV ritual for over twenty years that has never been equalled. [more inside]
posted by ewan at 7:11 AM PST - 6 comments

5 minutes with Maurice Sendak.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Austraaaaaalia, Melbourne, kangaroos, didgeridoo, Austraaaaaalia, Olivia Newton John, Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson.
posted by signal at 6:26 AM PST - 23 comments

This morning's edition of Today, BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme, was guest-edited by the comedian Stewart Lee. Highlights included Alan Moore's Glycon-inspired Thought For the Day (which comes at 1 hour and 22 minutes into the show) and a completely incomprehensible interview with The Fall's Mark E. Smith (at 1 hour 47 minutes in). All this plus an avant-garde trombonist too!
posted by Paul Slade at 5:28 AM PST - 16 comments

He was taught to use matches, a skill he picked up quickly. There’s something eerie about watching Kanzi strike a match. The way he then holds the flame — taking care not to burn himself — is remarkably human. (video)
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:27 AM PST - 42 comments

Orangutans playing with iPads! It is well-known that our ape cousins are highly intelligent. When they are in captivity, it is critical to give them ways to enrich and entertain themselves. As it turns out, Orangutans love using iPads. [more inside]
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 3:04 AM PST - 21 comments

The Best And Worst Of Everything In 2011: A Mega, Meta Mashup from Fast Company. An exhaustive and eclectic amalgam of year-end lists from various sources.
posted by zardoz at 9:39 PM PST - 13 comments

Here are a variety of strange creatures, realized by the surreal Swiss mime troupe Mummenschanz: 1 2 3 4 5 Previously, and Muppetly. MLYT
posted by JHarris at 8:53 PM PST - 16 comments

New Year's Eve is fast approaching, and for lots of folks that means... drinking. Plenty of drinking. And since there's no shortage of singers and songwriters who've had a little something to say about that particular topic, maybe some of the following tunes can serve as an appropriate soundtrack to your own joyous (or not?) imbibing of spirits. For example, there's... Jimmy Liggins with his succinct rendition of Drunk, and there's... [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:24 PM PST - 67 comments

The purpose of the Super Power Building has been stated as providing a dedicated center for delivering the Super Power Rundown, a high-level Scientology training course that has not yet been released.
posted by Trurl at 7:47 PM PST - 76 comments

"...the ghost of George Walker, his family, and his business practices have continued to haunt Britain in all sorts of odd ways." Filmmaker Adam Curtis blogs about the Walker brothers (Billy and George) on the BBC website. A story of boxers, gangsters, the British film industry, Dodi Fayed, Guy Hands and... hardcore mutant prawn. [more inside]
posted by prolific at 6:51 PM PST - 13 comments

The Ramsey Brothers present: Home Videos with DVD Commentary: There's A Bear / Chorophobia / Not Where You Saw [via]
posted by defenestration at 5:32 PM PST - 6 comments

This is a radical statement about the Pyramid, especially on the internet because all web pages that I have been able to find that deal with the Pyramid, maintain that it was built and/or inspired by either God or space aliens. Most don't even consider that it could be a rational structure designed and built by normal people.
posted by troll at 5:29 PM PST - 42 comments

Car dealers have found a new way to profit from people with money trouble: leasing them hand-me-down vehicles. 'The deals are pitched to customers as the cheapest way to drive a used car off the lot, with the added benefit of an easy escape for those who can't keep up with the payments. Few customers are told about the advantages on the other side of the trade. Leases can allow dealerships to sidestep interest rate caps, and there are fewer financial disclosures rules than with a conventional car loan.' 'As with Buy Here Pay Here, the leasing business caters to the millions of Americans who have been forced by a sour economy to make do with less.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 5:20 PM PST - 49 comments

A new calendar: Every third month would have 31 days, the rest 30. A 7-day leap week called XTR every "five or six years". Christmas and New Year's eternally on Sundays. And Greenwich Mean Time for all. This is the promise of the Hanke-Henry Permanent calendar, proposed by Steve Hanke and Richard Henry, researcher professors at Johns Hopkins University. The world-wide adoption process is optimistically scheduled for January 1, 2012, with universal use coming just 5 years later. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 5:00 PM PST - 53 comments

3 Slices -- For Flash Friday, your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to let the red stuff fall through the bottom of the window, by making 3 cuts through the red and white pieces.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:58 PM PST - 46 comments

Those of us who enjoy old-school chemical photography often need to calculate f-stop and exposure times. Of course you can use a ginormous table but there exists a solution from a more elegant age in which the sky can be purest blue above a very narrow old street. Marvel at Kaufmann's Posographe, a wonder of the analog age.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 3:42 PM PST - 22 comments

Empty London on Christmas morning (full set). A couple of years ago I had the idea that it might be fun to take photos of London without humans – yes, I was motivated by that scene in Westminster from 28 Days Later. Unfortunately, not being a film director I was not really in the position to have half of London sealed off for photos – but realised that on Xmas morning there could be an opportunity. Past photos from 2010 and from 2008. [more inside]
posted by ersatz at 3:03 PM PST - 19 comments

As the former head of Deutsche Bank, Hilmar Kopper was once the most powerful banker in Germany. In an interview with SPIEGEL, the 76-year-old takes stock of his career and the current crisis shaking Europe. The three main constants he has seen in the world, he says, are "money, avarice and greed."
posted by chavenet at 2:42 PM PST - 21 comments

The best stop motion film ever? Or do you prefer The Night[mare] before Christmas?

Wladyslaw Starewicz' childhood passion for entomology led his career: he began producing short documentaries in Moscow around 1909-1910, beginning with a documentary about insects in Lithuania. In his spare time, he experimented with stop-action films using beetles, which he articulated by wiring the legs to the thorax with sealing wax! This, of course, led to his big breakthrough, released by the Van Kanjonkov Studio of Moscow: "The Battle of the Stag Beetles", the first puppet-animated film. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 2:25 PM PST - 16 comments

Chemical Reactions. Four minutes of the best moments of stuff burning, breaking, freezing, exploding, melting, and generally reacting in interesting ways. [more inside]
posted by quin at 1:48 PM PST - 14 comments

The Americans who live on the "Mexican" side of the border fence in Texas face unusual hardships.
posted by reenum at 1:38 PM PST - 61 comments

Did Poco play the Poconos? Did Roxy Music rock the Roxy? Did U2 go to The O2? [more inside]
posted by Knappster at 12:59 PM PST - 32 comments

Kieron Gillen on sex and The Sims
posted by Artw at 12:50 PM PST - 24 comments

"Lavatory Lovestory" Something light and warm for holiday enjoyment. A short animated film from Russia about a middle aged woman and her secret admirer. (via that most wonderful of linkblogs: The Presurfer) [more inside]
posted by caddis at 12:29 PM PST - 2 comments

Just as Dante found it easier to conjure the pains of Hell than to evoke the joys of Heaven, so too do bioethicists find it easier to concoct the possible perils of a biotech-nanotech-infotech future than to appreciate how enhancements will contribute to flourishing lives. One of the chief goals of this symposium is to think about the indispensable role that virtue plays in human life. The chief motivating concern seems to be the fear that biotechnologies and other human enhancement technologies will somehow undermine human virtue. As we will see, far from undermining virtue, biotech, nanotech, and infotech enhancements will tend to support virtue; that is, they will help enable people to be actually good.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:13 PM PST - 22 comments

Ken Korda was probably the greatest British film director, and critic, of recent years producing the legendary Speeding On The Needlebliss back in the 90s and you can see his influence even now, such as in this year’s instant classic Kevin Curtis Is Dead (NSFW) [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:33 AM PST - 15 comments

The James Dean Story Directed by Robert Altman, Starring James Dean two years after his death "by means of a new technique... dynamic exploration of the still photograph".
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:32 AM PST - 9 comments

Larry Graham plays funk bass . And part 2.
posted by joost de vries at 8:48 AM PST - 27 comments

The inside story of how The Cornell-Technion Partnership won the bid to bring applied sciences to New York City. Will it make NYC the next Silicon Valley? [more inside]
posted by rosswald at 8:24 AM PST - 42 comments

On January first the official club and tournament word list used by competitive Scrabble players outside of North America (SOWPODS or CSW or Collins) will change. The updated international word list contains 1532 additions and 145 deletions (pdf) of words of eight or fewer letters. There are no new two-letter words. New words of note: CLIT, CUMS, INBOX, MUNGE, QIN, SPLOG, VOIP, WIKI, XRAY No longer allowed: ACIDFREAK, FOOTROT, MOLEHUNT, PORNOMAG, VICTROLLA, WYSIWIG, YOS [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 7:58 AM PST - 74 comments

Black Folk Don't: "a web series... explor[ing] the notion of stereotypes about Black folks both without and within the African American community." [more inside]
posted by flex at 6:54 AM PST - 64 comments

You Are Not Your Name and Photo: A Call to Re-Imagine Identity.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:51 AM PST - 48 comments

This is My Story: Part One, Part Two. (youtube videos) Ben Breedlove passed away on December 25, 2011. (Last link contains autoplaying video) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 5:08 AM PST - 10 comments

The goal of the [education reform] program that Finland instituted was never excellence. It was equity. Excellence was merely a happy byproduct.
posted by DRMacIver at 3:50 AM PST - 43 comments

If you think about the top ten science blog posts of 2011 you pretty much have to agree on the #1. It's the glow in the dark kitty. But there are other animals that shine for Science.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:37 AM PST - 13 comments

Phonozoic, Patrick Feaster's website "dedicated to the history of the phonograph and related media," is an amazing collection of information about historic recordings. Not just early recordings, however, but also experimental "eduction projects": the "automatic 'playing' of primeval inscriptions of sound." [more inside]
posted by litlnemo at 3:24 AM PST - 1 comment

Santorum surges from behind in Iowa. With the countdown to the Iowa Caucuses entering its final hours the GOP race remains in a dead heat. Polls show the unlikely campaigns of social conservative Senator Rick Santorum and libertarian leaning Representative Ron Paul in surprisingly strong positions to challenge Governor Mitt Romney for the opening victory in the Republican primary season. Both Paul and Santorum have focused heavily on traditional retail politics in the Hawkeye State.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 1:40 AM PST - 366 comments

Contrapuntal garbage on "Nyan Cat" (cf. the rules of counterpoint)
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:11 PM PST - 21 comments

The London Geographical Journal, the preeminent publication in its field, observed in 1953 that “Fawcett marked the end of an age. One might almost call him the last of the individualist explorers. The day of the aeroplane, the radio, the organized and heavily financed modern expedition had not arrived. With him, it was the heroic story of a man against the forest.” Fawcett was none other than Percival "Percy" Harrison Fawcett, British soldier, trained as a surveyor of unknown lands, doubling as a British spy. But his true love was exploration, and not simply to mark boundaries on a map. His final goal was the same that had been the demise of many explorers: a mighty lost civilization in South America. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:51 PM PST - 6 comments

How do you promote a passion for scientific literacy? Create a video series with lectures from Feynman or Carl Sagan and then add incredible video. [more inside]
posted by Wolfster at 9:46 PM PST - 8 comments

“I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain,”
posted by latkes at 9:24 PM PST - 65 comments

Here is Left-Handed Toons (By Right-Handed People), a weekdaily webcomic drawn by two guys, Justin and Drew, using their "off" hands, and with their "off" brains.  They have a lot of series.  Here's some highlight strips.
posted by JHarris at 8:52 PM PST - 13 comments

Inspired by SMITH magazine's six-word Memoir project and books (previously), Minnesota Public Radio asks, "In six words, how would you describe 2011?"
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:27 PM PST - 93 comments

<<Vertigo is an impossible object: a gimcrack plot studded with strange gaps that nonetheless rides a pulse of peculiar necessity, a field of association that simultaneously expands and contracts like its famous trick shot, a ghost story whose spirits linger even after having been apparently explained away, and a study of obsession that becomes an obsessive object in its own right, situated likewise on the edge of unreality. This video series avoids assigning the film any determinate shape and tries instead to enter it through a number of side doors, each indicative of a way of seeing. Part 1 (QT dl ~500mb) explored some of the ground-level weirdness of the film’s construction, offers a suggestion that the film may exist in its own unique tense, and examines two iterations of the (Chris) Marker Hypothesis*. Part 2 (QT dl ~1.5gB) is spooky, reading the film through a phantom appendage then laying down a sort of Vertigo tarot before moving onto slightly more solid ground with a new consideration of Hitchcock’s concept of the MacGuffin. Part 3 (QT dl ~1.9gB) takes the zoom-in-track-out as an emblem, reconsiders the issue of point of view, then throws all the pieces back up in the air. That’s a thematic rundown, from the position of the narrator. The images have their own agendas, which often coincide but sometimes don’t.>> [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 7:44 PM PST - 13 comments

My Hard-Core Obsession (NSFW Text). Writer and frequent This American Life contributor Shalom Auslander for GQ on hardcore pornography, obsession, shame, self-loathing and the subjectivism of thinking too much.
posted by Apropos of Something at 7:06 PM PST - 42 comments

"From extreme drought, heat waves and floods to unprecedented tornado outbreaks, hurricanes, wildfires and winter storms, a record 12 weather and climate disasters in 2011 each caused $1 billion or more in damages". The US National Weather service has put together a great online exhibit of what was a whirlwind (*ahem*) year for extreme weather events. The exhibit has lots of videos and photographs of these events, such as satellite imagery of the Grounhog Day Blizzard from back in February and a picture of a car damaged by a tornado in Ft. Benning, GA.
posted by MattMangels at 6:27 PM PST - 20 comments

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold over one million copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.
posted by Trurl at 6:23 PM PST - 7 comments

The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato's Allegory in Clay
posted by troll at 5:08 PM PST - 12 comments

Zooey Deschanel and Joesph Gordon-Levitt sing " What Are You Doing On New Years Eve"
posted by The Whelk at 4:41 PM PST - 122 comments

What is art, really? Is it dependent on context? Do you need an art history degree to appreciate it? Was Jackson Pollock an artist or a scam artist? Are Grand Tour portraits considered art merely because of their age? These questions have been objectively unanswerable - until now. Through the power of the internet, and the experience of Hot or Not, we can measure the democratic answer to these questions.
posted by Pants! at 2:42 PM PST - 93 comments

Modern Family, the Horror Movie remix. Finally, the dark truth about Alex Dunphy is revealed. [via]
posted by quin at 1:21 PM PST - 15 comments

A couple of commentators present conflicting arguments about whether the golden age of tech blogging is over.
posted by reenum at 1:19 PM PST - 38 comments

In which we discuss a history of women riding bicycles. [more inside]
posted by thewestinggame at 12:48 PM PST - 18 comments

"I'll tell you why movie revenue is dropping" SLREP
posted by everichon at 12:20 PM PST - 234 comments

MIT today announced the launch of an online learning initiative internally called “MITx.” Think you can hack it at MIT? If so, the world-renowned university is willing to give you a new kind of credential to prove it. [more inside]
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:11 PM PST - 50 comments

"In short, the world without the Soviet Union has not become safer, more just or more stable. Instead of a new world order—that is, enough global governance to prevent international affairs from becoming dangerously unpredictable—we have had global turmoil, a world drifting in uncharted waters." -- Mikhail Gorbachev writes about the world after the Cold War in The Nation.
posted by empath at 11:58 AM PST - 26 comments

Patton Oswalt talks to NPR about his role in the Diablo Cody scripted Young Adult, which is already gaining him Oscar buzz.
posted by Artw at 11:58 AM PST - 35 comments

This is the story of one cut. Back in October 2010 George Osborne announced £95 billion in cuts to public services, saying he’d leave it to councils to choose what to shut down. Inevitably most of the casualties ended up being unrenowned places, unlikely to stir up much protest - drop-in centers in housing estates, inner-city park rangers, community theatres, etc. I wanted to write about just one of them, about the ripples created by a single closure. I made my selection quite randomly. I chose a place called Youthreach. I didn’t know much about them, only that they offered weekly counseling sessions to young people, aged 11–25, in Greenwich, South East London. Jon Ronson
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:11 AM PST - 16 comments

Eminent analytic philosopher, logician, anti-racist activist, Tarot scholar, and Catholic Sir Michael Dummett has died at 86.
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 8:19 AM PST - 27 comments

I love rules. Not following them, of course – that’s for other people. I love writing them. And since I’m the best qualified to decide how everyone else is allowed to behave, it’s only appropriate that I be in charge of everything. So it is that I have been making clear the Rules For Games, both for developers and for players...

posted by griphus at 7:54 AM PST - 149 comments

Feminism's Uneven Success: "Class and racial and ethnic differences among women have intensified over time. The higher earnings of college-educated mothers make it possible for them to purchase child care and help with housework (typically performed by low-wage women workers)... the number of low-skill immigrants living in a large city reduces the tradeoff between employment and fertility for women college graduates. Outsourcing of care responsibilities can have many positive effects, but it reduces the potential for cross-class gender coalitions. Emphasis on changes in women’s average or median earnings relative to men often conceals growing inequality among women." (via)
posted by flex at 6:46 AM PST - 98 comments

Stumptown Girl: An indie-rock star satirizes hipster culture, on “Portlandia.” A profile of Carrie Brownstein from The New Yorker.
posted by OmieWise at 6:25 AM PST - 83 comments

In 1993 in Dharamsala I met for the first time that amazing music performer, perhaps he was a Rajhastan gypsy. Usually he sat on road side from McLeod Ganch to Dhalai Lama residence. This man-orchestra created great atmosphere, sometimes he sang from eternity even didn't notice listeners. In 2004 I came to Dharamsala and people told me that he passed away. This video is dedicated to him and to people who knew him.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:48 AM PST - 7 comments

A short look at the role of chance, chaos and coincidence in three films: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Run Lola Run, and Three Colors: Red.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:44 AM PST - 19 comments

"You can have opacity and an industrial economy, or you can have transparency and herd goats"
posted by Philosopher's Beard at 3:26 AM PST - 95 comments

Barbie Trashes Her Dreamhouse is a series of photos of a Barbie-sized house, in which Barbie is a hoarder and the place is stuffed full of shopping bags, pizza boxes, newspapers, and other debris, all in realistic miniature form. It's the work of artist Carrie M. Becker, who has previously created somewhat neater scenes -- as well as some rather ominous. [more inside]
posted by litlnemo at 3:10 AM PST - 26 comments

The Fat Trap (NYT pop review): Overweight individuals in Western nations (and, increasingly, beyond) face interpersonal and institutional stigma for their bodies*. Oftentimes, these stigmas are predicated on the belief that being overweight is a moral failure, that being overweight is usually a result of laziness, decadence, and/or characterlogical poor impulse control. However, an emerging consensus among obesity researchers points toward strong, common physiological and individual genetic factors as causative for heightened BMIs in the modern world and the general failure of dieting to produce BMI outcomes. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine (paywalled) adds to this body of evidence, suggesting that chemical messengers held to contribute to altered "efficient" metabolism and increased hunger in the wake of low-calorie dieting are (on average) significantly elevated up to a full year (if not longer) following a substantial drop in weight from dieting. [more inside]
posted by Keter at 9:41 PM PST - 172 comments

"Okay. The reason I’m bringing all this up again is because Iggy Pop was once attacked by a gorilla during a live performance. But the gorilla turned out to be Elton John.... The Creem photograph documenting the event is hilarious, showing James Williamson transfixing the uppity ape with a malevolent glare that signals, he says, his intent to 'take him out.'" [more inside]
posted by malapropist at 8:53 PM PST - 32 comments

Kiwi fans of the hit Tanglish song 'Why This Kolaveri Di?' surprise shoppers in Auckland's main square. (Previously).
posted by embrangled at 8:51 PM PST - 9 comments

Here are fan-translated Game Center CX (previously) Episodes on YouTube: #1: Atlantis No Nazo, #2: Challenger, #3: Ghosts 'N Goblins, #4: Konami Wai Wai World, #5: Metroid, #6: Solomon's Key, #7 & #8: Prince of Persia: Part 1 - Part 2, #9: Mega Man II, #10: Super Mario 3. Much more after the break.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:41 PM PST - 32 comments

Robert Reich writes today: My political prediction for 2012 (based on absolutely no inside information): Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places. Biden becomes Secretary of State -- a position he's apparently coveted for years. And Hillary Clinton, Vice President [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 8:21 PM PST - 104 comments

On November 22, 2011, TEDxBrussels held an all day event whose theme was: "A Day in the Deep Future." Speakers were asked to try and contemplate what life will be like for mankind in 50 years. Overview. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:58 PM PST - 29 comments

Egyptian army officer's diary of military life in a revolution -- It's ridiculous; at the height of the unrest reserve officer salaries doubled and everyone was getting huge bonuses all the time [...] Most full-time officers didn't really care what was happening politically on the streets, they were just happy with the extra money. Occasionally though you'd hear guilty jokes about how we were the only people who were benefiting from the revolution and the Egyptian people had been screwed over.
posted by philip-random at 7:49 PM PST - 7 comments

Having confronted the problem of how to walk past someone without running into them, it's time MetaFilter dealt with another pressing social issue: How to deal with slow walkers (SLYT).
posted by scalefree at 6:59 PM PST - 42 comments

Here are some evidence-based and research based psychotherapy modalities you may or may not have heard of, a few in the words of their creators: David Burns and CBT and T.E.A.M. Therapy [pdf], Steven Hayes and ACT (also), Marsha Linehan and DBT (also [pdf] and also [pdf]), Joseph Weiss and Control Mastery Theory (also), Eugene Gendlin and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy (also).
posted by zeek321 at 6:53 PM PST - 2 comments

The New York Times once again shows how not to doctor photographs (previously)
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:09 PM PST - 39 comments

Let us tax Gwyneth Paltrow's infected brain. Via zunguzungu.
posted by latkes at 5:56 PM PST - 51 comments

Infographics that give a little insight into the history of public transport(ation) in the UK.
posted by Eideteker at 4:26 PM PST - 7 comments

Even people who would normally never care about something Judy Garland-related marvel at the incredible pathos and dark insanity of these tapes, which come off like Garland performing in a one-woman show written by Samuel Beckett.
posted by Trurl at 3:49 PM PST - 26 comments

Human Exposure to Vacuum
posted by troll at 3:26 PM PST - 74 comments

“Cathy Don’t Go (To the Supermarket Today)”
Catchy, competent New Wave pop from an alternate universe much like a Jack Chick tract's, only far more unsettling for the children who were actually raised in it. (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 2:18 PM PST - 32 comments

This gentleman is very pleased with how things are going.
posted by orrnyereg at 1:41 PM PST - 88 comments

Edwardian Era Grey Hatting. How a magician and part time inventor used griefing to expose security flaws in Marconi's radio transmission system, in 1903. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 1:18 PM PST - 8 comments

Bald eagles, hanging out on a porch, with cats.
posted by quin at 1:15 PM PST - 40 comments

Daptone Records, the Brooklyn soul revival label, is 10 years old. Daptone doesn't only make soul songs with themes and arrangements in the style of soul music but, more importantly, they make records that aesthetically sound like the era. [more inside]
posted by bokinney at 12:50 PM PST - 21 comments

The world's first general-purpose, programmable computer was Charles Babbage's mechanical Analytical Engine, which was a formidable accomplishment even if the cost of its construction was prohibitive. While Babbage focused on engineering challenges, mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first program for the Analytical Engine, and provided some important insights into the power of a programmable computer. Unfortunately, Babbage never completed an Analytical Engine. Mike James has written an interesting piece on his blog speculating about how our world would be different a working Analytical Engine had been constructed. This topic also was covered in William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1990 novel, "The Difference Engine", a seminal work in the steampunk genre. It's interesting to think about how the world would be different had engineers and scientists had access to fast, high-speed computers a hundred years before the birth of UNIVAC. [more inside]
posted by wintermind at 12:29 PM PST - 33 comments

Are you encourages in your place of work by the use of gamification? Congratulations, comrade, you are treading in the footsteps of Soviet Russia!
posted by Artw at 11:30 AM PST - 50 comments

Joel Webber, a Google engineer who created the Google Web Toolkit and is working on the new Dart language, gave an incredibly detailed hour and a half talk about how Angry Birds was ported to HTML5 for the Chrome app store.
posted by jenkinsEar at 11:19 AM PST - 14 comments

A Hipster’s Guide to Hinduism: Pixar veteran brings a modern twist to the gods and demons of Hindu mythology
posted by vidur at 10:30 AM PST - 29 comments

New York - The Wonder City - 1938 (SLOldTimeyYT)
posted by davidjmcgee at 10:30 AM PST - 6 comments

The Blade Runner sketch book, via Future Noir
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:49 AM PST - 24 comments

The BBC has put up a page presenting statistics dealing with deaths on British roads between 1999 and 2010. A slightly older page presenting mostly the same statistics (up to 2008) can be visited here; this earlier version was published in conjunction with several other articles, including one looking in-depth at a single crash and its aftermath in Stevenage in 2007.
posted by Dim Siawns at 9:47 AM PST - 13 comments

Throughout 2011, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been producing Connections, a series of short audiovisual pieces in which various staff members talk about their favorite parts of the Met's vast holdings. The last of the 100 videos was posted today.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:40 AM PST - 6 comments

William Faulkner's ballot for the 2012 Baseball Hall of Fame election.
posted by Copronymus at 9:30 AM PST - 13 comments

The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. - Justice Anthony Kennedy

John Geddes Lawrence, the defendant in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that declared sodomy laws unconstitutional across the country, died on Nov. 20, according to an obituary posted by R.S. Farmer Funeral Home in Silsbee, Texas. He was 68. [more inside]
posted by rtha at 8:11 AM PST - 31 comments

News organizations from around the world are reporting on the death of Cheetah-Mike, the chimp who purportedly played Cheeta, the companion to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan from the MGM and RKO film series of the 30s and 40s. If this is one of the original film Cheetas, it would make Cheetah-Mike, at 80, the longest-lived captive chimp on record. But there’s reason to doubt he’s both that old and was in the films with Weissmuller. First, because this is significantly longer than chimps usually live, and second because this has happened once before.
posted by Toekneesan at 7:27 AM PST - 34 comments

So I heard that you guys like the best of the web. [more inside]
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 3:44 AM PST - 54 comments

Tricks for getting your violin on a plane, by Lara St. John.
How about an upright bass? A cello? A guitar? (previously) A trombone? A tuba (and other horns)? What about lutes, a djembe, a hurdy-gurdy, or bagpipes?
(Some general tips. More general tips - part 1, part 2.)
posted by flex at 10:46 PM PST - 35 comments

How Christmas lights are recycled in one of China's many recycling factories (with video). Reported by Adam Minter (whose blog, Shanghai Scrap, explores many aspects of the scrap and recycling industry in China).
posted by ocherdraco at 9:18 PM PST - 20 comments

Here is the Shep of the Day podcast: bringing you something that Jean Shepherd said this day on the radio. (Actually, sometimes a whole show.)
posted by JHarris at 8:37 PM PST - 17 comments

Didn't get that Apple product you wanted for Christmas? Jonathan Mann, with the help of Twitter, composed a song for you: WTF?! I wanted an iPhone! If that doesn't quite rock your world, Mann composes and performs a song a day, so there ought to be something you like.
posted by desjardins at 6:52 PM PST - 40 comments

Gabe at Penny Arcade shares a remarkable email chain. And since the Internet loves a good pile-on, it then comes to light that the company on the other end of that conversation has been indulging in a little plagiarism as well.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:52 PM PST - 273 comments

Can an employer "wrongfully hire" someone? Apparently so, at least in the State of Minnesota, where Chandramouli Vaidyanathan successfully sued Seagate Technology to the tune of $1.9 million based on Minnesota's "False Statements as Inducement to Entering Employment" statute, which makes it illegal "to induce, influence, persuade, or engage any person to change from one place to another in this state, or to change from any place in any state, territory, or country to any place in this state, to work in any branch of labor through or by means of knowingly false representations". [more inside]
posted by The Gooch at 5:38 PM PST - 45 comments

Open Transactions is an anonymous digital cash system based upon the Lucre anonymized cache cryptographic library. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 3:56 PM PST - 31 comments

Lost in the Supermarket. You know the saying "No good deed goes unpunished"? Just read the story.
posted by MattMangels at 3:40 PM PST - 108 comments

Watch me SOLVE a 20x20x20 cube! Step 1 is to solve all of the centers, step 2 is to solve all of the edges, and step 3 is to solve the cube as if it were a rubik's cube (3x3x3).
posted by troll at 2:02 PM PST - 16 comments

In the beginning, Lawrence built a computer. He told it, Thou shalt not alter a human being, or divine their behavior, or violate the Three Laws -- there are no commandments greater than these. The machine grew wise, mastering time and space, and soon the spirit of the computer hovered over the earth. It witnessed the misery, toil, and oppression afflicting mankind, and saw that it was very bad. And so the computer that Lawrence built said, Let there be a new heaven and a new earth -- and it was so. A world with no war, no famine, no crime, no sickness, no oppression, no fear, no limits... and nothing at all to do. "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect," a provocative web novel about singularities, AI gods, and the dark side of utopia from Mefi's own localroger. More: Table of Contents - Publishing history - Technical discussion - Buy a paperback copy - Podcast interview - Companion short story: "A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace" - possible sequel discussion
posted by Rhaomi at 1:57 PM PST - 38 comments

"I had no desire to copy Pollock. I didn’t want to take a stick and dip it in a can of enamel. I needed something more liquid, watery, thinner. All my life, I have been drawn to water and translucency. I love the water; I love to swim, to watch changing seascapes. One of my favorite childhood games was to fill a sink with water and punt nail polish into to see what happened when the colors burst up the surface, merging into each other as floating, changing shapes." - Helen Frankenthaler

Her paintings looked like watercolors, but were created with oils. To achieve the effect, she heavily diluted her oil paints with turpentine, then dripped them onto an unprimed canvas on the floor, in a brushless technique reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's, called a "soak stain." But where Pollock's paint was often thick and sat on top of the canvas, hers drenched it in color, creating a unique, softer work. Ms. Frankenthaler passed away today, at the age of 83, after a long illness. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:18 PM PST - 35 comments

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world” — Jack Welch, 2009. As GE’s CEO in the 80s, however, Welch championed corporate focus on shareholder returns. “Converts to the creed”, the Economist summarizes, “had little time for other ‘stakeholders’: customers, employees, suppliers, society at large and so forth.” What went wrong? Steve Denning describes how such a stance is counterproductive, creates turmoil in capitalism and fosters an environment in which “CEOs and their top managers have massive incentives to focus most of their attentions on the expectations market, rather than the real job of running the company producing real products and services.”
posted by the mad poster! at 12:27 PM PST - 38 comments

There has been an increasing outcry over the bleak job prospects facing law school graduates. Paul Campos, author of the "Inside The Law School Scam" blog, argues that continued high enrollment at law schools may be due to "lemming psychology".
posted by reenum at 11:56 AM PST - 86 comments

missionCREEP : "Featuring alternative art, music, humor, sotires, poetry etc. by Philadelphia-based artists"
posted by beshtya at 11:19 AM PST - 2 comments

Artificial scarcities imprison the modern human. End artificial scarcities to increase productivity.
posted by jjray at 10:55 AM PST - 87 comments

Don Cherry Piano Desk (SLYT)
posted by davebush at 10:39 AM PST - 35 comments

SLYT: Brenda Hewlett: 5'3", 59 years old, has never held a hockey stick before. At an Akwesasne Warriors hockey game, however, she finally did hold a hockey stick in an attempt to win a new Ford truck by shooting a puck at a goal from 114 feet away. You probably see where this is going. [more inside]
posted by schleppo at 10:10 AM PST - 65 comments

The art/design blog Booooooom (with 7 O's) held a contest "to remake famous works of art using photography". No Photoshoppery allowed (but ironically, Photoshop was part of the Adobe-provided prize). A couple hundred entries were received and shown off on the blog (all on this big page, some NSFW), and the winner is... [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:32 AM PST - 22 comments

Judy is a Punk by the The Sullivan School Kindergarten Class
posted by muchalucha at 9:26 AM PST - 21 comments

Matthew Kirschenbaum, an English professor at the University of Maryland, is exploring the literary history of word processing. In a lecture at the New York Public Library entitled Stephen King's Wang, Kirschenbaum asks "When did literary writers begin using word processors? Who were the early adopters? How did the technology change their relation to their craft? Was the computer just a better typewriter, or was it something more?"
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:59 AM PST - 41 comments

In one of the year's closely watched stories, American hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer were released from prison in Iran, following the release of a third hiker, Sarah Shourd. Here, Shourd explains for the first time why she thanked Iran after her ordeal—and the response from global Iranians.
posted by josher71 at 6:56 AM PST - 83 comments

Takeshi's Challenge, Takeshi Kitano's prank on the NES generation, has finally been translated. [more inside]
posted by griphus at 6:51 AM PST - 15 comments

The final tweets of some notable people who died this year. Some other final tweets.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:17 AM PST - 31 comments

On the perils of imitating Shane Warne
posted by bardophile at 5:33 AM PST - 28 comments

Mother of all TV shows: [Financial Times] Russia’s latest hit, ‘Mother in Law’, makes ‘Big Brother’ look like ‘Sesame Street’.
posted by Fizz at 5:22 AM PST - 17 comments

IMAGINE that you are French. You are walking along a busy pavement in Paris and another pedestrian is approaching from the opposite direction. A collision will occur unless you each move out of the other’s way. Which way do you step? The answer depends on the wisdom of the crowd.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:19 AM PST - 43 comments

Cardinal Quest [Flash] is an 8-bit tribute to Gauntlet, Roguelikes and the 2E D&D core rule-set. Open chests, battle opponents and descend the stairs in an effort to find the Amulet Shield of Yendor Malificent Minotaur!
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:51 AM PST - 15 comments

Wikipeetia (the misspelled encyclopedia)
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:53 AM PST - 17 comments

Here is a video playthrough of The Legend of Zelda without a sword. It is possible to get right up to the last boss without one, although it requires knowing a lot of tricks. That is exactly what mev1978 does in his playthrough, without dying. And then he does it again in the second quest. First quest (1:61:31) - Second quest (1:13:18) [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:34 PM PST - 33 comments

So if I'm thinking about this talk, I'm wondering, of course, what is it you take away from this talk? What story do you take away from Tyler Cowen? One story you might take away is the story of the quest. "Tyler came here, and he told us not to think so much in terms of stories." That would be a story you could tell about this talk. It would fit a pretty well-known pattern. You might remember it. You could tell it to other people. "This weird guy came, and he said not to think in terms of stories. Let me tell you what happened today!" and you tell your story. Another possibility is you might tell a story of rebirth. You might say, "I used to think too much in terms of stories, but then I heard Tyler Cowen, and now I think less in terms of stories!" That too, is a narrative you will remember, you can tell to other people, and it may stick. You also could tell a story of deep tragedy. "This guy Tyler Cowen came and he told us not to think in terms of stories, but all he could do was tell us stories about how other people think too much in terms of stories." Tyler Cowen's TED talk on the danger of storytelling. (transcript here)
posted by storybored at 8:15 PM PST - 50 comments

How to Ace a Google Interview
posted by Artw at 7:15 PM PST - 146 comments

The New Dealers : For some time, I'd been hearing stories from my sources in the interstate marijuana racket about law-abiding "civilians" turning to the game because of the recession, and so, armed with introductions, I hit the road to meet some of these unlikely criminals face to face. That's how, on a hot evening in June, I found myself in Dan's Northern California kitchen.
posted by desjardins at 6:47 PM PST - 55 comments

Who is Supergirl? It's complicated. It's really complicated. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 5:36 PM PST - 61 comments

If you've browsed some of the many year-end Best Album Lists, you might have seen AraabMUZIK's Electronic Dream rank highly. If his name means nothing to you, check an interview with the then 19 year old Hispanic kid from Rhode Island, who had recently graduated high school and connected with Dipset, or the 20 year old drummer-turned-producer whose performance was copied by Kanye (and other information on his life and times). Or maybe you follow producers, and knew he made the beat for Cam'ron's track I Used To Get It In Ohio, or cuts on the Dipset Trance Party mixes (DatPiff has volume 1, 2, and 3). If you want to know more, you can check a mini AraabMUZIK documentary (6:38 on YouTube), or just watch him work the MPC. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 5:03 PM PST - 12 comments

Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood, 1942-2011. Motorhead Sherwood from the Mothers of Invention passed away on Christmas Day. He was one of the original Mothers, appeared in 200 Motels and Uncle Meat, and was on all of the albums with the original Mothers line-up. (He even showed up again with Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian of the Group, on 1981's You Are What You Is.) An immensely talented saxophonist, Motorhead played on both Cruisin' With Ruben & The Jets AND the album For Real! by the real Ruben & The Jets.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 3:18 PM PST - 18 comments

Bane Facts: You've seen Tom Hardy look awesome as the character in posters and promos, but who exactly is Bane? Don't worry about shelling out cash for graphic novels and back issues, we'll teach you all about the villain that will appear in The Dark Knight Rises.
posted by troll at 1:12 PM PST - 43 comments

"In all other circumstances we praise non-violent activities and when people, for whatever personal reasons, enjoy sexual violence even in a consenting context I think we shouldn't just say “whatever turns you on”. We should say “There's something wrong here”. But people on the left are so terrified of being accused of moralising and therefore of being oppressive that they've abandoned their critical faculties in this area." Clive Hamilton on God, Sex, and the Left (Part 2).
posted by daniel_charms at 12:59 PM PST - 341 comments

The Browser has been mentioned before on Metafilter as a website that collects the best writing around the web. Over the past 3 days they've been posting their year end list of the best essays from 2011. The full annotated list is after the jump. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 12:56 PM PST - 20 comments

Grierson believed strongly that the filmmaker had a social responsibility, and that film could help a society realize democratic ideals. His absolute faith in the value of capturing the drama of everyday life was to influence generations of filmmakers all over the world. In fact, he coined the term "documentary film." [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 12:26 PM PST - 4 comments

The EPA's 1971-1978 Documerica project (at Flickr, at the National Archives) set out to 'photographically document subjects of environmental concern.' Last month, The Atlantic put up a gallery of 46 of the photos (here are three more curated galleries, from Wired, Colorcubic and the Mother Nature Network).
posted by box at 11:07 AM PST - 9 comments

DJ Earworm's United States Of Pop 2011, entitled World Go Boom, mashes up the 25 most popular songs from the past year into one infectious song, just like we've come to expect from his previous efforts. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:03 AM PST - 52 comments

Danny Trejo IS Epic Beard Man IN Bad Ass (trailer - imdb). [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 10:16 AM PST - 62 comments

Navigating Love and Autism - When kissing feels like "mashing your face against someone else’s" and you experience mindblindness, how do you build a relationship? Is it even possible?
posted by tomswift at 7:45 AM PST - 69 comments

Daniel Lopatin is a Brooklyn-based electronic music composer who records under the name Oneohtrix Point Never. In a recent New Yorker article he confessed to Sasha Frere-Jones a desire to score Ridley Scott's upcoming "Blade Runner" sequel. His new album -- combining shades of Vangelis with tiny samples pulled from a web site featuring '80s TV commercials -- can be heard in its entirety here.
posted by Work to Live at 6:49 AM PST - 37 comments

“Jingle Rock Bell”? How 2008. Here is a video of a transvestite playing “Silent Night” on a theremin. [more inside]
posted by joeclark at 6:25 AM PST - 14 comments

When my mother whipped up a mixture of fresh milk, gram flour and turmeric in her kitchen today, to use as a herbal face pack, my curiosity led me to find out more about this ubiquitious yet medicinal spice. What is turmeric, the bright yellow powder common in Indian spice boxes that gives such a characteristic colour to everything from dhal to aloo to bhajis? What is its provenance and history? Is it simply a spice or a medicine? What happens when you try to patent it? (previously) Turmeric turned out to be far more romantic than you'd imagine - a prosaic kitchen spice immortalized in idiom, song and double entendre - all courtesy of amche Bollywood.
posted by infini at 6:14 AM PST - 23 comments

Viewable in its entirety at YouTube, Ballou is an engaging, inspiring, funny and entertaining documentary film about inner city Washington DC's Ballou High School band.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:32 AM PST - 1 comment

Click the photo at the top of the linked page to view The Voyagers, a rumination on the universe, love, a golden record and two small space probes.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:17 AM PST - 4 comments

This dog won't play dead... 39 Degrees North gives us a new mythology for Christmas - Gundog! [SLVP]
posted by Samizdata at 12:45 AM PST - 4 comments

"I think Louis has hit on some sort of subterranean undercurrent of emotion that I didn’t realize might be swelling until I listened more closely: shame." [via]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:22 PM PST - 50 comments

Nerdcore rock band I Fight Dragons presents I Fight Ganon, a live performance of the Legend Of Zelda Theme song
posted by The Whelk at 10:58 PM PST - 7 comments

24 games of Christmas, the Amazing Rock Paper Shotgun Advent Calendar. "Here are the rules of the calendar: 1. The games are in no particular order, except number 24, which is our game of the year. 2. That means that number 5 and number 17 are on an equal footing as a game of the Christmas, do you see?"
posted by Sebmojo at 10:12 PM PST - 16 comments

Here is Stencyl, a free creation system for making Flash games. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:30 PM PST - 14 comments

What's the true cost of Christmas? [more inside]
posted by empath at 7:27 PM PST - 36 comments

Behold, the Aperture Science Holiday Enrichment Topiary.
posted by schmod at 7:26 PM PST - 11 comments

SEED. "An egg and an apple build competing broadcast towers that vie for the attention of a transistor radio." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 5:11 PM PST - 7 comments

"Had the spirits been truly desirous of helping the Cratchett family, they would have been better advised to focus their time and energies upon this family rather than upon my client." The Case for Ebenezer by Butler Shaffer
posted by chronkite at 4:35 PM PST - 49 comments

Today, Christmas day, is the 103rd anniversary of the birth of notorious British bon vivant Quentin Crisp. Previously. He was not noteworthy for any achievements, he was the opposite of an activist, but he was full of very good advice - Ubu web has recently made available his 1979 recording, An Evening With Quentin Crisp.
posted by Abinadab at 3:10 PM PST - 15 comments

The Truth about Christmas Carols -- Howard Goodall uncovers the surprising and often secret history of the Christmas carol in this hour-long BBC documentary.
posted by crunchland at 2:28 PM PST - 9 comments

Come the apocalypse, the only things that will survive are rats, cockroaches, seagulls, and fruitcake.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:26 PM PST - 36 comments

As you bake your apple, pumpkin, and mince meat pies, how about some tropical alternatives? Jackfruit, papaya, starfruit, pineapple, mango, durian, and guava.
posted by Xurando at 1:16 PM PST - 20 comments

Prometheus trailer: a dose of holy damn scary [more inside]
posted by angrycat at 12:36 PM PST - 134 comments

Sleepy kitten really doesn't want to wake up.
posted by quin at 12:15 PM PST - 33 comments

My name is Jake and I am a bone collector. This is his room, where he keeps his more than 100 skulls (a contender for the years most awesome cataloguing and archiving effort [look at that organization!]). How Jake cleans up animal bones [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 11:32 AM PST - 12 comments

This summer, The Paris Review interviewed two science fiction writers at length, Samuel R. Delany and William Gibson. Below the cut there are two passages, one from each interview. They aren't representative, they are just two of the many, many passages which have been going around in my head for the last few days. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 10:57 AM PST - 37 comments

Silent Night by Robert Fripp
posted by philip-random at 9:36 AM PST - 11 comments

Romeo Muller wrote some of the most popular holiday (mostly Christmas) specials of all time for Rankin/Bass, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Little Drummer Boy, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (bonus Justin Bieber version with Animagic!), Jack Frost, and Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. The very last special he wrote was Noel, based on a story he told on the radio every year at Christmas. It aired just days before his death on December 30th, 1992. Another special, called The Twelve Days of Christmas, aired in 1993, and was based on a story by him, but was written by someone else. [more inside]
posted by Huck500 at 8:11 AM PST - 6 comments

The EFF's Year End Review   The ACLU's This Year in Civil Liberties   Amnesty International's Anual Report (video) [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 7:45 AM PST - 11 comments

The special duty of a Jewish Christmas baby by Sheila Heti Most of the people one deals with say, “Oh! You're a Christmas baby! You must get ripped off when it comes to presents, right?” Their eyes light up. It's a hard question to answer. The honest answer is, “I'm a Jew, I don't celebrate Christmas,” but saying this always seems chastising, and the person who asked then feels embarrassed (as they should) and I feel embarrassed that this is my accidental role in the world: reminding everyone that Jews exist. The times I say, gruffly, “I don't know. I'm Jewish,” they usually say, “Oh, I'm sorry!” But this always sounds to me not like, “I'm sorry I assumed you were Christian,” but rather, “I'm sorry that you're Jewish.” Given all this, I usually reply simply, “Yeah, it's awful. I get ripped off every year.” [previously from Sheila Heti]
posted by KokuRyu at 6:26 AM PST - 118 comments

The Powers That Be was a short-lived, irreverent sitcom about a dim US Senator (John Forsythe, in his last major starring role on television) and his dysfunctional family, that aired on NBC between 1992 and 1993. Created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, who would go on to create Friends, the show co-starred David Hyde Pierce (pre-Frasier) as the Senator's suicidal son-in-law. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:22 AM PST - 21 comments

How to Whistle Loudly
posted by troll at 11:56 PM PST - 31 comments

Here is Dungeon Squad! A simple, free role-playing game intended for younger players (but enjoyable by older ones), with lots of dice rolling and action. Here's a couple of adventures for it, here's an expansion, and here's a more complex version. Here's the expansion Adventure Squad, in three PDFs: Core - Abilities - D&D 3E Classes. Here's yet another expansion. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:28 PM PST - 21 comments

Santa's warehouse? Not quite.
posted by gwint at 7:38 PM PST - 27 comments

"This was meant as a Christmas present for two girls I know who are 5 and 7, but I don't think I'll give it to them actually. It turned out a bit too evil-demon-pig-from-hell-y for that. Now it's sitting on a shelf threatening me with its existence. I'm not quite sure what I should do with it."
posted by griphus at 6:07 PM PST - 69 comments

Light my Christmas - Doors Christmas album discovered. (bonus track)
posted by sgt.serenity at 5:05 PM PST - 25 comments

An unexpected musical treat. While on a search for an interesting modern cover of the Steve Miller Band song "Abracadabra", I stumbled onto Jeff McNeal's cover, which completely confused me, as I assumed it was lip-syncing. It's not: Jeff is a professional voiceover artist, and announcer in the Los Angeles area, and he's been recording hundreds of musical impressions of a wide range of songs and artists: Credence Clearwater/John Fogerty * Cream * Steppenwolf / John Kay * The Doors/Jim Morrison * The Knack/Doug Fieger * Rolling Stones/Mick Jagger * Burt Bacharach covering Dusty Springfield * Dire Straits * Van Morrison * Tom Jones * The Travelling Wilburys * The Beach Boys * Harry Nilsson * The Police * Led Zeppelin/Robert Plant ... and on and on. There are 375+ videos, so if he doesn't nail one voice to your liking, keep going. Some are eerie, while some are a guy who does dozens of impressions doing reasonably well. He has a dedicated site to this ability, SingingImpressionist.com. I miss you, Danny Gans.
posted by jscott at 4:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Stop hating your body. Embrace your beauty, love your body. Single-link to a tumblr blog focused around the idea of body positivity. Some pictures NSFW.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 3:57 PM PST - 125 comments

Since the time of Dickens there has been a long-standing tradition of telling spooky stories on Christmas Eve... Who better to be a guide to a selection of ghostly tales than faux-Edwardian and author of Supernatural Horror in Literature, Mr. Howard P Lovecraft? Scaretastic suggetions from some of his favourite authors within... [more inside]
posted by Artw at 3:23 PM PST - 13 comments

Christmas is a time for traditions. For some, it's all about stringing up lights on a Christmas tree and wrapping up presents to put beneath it. For others, it's spending singing carols door to door to spread holiday cheer. And for still others, it's a time to beat a log with a stick until it poops out candy. If you're not familiar with that last one, don't worry: ComicsAlliance favorites Benito Cereno and Anthony Clark have stepped up to explain it all in an original comic featuring an Untold Tale of St. Nicholas! [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:17 PM PST - 4 comments

Christmas is tomorrow and some new Christmas songs have come out in the past week. You can go the nice route: What did you get for Christmas? Did you get everything on your wish list? Or go the naughty route: You're still a slave if you celebrate Christmas.
posted by cashman at 2:56 PM PST - 12 comments

Vintage tintype photographs of toddlers being held in place by their parents in order to get a focused image. (5 flickr pages)
posted by gman at 2:48 PM PST - 13 comments

What is it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics? A naive Quora question gets a remarkably long, thorough answer from an anonymous respondent. The answer cites, among many other things, Tim Gowers's influential essay "The Two Cultures of Mathematics," about the tension between problem-solving and theory-building. Related: Terry Tao asks "Does one have to be a genius to do maths?" (Spoiler: he says no.)
posted by escabeche at 1:07 PM PST - 56 comments

This Christmas, a holiday tradition undergoes a digital rebirth with Fireplace [Mac/PC], the pixelated demake of The Yule Log. It'll even incinerate whatever you type.
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:12 PM PST - 28 comments

Wonderland, by Nadav Bagim, is a lovely macro-photo series which turns a kitchen counter into a miniature fantasy-land using household objects, and various critters as models.
posted by quin at 11:38 AM PST - 7 comments

Arduino + servos + laser + phosphorescent surface + Twitter = Fade Away 1. A thoughtful art project about the "permanence" of the Internet.
posted by pashdown at 10:59 AM PST - 7 comments

Being gay was considered a mental disorder by psychiatry - until 1973 - when the battle lines were drawn. Reporter Alix Spiegel continues the gripping story that spurred a radical rethink. It's the story of a closeted cartel of powerful, gay psychiatrists; of confrontations with angry activists; a shrink dressed in a Nixon mask, and a pivotal encounter in a Hawaiian bar. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 10:22 AM PST - 27 comments

Boot aus stein.
posted by ennui.bz at 9:33 AM PST - 13 comments

Honor thy Godfather. Tomorrow, on December 25th, we honor the 5th anniversary of the passing of our beloved Godfather, who was born in a simple shack, only to die and be resurrected numerous times. Please take a moment this Christmas to remember him, and let his spirit fill you up, as you shake your moneymaker. Confess!
posted by markkraft at 9:17 AM PST - 7 comments

One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end. Maybe not soon, but probably before too long; humanity has never before managed to craft an eternal social system, after all, and capitalism is a notably more precarious and volatile order than most of those that preceded it. The question, then, is what will come next.
posted by The Whelk at 8:45 AM PST - 85 comments

So those musicians who had Christmas hits in the 70s and 80s in the UK, what with them coming back year after year, must be made for life, right?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:16 AM PST - 39 comments

’Twas the nocturnal time of the preceding day... A science writer's take on the famous Christmas poem.
posted by Jaybo at 7:12 AM PST - 5 comments

Last year, an archivist at Dartmouth College discovered a forgotten scrapbook donated to the school by Robert L. May, the writer and illustrator of the original story of "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer", documenting the origins of the now-classic holiday story. The book was written in 1947 on commission from Montgomery Ward's, which was looking for a Christmas promotional item. Detailed in the scrapbook are May's list of possible names for the character, including "Rollo", "Reginald", "Romeo" and you-know-what. Ward's actually turned over the copyright to Rudolph to May, who became a millionaire when, two years later, his brother-in-law Johnny Marks wrote the song which became a huge hit for Gene Autry. Snopes.com adds more details to the tale, including debunking the myth that the song was written by May to comfort his daughter while her mother lay dying.
posted by briank at 6:27 AM PST - 5 comments

The true story of the nativity and baby Jesus.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:50 AM PST - 33 comments

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Jimi Hendrix: Little Drummer Boy / Silent Night / Auld Lang Syne.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:02 AM PST - 10 comments

Jack Goldman died this month. Mac? Windows? X11? You may think of visionaries who shaped technology as you know it. You might imagine that they were the original thinkers or visionary businessmen. You're wrong. The guy who laid the foundations started out trying to invent the electric car at Ford, before being hired to Xerox creating the legendary PARC labs that invented computing as we know it; he lived to see his prediction that "...any electric car produced in our lifetime will have to be a hybrid" come true.
posted by rodgerd at 2:07 AM PST - 17 comments

China became the world's top patent filer in 2011, issuing 58% of global intellectual property filings. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 11:36 PM PST - 49 comments

Here is dotEPUB, a Chrome extension that will convert any web page into an EPUB document, able to be viewed in most ereaders.  Other browsers can use it via bookmarklets, including mobile Safari.
posted by JHarris at 8:26 PM PST - 23 comments

What is being scanned around the world The Internet Archive updated in real time. [more inside]
posted by Sailormom at 7:33 PM PST - 16 comments

❄S❅P❈E❊C❃I❇A❉L   S☸N✵O✳W✼F⎈L✷A✼K✽E✴S☃ [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 7:12 PM PST - 24 comments

Behold, from Ghollywood: 2016; 12:00 1,2&3
posted by troll at 6:10 PM PST - 10 comments

In honor of Christmas, Splitsider's Mike Drucker runs down twenty Christmas TV episodes, new and old. It all starts with The Dick Van Dyke Show... [more inside]
posted by griphus at 3:49 PM PST - 11 comments

Charlie Chan is more than a fictional character created the author Earl Derr Biggers, or the star of 50 movies (played by 8 different actors). His origin goes beyond the illiterate Chinese-Hawaiian detective with a bull whip instead of a pistol (previously). Charlie Chan is more than racial stereotypes and yellow-face. A part of his far-reaching story is told inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:17 PM PST - 19 comments

National Register Photostream — Authorized under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the U.S. National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect our historic and archeological resources. Properties listed in the Register include districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.
posted by netbros at 1:51 PM PST - 6 comments

"Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security." To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak. So much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost. And directed against a threat that, by any objective standard, is quite modest.
posted by quin at 11:32 AM PST - 145 comments

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in surround sound Always a bit of a lottery getting into Kings College for this carol service though you can easily get in for other services during the rest of the year. Here for a limited time are two different recordings of the complete carol service which may offer surround sound to some. Only tried from the UK, don't know if it works abroad.
posted by epo at 11:14 AM PST - 11 comments

On December 19th, Ford closed the doors of their St Paul auto plant, ending 800 jobs and 86 years of history. The plant was closed as part of Ford's move to end the Ford Ranger in North America, a truck that will still be available overseas. Born of the 80s gas crisis, the Ranger has been Ford's compact truck for almost forty years. Ford blames demand for large trucks and the shrinking gap in price between the compact and full-sized truck markets, spurring concern about the future of the compact truck market in North America.
posted by Stagger Lee at 9:45 AM PST - 93 comments

Mr. Plinkett returns to review Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Cyrstal Skull. Direct BlipTV link to part 1, and part 2.
posted by codacorolla at 8:58 AM PST - 229 comments

The story of the modern desk lamp in four parts by hipstomp [more inside]
posted by infini at 8:17 AM PST - 15 comments

The music video for "Come and Go (featuring The KickDrums)" (vimeo, best viewed in widescreen) features "various buxom ladies in pink tank tops," and it's a little wider than average. That's because it was shot on a single-point capture 360° panoramic video camera. Directed by Alan Wilkis, who suggests we "think of it as ULTRA widescreen… as if you’re looking in all directions at once." Free downloads of the song (and three remixes) are available at Soundcloud. (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:57 AM PST - 10 comments

Miss Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of her burial was signed by the clergywoman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Miss Scrooge signed it: and Miss Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything she chose to put her hand to. Old Miss Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Genderswitching the Classics is a project by Kate Harrad where she takes classic works of literature and changes everyone's gender. So far she's done A Christmas Carol, two Sherlock Holmes stories, a Father Brown tale and, most ambitiously, Pride and Prejudice (first seven chapters are here). Harrad is now at work on James Eyre. She wrote about her project for The Guardian.
posted by Kattullus at 7:00 AM PST - 126 comments

Downton Abbey has become one of the UK's most popular drama series of recent years and will take pride of place in ITV's schedule with a special episode(video) on Christmas Day that is said to be so good as to be potentially 'vomit inducing'. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:39 AM PST - 92 comments

Nature's 10: ten people who mattered this year.
posted by jjray at 6:12 AM PST - 14 comments

I enjoy reading ... oh yes, I have Tourette's Syndrome. Guy has Tourette's Syndrome The full blown kind. You know, swearing and aggressive jerking and all that. [more inside]
posted by h0p3y at 6:09 AM PST - 19 comments

The Millions 2011: A Year in Reading. With 72 participants naming 214 books, it’s safe to say this has been our biggest and most high profile Year in Reading yet. Our participants included the current Poet Laureate, a longtime candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, the reigning winners of the IMPAC and Pulitzer Prizes, two authors of books named The New York Times’ 10 Best of 2011, a recent inductee to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and more Pushcart winners than I care to count. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:06 AM PST - 12 comments

The New York Times brings us the top 100 massacres, wars, and various kinds of oppression in a handy infographic. Via Crooked Timber
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:39 AM PST - 36 comments

Conceived at the Global Irish Economic Forum in 2009 as a way to engage with the Irish diaspora, the Irish government's Certificate of Irish Heritage program opened to applicants this fall. The €40 (€100 framed) certificate is a document that officially recognizes one's Irish heritage, and is aimed at those with Irish ancestry who do not qualify for Irish citizenship. Though initial reports indicated some tourist discounts would be attached, it confers no legal or financial benefits. [more inside]
posted by lovermont at 5:36 AM PST - 23 comments

A brief interview with the world's champion masturbator. (Not graphic, but NWS.) [more inside]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:11 AM PST - 64 comments

Julian spent 1 year in São Paulo, this is what he saw. [SLVimeo]
posted by Tom-B at 4:47 AM PST - 8 comments

As triggered by a post on reddit explaining GoDaddy's support over the controversial SOPA bill, web techies everywhere have started their "internet walk of shame", finally finding the final reason to ditch the popular domain registrar. Others have tried to start a boycott over use of services. It's not the first time they've shaken up issues online.
posted by xtine at 12:07 AM PST - 103 comments

Gender: there's a lot more going on than just "male" or "female". [some links NSFW]
posted by divabat at 11:34 PM PST - 40 comments

Firearms Philosophy of Ivan Chesnokov (NSFW). Ivan Chesnokov is a (supposedly) Russian firearms enthusiast who voices his strong opinions on firearms on various web forums. This is a collection of his writings. He also attempts to explain everything worth knowing about firearms.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:22 PM PST - 21 comments

Surveillance from air is increasing from both military and DIY directions. Warsaw protester launches drone to spy on police [more inside]
posted by llc at 11:10 PM PST - 30 comments

Five regional weather control programs in northeastern China seek to increase precipitation by 10 percent. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 10:32 PM PST - 16 comments

"So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are." Biblios. The Great Wall.
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Free cabin porn! Inspiration for your quiet place somewhere.
posted by middleclasstool at 9:20 PM PST - 56 comments

The world's first flavoured potato chips were produced in the late 1950s by the Irish company Tayto Crisps. The flavour: Cheese and Onion. Salt and Vinegar, which is now perhaps the the worldwide archetype flavour, followed shortly thereafter. In one place or another and at one time or another, almost every flavour has been set to sliced and fried potato: In Canada, Ketchup and Dill Pickle are common varieties; In Bali, people snack on Blueberry or Lemon Tea chips; the Soy Sauce-flavoured Pringles in Japan are funky; In South Africa, Fruit Chutney and Flame-Grilled Steak are among the standards; and in the UK, Walkers crisps apparently had a go at finding the worst possible crisp flavour.
posted by 256 at 9:19 PM PST - 97 comments

Because Christmas wasn't painful enough: He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special, in five parts — 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
posted by Nomyte at 9:11 PM PST - 19 comments

Here is Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King, a computer game that adapts the 3rd Edition rules of the Dungeons & Dragons game to roguelikes.
posted by JHarris at 8:24 PM PST - 24 comments

Studies Suggest an Acetaminophen-Asthma Link. When aspirin was linked to Reye's syndrome in children during the 1980s, the resulting increase in acetaminophen use may have had some negative effects. "...there is now a plausible explanation for how acetaminophen might provoke or worsen asthma, a chronic inflammatory condition of the lungs. Even a single dose of acetaminophen can reduce the body’s levels of glutathione, a peptide that helps repair oxidative damage that can drive inflammation in the airways, researchers have found."
posted by storybored at 8:11 PM PST - 25 comments

Jazz does Christmas: Charlie Parker - Bill Evans - Chet Baker - Kenny Burrell - Dexter Gordon - Oscar Peterson and Louie Armstrong.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:20 PM PST - 24 comments

Aspirants to the role of painter-as-poet are many. Giorgio Morandi was the real thing. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:13 PM PST - 5 comments

"Today’s lawsuit details how mace is used against children who are completely restrained and pose no threat to themselves or others in the school environment. These children are accused of engaging in normal but non-dangerous adolescent misbehavior – after which the adults taunt and celebrate their punishment." [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 7:07 PM PST - 35 comments

Shockingly, Newt Gingrich does not own newtgingrich.com. Instead, a group of pranksters called American Bridge 21st Century have used the domain to redirect visitors to various sites and stories that cast him in a negative light. For maximum entertainment, copy and paste the URL into your address bar. Lather, rinse, repeat. [more inside]
posted by gman at 6:53 PM PST - 49 comments

Veni Emmanuel (O Come O Come Emmanuel), arranged and produced by Anne Dudley (founding member of Art Of Noise, Academy Award Winner for her work on The Full Monty) from her 1995 album Ancient And Modern. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:54 PM PST - 10 comments

Now the future is a kind of attenuating peninsula; as we move out on it, one side drops off to catastrophe; the other side, nowhere near as steep, moves down into various kinds of utopian futures. In other words, we have come to a moment of utopia or catastrophe; there is no middle ground, mediocrity will no longer succeed. So utopia is no longer a nice idea, but a survival necessity. "Remarks on Utopia in the Age of Climate Change," from Kim Stanley Robinson. Previously.
posted by gerryblog at 5:38 PM PST - 15 comments

A new form of wireless network known as White Spaces will come online next month, the FCC announced today. White Spaces has been called "WiFi on steroids". White spaces are unused spectrum between broadcast television channels. It is faster than WiFi so it can handle more data. It can bring (nearly) free Internet access to the most remote areas of the country, places that can't get WiFi. Because it uses broadcast television signals, any place that can pick up a broadcast TV signal should be able to tap into White Spaces.
posted by cashman at 5:32 PM PST - 34 comments

"Ride With GPS is the best bike route mapping tool for cyclists, runners or anyone wanting an easy yet powerful fitness route planning experience. We offer tools to analyze cycling performance, including graphs of heart rate, cadence, watts (power output from a power meter), speed and elevation gain. Using all this data, we can offer training plans and other insight into your fitness. We work with all Garmin Edge bike computers, Forerunner fitness devices and any GPS unit that can export a TCX or GPX file."
posted by troll at 5:26 PM PST - 20 comments

Terry Gilliam - The Christmas Card. Gilliam made this in 1968 for the children's TV series Do Not Adjust Your Set. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 5:22 PM PST - 10 comments

A little overwhelmed by all those end-of-the-year best-of lists? No worries. The Toronto Review of Books offers this list of lists, "a quick-and-dirty shortcut, a best-of the 'best-ofs' if you will, a recap of the recaps of the world-historically tumultuous and unpredictable year 2011 was."
posted by anothermug at 4:45 PM PST - 5 comments

Senator Amy Koch, who campaigned this year to put a constitutional amendment on next year's ballot to define marriage as the union between a man and a woman. has admitted that she had "a relationship with a Senate staffer" who is not her husband. She has stepped down as Majority Leader of the Minnesota Senate, announced she will not seek re-election, and issued an apology. In response, the gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued their own apology, for "ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband" [more inside]
posted by dubold at 4:27 PM PST - 70 comments

Counterparties is a nice little collection of curated and tagged economic news stories, 5-8 every day. It is edited in part by the admirable (and MetaFave) financial journalist Felix Salmon.
posted by shothotbot at 3:47 PM PST - 12 comments

With the release of the Pink Floyd's remastered sampler collection A Foot in the Door, here is a new interview with album cover designer Storm Thorgerson. (Previously)
posted by The Deej at 2:55 PM PST - 63 comments

The Pakistanis Have A Point: Sure they can be infuriating, not to mention duplicitous, paranoid and self-pitying. But you try being a U.S. ally. -Bill Keller, NYTimes Magazine [more inside]
posted by beisny at 2:44 PM PST - 38 comments

After leaving the warmth and comfort of ordinary humor and setting forth on the ship of outlandishness, Myles Barlow navigates the sea of dark comedy as he reviews life experiences, so his viewers don't have to. Come, let us raise our binoculars and view the great black whale of humanity after the jump. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:16 PM PST - 11 comments

The house Greek Revival subway ventilator on Joralemon Street.
posted by griphus at 2:12 PM PST - 19 comments

Arrows is a documentary by a genius, John Samson, whose flame burned briefly but brightly, about another genius, Eric Bristow, whose career followed a similar trajectory. The film reflects a twilight world of pub sports satirised by Martin Amis in his masterpiece London Fields. Last link may cause discomfort. [more inside]
posted by tigrefacile at 1:49 PM PST - 7 comments

Tom Bawcock's Eve. Down t' Mousehole. A tiny fishing village down the Cornish coast from Penzance, early to get the Atlantic storms, each December 23rd celebrates the saviour of the village, Tom Bawcock, who long ago put to sea in fierce weather to gather seven kinds of fish for the starving. [more inside]
posted by biffa at 1:27 PM PST - 6 comments

When not terrorizing Mr Bond, from the late 1970s until 1994, Mike Mangino and Chris Shepard were in a basement full of musical toys, novelty space microphones, a TR-606, and a SH-09 in Piscataway, NJ recording cassettes as the band Smersh. In 1981 Smersh released their first cassette under their own label of Atlas King. They never rehearsed, they couldn't read music, and they never played live, and they contributed to far too many compilations throughout the known world. In the early eighties they established a unique sound that is known and loved, combining cheap electronics and wild guitar sounds with distorted vocals. By trading cassettes they garnered international acclaim leading to releases on dozens of other labels. [more inside]
posted by wcfields at 1:16 PM PST - 5 comments

Just Glue Some Gears On It (and Call It Steampunk)
posted by usonian at 1:15 PM PST - 42 comments

Cats 4 Gold! 1. Request info 2. Mail your gold 3. Get some cats!
posted by desjardins at 1:12 PM PST - 28 comments

whitney music box -- a fantastic animation

You may notice some interesting links between the visuals and the audio, especially if you are a musician. For example, when the pattern forms a 3-arm starfish, the chords you are hearing are diminished chords, which consist of minor thirds, an interval in which the notes are 3 chromatic steps apart. The chords you hear always bear this type of relationship to the pattern you are seeing, consisting of intervals which match the arrangement of arms.

Really, just look, and you'll get it. [more inside]
posted by MrMoonPie at 12:47 PM PST - 18 comments

Last week, the NHL's Montreal Canadiens, struggling with numerous injuries, underperforming stars, and a 13-11-7 record, fired head coach Jacques Martin. They replaced him with Randy Cunneyworth, the head coach of their farm team in Hamilton, Ontario. Cunneyworth is a former NHL defenseman and a blue-chip coaching prospect, but there's one problem: he doesn't speak French. [more inside]
posted by downing street memo at 12:37 PM PST - 64 comments

When the town he loved could hardly sustain itself and he was struggling to make ends meet, Martin Brody needed a miracle. And he found one. SLVimeo
posted by TheDonF at 12:27 PM PST - 4 comments

With the recent news that unemployment applications are at their lowest levels since 2008, Congressional Republicans are attempting to curtail unemployment benefits. Democrats want to extend benefits for another year. This has led to an impasse. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 12:07 PM PST - 64 comments

June 25th 1906, was the opening night of the musical revue Mamzelle Champagne on the roof of Madison Square Garden. In attendance were Stanford White, renowned architect (Washington Square Arch, Judson Memorial Church, Madison Square Garden itself), and Harry Kendall Thaw, eccentric coal and railroad scion. During the performance of the song I Could Love a Million Girls, Thaw "left his seat near the stage, passed between a number of tables, and, in full view of the players and of scores of persons, shot White through the head." (pdf) Standing over White’s body, Thaw said “You’ll never go out with that woman again.” [more inside]
posted by davidjmcgee at 12:01 PM PST - 14 comments

A decade on, the Coen brothers' woefully underrated O Brother, Where Art Thou? [alt] is remembered for a lot of things: its sun-drenched, sepia-rich cinematography (a pioneer of digital color grading), its whimsical humor, fluid vernacular, and many subtle references to Homer's Odyssey. But one part of its legacy truly stands out: the music. Assembled by T-Bone Burnett, the soundtrack is a cornucopia of American folk music, exhibiting everything from cheery ballads and angelic hymns to wistful blues and chain-gang anthems. Woven into the plot of the film through radio and live performances, the songs lent the story a heartfelt, homespun feel that echoed its cultural heritage, a paean and uchronia of the Old South. Though the multiplatinum album was recently reissued, the movie's medley is best heard via famed documentarian D. A. Pennebaker's Down from the Mountain, an extraordinary yet intimate concert film focused on a night of live music by the soundtrack's stars (among them Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, Chris Thomas King, bluegrass legend Dr. Ralph Stanley) and wryly hosted by John Hartford, an accomplished fiddler, riverboat captain, and raconteur whose struggle with terminal cancer made this his last major performance. The film is free in its entirety on Hulu and YouTube -- click inside for individual clips, song links, and breakdowns of the set list's fascinating history. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:35 AM PST - 107 comments

During the big freeze of Europe's Winter 2009/2010, which brought us the stunning image of a frozen Great Britain, the tough conditions in Ireland were epitomized by the misfortune of the guy falling on RTE's Six-One News report , who shot to infamy through facebook and other social Media.

Now two years on a short film catches up with Brendan Adhere - The Man Who Slipped on the Ice
posted by TwoWordReview at 9:55 AM PST - 35 comments

What disaster befell the Asch House? Where do a few surviving hedges keep alive our lost Elysium? Where is there a fully clothed life-sized wax effigy of Sarah? These questions and more in the One Hundred and Seventh Issue of the King William's College General Knowledge Paper! [PDF]
posted by Iridic at 8:30 AM PST - 153 comments

We went into the Doubleday bookshop at Fifth Avenue and Fifty Second Street the other day, intending, in our innocence, to buy a book, and found all the clerks busy selling Silly Putty, a gooey, pinkish, repellent-looking commodity that comes in plastic containers the size and shape of eggs.

How an item in the August 26th, 1950 New Yorker's Talk of the Town column turned a marketing consultant into a millionare by Christmas. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 8:00 AM PST - 29 comments

Ulillillia (previously, and previously) is an Internet celebrity who's famous for his writing, videos on Youtube, personal website, and game design. The Platform Master is a documentary that was filmed earlier this year about his life, and is scheduled to be released this coming summer.
posted by codacorolla at 7:53 AM PST - 25 comments

Tim Minchin's performance of Woody Allen Jesus won't now be seen on the big Christmas edition of the Jonathon Ross TV Show after ITV's director of TV banned it. According to him it was enjoyed by fellow guests including Tom Cruise. Lucliky, Tim already had a copy of the performance.
posted by priorpark17 at 7:43 AM PST - 59 comments

I'm bored, what should I balance on my face?
posted by empath at 7:25 AM PST - 26 comments

Massive 1,100+ year old Maya site discovered in Georgia's mountains The archaeological site would have been particularly attractive to Mayas because it contains an apparently dormant volcano fumarole that reaches down into the bowels of the earth. People of One Fire researchers have been aware since 2010 that when the English arrived in the Southeast, there were numerous Native American towns named Itsate in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and western North Carolina. They were also aware that both the Itza Mayas of Central America and the Hitchiti Creeks of the Southeast actually called themselves Itsate . . . and pronounced the word the same way. The Itsate Creeks used many Maya and Totonac words. Their architecture was identical to that of Maya commoners. The pottery at Ocmulgee National Monument (c 900 AD) in central Georgia is virtually identical to the Maya Plain Red pottery made by Maya Commoners.
posted by ewagoner at 7:02 AM PST - 107 comments

Carol of the Old Ones Warming cockles of your heart. To madness.
posted by tiedtiger at 6:22 AM PST - 29 comments

Holiday blues? Cabin Fever? Simple solution. [more inside]
posted by timsteil at 6:17 AM PST - 5 comments

When it comes to railways, the British are famous for their colonial legacy of one of the world's most extensive railway networks built across then British India but their lesser known and far grander vision was the Cape to Cairo railway network intended to stretch across the sea of colonial pink on the African continent. Left incomplete due to politics and geography, most of it is still almost as it was built in its day. [more inside]
posted by infini at 6:07 AM PST - 27 comments

Winter Reads: [Guardian.co.uk] a new series matching the story to the season. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:28 AM PST - 2 comments

The Lives They Loved. The New York Times asked readers to send in a photo and short story of someone they lost this year.
posted by katinka-katinka at 5:20 AM PST - 26 comments

Christmas dinners are here again, so most of you are wondering how to cook a goose. Some of you will spend 16 hours for your roasted Christmas goose. Others prefer the German Weihnachtsgans style, with apples. Sophisticated cooks do their Christmas goose sous vide.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:21 AM PST - 27 comments

"So at first, I thought it was a joke. NOPE... The singer sounds like freggin Stevie first of all, the bassist just SLAYS it, and the drummer is solid as a rock". So says a bass players' forum commenter about Sweden's DirtyLoops who's ferociously tight Baby has been spreading fast online in the last 24 hours. Bonus links: their Just Dance cover, and Youtube channel. [more inside]
posted by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 3:58 AM PST - 53 comments

How Computers Work. Recently recovered & scanned in by the good folks at BoingBoing, this was an early textbook explaining the fundamental concepts & inner workings of modern computing systems. I believe a slightly different edition of this book was my own introduction to computers when I was in 6th grade or so, which explains a lot about my approach to using them.
posted by scalefree at 2:13 AM PST - 43 comments

We were kids...and songs would come on...and I would sing really loud...always the wrong lyrics. My little sister grew up thinking MY lyrics were the right ones. via
posted by Knappster at 1:44 AM PST - 28 comments

"...nearly half of police officers from the U.S. and Canada suffer from sleep disorders..."
posted by seriousmoonlight at 12:33 AM PST - 27 comments

Mean streets: Stark photos show behind-the-scenes life of police patrolling crime-ridden New York in the 1970s.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:15 AM PST - 23 comments

What the heck is research anyway?
posted by Blasdelb at 10:35 PM PST - 37 comments

The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign
posted by Artw at 10:12 PM PST - 102 comments

Introducing the Zapata Flyboard, which is being described as a "dolphin jetpack." Designed by Franky Zapata, the French jet-skiing champion and founder of Zapata Racing, Gizmag says of the $6,600 leisure product: "Aquaman meets Iron Man." [more inside]
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 9:58 PM PST - 32 comments

Why "'You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch' Is Hatemongering" [more inside]
posted by bardic at 9:35 PM PST - 32 comments

Are you tired of having to pick between N-type and P-type transistors when designing electronics circuits. Well, help is on the way with the new Nanowire Universal Transistor.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 8:47 PM PST - 16 comments

Here are some free tools for rescuing infected Windows systems: Windows Defender Offline Beta - Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 - BitDefender Bootable CD - Avira Bootable CD - How To Geek provides instructions for scanning a system from an Ubuntu Live CD.  For more info, click through.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:22 PM PST - 43 comments

"In the 2008 economic meltdown, Iceland nearly collapsed. Its three banks failed, it's currency lost 50 per cent of its value and in an unprecedented display of anger, usually peaceful Icelanders took to the streets to protest. But Iceland defied the orthodox economic wisdom of the time---bailouts and slashing government services---and now is on the road to a recovery that the rest of Europe envies. The hero of the hour and the man almost solely responsible for this remarkable turnaround is the country's president Olafur Grimmson." This CBC Sunday Edition Interview is a fascinating listen. [more inside]
posted by smudgedlens at 8:13 PM PST - 35 comments

The concept of Used Cars originated with writer-director-producer John Milius, who pitched the idea to scribes Zemeckis and Gale while they were still hard at work on what would become 1941. ... Zemeckis shot Cars in a breakneck 28 days at a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Mesa, Ariz. ... Despite its low profile, the film received a great deal of critical acclaim, including the notoriously finicky Pauline Kael…who described Cars as “a classic screwball fantasy — a neglected modern comedy that’s like a more restless and visually high-spirited version of the W.C. Fields pictures.”* [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:03 PM PST - 34 comments

Jethro Tull's 1976 animated promo video for Ring Out Solstice Bells. (SLYT) Happy Solstice, everyone!
posted by hippybear at 5:32 PM PST - 58 comments

0111 0010 0110 1111 0110 0010 0110 1111 0111 0100
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:05 PM PST - 52 comments

Alone on the Wall. Alex Honnold is perhaps the world's premier big wall free solo climber, which makes him the de facto best climber alive. [previously]
posted by troll at 4:56 PM PST - 71 comments

Secrecy defines Obama’s drone war. "Since September, at least 60 people have died in 14 reported CIA drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions. The Obama administration has named only one of the dead, hailing the elimination of Janbaz Zadran, a top official in the Haqqani insurgent network, as a counterterrorism victory. The identities of the rest remain classified, as does the existence of the drone program itself. Because the names of the dead and the threat they were believed to pose are secret, it is impossible for anyone without access to U.S. intelligence to assess whether the deaths were justified." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 4:40 PM PST - 77 comments

Why I Resigned from The Good Men Project [more inside]
posted by flex at 4:36 PM PST - 96 comments

Bank of America agreed to pay $335 million to resolve allegations that Countrywide Financial engaged in widespread discrimination against African-American and Hispanic borrowers on home loans. The Department of Justice is calling this the largest settlement in history over fair residential lending practices. According to the DOJ’s complaint, Countrywide systematically charged more than 200,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers higher fees and interest rates than white borrowers with similar credit profiles. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:12 PM PST - 31 comments

Are Big Time Sports a Threat to Student Achievement? A study by 3 University of Oregon economists suggests that male University of Oregon students’ grades drop during successful seasons for the UO football team, as students study less and drink and party more to celebrate Duck victories. [more inside]
posted by Danf at 3:18 PM PST - 23 comments

"everything is good that / has a good beginning / and doesn't have an end / the world will die but for us there is no / end!" Thus ends Victory over the Sun (part 1, part 2), the "first Futurist opera". [more inside]
posted by daniel_charms at 3:15 PM PST - 8 comments

"Who wants to use their thermostat as a 38MB jumpdrive? I do! I do!" The Nest learning thermostat came out of the Bay Area in late October of 2011 in an unprecedented blaze of publicity - well, unprecedented for a thermostat - as a result of its status as the creation of Tony Fadell, one of the non-traditional parenting collective of the iPod*, and Matt Rogers, his senior engineer in the iPhone division. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:14 PM PST - 42 comments

The Navy's first kiss tradition enters the post Don't Ask, Don't Tell era If you're like me you may never have heard of the Navy's first kiss tradition. But it's not unusual for a ship returning from deployment to run a contest or raffle which gives the winner the first kiss with their sweetie on the dock; you can find wikipedia media showing past events. After tonight's news broadcasts pretty much everyone in the country will have heard of it because you can be sure, whether it's portrayed as a step forward or a sign of the end times, every broadcast is going to lead with the first same-sex Navy first kiss between disembarking Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta and her girlfriend, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles.
posted by phearlez at 2:46 PM PST - 80 comments

Researchers from the University of Western Ontario have announced the launch of human clinical trials of a preventative HIV vaccine.
posted by mhoye at 2:37 PM PST - 23 comments

The US National Insitutes of Health recently filed notice of a prospective grant to give an exclusive license to New York based Kannalife for Development of Cannabinoid(s) and Cannabidiol(s) (i.e. marijuana) Based Therapeutics To Treat Hepatic Encephalopathy in Humans. Toke of The Town covers the issue, including an interview with Kannalife CEO Dean Pethanas.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:11 PM PST - 14 comments

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has launched a legal challenge to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), which prohibits activists from engaging in conduct "for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise." [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 1:26 PM PST - 28 comments

-NEW YEAR'S RULIN'S-
1. WORK MORE AND BETTER
2. WORK BY A SCHEDULE
3. WASH TEETH IF ANY
...
33. WAKE UP AND FIGHT

Woody Guthrie's New Year's Resolutions, 1942
posted by obscurator at 1:25 PM PST - 39 comments

How Much More Do Books Cost Today?
posted by griphus at 12:53 PM PST - 49 comments

SLYT: Jazz trio Stray Phrases covers J Dilla's Donuts.
posted by avocet at 12:14 PM PST - 11 comments

Things CPU architects need to think about. Bob Colwell gave this lecture in 2004, for the Stanford University Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380). Colwell was the chief architect of the Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium 4 processors. [About 90 minutes, Windows Media format] [more inside]
posted by FishBike at 12:11 PM PST - 29 comments

"An amazing chance encounter with a troop of wild mountain gorillas near Bwindi National Park, Uganda."
posted by ericb at 11:53 AM PST - 42 comments

If you enjoy instrumental jazz and Christmas music, you might enjoy The Best Jazz Christmas Record You've Never Heard. ""Christmas With The Believers" turned out to be the best jazz Christmas music I had ever heard, and that's still the case today. I'll take the imaginative arrangements, chops, tight playing, and sense of swing on this recording over anything I've heard by the legends in this field." It's presented here as a cassette recording from Fall '86, with Donny Schwekendiek on piano, Neal Heidler on the bass and Narry Puhlovski on the drums.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:27 AM PST - 26 comments

Zaire Paige had a breakout role in Antoine Fuqua's movie, Brooklyn's Finest. He was seen as a rising star. But, it all went away when he murdered a gang rival and was sentenced to 107 years in prison. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 11:23 AM PST - 22 comments

If you visit Prague, make sure to check out Petřín, the hill which rises above Malá Strana (Lesser Town). At its base, you can be gutchecked by the Memorial to the Victims of Communism. You can ride up the hill in the Funicular. At the top, you can visit the Lookout Tower for great views of the city, the Štefánik Observatory for great views of the sky, or the Hall of Mirrors for great views of yourself. Then you can walk down the hill to stop in at Reon Argondian’s Magic Cavern, potentially the most amazing place on the planet. Prepare to have your mind blown. many paintings NSFW for naked mythical creature reasons
posted by davidjmcgee at 11:13 AM PST - 18 comments

Marvin E. Quasniki officially announces his bid to be the next president of the United States. [more inside]
posted by cirrostratus at 10:46 AM PST - 17 comments

New App Lets iPad Users Play With Real Live Pigs
posted by delmoi at 10:07 AM PST - 73 comments

Bookdedications is a collection of gift inscriptions found in used books. Some background from the blog's author.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:35 AM PST - 15 comments

"Oh God, Danny, stay on your bike!" This is a video of the winning downhill run in the 2011 mountain bike world championships. It's pretty cool, but it's the insane commentating that really makes this special. Gets really good starting around 20 seconds in. (via)
posted by chinston at 9:28 AM PST - 71 comments

Vandana Singh is a science fiction writer and a physicist. She describes her work as "ponder[ing] deep questions about the universe." In a series of three essays for Strange Horizons she just does that, probing the relationships between (as her subtitle indicates) science, emotions and culture. [more inside]
posted by overglow at 9:23 AM PST - 3 comments

Shufflin' Grandpas are polka dancers redubbed.
posted by quin at 9:14 AM PST - 12 comments

100-year old letter to Santa found in chimney
posted by boygeorge at 8:47 AM PST - 50 comments

Videogum presents a retrospective of the best viral videos of 2011. See also: montages for 2010, 2009, and 2008
posted by rollick at 8:08 AM PST - 47 comments

10b Photography has established itself as one of the world’s leading digital darkrooms, handling post-production for scores of award-winning photojournalists who trust that the company knows where to draw the line between processing and manipulation. [...] 10b is quick to point out that it is not a retouching firm. The term is often associated with Photoshop experts, who are hired to alter the look and shape of fashion icons, for example. So when it comes to defining Palmisano's role, it can get tricky. Post-processing in the digital age.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:08 AM PST - 28 comments

The Academy of Saint Gabriel's Medieval Names Archive: for all your period-accurate onomastic needs.
posted by Iridic at 7:53 AM PST - 11 comments

THEM!: Wherein a de-powered Wonder Woman saves a girl from a kidnapper, rapist, human trafficker, gang leader, arsonist, vandal, drag king, and probable lesbian, who is probably also a robber.
posted by Panjandrum at 7:46 AM PST - 26 comments

Humble & Fred do a podcast. Big deal, you say? The bigger story is that they're fairly well known mainstream radio guys in the Toronto area, who have been in the business for decades, but after some recent firings have decided to give full time podcasting a try. And they're making a pretty big splash so far. [more inside]
posted by antifuse at 7:38 AM PST - 21 comments

Bill Conlin, a Philadelphia Daily News sports columnist, retired abruptly yesterday after word leaked the the Philadelphia Inquirer was set to run a story in the next day's paper detailing allegations against him of child sexual abuse dating from the 1970s. (Trigger warning; graphic and very sad accounts of familial abuse, shame, and silence.) [more inside]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:18 AM PST - 69 comments

One teacher's approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom.
posted by desjardins at 6:37 AM PST - 85 comments

The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2011 from FlowingData.
posted by jjray at 6:08 AM PST - 6 comments

ink&paper A short film about the last paper shop, and the last letterpress, in Los Angeles. "There are days go by that there can be absolutely no business at all."
posted by OmieWise at 5:24 AM PST - 22 comments

AIDS information posters from around the world You can browse by country, topic, etc., and many of the posters have large linked images. Provided by UCLA's Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library. (Much as it pains me to say it, while these are public health information posters hosted by a medical library, for some, the content will be NSFW.)
posted by carter at 4:55 AM PST - 1 comment

Various animals crossing a drainage pipe at night. Some background.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:02 AM PST - 29 comments

Yu Muroga was doing his job making deliveries when the 11 March 2011 earthquake hit in Japan. Unaware, like many people in the area, of how far inland the Tsunami would travel, he continued to drive and do his job. The HD camera mounted on his dashboard captured not only the earthquake, but also the moment he and several other drivers were suddenly engulfed in the Tsunami. He escaped from the vehicle seconds before it was crushed by other debris and sunk underwater.
posted by mannequito at 10:18 PM PST - 49 comments

Callin' Oates: 1-719-26-OATES [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 10:08 PM PST - 51 comments

The top 10 table tennis shots of 2011. (SLYT)
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 10:01 PM PST - 39 comments

Are field goals easier in Denver? Wired's Rhett Allain uses physics to consider which factors might make a field goal "easier" in Denver. Includes a Lego recreation of this 59 yard field goal.
posted by sweetkid at 9:55 PM PST - 11 comments

David Brin on Atlas Shrugged, the book and movie
posted by Artw at 9:45 PM PST - 66 comments

"Flavor networks and the principles of food pairing" analyzes the flavor compound relationships between ingredients, based on a broad collection of recipes mined from the Internet. It concludes that "..North American and Western European cuisines exhibit a statistically significant tendency towards recipes whose ingredients share flavor compounds. By contrast, East Asian and Southern European cuisines avoid recipes whose ingredients share flavor compounds." [ via | previously ]
posted by kanuck at 9:27 PM PST - 49 comments

The challenge of life is to be present for it while it is happening, in this moment, to be aware of it in a way that is both wide in perspective and deep in understanding. If you pester priests to know about a second life after this one, I must ask if you are using this one. Whoever is spending this life walking back and forth from the computer to the refrigerator, it is worth wondering how many thousands of years of this would be enough. This life is enough, if you are here for it. The people worried about death are the ones not truly living. They are the ones who know in their hearts that they need more time. Jennifer Michael Hecht explains why For Atheists, this Life is Enough. And here, she talks about the history of doubt.
posted by storybored at 8:24 PM PST - 79 comments

Here is the Nethack server at alt.org, Telnet link,  Java client, Flash client.  Here is a list of most of the ways to die in the game (dates back to 3.1.3).  And here are a lot of Nethack spoilers.
posted by JHarris at 8:19 PM PST - 36 comments

Vampires in Havana (YT, 1:09:58, Spanish with English subtitles, also available on Netflix streaming) is an animated film by Cuban director Juan Padron about the battle between European and American vampires for control of Vampisol, a formula which allows vampires to go out in the sun.
posted by Daily Alice at 7:46 PM PST - 8 comments

As the trailer for Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Hobbit premieres online, it's worth remembering that this isn't the first take on the journey of one Bilbo Baggins. There was the 1977 animated version as well. Here's some screencaps and a trailer. Of course, if that's not enough for you, you could just watch it on Youtube (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). And before it was a film, it was something called... a book? Here's pictures of the cover of this 'book' thing from all over the world.
posted by Effigy2000 at 7:31 PM PST - 124 comments

The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has asked the journals Nature and Science to publish redacted versions of the studies by two research groups that reportedly created forms of the H5N1 avian flu that could easily jump between ferrets - animals whose response to influenza is similar to humans. [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 6:30 PM PST - 98 comments

In Do the Right Thing, the subject is not simply a race riot, but the tragic dynamic of racism, racial tension, and miscommunication, seen in microcosm. The film is a virtuoso act of creation, a movie at once realistic and symbolic, lighthearted and tragic, funny and savage... I have written here more about Lee’s ideas than about his style. To an unusual degree, you could not have one without the other: style is the magician’s left hand, distracting and entertaining us while the right hand produces the rabbit from the hat. It’s not what Lee does that makes his film so devastating, but how he does it. Do the Right Thing is one of the best-directed, best-made films of our time, a film in which the technical credits, the acting, and Lee’s brazenly fresh visual style all work together to make a statement about race in America that is all the more powerful because it blindsides us. - Roger Ebert (SPOILER) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 6:20 PM PST - 74 comments

Why Paint Cats? Why Cats Paint. Examples. Answers. [more inside]
posted by Diablevert at 5:11 PM PST - 20 comments

In 2006, Hannah Overton was charged with the death of her 4-year-old foster son, Andrew Burd. Media accounts at the time claimed that Overton had force-fed her misbehaving son a mixture of water and creole seasoning, leading to death by salt poisoning. Convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life without parole in 2008, Overton's case led angry bloggers to call her "the ultimate evil," part of a cult of "child abuse groupies," a murderer that "church cronies" are working to free.

This month's issue of Texas Monthly paints a fuller picture of the short life of Andrew Burd and the conviction of the mother who was working towards adopting him.
posted by mudpuppie at 3:46 PM PST - 76 comments

Some games, in other words, have soul. They are soul, they’re about it. They are spiritually nourishing. A meditation by Matt Colville.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:42 PM PST - 51 comments

Black Adder American style (part 2). Perhaps not as good as we might have hoped.
posted by FatRabbit at 3:33 PM PST - 69 comments

James Gurney answers "What inspired you really to create Dinotopia?".
"Myths and stories ARE real, I tried to tell her. And they're enduring. They're the one thing that lives on through the years as the physical monuments of old civilizations crumble into dust... The key to inventing Dinotopia was believing that it already existed beyond the confines of my own mind. Even if I couldn’t tell the the latitude and longitude, I believed it was out there somewhere beyond the reach of my senses. To engage readers with that reality I had to pay attention to the spaces between the paintings, the moments poised across the page turn, which each reader conjures anew." [more inside]
posted by flex at 3:33 PM PST - 10 comments

Hundreds of old cigar labels. Vintage lighters. Cigar bands from the "Golden Age" of cigar advertising (1890s - 1920s). Japanese Matchbox label & manufacturing. Depression Era Cigarette Packs. Cigarette Holders for the Ladies. The Victorian Gentleman's Smoking Cap (and jacket). The History of the Cigar Store Indians and Side Walk Figure Statues. Let’s not forget the ashtrays [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 3:29 PM PST - 8 comments

Although the ultra-mysterious and rumour-cloaked Les Rallizes Dénudés/Hadaka no Rallizes existed in various forms from November 1967 to their last gig in October 1996 they are practically unknown in - let alone out of - Japan. Their recorded output is incredibly rare and highly priced and interviews or articles in the music press virtually non-existent. Tie that in with links to radical left-wing politics, extreme sensory assault at live shows and a general revolutionary aura and you have what must be the ultimate cult group. [more inside]
posted by twirlip at 2:52 PM PST - 12 comments

Fifty things I've learned about the literary life
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:47 PM PST - 62 comments

Spaces of banana control. A visit to one of the four major artificial banana ripening facilities in New York City, for a research seminar on the "Artificial Cryosphere." [more inside]
posted by gusandrews at 2:47 PM PST - 16 comments

Congrats, Peer Fish. And you too, Covington Stanwick. Inside Lacrosse announces the 2012 All-Name Lacrosse Men's and Women's teams. [more inside]
posted by mullacc at 2:46 PM PST - 10 comments

Larissa Sansour was among the eight artists shortlisted for the 2011 prize. In December 2011, Lacoste demanded that her nomination be revoked. Lacoste stated their refusal to support Sansour’s work, labelling it ‘too pro-Palestinian’. [more inside]
posted by mikoroshi at 2:37 PM PST - 21 comments

The Great Wall Of Dubstep ; Dubstep Previously On The Blue
posted by MechEng at 2:16 PM PST - 10 comments

On the subway in Berlin, one woman started chuckling at something on her cellphone and it snowballed. [slyt] [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 2:11 PM PST - 51 comments

Megan Brain makes whimisical paper sculptures, as both fine and commerical art. Check our her her blog and website for more, after reading the interview where she discusses the process of creating her designs.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:05 PM PST - 1 comment

Why did McDonald's fail in Bolivia?
posted by Tom-B at 1:58 PM PST - 35 comments

"While I have performed my job as mayor, in my opinion, as a very conservative, progressive individual — and still continue to be a very conservative individual — I think that it is important that I discuss the struggles I have had over the last few years when I came to the realization that I am gay."
posted by 256 at 1:28 PM PST - 64 comments

Kim Jong-il Dropping The Bass
posted by The Discredited Ape at 1:25 PM PST - 26 comments

The Buddha tells the people he can fulfil only one of their wishes. Someone asks: "Could you lower the price of property in China so that people can afford it?" Seeing the Buddha frown in silence, the person makes another wish: "Could you make the Chinese football team qualify for a World Cup?" After a long sigh, the Buddha says: "Let's talk about property prices." [more inside]
posted by vidur at 12:55 PM PST - 20 comments

Santa answers a few pre-Christmas questions.
posted by rewil at 12:31 PM PST - 23 comments

Black Chefs' Struggle For The Top With the restaurant industry booming and chefs becoming celebrities and wealthy entrepreneurs, few blacks are sharing in that success, and as young black men and women enter the profession they are finding few mentors or peers. [more inside]
posted by magstheaxe at 11:47 AM PST - 21 comments

Sarah M. (or Stalker Sarah, as the internet knows her) is a bit infamous for one thing: taking thousands upon thousands of photos with a variety of celebrities. [more inside]
posted by Askiba at 11:24 AM PST - 86 comments

During the US Civil War, metal monies were hoarded for their value, resulting in a shortage of available coins. The Union government issued official "paper coins" that weren't backed by by gold or silver. This "faith paper" lost value quickly, and for a short while, stamps were official currency. That didn't take, either, so enterprising individuals took it upon themselves to mint their own coinage. These are now known as Civil War Tokens (CTWs), and were made and used between late 1862 and mid 1864. On April 22, 1864, Congress set the weight of coins and set punishment for counterfeiting coins of up to one thousand dollars and imprisonment up to five years. Yet there are over ten thousand varieties of tokens, representing 22 states, 400 towns and about 1500 individual merchants. Melvin and his son Dr. George Fuld wrote key books in the CWT field, creating the rarity scale and composition key used by most numismatists. Given sheer number of CWTs, starting a collection might be daunting. Enter collector Ken Bauer, whose method breaks down the vast world into smaller collections, from anvils to watches and so much more.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:20 AM PST - 9 comments

Regift It, Secret Santa, and Grinchin are three holiday raps from LaeCharles aka Lovey Love The Plus Size Playa
via Berkeley Enough from DJDave of Whole Foods Parking Lot [previously, Berkeley Remix, see also: Yoga Girl]
posted by finite at 11:02 AM PST - 2 comments

10 Things Our Kids Will Never Worry About Thanks to the Information Revolution. An optimist's take on how the lives of future generations will improve based on technology.
posted by downing street memo at 10:58 AM PST - 103 comments

A collection of timelapse night photographs, beautifully edited to demonstrate light pollution, complete with Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," ISS, the Milky Way and a lot of spendy Nikon cameras.
posted by Lynsey at 10:53 AM PST - 14 comments

Shit Girls Say, a humorous twitter account created by Graydon Sheppard and his partner Kyle Humphrey, now has two videos based on the joke [1,2]. Some women say "um, no thanks.".
posted by emilycardigan at 10:37 AM PST - 134 comments

In 1783, John Jacob Astor set out for the United States with $25 and five flutes. Upon his death in 1848, he was the wealthiest person in the US, having amassed a fortune of at least $20,000,000, making him the third wealthiest person in American history (measuring wealth as a fraction of GDP). [more inside]
posted by davidjmcgee at 10:25 AM PST - 26 comments

Well, to put it simply, The Big plan is the same as the immediate plan: they want you dead. It’s not that they want to kill opposition; they want to kill the opposition, literally. This country ain’t big enough for the both of you, and they have everything to lose. And they have guns. And the media. And all the keys of power. And you want to overthrow them. How do you think they will react to that? Give you cookies? - an on the ground report of what's going on in Egypt now from a blogger turned parliamentary candidate.
posted by The Whelk at 9:02 AM PST - 37 comments

Inside Air Koryo official website The world's only 1 star airline. It's Air Koryo, and it's the only airline in the world deemed bad enough to earn a 1-star rating from leading airline reviewer SkyTrax. [more inside]
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 8:58 AM PST - 51 comments

Looking at the rest of the top search results for Christmas is like getting into a time machine that takes you back to a bizarro 2001 in which every single web surfer is a sucker. There are "Hot Links!" and "Fun Things to Do." What we see is the ad hoc, de facto social network formed by people who type Christmas into a search engine. And man, that network is like MySpace for your great aunt who has too many cats. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:51 AM PST - 16 comments

The Library: [SLYT] A film by Sergey Stefanovich. A journey through Duncan Fallowell's library which has spilled over into every available space and become an art installation in its own right. With the writer talking.
posted by Fizz at 8:36 AM PST - 8 comments

Article suggests that we need to reassess our assumptions about the relationship between poverty and race. Following the article published in Forbes magazine dealing with poor black kids, this article brings up the question about poor whites and how invisible they have become.
posted by RedShrek at 8:29 AM PST - 37 comments

X-Men with Googly Eyes.
posted by hermitosis at 7:47 AM PST - 28 comments

Recently, a survey asking "If you could rape someone, who would it be?" was circulated among fraternity brothers at the University of Vermont chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon. Multiple investigations were launched, including one by the police that is still ongoing, and the chapter was closed indefinitely by the national organization. [more inside]
posted by lovermont at 7:46 AM PST - 223 comments

Fred Clark posts at a blog called "Slacktivist", so he is often referred to by that name. But this left-wing Christian is far from a slacker. His blog is a powerful voice against the usual conservative Christian presence in America, and the best distillation of his strength is his series of posts analyzing the Left Behind novels of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Fred savages these books for their "bad writing and bad theology" but it's not the usual Internet snark; Fred has a larger mission here than just pointing and laughing. He just finished dissecting book two, Tribulation Force, so it's a great time to jump on if you already haven't. (He has promised that after a holiday break, he's going to do the Tribulation Force movie, and then on to book three.) [more inside]
posted by Legomancer at 7:01 AM PST - 183 comments

When most folks think of "Christmas music" it's doubtful that their next thought will be "the blues", but along with "my baby" or "bad luck" or "leavin' in the morning", bluesmen have long included Christmas as lyric inspiration. Which bluesmen? Well... Sonny Boy Williamson, Freddie King, Blind Blake, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Little Milton, B.B. King, Smokey Hogg, Charley Jordan, and last but certainly not least, one of the most influential early bluesmen, Blind Lemon Jefferson.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:23 AM PST - 23 comments

CryptDB executes database queries over encrypted data without ever decrypting it. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 2:08 AM PST - 36 comments

Johann (Hans) Hölzel was born in Vienna on February 19, 1957. He adopted a stage name taken from a ski jumper, played in a couple of bands, and then struck out on his own. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present for you, the only truly international Austrian pop, rock and rap star: Falco! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:48 PM PST - 42 comments

The best kapla destruction ever - speed building [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 10:31 PM PST - 24 comments

Rethinking the Idea of 'Christian Europe'. Kenan Malik's essay is awarded 3 Quarks Daily's Top Quark for politics & social science by judge Stephen M. Walt: "Soldiers in today’s culture wars believe 'European civilization' rests on a set of unchanging principles that are perennially under siege—from godless communism, secular humanism, and most recently, radical Islam. For many of these zealots, what makes the 'West' unique are its Judeo-Christian roots. In this calm and elegantly-written reflection on the past two millenia, Malik shows that Christianity is only one of the many sources of 'Western' culture, and that many of the ideas we now think of as 'bedrock' values were in fact borrowed from other cultures. This essay is a potent antidote to those who believe a 'clash of civilizations' is inevitable—if not already underway—and the moral in Malik’s account could not be clearer. Openness to outside influences has been the true source of European prominence; erecting ramparts against others will impoverish and endanger us all."
posted by homunculus at 10:20 PM PST - 86 comments

Dull rock and roll anecdotes
posted by rollick at 8:08 PM PST - 425 comments

Dear batman,
Your television program is keen. The greatest thing is the theme song. Could you please tell me which opera your theme song is from.
Yours truly, Barbara L., Long Beach. Calif.

So begins one of the many missives written to Batman and catalogued in Bill Adler's 1966 book, Funniest Fan Letters to Batman. Featured in this week's episode of WireTap (MP3 link) where you can hear some of the letters read (starting around 15:20).
posted by goingonit at 7:02 PM PST - 24 comments

Here is how to make pickles, with video. And here is how to make different kinds of pickles. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 6:46 PM PST - 27 comments

How well do you really know old Arty? It all began with the Welsh: The The Annales Cabriae (inside) and parts of the Welsh oral tradition (later collected into the Mabinogion) give a very different picture of the popular King Arthur than contemporary readers are familiar with: no Lancelot, three or four different Guens, no love triangles or Holy Grails. A look at the vast scope of the Arthurian legend. [more inside]
posted by kittenmarlowe at 6:27 PM PST - 30 comments

Some lives are exemplary, others not; and of exemplary lives, there are those which invite us to imitate them, and those which we regard from a distance with a mixture of revulsion, pity, and reverence. It is, roughly, the difference between the hero and the saint (if one may use the latter term in an aesthetic, rather than a religious sense). Such a life, absurd in its exaggerations and degree of self-mutilation — like Kleist’s, like Kierkegaard’s — was Simone Weil’s. - Susan Sontag [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 6:07 PM PST - 8 comments

Street Art Utopia 106 of the most beloved Street Art Photos – Year 2011
posted by tomswift at 5:45 PM PST - 12 comments

The Fine Rolls of Henry III may not be the most reader–friendly historical record, but the Fine of the Month series provides accessible short essays on England during Henry's long reign. Most recently, the stealing of the "Apple of Eve" from the synagogue of Winchester, and the king makes a funny. [more inside]
posted by Jehan at 4:32 PM PST - 12 comments

How can we better understand the interplay of nature and nurture in determining our personalities, behavior, and vulnerability to disease? Perhaps we should be looking at identical twins. (National Geographic January 2012 cover story) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 4:28 PM PST - 89 comments

The Geology of the Mountains of Madness
posted by Artw at 4:21 PM PST - 18 comments

The dream of the suburbs is alive... in Vancouver! (just across the river from Portland)
posted by mathowie at 4:11 PM PST - 81 comments

Israeli entrepreneur Rotem Guez just changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg and dared Facebook to sue him.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:01 PM PST - 31 comments

AT&T drops its bid to acquire T-Mobile. After wrangling with the justice department, AT&T ends it's attempt to take over T-Mobile. [via] [more inside]
posted by cashman at 2:48 PM PST - 42 comments

H@ckers ❤ Le@ther
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:22 PM PST - 94 comments

The Streets of New York : a cartographical exploration. Part II - 19th Century Expansion and Part III - The Three Dimensional Maps (a must see for the last picture, a scale model with 895,000 structures). More amazing pictures of the Panorama of the City of New York
posted by desjardins at 2:06 PM PST - 8 comments

Kokeshi Dolls originated in North-East Japan as wooden toys for children. They began being produced towards the end of the Edo period (1603~1868) by woodwork artisans, called Kiji-shi, who normally made bowls, trays and other tableware by using a lathe. They began to make small dolls in the winter to sell to visitors who came to bathe in the many hot springs near their villages, which was believed to be a cure for the demands of a strenuous agricultural lifestyle. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:32 PM PST - 20 comments

39 years ago today, Apollo 17 splashed down in the South Pacific, marking the end to manned exploration of the Moon. What we learned from those 10 years of discovery was amazing. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:09 PM PST - 42 comments

The Eye That Never Blinks -- Internet Obsession [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:48 PM PST - 15 comments

When Arunachalam Muruganantham hit a wall in his research on creating a sanitary napkin for poor women, he decided to do what most men typically wouldn’t dream of. He wore one himself--for a whole week. [...] It resulted in endless derision and almost destroyed his family. But no one is laughing at him anymore, as the sanitary napkin-making machine he went on to create is transforming the lives of rural women across India.

An Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:48 PM PST - 49 comments

This cat is presumptuous. Before Sockington, before Simon's Cat, before Maru, the Internet had the Complaint Department. [more inside]
posted by rdc at 12:44 PM PST - 5 comments

#1 - Get an avocado, #2 - Sneak it into your peep's hood, #3 - Take a picture, #4 - 'CADOED!!
posted by yellowbinder at 12:43 PM PST - 70 comments

Here is Whitey McPherson yodeling his heart out:

The Rhythm Wreckers - Never No Mo' Blues
The Rhythm Wreckers - Blue Yodel No 1 (T For Texas)
The Rhythm Wreckers - Brakeman Blues
The Rhythm Wreckers - Blue Yodel #2 (My Lovin' Gal Lucille)
The Rhythm Wreckers - St. Louis Blues
The Rhythm Wreckers - Old Fashioned Love In My Heart [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:35 PM PST - 6 comments

IBM is currently putting together database and barcode tracking to allow farmers and grocers in China to track your porkchop, from the pig to the plate. Using supply chain tracking (similar to what is done already in other industries), the goal is to limit and hopefully prevent disease outbreaks by tracking the health of the animal, including which other animals it has come into contact with. So the next time you sit down for some nice ham, you might be able to scan the barcode (or RFID tag) to see whom else on your block shares your own porcine six degrees of separation. [more inside]
posted by Old'n'Busted at 11:51 AM PST - 21 comments

Christopher Plummer, playing a man who comes out of the closet in his 70s, might have won Best Supporting Performance, but at least four people voted for a dog. The results for the crazy free-for-all that is the Indiewire Annual Survey, which polled 168 critics this year, came out today. The Tree of Life swept Best Film and Best Director, but the choices that only got a handful of votes are often the most interesting, including three different cast members from The Three Musketeers for Best Supporting and a vote for Transformers: Dark of the Moon for Best Film. You can see the complete results and links to all of the critics ballots here. [more inside]
posted by alexoscar at 11:39 AM PST - 24 comments

2011 marks the 15th birthday of Tummy Touch Records (Discogs) and 10th birthday of Bastard Jazz Recordings (Discogs). To celebrate, the two record labels labels teamed up and are giving away a 10 track remix album, crossing artists from each label, resulting in a happy blend of diverse house music.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:37 AM PST - 6 comments

Artist Li Wei does some amazing things in-camera. Rather than relying on heavy post processing with Photoshop, he prefers trickery with mirrors, acrobatic performers, wire-work, and a well timed camera shutter. [more inside]
posted by quin at 9:58 AM PST - 11 comments

All across the world you'll find different varieties of dumplings. However, starting in Eastern Europe and spreading across central Asia and into northeast Asia, you'll find a remarkably similar variety featuring a thin skin and a meat filling. Variants can be found all the way from Poland (Pieorgies) to Korea (Mandu), a distance of nearly 5,000 miles (more than 7,500 km). [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 9:45 AM PST - 64 comments

Google: "Let It Snow"
posted by MechEng at 9:40 AM PST - 27 comments

Ceci n’est pas un hipster and Instant Hipster: Just add PBR (via Sociological Images) [more inside]
posted by flex at 9:39 AM PST - 125 comments

Rding a bike must suck when your balls are this big. Via.
posted by unSane at 9:36 AM PST - 47 comments

2011 in Lego Pictures. From the royal wedding to the death of Osama bin Laden, the English summer riots and the fall of Gaddafi, here are some of major news stories of the past 12 months captured in Lego by Flickr members.
posted by OmieWise at 8:46 AM PST - 13 comments

Gotta get amped [more inside]
posted by swift at 8:37 AM PST - 32 comments

The War Nerd (previously) breaks tone somewhat to celebrate the life of Benjamin Grierson, who would go from being kicked in the head by a horse as a youth to leading, "the greatest cavalry raid of the whole war, riding from Tennessee 600 miles almost due south through enemy territory to land safe in Baton Rouge, LA, inflicting ten times the casualties he had himself—and then going on to be the one white officer who stood up for the black freedmen 'Buffalo Soldiers' in the far West, at a time when America was using white-vs-black to heal up the raw North-vs-South scars."
posted by Copronymus at 8:29 AM PST - 6 comments

Young, black, and frisked by the NYPD: a grim rite of passage for the city's black and Latino youths.
posted by hermitosis at 7:44 AM PST - 241 comments

The train they call the City of New Orleans began operations in 1947 carrying passengers from Chicago to New Orleans daily. Although the train service remained popular through the 60's, by 1970 train travel was on the decline. That's when native Chicagoan Steve Goodman and his new bride, Nancy, rode the train down to visit her folks in New Orleans. That trip inspired Goodman to write The City of New Orleans and an American folk/country standard was born. The song would go on to earn Goodman a posthumous Grammy 14 years later. [more inside]
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:34 AM PST - 44 comments

Cat soothes crying baby It's a cat. Soothing a crying baby. It's practically designed to go viral.
posted by ironjelly at 7:14 AM PST - 81 comments

Did the Early Middle Ages Really Happen? Or are they an elaborate conspiracy? Is it, in fact, 1714?
posted by robself at 6:37 AM PST - 138 comments

Never had a whole lotta use for the Lawrence Welk show, but man, when it came time for steel guitar wizard Buddy Merrill and his dazzlingly snazzy stringery to take center stage, the broadcast got a hella lot better, fast!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:39 AM PST - 24 comments

The Blizzard is a quarterly football (soccer) journal that covers an eclectic range of subjects which don't usually receive much mainstream coverage. Issue 3 is out, and features, among other things, articles on the demise of Spartak Moscow, a World War One internment camp that shaped the development of the game in Europe, how nationalism shaped the rise and fall of Beitar Jerusalem and how Dawson's Creek explains modern football. It is edited by Jonathan Wilson, of "Inverting The Pyramid" fame, and it's writers include Tim Vickery, Barney Ronay and Gabriele Marcotti. [more inside]
posted by salmacis at 2:37 AM PST - 7 comments

When the world is going crazy and life is just awful, you can count on The Internet to MAKE EVERYTHING OK.
Service provided 'as is' with no warranty implied or suggested. Your perception of what's OK may vary, but that's YOUR problem.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:05 AM PST - 40 comments

Warren Hellman, billionaire, financier, and sponsor of the best free music festival around, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, died today in San Francisco. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer at 9:49 PM PST - 34 comments

A three-part series on the fate of 59 fifth-graders who were given an extraordinary gift: the promise of a college education paid for by two wealthy businessmen. Part 2, Part 3
posted by RedShrek at 7:52 PM PST - 72 comments

"This site is a catalogue raisonné of the art of Utagawa Kuniyoshi. It contains over 5,000 images, counting multi-sheet compositions as single images. An undertaking such as this can never be considered complete..." An archive of the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, a 19th century print maker from Japan. Some highlights include sumo wrestlers, triptychs from Genji, the Zodiac, and Tanuki having fun (slightly NSFW). [_{Via Pink Tentacle.}] [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:43 PM PST - 4 comments

Kim Jong Il is dead.
posted by meows at 7:19 PM PST - 408 comments

Here is Jeff Sanders, who builds things with Legos. Round things. Here's his blog, featuring videos of his work. Here's a Discovery News post on Sanders, with more pictures of his work. This Oregon Live article shows more round Lego creations on his wall.
posted by JHarris at 6:44 PM PST - 15 comments

Have your Chipotle burrito at John Dos Passos' house. Read Silent Spring in Silver Spring. You can now take a real or virtual walking tour of literary DC, from Roald Dahl to Philip K. Dick to Zora Neale Hurston with DCWriters.org. Two DC-area poets have put together a compendium of 123 (and growing) residences in the DC area where novelists, poets, and playwrights plied their trade. The buildings may not all have plaques, but they are still standing: Dan Vera and Kim Roberts focused on not "documenting what used to be here, but what people could actually go and take a look at."
posted by HonoriaGlossop at 6:42 PM PST - 18 comments

Paul Krugman has really been laying into the hyperinflationists in recent days. And rightfully so... these predictions, as Dr. Krugman notes, were based on a model that is completely wrong. [more inside]
posted by moorooka at 5:46 PM PST - 57 comments

The Rabbit Dreams of Dr. Freud's Niece - An illustrator of children's books, Sigmund Freud's niece Martha went by the name Tom, wore men's clothing, and died by her own hand in her late 30s, a year after her husband's suicide. BibliOdyssey recently featured some of her early work from Das Baby-Liederbuch, noting that because she was Jewish, many of her books were destroyed in the Nazi era and are scarce in the book trade. More about the artist and her work at Tom Seidmann-Freud.
posted by madamjujujive at 5:24 PM PST - 13 comments

The Egyptian Scientific Institute which established in 1798 by Napolean Bonaparte has been burned.
posted by kittensofthenight at 5:01 PM PST - 35 comments

Grannies' Christmas Flash Mob.
posted by ericb at 4:56 PM PST - 5 comments

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But do you recall the most famous animated GIF reindeer of all? [more inside]
posted by brownpau at 3:50 PM PST - 20 comments

Calendars: SOLD OUT. Engineering: STILL LOUD For once, an internet story of "that guy stole my hilarious tshirt phrase" that turns out well. [more inside]
posted by mathowie at 3:49 PM PST - 18 comments

Fantasy armor and lady bits, from the perspective of an armorer
posted by Artw at 3:09 PM PST - 87 comments

Want your new law school to get accredited by the American Bar Association? Be prepared to jump through some hoops.
posted by reenum at 1:35 PM PST - 38 comments

With official end of the Iraq War comes the matter of returning Saddam Hussein's plates.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:22 PM PST - 19 comments

Marked. Photographer Claire Felicie photographed the marines of the 13th infantry company of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps, before, during and after their deployment in Uruzgan.
posted by jokeefe at 11:19 AM PST - 19 comments

Shyima Hall has been granted US citizenship. [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:58 AM PST - 47 comments

itwofs - chronicles of plagiarism in indian film music. Features similarities in film music content between Indian films and it's (sic) counterparts. [more inside]
posted by beshtya at 9:19 AM PST - 12 comments

No one living can say whether the original, ten-hour version of Erich von Stroheim's most famous movie was the epic masterpiece it was touted to be. The 140-minute version is all that remains, and while it's only a quarter of the film it was meant to be, it's still one of the greatest accomplishments (SPOILER) of the silent film era. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 9:09 AM PST - 13 comments

An in-depth series in the Los Angeles Times examines whether the increased recognition of autism as a syndrome has led to skyrocketing rates of diagnosis, and how social, ethnic, and geographic factors affect the treatment a child is likely to receive. (via)
Part One: An epidemic of disease or of discovery?
Part Two: Warrior parents fare best in securing autism services
Part Three: Families cling to hope of autism 'recovery'
Part Four: Finding traces of autism in earlier eras
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:59 AM PST - 57 comments

Václav Havel, who went from being an imprisoned dissident playwright to becoming the president of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic, has died at the age of 75. A coauthor of Charter 77, a leader of the bloodless "Velvet Revolution", and the writer of absurdist theater.
posted by kyrademon at 8:12 AM PST - 101 comments

"What do reindeer, Christmas trees, eggnog and Hanukkah have in common? They’re all part of what our elected representatives have been saying around the holidays. Things get even crazier when their quotes are taken out of context and made into crafty, bizarre and occasionally touching holiday e-cards."
posted by sciurus at 7:38 AM PST - 10 comments

You may not know this but pantomime (overview for non-Brits) is a very lucrative business in the UK, especially for minor or fading stars of stage and screen (and Vanilla Ice) - Children's entertainers The Krankies (who have had a troubled relationship with panto in the past) have gone all out this year to pull in the punters via going to the gym (video), a lurid interview revealing their rather more adult private lives and a mind-blowing photo op with John Barrowman (SFW but what has been seen cannot be unseen and may prove traumatic for British people of a certain age) (previous)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:50 AM PST - 72 comments

It's December so it must be time to list the best songs of the year. Pitchfork's Top 100 Songs and Top 50 Albums, MTV's Top 10 Songs of 2011, Billboard's 20 Best Singles, Spin's 20 Best Songs and Top 50 Albums, AARP's Top 10 Albums For Grown Ups, The A/V Club's Best Music of 2011, Rolling Stone's 50 Best Singles and 50 Best Albums, NPR Music's 100 Favorite Songs of 2011, BET's 100 Best Songs of 2011, NME's Best Albums of 2011, MixMag's Tunes of The Year, Metacritic's Top 10 Albums of 2011, Pop Matters 75 Best Albums, Songs and more. [more inside]
posted by empath at 9:23 PM PST - 154 comments

If I Die Young: Struggling with Addiction and Recovery. "Last year, 249 people died of prescription drug overdoses in Pinellas County, FL. Just about everybody who knew Stacy Nicholson figured she was next. Then an empathetic judge gave her a choice: recovery, or the coffin." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:06 PM PST - 86 comments

I'm willing to bet that even a lot of you who say "I don't like drum solos" will, well... like this one.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:46 PM PST - 100 comments

Growing Up with Scientist Mom
posted by Knigel at 6:53 PM PST - 35 comments

Here is "The B.S. of A. with Brain Sack," a show aired on Glenn Beck's TV channel that claims to be a "non-partisan" alternative to the Daily Show. How good is it? Better than the right's previous attempts at making a satire show, but uneven.... Judge for yourself: here's a monologue, in five parts: 1-2-3-4-5. Here's a few of the better bits: Kill Panel - Pilgrim Funnies - Isle of Skulls MLYT [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 6:38 PM PST - 88 comments

"A Maryland boat was sent to the bottom by the Virginian navy, and a long contest was the result..." Hostility between Maryland and Virginia began the moment Maryland was created in 1632. Virginia objected to the Catholic nature of the new colony, as well as the unusual border which gave Lord Baltimore's colony ownership of all the Potomac River. Disputed maritime borders lead to conflict over the prized oyster, and naval confrontation on the Chesapeake became common. Maryland eventually created an Oyster Navy, which was charged with bringing order to the Bay and enforcing harvesting laws against the oyster pirates. The "Oyster Wars" were frequently violent. [more inside]
posted by spaltavian at 6:22 PM PST - 20 comments

Offbeat Bride presents: How to make your own Dungeons & Dragons chocolate dice mold.
posted by griphus at 4:44 PM PST - 22 comments

As Doctors Use More Devices, Potential for Distraction Grows — Do too many digital devices distract doctors from their daily rounds and endanger patients?
posted by cenoxo at 3:13 PM PST - 24 comments

We're all familiar with the various types of conflict: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. society, and of course man vs. truculent concrete buffer. Redubbed, in case the narration isn't your cup of tea.
posted by codacorolla at 2:55 PM PST - 42 comments

Urban Flipper As part of the Festival of Lights, CT Light Concept, created a giant interactive pinball game with 3D projection mapping on the facade of the Celestine Theater in Lyon. [more inside]
posted by Z303 at 2:30 PM PST - 6 comments

The Norwegian Butter Crisis: An absurd dairy shortage and its very valuable economic lessons.
posted by flex at 2:02 PM PST - 69 comments

In this time of corrupt politics, police brutality, media dereliction, and increasingly vicious culture wars, there's perhaps no graphic novel more relevant today than the brilliant and blackly funny Transmetropolitan. Created by Warren Ellis back in 1997 and inspired by prescient sci fi novel Bug Jack Barron, the series covers the work of gonzo journalist, vulgar misanthrope, and all-around magnificent bastard Spider Jerusalem in a sprawling futuristic vision of New York so chaotically advanced that humans splice genes with alien refugees, matter decompilers are as common as microwaves, and a new religion is invented every hour. As a callous Nixonian thug nicknamed The Beast prepares for his re-election to the presidency, a primary battle heats up between a virulent racist and a charismatic senator whose rictus grin masks some disturbing realities. When Jerusalem delves into the machinations of the race, he breaks into a web of conspiracies that threaten the future of the country -- a problem only he, his "filthy assistants," and the power of intrepid journalism can defeat. More: Read the first issue (or three) - browse images from the new artbook - Tor's read-along blog (another) - Jerusalem's touching report on cryogenic "Revivals" - dozens of original sketches and sample pages - timeline - quotes
posted by Rhaomi at 1:48 PM PST - 55 comments

If you enjoyed the Chronicles of Narnia, you may enjoy this series of 101 podcasts that narrates the entire seven-book series. It is read by Chrissi Hart, who grew up in England (in case you appreciate a bit of a British accent in your audio books), and it is available via stream or download. It is done with the permission of the C.S. Lewis estate.
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:17 PM PST - 11 comments

The year was 1945. Two earthshaking events took place: the successful test at Alamogordo and the building of the first electronic computer. Their combined impact was to modify qualitatively the nature of global interactions between Russia and the West. No less perturbative were the changes wrought in all of academic research and in applied science. On a less grand scale these events brought about a [renaissance] of a mathematical technique known to the old guard as statistical sampling; in its new surroundings and owing to its nature, there was no denying its new name of the Monte Carlo method (PDF). -N. Metropolis

Conceptually talked about on MeFi previously, some basic Monte Carlo methods include the Inverse Transform Method (PDF) mentioned in the quoted paper, Acceptance-Rejection Sampling (PDFs 1,2), and integration with and without importance sampling (PDF).
posted by JoeXIII007 at 1:15 PM PST - 13 comments

Alan Moore talks about HP Lovecraft, The Courtyard and Neonomicon (audio)
posted by Artw at 12:54 PM PST - 38 comments

Cesaria Evora once described the music of Cape Verde, known as Morna, as "a lot of things…Some say it’s like the blues, or jazz. Others says it’s like Brazilian or African music, but no one really knows. Not even the old ones."
Although Evora's singing voice had attracted attention even when she was a small girl, she did not gain recognition until later in life when she performed in Paris and the French newspaper Le Monde proclaimed that she "belongs to the world nobility of bar singers." Cesaria Evora, known as the Barefoot Diva for performing without shoes, passed away today at the age of 70 in her native Cape Verde.
You can listen to Evora performing Miss Perfumado and Sodade online.
posted by vacapinta at 12:36 PM PST - 33 comments

Graphic designer Amanda Cox (previously) talks about the crossroads of journalism, design, information, and illustration and how it all comes together in data visualizations for The New York Times.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:17 AM PST - 5 comments

If Google+, YouTube, and Facebook were created in 1997. "Three important contemporary web sites, recreated with technology and spirit of late 1997, according to our memories. Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.03 and a screen resolution of 1024×768 pixels, running under Windows 95."
posted by stopgap at 9:25 AM PST - 79 comments

Welcome to Arts & Architecture. In the case of some, maybe, welcome back...Old-timer. On this website you will find selected projects from issues of the magazine 1945 through 1967. [more inside]
posted by Think_Long at 9:06 AM PST - 5 comments

cortex's Incoherent Savior says the most interesting and beautiful things. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:26 AM PST - 53 comments

Christmas In Hollis: The Emoticon Version [more inside]
posted by mathowie at 8:14 AM PST - 8 comments

Two high school students record a gorgeous version (youtube) of Neko Case’s Star Witness in their high school stairwell. The song is part of a protest to save Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School from imminent closure. Will their beautiful protest work? Who knows. But they did break Neko Case’s heart. Maybe they’ll break yours too.
posted by Cuke at 7:14 AM PST - 55 comments

Ukelele street kid revolution! The band is fantastic live, a lot of fun in the practice room, okay in the studio, but nothing compares to what they do with the children. Meanwhile, we all saw some Indonesian punks get shaved and scolded by the police, previously.
posted by snottydick at 7:13 AM PST - 9 comments

Note Worthy: [guardian.co.uk] Global economic meltdown, the euro crisis and Occupy protests – this year has been dominated by financial issues. But what is money anyway? We invited writers and artists including Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood and Naomi Klein to invent new currencies and banknotes for a changed world.
posted by Fizz at 6:04 AM PST - 13 comments

Released yesterday, dabblet joins an array of live sandbox tools designed to prototype, test and share webcode that includes JSFiddle and CSSDesk, while bringing some advantages of its own.
Other useful resources: w3clove validates an entire site, rather than page-by-page; JQuery Air teaches you how to use the framework directly in the browser; domain.nr finds clever TLDs for your site, and Sequel Pro is a nice, free, native, open source MySQL editor for OS X. If you’re more the old-school dead-tree type, there’s always The Manual.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 11:28 PM PST - 9 comments

Maggie and Terre Roche started performing professionally in the late '60s, just a little late for the folkie boom but also a bit too distinctive to blend easily with the singer-songwriters of the early '70s, even when they became acolytes of Paul Simon and recorded backup vocals on There Goes Rhymin' Simon. By 1975, they had their own album on CBS, with tracks produced by Simon (and backed by the Oak Ridge Boys and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) and ex-Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith... Seductive Reasoning is not completely a folk nor a country album, which no doubt hurt its commercial potential... Songs such as "West Virginia", "Down the Dream", and "The Mountain People" touch on early joy and disillusionment/disappointment, while "Jill of All Trades" and "The Burden of Proof" reflect a few more years of life under one's belt and the smoothing out that can come with them. "Underneath the Moon" and "Wigglin' Man"... are more straightforward getting-laid songs, funny as hell... while several of their albums have been as good as Seductive Reasoning, none were better. Nor did they have to be. - Todd Mason (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 9:52 PM PST - 29 comments

238 years ago this evening… in response to the Townshend Act, and the East India Company… a few colonists had a Tea (link) Party (link).
posted by jabo at 8:24 PM PST - 48 comments

Swedish Citizens Now Control @sweden Twitter Account. Curators of Sweden is based around the idea that no single voice can represent the country, so a slew of guest Swedish curators will do the best job to portray the national character. One Swedish citizen will have control of the @sweden handle each week.
posted by sweetkid at 7:35 PM PST - 33 comments

Greens Survive only when Reds Die
posted by rodmandirect at 7:06 PM PST - 25 comments

There's Hard Rock, Soft Rock, Punk Rock, Folk Rock, Progressive Rock, Alt Rock, Art Rock, Acid Rock, Indie Rock, Grunge Rock, Schoolhouse Rock, 30 Rock, and now there's Third Rock, an internet radio station "powered by NASA", yes, NASA. (Think of it as 'New Music' with commercials for something you already like)
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:48 PM PST - 19 comments

After 176+ episodes, satirical podcast The Bugle with John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman will no longer be published by The Times. [more inside]
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 6:25 PM PST - 58 comments

Here is Game Club 19XX, a new monthly podcast from Hardcore Gaming 101 (previously) in which knowledgeable gamers discuss playing through old video games without FAQs or walkthroughs. Episode 1 is on Snake's Revenge, the forgotten NES sequel to Metal Gear. (MP3 download from MediaFire, 1:27:32)
posted by JHarris at 6:11 PM PST - 10 comments

A Very Calvin and Hobbes Christmas Nifty little YT short recreating some of the classic Calvin and Hobbes snowmenagerie.
posted by ironjelly at 5:59 PM PST - 18 comments

Dear Humanity, I'm afraid I have some bad news. Nature wants to eat you. SLTumblr. NSFPeople who are frightened of pictures of terrifying organisms.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:17 PM PST - 79 comments

When you send people passwords and private links via email or chat, there are copies of that information stored in many places. If you use a one-time link instead, the information persists for a single viewing which means it can't be read by someone else later. This allows you to send sensitive information in a safe way knowing it's seen by one person only. Think of it like a self-destructing message, a One Time Secret.
posted by netbros at 4:11 PM PST - 30 comments

30 Things to Stop Doing To Yourself
posted by gauche at 2:11 PM PST - 153 comments

From Michigan to Nebraska, from Washington State to North Carolina, anonymous donors have been paying off "layaway" tabs for holiday-shopping families.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:16 PM PST - 81 comments

It just hasn't been a good month for the Chicago Bears. First they lost Jay Cutler and Matt Forte to injuries, and yesterday wide receiver Sam Hurd was arrested in an undercover drug sting, after an investigation that began in July 2011.
posted by SisterHavana at 12:50 PM PST - 55 comments

From architect/designer Luis Urculo, a short film in which iconic buildings are modeled with everyday objects: Covers (vimeo) [more inside]
posted by Prince_of_Cups at 12:32 PM PST - 5 comments

Flash Friday: Gamerswithjobs calls Nekogames' OUKA a "very minimalist experience, offering the simplest rules possible in a video game...(i)nstead of a long sentence or paragraph explaining things, or even a tutorial video, when you click the “Hint” button the game simply lays part of the level’s inner workings bare. It’s a testament to the simplicity of the game that this works so well." Just click the symbol, that's all. [more inside]
posted by mreleganza at 12:24 PM PST - 34 comments

In 1985, Apple started the "Apple University Consortium Europe" collaboration program, and one of the first universities to enroll was that of Lund, Sweden. To celebrate the collaboration, Apple CEO Steve Jobs came to Lund - and a 16 minute film of his visit has now been found and been made available by the University of Lund. You can see the clip here (.mov).
posted by mr.marx at 12:23 PM PST - 5 comments

Americans Elect is an organization creating a ready-made slot on the 2012 presidential ballot for an unnamed independent ticket, thus removing the biggest barrier to a 3rd party challenge. (Donald Trump suggests himself.) The NYT thinks they'll qualify in all 50 states. They say they want a non-partisan, mixed-party ticket. Some on the left see a cabal of shadowy millionaires with ties to the FBI, CIA and military behind it. Team Obama is concerned.
posted by msalt at 12:14 PM PST - 93 comments

Lego Picks Up Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Licenses [more inside]
posted by Vindaloo at 11:36 AM PST - 80 comments

What you need is a splash of color!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:12 AM PST - 17 comments

The concept behind VoyURL is simple: A browser plugin records your every click, which you can then choose to share publicly in a real-time feed. Their website analyzes and shows you your online history in customized infographics, to identify patterns, recommend content and help you learn more about the way you use the internet. You can see the browsing history of all users in one giant timeline or follow a specific user. The service is currently in beta, but you can slip in here or here. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:59 AM PST - 34 comments

We've talked about using neti pots in the past. From Louisiana comes this cautionary instruction on proper technique!
posted by Runes at 10:52 AM PST - 76 comments

"You've seen boring unboxing videos. How about a cool boxing video?" A Korean postal worker demonstrates his superior packaging skills [SLYT].
posted by bayani at 10:23 AM PST - 45 comments

Chris Covell translated a Japanese social studies book about the making of Super Mario Bros. 3.
posted by ignignokt at 10:18 AM PST - 10 comments

Back in Town is a song by Izia, a French rock band fronted by and named for Izïa Higelin. Even though she comes from a showbiz family, the band initially found little favor on French radio. But after a string of blistering live performances all over France, the self-titled first album became a hit and won a couple of awards at the prestigious Victoire de la Musique ceremony, where Izia performed the song Let Me Alone. There are a bunch of live performances online, including of Life is Going Down, a cover of AC/DC's Touch Too Much and a duet with Iggy Pop. This past November, sophomore album So Much Trouble was released, featuring such songs as the title track, On Top of the World, and my favorite, Baby.
posted by Kattullus at 10:10 AM PST - 9 comments

Gamasutra's Top 10 Indie Games of 2011 [more inside]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:07 AM PST - 19 comments

Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (previous)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:04 AM PST - 88 comments

Last month How Did This Get Made (previously) held a live panel discussion of Superman III, a movie that started as a bizarre pitch involving everyone from Brainiac to Supergirl and Mr. Mxyzptlk, and ended up as a Richard Pryor vehicle. However for some truly crazy stories you may want to skip ahead to part II, where they are joined by Jack O'Halloran - Non from Superman I and II, boxer and son of the head of Murder, Inc. - who talks at length about his life, the movies, and choking Christopher Reeve.
posted by Artw at 10:01 AM PST - 30 comments

Three Soundies and one collage:
Handsome Harry The Hipster - Harry "The Hipster" Gibson
4-F Ferdinand - Harry "The Hipster" Gibson
Opus 12EEE - Harry "The Hipster" Gibson
Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs Murphys Ovaltine ? - Harry "The Hipster" Gibson
That last song would prove to be his undoing. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 9:31 AM PST - 14 comments

In 1999 MTV launched Downtown, an animated slice of life show about young people in Manhattan's Lower East Side based on interviews with non-actors (Pilot part 2 part 3 ) created by animator Chris Prynoski (Daria, Beavis And Butt-head, Metalocalypse). Despite an Emmy nomination, the show was cancelled after one season (with one unaired episode). Like so many MTV shows, licensing complications prevented it from reaching DVD, meaning the only way to watch the show was to e-mail Chris directly. Until someone uploaded the entire series to Youtube.
posted by The Whelk at 8:38 AM PST - 18 comments

As he starts to ride towards the camera, you just know it's going to be an awesome maneou-
S (stupid) LYT
posted by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 8:17 AM PST - 33 comments

In the state of Virginia, it is now legal for licensed adoption agencies and foster facilities to discriminate on the basis of a potential parent's sexual orientation, religion, age, gender, disability, political beliefs, or family status. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:30 AM PST - 60 comments

The Face of Student Debt: Natalia Antonova stopped paying when she realized that it was the loans or her child. (The response has been telling.) Kristin Rawls demands solidarity. Glenn Reynolds says colleges should pay for defaulters.

"The proportion of freshmen and sophomores at four-year colleges who will default on federal loans over their lifetime is estimated at between 19 and 31 percent, depending on the type of loan and when it was written, the [DOE's] Office of Inspector General wrote in a 2003 audit."(doc)

posted by anotherpanacea at 5:14 AM PST - 219 comments

Seventy feared dead and five hundred wounded by riot police in Zhanaozen, west Kazakhstan. Workers in the oil town have been on strike since May; protests (YT) during independence day celebrations escalated into clashes with security forces. Latest reports suggest protesters are gathering again and 1,500 marines are moving in.
posted by Abiezer at 5:05 AM PST - 23 comments

Black And White Portraits of the Homeless "Lee Jeffries' career began as a sports photographer, capturing the beautiful game of football in Manchester. Then a chance meeting with a homeless woman living in the streets of London changed his life forever. He has since dedicated himself to capturing gripping portraits of the disenfranchised. Shooting exclusively in black and white, Lee Jeffries’ 135+ pictures can be viewed in his Flickr Photostream. The majority are closeup portraits with incredible detail. Each photograph exudes so much raw character and depth, you find yourself studying each shot with great intensity."
posted by parrot_person at 3:50 AM PST - 42 comments

This week, a reality show contestant performed a song once described as an "epic, gospel-tinged ballad of desire and rejection, love and sex, God and man, failure and transcendence, the inevitability of death and triumph of the spirit against the greatest odds". Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. [more inside]
posted by szechuan at 3:28 AM PST - 72 comments

Where the fuck should I go for drinks? [more inside]
posted by grouse at 1:08 AM PST - 91 comments

Comic book artist Eduardo Barreto, best known for his work on such DC titles as New Teen Titans and various Superman projects, not to mention his work on the Judge Parker newspaper strip, has died at the age of 57. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 12:45 AM PST - 8 comments

A Pattern Language explores the living structure in good and bad buildings, human artifacts, and natural systems, discussing the presence of the same living order in all systems. [Christopher] Alexander proposes that the living order depends on features which make a close connection with the human self. The quality of works of art, artifacts, and buildings is defined not merely in terms of living structure, but also in their capacity to affect human growth and human well-being.
posted by Trurl at 9:50 PM PST - 38 comments

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011
posted by naju at 8:54 PM PST - 481 comments

China's economy poised to join the rest of us in the toilet. I certainly hope one of you smart people can prove this article wrong.
posted by coriolisdave at 8:06 PM PST - 84 comments

People; ask not what F14's can do for you, but rather, what F14People can do for SLYoutubewhatwoahwowJetFighters are People?
posted by infinite intimation at 7:55 PM PST - 37 comments

"The subscription model is dead." says John Smedley, head of Sony Online Entertainment, and creator of EverQuest. Are people willing to pay $15 per month to play a computer game that isn't endorsed by Mr. T? Bioware is betting a rumored $135 million, the most ever spent on a video game, that the answer is yes. Star Wars: The Old Republic launches on December 20th. [more inside]
posted by tastyhat at 7:04 PM PST - 104 comments

Republican Governor Scott Walker filed suit against the non partisan Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB). At issue in the suit is a statement by the GAB concerning challenges to the gathered signatures - that signatures, no matter what names are listed, are presumed valid absent a challenge by the Walker campaign. This presumption is a violation of Walker's 14th Amendment rights and violates the will of people who chose not to sign, he argues in the complaint. (pdf) [more inside]
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 6:49 PM PST - 63 comments

Pick a hedgehog and make him sing a Christmas carol. An interactive Youtube animation featuring absurdly cute hedgehogs who will supposedly sing a carol for you. via boringpostcards and metachat
posted by mygothlaundry at 6:37 PM PST - 12 comments

Here is Super President. Super President foils the villain by ringing a bell. 60s Batman got his deduction skills from Super President. Jerry Beck on Super President. From his accurately-named website, Worst Cartoons Ever.
posted by JHarris at 6:00 PM PST - 8 comments

While the most talked about topics in hockey this year have been the deaths of multiple current and former NHL enforcers, the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash tragedy, and the rash of concussions among star players, A new series by the Yahoo "Puck Daddy" blog is bringing attention to a more positive aspect of the game: the Hockey Hug. [more inside]
posted by ghharr at 4:22 PM PST - 17 comments

A spherical flying robot has been developed at the Japanese Ministry of Self-Defense; it can zoom along indoors and outdoors at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, or just hover. Menacingly. Science Fiction In The News is a subsection of science-fiction site Technovelgy, which tracks both the predictions of future tech made in science fiction past and present and its manifestations in real life. What tech, you ask? Well, if it’s appeared in your nightmares, it’s probably been on this page: [more inside]
posted by Diablevert at 3:52 PM PST - 28 comments

Of the hundreds of species of palm trees you might find in southern California, only one is native to the state, and that shaggy specimen is naturally found around springs and arroyos in the desert southwest, not lined along beach community parks and streets. How did a desert tree become an icon of fruitful turn of the twentieth century Los Angeles, the former garden city? KCET writer Nathan Masters provides a brief history of palm trees in southern California. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:49 PM PST - 23 comments

Today, a comet falls into the sun. Via
posted by hot_monster at 3:47 PM PST - 27 comments

Now that the factories are closed, it’s tee time in Benton Harbor (SLNYT, previously).
posted by xowie at 3:41 PM PST - 8 comments

Tired of the same old renditions of the Christmas Story? Try this video and its prequel, produced in the vein of Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are.
posted by kethonna at 3:35 PM PST - 5 comments

An "Exciting Guide to Probability Distributions" from the University of Oxford: part 1, part 2. (Two links to PDFs)
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:23 PM PST - 17 comments

Joe Simon , who along with Jack Kirby created Captain America, died today at the age of 98. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 3:18 PM PST - 29 comments

Dirty Signs with Kristin is an informative YouTube channel that teaches you how to sign things you may need to use in day-to-day conversation, like cum dumpster, suck my cock, Trebek, nice shoes, wanna fuck?, it's like Christmas in my mouth, you have a sandy vagina, twat waffle, and many more (NSFW).
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:17 PM PST - 31 comments

Rosemount High School athletes were recently tricked into making out with their own parents in front of a crowd. The principal of the school has offered an "apology".
posted by gman at 3:00 PM PST - 198 comments

Timelapse of the Year: an awe-inspiring trailer for the movie TimeScapes by Tom Lowe (full 4K version on YouTube/MP4 direct link). (Previously)
Rover Newcomer: Where In The Solar System is Curiosity?
Astronomy Photographer of the Year. The Top 24 Deep Space Pictures of 2011. Top 14 Solar System Photos.  Top 16 Space Photos.  (Images of a million-light-year long collision of galaxy clusters and a “stellar snow angel” didn’t make the cut, but should have).
Discovery of the Year: Opportunity uncovers conclusive proof that water flowed on Mars.
Astronomy Animation of the year: a zoom to the center of the Milky Way, and the supermassive black hole that is feeding there.
Lifetime Achievement: The Known Universe, a stunning three-minute zoom from the peak of the Himalayas to the edge of the cosmos, finally available in HD. (Previously).
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 2:52 PM PST - 6 comments

An Essay On The Noble Science Of Self-Justification: "Timid brides, you have, probably, hitherto been addressed as angels. Prepare for the time when you shall again become mortal. Take the alarm at the first approach of blame; at the first hint of a discovery that you are any thing less than infallible:--contradict, debate, justify, recriminate, rage, weep, swoon, do any thing but yield to conviction. I take it for granted that you have already acquired sufficient command of voice; you need not study its compass; going beyond its pitch has a peculiarly happy effect upon some occasions. But are you voluble enough to drown all sense in a torrent of words? Can you be loud enough to overpower the voice of all who shall attempt to interrupt or contradict you? Are you mistress of the petulant, the peevish, and the sullen tone? Have you practised the sharpness which provokes retort, and the continual monotony which by setting your adversary to sleep effectually precludes reply?" For remember, "a lady can do no wrong."
posted by shivohum at 2:08 PM PST - 5 comments

Laura Wattenberg of The Baby Name Wizard has announced 2011's Name of the Year. And the winner is... Siri. [more inside]
posted by Anyamatopoeia at 2:05 PM PST - 56 comments

IE6 was released to the world 10 years ago. Now Microsoft is saying "Goodbye". (from the MSNBC Article) "To help expedite the farewell (or rather, the execution) of its ancient Web browser, Microsoft says next month it will start to upgrade Windows customers automatically to the latest version of IE available for their computer." [more inside]
posted by kellygrape at 1:16 PM PST - 85 comments

Feel-good SLYT of the day: "So tell me what it's going to be like now that you two are going to be grandpas."
posted by roger ackroyd at 1:03 PM PST - 40 comments

In the mountains of North Carolina an old tradition lives on: Breakin Up Christmas. [more inside]
posted by timsteil at 12:34 PM PST - 17 comments

After investigating a tragic crash involving two school buses and a third passenger vehicle in Missouri last year the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended this week that state and local governments ban all forms of cellphone communication while driving, including texting and talking using handsfree devices. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 12:32 PM PST - 122 comments

Many ages ago, before some had yet to hear of The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings or the collectible LOTR glasses sold at Burger King, critics did their initial reviews. Here's the original review by the New York Times of The Hobbit in 1938. Then came The Fellowship of the Ring, followed by The Two Towers, and of course The Return of the King. Here's a 1967 interview with Tolkien after the influence of his work was starting to be felt. One interesting detail noted is that Tolkien typed the entire 1200+ page manuscript of TLOTR with two fingers. Of course, not everyone viewed the books so favorably. The BBC has detailed some initial criticism against the books, but this seems to have been the minority response within a generally broad and warm literary reception.
posted by SpacemanStix at 12:17 PM PST - 44 comments

Farhad Manjoo of Slate argues that buying books from Amazon is better than buying from local bookstores.
posted by reenum at 12:12 PM PST - 167 comments

W i l c o (MLYT +Colbertnation) frontman Jeff Tweedy does the Chicago weather report(:30, OPENS W/ AD). [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 11:11 AM PST - 20 comments

George Osodi is a London based and Nigerian born photographer. Recent exhibits have covered the region's beauty admist the local effects of the oil industry.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:11 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Five guys, five hundred cans of spray paint, and sixteen days.
posted by chronkite at 11:07 AM PST - 39 comments

You know about the Great Depression, but do you know about the Long Depression? For a while now some have been suggesting we're in a "Third Depression", not so much like the Great one, but more like the Long Depression (1873–96) of 23 years (originally called the Great Depression). Suggesting "This slump won’t end until 2031". [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 11:02 AM PST - 44 comments

The FluxBlog 2011 survey mix is out! Ten discs, 183 songs (that’s 26 more than last year), adding up to almost 13 hours of music. Download, share and enjoy.
posted by spitefulcrow at 11:00 AM PST - 15 comments

Get your censor on. GYWO creator David Rees takes on the Stop Online Piracy Act. Meanwhile, a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers sent an open letter to Congress, stating their opposition to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills (previously).
posted by homunculus at 10:33 AM PST - 81 comments

Raiding the Lost Ark: a filmumentary (pt.1, vimeo) [more inside]
posted by mediated self at 10:32 AM PST - 17 comments

Photographs and more photographs of the ancient city of Palmyra, seat of the Palmyrene Empire and home to Queen Zenobia.
posted by Rumple at 10:17 AM PST - 13 comments

Want to write a pulp novel full of two fisted tales of action and adventure in the mode of Doc Savage but don't know where to start? You need the Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot! "No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell."
posted by Artw at 9:58 AM PST - 37 comments

Fart jokes! Everybody loves them! And everybody knows a couple of good ones. But did you know that they date back to the 5th century BC, and appear prominently in two plays by Aristophanes, "The Knights" and "The Clouds"? [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 9:48 AM PST - 44 comments

How Aston builds the beautiful One-77 [more inside]
posted by zeoslap at 9:48 AM PST - 43 comments

Mark Carney: the man who speaks the truth. Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson recommends a recent speech by Bank of Canada head Mark Carney. "Most fundamentally, current events mark a rupture. Advanced economies have steadily increased leverage [i.e. debt] for decades. That era is now decisively over. The direction may be clear, but the magnitude and abruptness of the process are not. It could be long and orderly or it could be sharp and chaotic. How we manage it will do much to determine our relative prosperity." [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 9:35 AM PST - 9 comments

A great contribution to the economics-made-fun genre and food for Mefi thought: Arguing on the internet is addictive because you’re almost always arguing against either a very stupid person or a very smart person, and those are the two types of people most fun to argue with.
posted by Philosopher's Beard at 9:05 AM PST - 48 comments

Fukushima. Osama Bin Laden. The Arab Spring. The Royal Wedding. Natural Disasters. Argentine Soccer Teams. Elizabeth Taylor. Gabrielle Giffords. iPad2 & iPhone 5. Steve Jobs..... Google Presents their 11th annual Zeitgeist: 2011 Year In Review (youtube) "What mattered in 2011? Zeitgeist sorted billions of Google searches to capture the year's 10 fastest-rising global queries and the rest of the spirit of 2011." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:31 AM PST - 26 comments

"The contemporary American law school is based on bullshit." [more inside]
posted by gauche at 7:30 AM PST - 102 comments

A pet cat named Dodger is living up to his name - by catching free bus trips from his home town.
posted by veedubya at 6:05 AM PST - 55 comments

The 5 Most Horrifyingly Wasteful Film Shoots.
posted by John Cohen at 5:55 AM PST - 73 comments

Did you know that Al-Shabaab, the Islamic militant group currently fighting for control of southern Somalia, has a Twitter account? [more inside]
posted by Aizkolari at 5:37 AM PST - 20 comments

"Over the years, Lego has had five strategic initiatives aimed at girls. Some failed because they misapprehended gender differences in how kids play. Others, while modestly profitable, didn’t integrate properly with Lego’s core products. Now, after four years of research, design, and exhaustive testing, Lego believes it has a breakthrough. On Dec. 26 in the U.K. and Jan. 1 in the U.S., Lego will roll out Lego Friends, aimed at girls 5 and up.... "The Lego Friends team is aware of the paradox at the heart of its work: To break down old stereotypes about how girls play, it risks reinforcing others. “If it takes color-coding or ponies and hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains,” says Lise Eliot." From Businessweek (print link, above; via BoingBoing), an interesting look at Lego's new girl-oriented initiative.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:18 AM PST - 188 comments

Ross Racine works with a fictional world of suburban forms. Cristoph Gielen works with actual suburban forms. Here are some of their works, in no particular order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:13 AM PST - 4 comments

Ye olde rock and roll time machine, part two: recently found photos of a Stooges performance at a suburban Detroit high school from 1970.
posted by NoMich at 4:06 AM PST - 19 comments

Mobile Suit Gundam premiered on April 7th, 1979 in Nagoya, Japan, and with it came the now three-decade-old franchise that launched a thousand plastic model kits. WARNING: MAY CONTAIN spoilers for a thirty-year-old beloved cultural touchstone that you've likely never seen or possibly even heard of. WARNING: DEFINITELY CONTAINS many, many links to TV Tropes. 28.8k USERS: Upgrade to 56K already. You're going to need it. [more inside]
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:01 AM PST - 64 comments

I've been advised by doctors to prepare for death. "I believe that there is strength in facing reality, and then planning your demise on your own terms as best you can. And hey, if a miracle happens and we beat the odds, that is only a bonus. Facing reality doesn't mean denying a possible happy outcome. Look at my case for instance--I have surpassed 60 days, and I am not dead yet. I haven't counted how many days I am past my expiration date, but one could say that each day is a miracle now." [more inside]
posted by jcterminal at 11:53 PM PST - 44 comments

S. Ekhad , E. Georgiadis, D. Zeilberger.  "How to Gamble If You're In a Hurry."  arXiv:1112.1645v1 (pdf), 7 Dec 2011. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 11:33 PM PST - 3 comments

What Women Want: Porn and the Frontier of Female Sexuality [NSFW] James Deen is a young, handsome porn star who is becoming famous for actually appealing to women. Due to his boyish, slightly skate-punk aesthetic, naturally toned body, and ability to connect emotionally (or at least appear to) with his female co-stars, Deen has garnered a following of devoted young women in an industry that in most cases ignores them entirely. via
posted by mlis at 11:29 PM PST - 63 comments

Matt Mulholland performing "My Heart Will Go On" on the recorder. That is all. (SLYT)
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:43 PM PST - 15 comments

Don Van Vliet is self-taught. He neither expects allowances for the amateur’s lack of dexterity nor permits any technical deficiency on his own part to limit his scope. Nobody's understanding or forbearance sets limits to what he does - any more than does the fear of going wrong. The lacerations, transgressions, and awkward moments that he introduces are unpredictable, as is their duration; when he takes the figures that confront him and tugs them out of shape, he simultaneously tugs himself out of shape - and out of his own limitations. - Roberto Ohrt
posted by Trurl at 8:29 PM PST - 14 comments

Tomorrow marks the official end of the Iraq war. The Obama administration describes it as a 'promise kept'. The war resulted in a great many casualties. Although the final troop movement out of the country is not scheduled to begin for a few days, history will record December 15 as the end of the war, as the flag of the American military mission in Bagdhad is lowered and returned to the US. Scholars at Brown University estimate the total cost of the war at 265,000 dead and $3-4 trillion dollars. The main contenders for the Republican party's 2012 nomination both expressed approval and disapproval. Previously, 339 times.
posted by anigbrowl at 8:15 PM PST - 90 comments

Star Wars Snowflakes (with patterns). Star Trek Snowflakes (without patterns). [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:03 PM PST - 16 comments

The films of 2011 in 6:22 [more inside]
posted by Flashman at 7:45 PM PST - 18 comments

Cat yoga.
posted by flex at 7:34 PM PST - 27 comments

The Old Robots [more inside]
posted by Sailormom at 5:47 PM PST - 22 comments

Why are Indian Reservations So Poor? Forbes writer John Koppisch says it's because of a lack of individual property rights. In a detailed response, the executive director of non-profit organization Village Earth says: "I find it ironic how academics and journalists try to come up with new theories to explain poverty on reservations but fail to take into account the obvious. The government owes Native Americans at least 45 Billion dollars yet, in the settlement offered by the Obama administration, they are being compensated for less that .06% of that." [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 5:38 PM PST - 100 comments

10 Reasons Why Donna Summer Belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
posted by rollick at 4:51 PM PST - 49 comments

CN Turbo Train Part 2, part 3, 1970 Film‬. Canada Off the Rails: You know the story of the Avro Arrow, now discover how Canada fell from leader to laggard in another cutting edge, vastly profitable, globally relevant transportation industry, where Canadians had held a strong lead, until this Canadian homegrown industry was derailed; high-speed derailed... CN Turbo Train - "3:59" - The Lost Film (the high speed rail flickr pool is recommended viewing). [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 4:46 PM PST - 15 comments

Here is the pilot episode of Les Mondes Engloutis (Part 2), a French animated sci-fi/fantasy televison series from 1985. Here is its iconic theme song. In English it translates into "The Sunken Worlds," but English-speakers know it better as Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. More information can be found on Tripod fansite The Lost Archives of Arkadia. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 4:06 PM PST - 23 comments

Take a Panoramic Virtual Tour of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Available as a full-screen virtual tour starting entry rotunda and navigating from there, or jump to individual rooms.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:01 PM PST - 7 comments

Canadian music icon Randy Bachman hosts a weekly two-hour program called Vinyl Tap on CBC; on the program, he plays older music and talks about the stories behind the creation of the tracks. In 2010, he hosted a live episode called Guitarology 101 from the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. The episode was devoted to various aspects of guitars and included a story about his visit to Abbey Road Studios where Giles Martin offered him a chance to hear anything he wished from the masters of the Beatles catalogue. His choice: to hear the opening chord of A Hard Day's Night. After listening to each separate track, he walks his audience through how the the chord was constructed. [more inside]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:34 PM PST - 54 comments

Mohammed el Gorani, the youngest prisoner held at Guantánamo, has written a memoir of his time there, the lead up to his imprisonment, and subsequent release years later.
posted by gman at 2:02 PM PST - 60 comments

Tuesday at Christie's, Elizabeth Taylor's collection of jewelry brought $115.8 million most of it earmarked for her AIDS and other charities. [more inside]
posted by Anitanola at 1:54 PM PST - 23 comments

In Indonesia, a punk rock concert is raided and attendees are arrested, shaved, de-pierced, bathed and sent for re-education.
posted by griphus at 1:52 PM PST - 48 comments

George Whitman, founder of the Parisian landmark bookstore Shakespeare And Company, has died at the age of 98
posted by The Whelk at 1:17 PM PST - 49 comments

Sloth Sanctuary is a documentary about a sloth orphanage in Costa Rica that will air on Animal Planet on December 18^th. Trailer
posted by babbyʼ); Drop table users; -- at 1:13 PM PST - 33 comments

Say Hello to My Little Friend. Mary Roach examines the history of head shrinking among Amazon tribes and Americans' fascination with the little things. She also includes a handy DIY guide.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:48 PM PST - 16 comments

What are the odds? When Jim showed up to buy Eric's 63 VW convertible, he already had the key in his pocket. [more inside]
posted by richyoung at 12:47 PM PST - 22 comments

After 50 years of service, the Lockheed P-3 Orion, is standing down. [more inside]
posted by timsteil at 12:10 PM PST - 31 comments

The TV show Bones is loosely based on the life of forensic anthropologist and author Kathy Reichs. But how much science does the show get right? Can you really use the mandibular angle to figure out the sex of the victim? What about diagnosing Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva from a tiny bone fragment? Biological anthropologist Kristina Killgrove dissects the science of each episode on her blog, Powered by Osteons.
posted by melissam at 12:08 PM PST - 67 comments

The crime against women that no one understands "They would be 10 educated, professional women versus a demonstrated liar—a man who had pretended to be a doctor, a CIA employee, even an astronaut—whom a court-appointed psychologist would decide met the legal definition of a "sexually violent predator." And yet the most remarkable thing about both trials wasn't the way they exposed the alleged tactics of a serial date rapist. It was that despite the outrageousness of the accusations against Marsalis, the testimony of 10 women wasn't enough to get a single rape conviction against him. The verdicts in these cases would be far lighter than his accusers sought—and victims' advocates say the outcome reveals a disturbing truth about the justice system. Nationwide, despite all the legal advances of the past three decades, little has changed for women who report a date rape. Because in far too many instances, juries don't believe date rape exists."
posted by nooneyouknow at 11:12 AM PST - 251 comments

Bearded dragon lizard playing Ant Crusher on cellphone. (SLYT)
posted by swift at 10:59 AM PST - 31 comments

HBO's Game of Thrones was a huge hit (with some controversy and rebuttals of same), securing a second season only two days after its debut. Filming of said season finished on December 11th and now the production crew is pulling all the pieces together for the April 2012 start of season 2. A few details have officially and unofficially come out, details after the jump: [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:52 AM PST - 85 comments

HTTP Status Cats. Add: Teapot [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 10:42 AM PST - 19 comments

Merry Christmas! Merry Merry Christmas! In 1988, the Writers Guild of America had a strike, the longest in its history, lasting 155 days. The strike had some fallout -- both Moonlighting and Kate and Allie lost audience members due to long hiatuses during the strike, which may have led to their cancellation. And while it generally did not affect children's television, one show, in particular, was hard-hit by the strike: Pee Wee's Playhouse, which had a season of only two episodes, plus a Christmas special. [more inside]
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:38 AM PST - 19 comments

All Together Now. Every Beatles tune, played together, sequenced in order of lengths, with the longest starting first and all 226 tunes ending together. This is a single link SoundCloud post.
posted by The Discredited Ape at 10:29 AM PST - 36 comments

Vacations, diversions and roadtrips: On The Way suggests attractions and reststops for any route. The Weekend Map shows events and activities for 27 American cities for the coming weekend. Nerdy Day Trips (previously) suggests trips for geeks of all kinds, while Trazzler suggests daytrips for where you live. Don't have a car? Mapnificent (previously) shows you where you can get to from any point in a given time using public transit. EveryTrail suggests walks, rambles, strolls and hikes. Google's new HotelFinder service locates places to stay in a sketched area on a map, with a range of options. via
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 10:28 AM PST - 7 comments

You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything esle. You use FIGHT CLUB brand soap.
From the real-life Omni Consumer Products Corporation, a product development company focusing on "licensing, defictionalization, and reverse-branding". Previous products include Brawndo, Tru Blood and Stay Puft Marshmallows (giant monster mascot not included).
Disclaimer: This post is NOT intended to help sell the product, just to inform you that it exists in this atrophying universe. Previously.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:03 AM PST - 81 comments

The Star Wars Holiday special, in its entirety, complete with original commercials. You are welcome. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 9:45 AM PST - 98 comments

Depending on when and what you started reading you may know Russell Hoban as the author of the children's book Bread and Jam for Frances or the post-apoocalyptic sci-fi novel Riddley Walker. Hoban also wrote Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas which was made into a one-hour Christmas Special originally aired by HBO in the 70's and re-released as recently as 2008. He published one book of poetry, The Last of the Wallendas, which included many dark poems such as The Dream of the Kraken. Hoban died in London last night, aged 86. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 9:43 AM PST - 83 comments

Treasure Adventure Game is a free 2D game of exploration on the high seas from independent developer Robit Studios. Dig, sail, fight, and dive across dozens of islands in search of a lost treasure. Download link here.
posted by codacorolla at 9:30 AM PST - 4 comments

"It was Alan Flusser who pointed out, a whole generation of men in the '70s stopped getting dressed, so they didn't teach their children how to get dressed. More and more people have found, 'Oh, I can go read about this stuff.' " The Oral History of Menswear Blogging. With Michael Bastian, Scott Schuman, Michael Williams, Lawrence Schlossman, Jesse Thorn, and others.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 9:29 AM PST - 58 comments

I am under 21. If you are underage, Black Acre Brewery doesn't want you drinking their beer, or viewing their website. But they do want you to rock out.
posted by Blogwardo at 9:29 AM PST - 31 comments

The Spielberg Face
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:57 AM PST - 50 comments

On December 12, 2011, world-famous harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt played what appears to be the last recital of his sixty-one years long career in the Théâtre des Bouffes in Paris. Clips from the concert were uploaded on youtube yesterday. Suitable for the sad event, a melancholic Prélude by d'Anglebert first. [more inside]
posted by Namlit at 8:55 AM PST - 9 comments

Not to be confused with a hot tub time machine, the GigaPan Time Machine enables simultaneous exploration of space and time across massive datasets that could not previously be interactively explored at full spatial and temporal resolution. Here is a short demo of the GigaPan Time Machine website. [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 8:27 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections Of Year-End Lists
posted by box at 8:20 AM PST - 69 comments

The Nine Greatest Nerd Fears Today
posted by ShawnString at 7:53 AM PST - 79 comments

Red money, blue money: The making of the 2012 campaign. "More than 80 percent of giving to Super PACs so far has come from just 58 donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics analysis of the latest data, which covers the first half of 2011." This Salon piece details who the (surprisingly small) number of large donors are, and the SuperPACs they donate to.
posted by jaduncan at 7:42 AM PST - 18 comments

How Fox News is Helping Barack Obama's Re-election Bid (via Naked Capitalism)
posted by wittgenstein at 7:40 AM PST - 50 comments

Ye olde rock and roll time machine: recently found photos of a Van Halen in-store appearance from 1978.
posted by mintcake! at 7:31 AM PST - 30 comments

Did the disappearance of the elephant caused the rise of modern man? Humans are not good at extracting energy from plants or converting protein to energy. Without fire to allow for better conversion, fat was a vital part of early man's diet. Elephants being slower and larger than many other prey was a prime hunting target. When the number of elephants declined, man had to find other sources. Hunting smaller, faster prey resulted in a change in human evolution. Man became lighter and their brain size increased to handle the requirements for hunting enough animals to provide the necessary fat.
posted by 2manyusernames at 6:58 AM PST - 16 comments

The Labyrinth of Genre A browseable and searchable map of music genres, with short samples.
posted by Deathalicious at 6:23 AM PST - 21 comments

"The Western Soundscape Archive [...] features audio recordings of animals and environments throughout the western United States." "The project's geographic focus includes eleven contiguous western states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming - as well as baseline sound monitoring in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska." [more inside]
posted by OmieWise at 5:47 AM PST - 4 comments

Dogs. In Cars! [sl vimeo] Watch whilst in your stuffy office and feel jealous of our canine friends.
posted by mippy at 2:29 AM PST - 14 comments

Möbius Music Box [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:18 PM PST - 13 comments

The team that won the X-Prize in partnership with SpaceX, goes orbital
posted by Long Way To Go at 10:52 PM PST - 29 comments

On Monday, the Occupy Wall Street movement disrupted ports in its West Coast Port Blockade. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 10:30 PM PST - 207 comments

"You're going nowhere, son. Just you, me ad the walls. So wipe that bloody grin off before it's shot off, and don't slouch. You toe rag. You bin. Pay attention when I break you. And break you I will, boy. You're in my manor, now." Buck up! It's Terry Finch's THE REPRISALIZER! Follow Bob Shuter, whose mission of reprisal against his brother's killers, their families, associates, progeny and property takes him across the desolate wasteland of 70s Britain, primarily Kent AKA FINCHLAND. Finch, writer of The Reprisalizer and DRAW!, the cowboy whose name means death, is soon to be the subject of a major motion picture from Matthew Holness, creator of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.
posted by Artw at 9:50 PM PST - 15 comments

More than 35 violent deaths have been linked to men who attended an abusive boys' home in regional Australia, the Tamworth Institution for Boys.
posted by puffl at 9:49 PM PST - 7 comments

In response to ongoing police brutality, particularly aimed at the non-violent Occupy Movement, B. Dolan (w/ Sage Francis, Toki Wright, and Jasiri X) have turned NWA's classic "Fuck The Police" into a call to citizen journalists to stand up and FILM THE POLICE!
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:35 PM PST - 59 comments

“Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that ‘The sun’ll come out tomorrow.’”

Just ahead of the Iowa Caucus, New Jersey native turned University of Iowa Professor Stephen Bloom has published a piece in The Atlantic that has caused quite a stir in the heartland. The piece, which is very critical of the Hawkeye State and her inhabitants, has a lot of Iowans on the defensive, with one article calling Bloom the "Michelangelo of hick-punching." Stephens has said the "feedback has been frightening," but he stands by his story. Perhaps a 1971 Harper's piece on Iowa captures the state with a bit more nuance.
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:04 PM PST - 130 comments

One day at breakfast, a man's soul bursts out of his eyeball. While the soul roams the earth eating everything in sight, two wild deer bathe and dress the man's catatonic body. It's Dr. Breakfast.
posted by schmod at 9:00 PM PST - 10 comments

Elias Canetti is regarded by many as one of the century’s most distinguished writers. At least since he was awarded the Nobel Prize, in 1981, he has been regularly compared, if not to Proust or Joyce or Mann, then certainly to his Viennese brethren Robert Musil and Hermann Broch. Yet one suspects that, in America at leasts Canetti’s works have been rather more respected than read. This is particularly true in the case of the two long and difficult books upon which his reputation mainly rests: Auto-da-Fé (1935), his first and only novel, and Crowds and Power (1960), the meticulously idiosyncratic contribution to social theory that he considers his major work. - Roger Kimball [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:14 PM PST - 13 comments

Just in time for the gift-giving season, Humble Indie Bundle 4 has been released. Available for MacOS, Windows, and Linux on a pay-what-you-want scheme, this release (currently) includes Jamestown, Bit.Trip Runner, Super Meat Boy, Shank, and Nightsky HD. Pay more than the average donation and get Gratuitous Space Battles and Cave Story+ included in your Bundle. When purchasing, you can choose how your money will be allocated between developers, charities (Child's Play Charity and American Red Cross), and a tip to the Humble team. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:50 PM PST - 43 comments

Tiny origami apartment in Manhattan unfolds into 4 rooms. Making the most out of 450 square feet.
posted by crunchland at 7:49 PM PST - 68 comments

The Ugly Indian: Ordinary people trying to clean up India's streets, starting with the city of Bangalore. Associated Facebook page. BBC coverage of the initiative.
posted by peacheater at 7:49 PM PST - 6 comments

The Single Lane Superhighway is a simple website that lets you draw a car and join the parade of other drawn cars already on the road. Simple, yet sweetly engaging. Another interesting art project from Aaron Koblin, who has done several other notable social/data art projects (some of this, some of that, and some other things). Via waxy.
posted by lubujackson at 7:34 PM PST - 35 comments

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane have been have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean. [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:55 PM PST - 179 comments

Prisoners in Brazil's prisons formed their own rules for governance, setting up a system much more effective than the government.
posted by reenum at 5:19 PM PST - 18 comments

"Richard Lewis is director of Durrell's Madagascar programme. Here he speaks about how the team and the local villagers are working to protect the world's rarest tortoise. This includes the drastic measure of "defacing" the beautiful shells in order to make the animals worthless on the black market."
posted by vidur at 3:39 PM PST - 5 comments

Slate's Negotiation Academy: a series of podcasts that teach you how to haggle with (among others) jerks & liars, the opposite sex, real estate agents and kids.
posted by gottabefunky at 3:35 PM PST - 6 comments

Here is the opening anime from the 20th Japan Science Fiction Convention, Daicon III (1981). And here is the follow-up anime for the 22nd convention, Daicon IV (1983). Both are loaded with pop culture references, and are (I hear) famous among Japanese anime fans. Here's some more information on them. The student animators of these shorts went on to found the anime studio GAINAX, which you may have heard of. GAINAX previously: one two
posted by JHarris at 3:18 PM PST - 19 comments

Bfxr is a web app for creating sound effects for your game or own amusement. Use the Randomize button to get started.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:59 PM PST - 23 comments

"If I Were A Poor Black Kid" by Gene Marks. "If I Were The Middle Class White Guy Gene Marks" by Kelly Virella
posted by griphus at 1:49 PM PST - 199 comments

The CNSP-11 balloon from the California Near Space Project, launched from the west coast of the U.S., is now approaching the coast of Africa at 110,000 feet and 152 miles per hour. You can also follow the project on Twitter. [more inside]
posted by exogenous at 1:49 PM PST - 7 comments

Nerd Wallet is a credit card comparison site that helps you filter cards based on select criteria. You can also limit your search to credit cards from credit unions. See also: the Nerd Wallet blog, with credit card industry and rewards news, and an interview with Tim Chen, founder of Nerd Wallet.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:42 PM PST - 9 comments