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Snicker, snicker, snicker... Ahh, Google.
posted by Fuzzy Dog at 10:46 PM PST - 66 comments

STEVE NILES is one of the writers responsible for bringing horror comics back to prominence, and was recently named by Fangoria magazine as one of it's "13 rising talents who promise to keep us terrified for the next 25 years." Niles, a horror/comic writer, is responsible for 30 Days of Night. Although, the idea originally was unsuccessful as a film pitch he turned it into a breakout mini-series comic. Did you know there was a prequel released, before the movie, online: 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails (Hulu)? AND a sequel: 30 Days of Night: Dust to Dust (Hulu)? [more inside]
posted by P.o.B. at 10:23 PM PST - 20 comments

Need a wig for your baby boy? Too bad, they're just for girls.
posted by bystander at 10:09 PM PST - 55 comments

April Fools Day, 2009 also means happy 60th birthday to one of my favorite musicians, Gil Scott-Heron (previously). From his popular early works like the heavily referenced "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", "Whitey On The Moon", and "The Bottle", to his continued productions and tours over the decades, he's had a few hurdles, but never stopped. For more on his life and music, here's a great documentary from a few years back (MLYT): pt. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
posted by p3t3 at 8:53 PM PST - 26 comments

Although the government has committed almost 3 trillion dollars to rescuing the financial sector, testimony today revealed that 6 months after the start of TARP, basic oversight of the program is lacking (more here and here), including the failure to account for almost 80 billion dollars. Meanwhile, Congress wants to know more about the court-appointed AIG monitor, while Neal Wolin, who helped draft Gramm-Leach-Bliley, has replaced a former hedge fund manager to run TARP--raising more questions about who is overseeing the plans, and about how they are being administered.
posted by ornate insect at 7:58 PM PST - 24 comments

SpaceTimeTV collects and lets you watch all the best educational videos online from full length documentaries (such as the 50 minute long Is There Life on Mars) to short video clips such as this one on glaciers and global warming. There are hundreds of videos on topics including history, space, technology, and nature.
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:37 PM PST - 6 comments

April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 274 days remaining until the end of the year. April 1 is most notable in the Western world for being April Fools' Day. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 6:15 PM PST - 42 comments

Star Trek/A-Team mashup. (SLYT.)
posted by Prospero at 4:42 PM PST - 26 comments

Last month's food court occupation at NYU's Kimmel Center cafeteria, live-blogged here, has produced what is possibly the most embarassing protest video ever. [more inside]
posted by jsonic at 4:26 PM PST - 132 comments

Four Hours of Free Funkiness Filter: Pretty Lights [more inside]
posted by jammy at 3:39 PM PST - 20 comments

Girls Soccer Coach Resigns over hilarious (insane?) email to parents "Some say soccer at this age is about fun and I completely agree. However, I believe winning is fun and losing is for losers. Ergo, we will strive for the “W” in each game. While we may not win every game (excuse me, I just got a little nauseated) I expect us to fight for every loose ball and play every shift as if it were the finals of the World Cup. While I spent a good Saturday morning listening to the legal liability BS, which included a 30 minute dissertation on how we need to baby the kids and especially the refs, I was disgusted. The kids will run, they will fall, get bumps, bruises and even bleed a little. Big deal, it’s good for them (but I do hope the other team is the one bleeding)."
posted by njbradburn at 1:38 PM PST - 220 comments

Meet the Islamic Philosophers. Arabic philosophy sought to reconcile the science and empiricism of Aristotle, the metaphysics of Neoplatonism, and the revelations of the Holy Qur'an. From the first thoughts of Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī, to the 20,000 pages of Abū 'l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd, the influence of these Muslim polymaths profoundly shaped Western thought. [more inside]
posted by ageispolis at 1:21 PM PST - 10 comments

Rosanna Pulido is the Republican nominee for the 5th Congressional District of Illinois (Rahm Emanuel's old seat). She's also an active poster on Free Republic. An active poster on Free Republic who's learning that what you write on the internet can come back to haunt you.
posted by dersins at 12:50 PM PST - 105 comments

Meet Liam Hoekstra. He is a remarkable toddler with a rare genetic disorder called Myostatin-Related Muscle Hypertrophy, which causes him to have accelerated muscle mass and development, which leads to enhanced strength, speed, and agility. Supposedly, the same genes were manipulated to create these beefcakes [previously].
posted by aftermarketradio at 12:29 PM PST - 51 comments

Miss Universe goes to Guantánamo Bay!
posted by geos at 11:56 AM PST - 41 comments

The Ministry of Type is a weblog about type, typography, lettering, calligraphy and other related things. The FontFeed, from the folks at FontShop, is a daily dispatch of recommended fonts, typography techniques, and inspirational examples of digital type at work in the real world. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 11:23 AM PST - 12 comments

Chris Crawford (previously) has released the beta version of his Storytron engine. The first demo? Balance of Power: 21st Century. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 10:56 AM PST - 30 comments

Prince Charles has been a notable critic of architecture over the years. Now he's had a go himself, designing a fire station in the village of Poundbury. Whilst the reception to the Prince's efforts has not been overwhelmingly positive at least the commentators at the Daily Mail like it
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:34 AM PST - 110 comments

Stephen Jay Gould tells the story of the 18th Century German professor Beringer who published a book, Lithographiae Wirceburgensis in 1726 which purported to show remarkable fossils, including spiders in their web, copulating frogs and Yahweh written in Hebrew (high resolution images of the original plates: 1, 2, 3, 4) This turned out to be a fake but the conventional story of the humiliated Professor Beringer and his Lying Stones of Wurzburg is not as simple as the one usually retold in textbooks. And as Gould mentions fossil fakes are not a thing of the past.
posted by Kattullus at 9:46 AM PST - 25 comments

He's a Hasidic Jew, but that doesn't stop him from dropping mad raps over hot reggae beats. Did I mention he can beatbox like a mofo, too? He was born Matt Miller, but you can call him Matisyahu. [more inside]
posted by baphomet at 8:37 AM PST - 71 comments

"Percy Harrison Fawcett ... convinced himself, based on a mix of archival research, deduction and clairvoyance, that a large undiscovered city lay hidden somewhere in the Amazon" Greg Grandin of The Nation talks about the allure of the Amazon in history and the repeated attempts made to domesticate, colonize, control, or explore it. previous discussion of failed Amazon ventures here ( via )
posted by The Whelk at 7:30 AM PST - 18 comments

"The Passover Seder, the oldest continuously observed religious ceremony in the world, tells the story of the Jews' Exodus from Egypt. Jewish tradition says that people of each generation must imagine that they personally had departed from Egypt, and the sages say that each generation must tell the story in its own terms. The sages probably did not intend this. "(Via)
posted by lucia__is__dada at 7:05 AM PST - 28 comments

Archaeologists and Native Americans race against the border fence. The REAL ID act authorized government agencies to bulldoze long-standing environmental, cultural and anthropological standards. But a team of activists worked delicately behind the scenes to win millions of dollars in federal funding and the go-ahead for a last-ditch effort to study ancient artifacts. Archaeologists have faced similarly rushed projects elsewhere along the fence route.
posted by univac at 1:32 AM PST - 43 comments

People who sit in the disability seats when I'm standing on my crutches. People who abuse accessible parking spots. CaughtYa! exposes people who park illegally in disabled spots. [this site is inaccessible - link is to the archive]
posted by desjardins at 9:57 PM PST - 138 comments

Baby owl trying to swallow rat. [youtube] [gif]
posted by 31d1 at 8:48 PM PST - 57 comments

With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different--and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter.

Sen. Jim Webb takes on the real third rail in American politics, the entire criminal justice system.
posted by empath at 5:58 PM PST - 111 comments

Why do mummies scream? Are screaming mummies really testaments to horrific deaths? Or are they the result of natural processes, botched or ad hoc mummification jobs, or the depredations of tomb robbers? Archaeology Online examines the science and history behind the gape-mouthed "masks of agony" seen on some mummies, and explores their portrayal in entertainment and pop culture. The article includes lots of interesting and informative additional links.
posted by amyms at 5:26 PM PST - 33 comments

Learn Hebrew with Pictures and Audio.
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:45 PM PST - 20 comments

Mixology Monday is blog dedicated to hosting a monthly cocktail party. Contestants are given a theme and week to submit their best creations. February's competition was Hard Drinks for Hard Times. [more inside]
posted by mrzarquon at 4:37 PM PST - 15 comments

The art of Jason Courtney takes a personal tour on some of the moments of Margaret Atwood's dystopia Oryx & Crake - a visit to the pigoons or Snowman's morning view, pausing to reflect on the enigmatic beauty of Oryx. [more inside]
posted by panboi at 4:05 PM PST - 42 comments

Dabke (in Arabic the "stomping of the feet") is a folk line dance, performed by either just men, just women or both together. A national dance of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Iraq the Dabke is danced with different steps and rhythms in different areas of the Middle East.
posted by Lanark at 3:50 PM PST - 9 comments

Excited for the upcoming Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm? Well, until then you can practise your Seinfeld knowledge by trying to identify all of the references in this picture. [more inside]
posted by Midnight Rambler at 3:22 PM PST - 47 comments

Blatantly jumping on the opportunity to create yet another thread on The Wire, I'd like to remind you that starting tonight, BBC 2 will air the entire series start to finish, an episode every weekday. First episode starts in a moment, at 11:20 PM UK time. Watch! [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:15 PM PST - 64 comments

To promote his upcoming album Together Through Life, Bob Dylan offers a free download (today and tomorrow only) of the song Beyond Here Lies Nothin'.
posted by ornate insect at 2:55 PM PST - 33 comments

From the team that previously brought you War on Terror, the board game, comes CRUNCH - the game for utter bankers.
posted by fay at 2:46 PM PST - 2 comments

Syria Calling: The Obama Administration’s chance to engage in a Middle East peace.
posted by homunculus at 2:36 PM PST - 17 comments

Don't listen to 'economists', its all about the Cave of Wealth and Death, the Godess of Inflation and Derivatives Beast. In an astonishing 3 parts (so far).
posted by Damienmce at 2:22 PM PST - 8 comments

On jetlag, and how to beat it. Reconfiguring your body clock. There and back again.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:16 PM PST - 16 comments

My Manhattan Project: How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street. [print version]
posted by blasdelf at 2:09 PM PST - 34 comments

Whose Father Was He? The soldier’s body was found near the center of Gettysburg with no identification — no regimental numbers on his cap, no corps badge on his jacket, no letters, no diary. Nothing save for an ambrotype (an early type of photograph popular in the late 1850s and 1860s) of three small children clutched in his hand. Errol Morris presents the Civil War-era mystery of a fallen soldier and a found photograph. [via]
posted by teamparka at 1:26 PM PST - 21 comments

The Huffington Post just announced that it is launching a new initiative to produce a wide range of investigative journalism — The Huffington Post Investigative Fund. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:12 PM PST - 23 comments

Talk to strangers! "When you use Omegle, we pick another user at random and let you have a one-on-one chat with each other." [via waxy]
posted by Lush at 1:10 PM PST - 141 comments

Photographer Helen Levitt, known mostly for her New York street scenes, has died at 95. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 11:52 AM PST - 13 comments

Make your own Choco Taco. (kind of previously)
posted by spec80 at 11:40 AM PST - 27 comments

A high-level Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation against six former Bush administration officials, on whether they violated international law. The officials named in this present case include the most senior legal minds in the Bush administration. They are: Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon’s general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers. If America won’t have a Truth Commission maybe someone else will have to kick start it for them.
posted by adamvasco at 11:27 AM PST - 196 comments

Microscope Imaging Station opens a door to the wonder of the microscopic world and allows the layman to explore it. They seek to recreate some of the excitement and wonder that the earliest biological researchers found. Features include cells with potential as well as bad oogy. The microscopic Galleries are inhabited by zygotes and organelles.
posted by netbros at 11:00 AM PST - 3 comments

Alison Bechdel's book review (comic book style) of "A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:35 AM PST - 18 comments

Sheril Kirshenbaum's brilliant ranting about sexism in science. Contains many links within that continue the discussion. Thankfully, sexism has gone down significantly in recent years. At the same time, it still exists in some amount - even a small handful of Nobel Laureates have acted sexist (or other -ist - Watson?). (For my part, I'm glad that I haven't encountered any sexism myself in neuroscience.)
posted by kldickson at 9:18 AM PST - 128 comments

Two musical masters impart their knowledge: Stephen Sondheim teaches students from the Guildhall School of Music: "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music (more), "My Friends" from Sweeney Todd, "Later" from A Little Night Music, and "Not Getting Married" from Company. Leonard Bernstein gives his lectures titled "The Unanswered Question" at Harvard (the full series on DVD here), speaks about Mahler's 9th, rehearses "Rite of Spring" with a youth orchestra (2, 3, 4, 5, 6), and performs "Journey into Jazz" (a "Peter and the Wolf" kind of story, but for jazz instead of classical music).
posted by ocherdraco at 9:06 AM PST - 5 comments

United Airlines settles suit over hidden porn United Airlines has settled a federal sexual-harassment lawsuit filed by a former pilot who grounded herself after repeatedly finding pornography hidden in the cockpits of domestic airline flights. Before settling, the airline appeared to equate art nudes and porn as part of its defense. The idea of cockpit-as-boyzone has been shot down before. [more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:37 AM PST - 167 comments

Reuben Margolin uses everything from wood to cardboard to make incredible kinetic sculptures.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 8:25 AM PST - 25 comments

Maurice Jarre (September 13, 1924 – March 29, 2009) was a French composer and conductor. Although he composed several concert works, he is best known for his film scores for motion pictures, particularly those of David Lean: Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984). All three of these scores won Academy Awards. - Wikipedia
posted by Joe Beese at 5:32 AM PST - 21 comments

Monopoly killer - how The Settlers of Catan redefined board games.
posted by Artw at 10:47 PM PST - 159 comments

Perhaps the most apt instrument to use to perform The Imperial March - in response to the Dr. Who theme on the singing tesla coils. From Faraday suited DJs at ArkAttack. [more inside]
posted by Smedleyman at 9:44 PM PST - 33 comments

Billy Jean from Winter Play, Can't get you out of my head from W & Whale, Karma Chameleon from 이장혁 (Lee Jang Hyuk) with 검정치마 (Black Skirts), Personal Jesus from Yi Sung Yol and 서울전자음악단 (Seoul Electric Band), Nobody does it better (+ Wonder Girls' Nobody) from Yi Sung Yol [more inside]
posted by needled at 7:19 PM PST - 52 comments

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, let's take a few moments to honor those Sesame Street humans overshadowed by their Muppet counterparts. Check out Bob (Bob McGrath) singing Danny Boy in Japanese on a 1966 broadcast of To Tell The Truth or singing a Japanese ballad. Watch Gordon (Roscoe Orman) as the big pimpin' title character in this original trailer for the film Willie Dynamite. See Maria (Sonia Manzano) as a lady trucker on B.J. & the Bear or getting menaced by Jeff Goldblum in the movie Death Wish. And Mr. Hooper (Will Lee) plays Pac-Man in an Atari commercial. Meanwhile, the Muppet stars of Sesame Street have gone some interesting evolutions as well in their career. [more inside]
posted by jonp72 at 6:32 PM PST - 39 comments

PersonRatings.com lets you rate and review millions of Americans. Anyone can post a profile and anyone can leave a comment. It's like Hot or Not for the new Web 2.0! Except, in what seems guaranteed to result in an eventual lawsuit, there is apparently no way to opt out. Here's the profile for PersonRatings CEO Jeremy Stamper. (via)
posted by 6550 at 6:28 PM PST - 63 comments

The recession has hit the theatre world (and the arts scene in general) very hard - but some argue that theatre practitioners aren't doing themselves any favours when seeking funding. The main question insufficiently addressed is "who is the funding for?" - hint: it's not about you. Approaching theatre as a product isn't working, not when MFA acting programs don't often allow its graduates to earn enough to earn back their debt. So now the question is: how can the economics of theatre be changed?
posted by divabat at 5:11 PM PST - 60 comments

The Tree Of Childhood is a debut animation produced by young Russian director Natalia Mirzoyan. Now tell me - have you ever fallen in abyss in your childhood dreams?
posted by Surfin' Bird at 3:19 PM PST - 16 comments

Barcelona 1908 [more inside]
posted by various at 3:02 PM PST - 23 comments

A German researcher accidentally jabbed her finger with a hypodermic loaded with the deadly Ebola virus. 48 hours later, she was injected with an untested, experimental vaccine, developed by an international team of virologists and biologists. Though she may never have been infected, she was certainly in danger; in 2004, a similar incident caused the death of a Russian scientist at a former Soviet biological weapons lab.
posted by permafrost at 1:54 PM PST - 38 comments

A map of the top 50 craft breweries in America by volume. State map of per capita beer consumption. [more inside]
posted by baphomet at 1:53 PM PST - 119 comments

mid-70s proto-punk band, Death, have finally gotten a real disc out. unearthed in crates lost for decades, their founder dead before seeing it happen, their children never knowing the shadowy past of their forebears, the sound of black pop-punk-politi-metal-wave is finally here. [more inside]
posted by artof.mulata at 12:44 PM PST - 16 comments

EU Profiler: the authors of Kieskompas, a "Vote-O-Mat"-style tool for the undecided Dutch voter, following up on their adaptation for the US Presidential election (previously on MeFi), will launch an EU-wide version for the European Parliament elections upcoming in June. So Europeans, urge your political parties to register! The tool itself will launch in May.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Stunning Underwater Photography A website filled with incredible underwater photography. Particularly impressive shots of a sardine bait ball being attacked by dolphins, sharks, whales and birds.
posted by srboisvert at 12:06 PM PST - 19 comments

[Cats-starring-in-fake-HTML-TV-Show-Filter] It's time for... CAT TOWN! ...brought to you by MeFi's Own® Spatch! Starring El Guapo, J. Wellington Cat III, ... and Angel. Filmed in ALL CAPS! Tonight's exciting episode: THE BIG GAME!
posted by not_on_display at 10:22 AM PST - 17 comments

We made a mistake. That is the simple, undeniable truth of the matter, however painful it might be. The flaw was not in our Observatories, for those machines were as perfect as we could make, and they showed us only the unfiltered light of truth. The flaw was not in the Predictor, for it is a device of pure, infallible logic, turning raw data into meaningful information without the taint of emotion or bias. No, the flaw was within us, the Orchestrators of this disaster, the sentients who thought themselves beyond such failings. We are responsible.
posted by aheckler at 9:33 AM PST - 51 comments

The smell of Scarlet Johansson is art.[slyt]
posted by geos at 9:24 AM PST - 111 comments

Time to reconsider the traditional campus computer lab? The University of Virginia has begun a three-year process of shutting down its public computer labs to shave costs, citing 99% laptop ownership of incoming 2007 students and the predominant usage of free software in their computing facilities. Issues such as printing and software distribution have yet to be ironed out. [/. thread]
posted by porn in the woods at 9:10 AM PST - 73 comments

Information Age Prayer: Too busy to pray as often as you'd like? No Problem! IAP will pray for you using text-to-speech software for a small fee. Available in Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Other. Via
posted by The Whelk at 8:53 AM PST - 14 comments

"If you’re given a choice between money and sex appeal, take the money. As you get older, the money will become your sex appeal." Katharine Hepburn rarely granted interviews, and when she did, she wanted them under her terms. When she agreed to appear on the Dick Cavett Show in September 1973, they went in the studio a day early so she could get the feel of things. They ended up doing the interview right then and there, without an audience. Kate Hepburn: The Full Cavett Interview. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 8:39 AM PST - 14 comments

To Sleep Perchance to Dream : an exhibition of 17th century sleep-related paraphernalia at the Folger Shakespeare Library offers insight into attitudes towards sleep and dreams. Insomnia? Try eating some lettuce.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 8:18 AM PST - 2 comments

Two galleries of photos of China in 1957 and 1978 by Robert Carl Cohen, "the first American to film China since the 1949 Communist victory." My personal favourite set is these street scenes from 1957, but Cohen captured a diverse range of images from Chinese lives. His (? I presume) site Radical Images has plenty of other interesting stuff too.
posted by Abiezer at 5:04 AM PST - 14 comments

So the legendary Throbbing Gristle have regrouped and are touring this spring. Here's a short video of Chris Carter testing out some new gear. Cosey has some new toys as well. Sadly, the original Gristlizer died awhile back. But it is being cloned.
posted by peewinkle at 2:37 AM PST - 25 comments

Bhay ho phir bhi jai ho! Be afraid, and then be victorious! Jai Ho, the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire song, was adopted by the reigning Indian National Congress Party as it's theme song. In response, this parody was released by supporters of the violently Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. And you thought the Pussycat Dolls' version was bad.
posted by Methylviolet at 2:36 AM PST - 15 comments

Some wiseacres slip in risque prank-call names to a local TV station for its "Happy Birthday" segment, and whaddyaknow! It works.
posted by zardoz at 12:15 AM PST - 65 comments

Frank Zappa was renown for his quality band members and even more for his legendary audition process. The Drum Channel has a 7 part video series which brings together Zappa's drummers from his previous bands (Ralph Humphrey. Chester Thompson, Terry Bozzio, Chad Wackerman and Ruth Underwood) to discuss the behind-the-scenes process of these auditions(Pt1, Pt2, Pt3, Pt4, Pt5, Pt6, Pt7). It also culminates in a drummer jam. [more inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:03 AM PST - 30 comments

Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network. "A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded. In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 10:55 PM PST - 31 comments

Jero, or Jerome Wright, Jr. is the first black singer of traditional Japanese enka music. Here he performs a duet - him wearing hip-hop garb, his partner in a kimono. He won the Best New Artist Award in Japan, and appeared today at the Cherry Blossom festival in Washington DC.
posted by desjardins at 6:21 PM PST - 37 comments

Secrets of a True Master : How To Make A Carrot Ocarina {slyt} [more inside]
posted by mannequito at 5:28 PM PST - 14 comments

Keep watching the skies - The New York Times looks back at 50s Sci Fi films in anticipation of Alien Trespass, the new film from X-Files veteran R.K. Goodwin. One or two of those classics haven't even been remade yet!
posted by Artw at 4:27 PM PST - 19 comments

The World According to Hoyle. Matt Hoyle is a commercial and fine art photographer based out of New York City. His portfolio includes Barnumville, a fictitious 1940s town of sideshow performers, and a series of cinematic shots from movies that were never made. Yes, he uses Photoshop, but I can't predict if you'll like or hate the final results. (He apparently has a long, happy relationship with saturation.) Yes, the site uses a Flash interface, but it's easy to switch from the default full display to thumbnails to full screen, and you can link to specific images. No, there are no pictures of his near-namesake mathowie anywhere in his portfolio. I checked. (via)
posted by maudlin at 4:12 PM PST - 10 comments

"Since I attacked my opponent in the past and the time waves have not yet propagated the results of this battle to the present, my units are still here in the present" Got that? Meta-Time Strategy Gaming [more inside]
posted by doobiedoo at 3:18 PM PST - 55 comments

Why I'm Alone: "People ask me why I'm still alone, and why I don't seek to date much, eight years after my husband died. I thought about it the other day, and came up with a few of the reasons."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:31 PM PST - 195 comments

Jean Baptiste André - Movement and Illusion. My favorite. One more.
posted by lazaruslong at 12:23 PM PST - 9 comments

MORMON JESUS (SLYT) Here are the originals.
posted by skjønn at 12:15 PM PST - 30 comments

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, formed with some former members of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers played some amazing blues-rock from 1967-1970 (long before Fleetwood Mac's descent into '70s wuss-rock). "Like it this way", "Oh well", "Rattlesnake Shake", "Shake your moneymaker" and the original version of "Black Magic Woman". Peter Green struggled with drugs and mental problems, penning "The Green Manilishi with the two prong crown" shortly before leaving the band. [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 11:48 AM PST - 42 comments

A Farm For The Future. Wildlife filmmaker Rebecca Hosking, previously in the public eye campaigning for the banning of plastic bags in the UK, is moving back to the family farm to take over from her father. This "deeply hopeful but realistic film" describes her investigation of the steps she could take to change it from a traditional beef pasture farm to a truly sustainable permaculture environment. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave at 11:17 AM PST - 23 comments

"My cat dragged in what appeared to be an odd-looking bird. Imagine my excitement when on closer inspection, it proved to be a real live dead Rhamphorhynchus! I had to dissect it immediately! Unfortunately, my camera jammed, so I had to paint the whole process." - John Conway's Paleontography
posted by brundlefly at 10:36 AM PST - 22 comments

World Builder by Bruce Branit. A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves. There's more at Not Possible in Real Life, dedicated to identifying and sharing well conceived and realized content creation in Second Life® that would not be possible in real life.
posted by netbros at 8:12 AM PST - 23 comments

Tibet serf debate shadows China's "emancipation day". Like Juneteeth or Martin Luther King Day, Tibet's Serf Emancipation Day commemorates the freeing of a million serfs in 1959. Much like the descendants of slaveowners mocking Martin Luther King Day, the descendants of Tibet's aristocracy have announced Smurf Emancipation Day.
posted by shetterly at 7:43 AM PST - 111 comments

Revealing how we are just a bunch of monkeys... (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:10 AM PST - 15 comments

Pics of the new Tesla S-Model have been leaked. With an anticipated price tag of 50K and a potential 45-minute recharge time, will this finally kick-start a true replacement to the internal combustion engine? And if so, where will the electricity come from? What future is there for the fuel-cell vehicle, or will fuel cells remain stationary? Is that really it for hydrogen? [more inside]
posted by molecicco at 5:27 AM PST - 68 comments

"I said to myself, 'we are going to die.'" Space Shuttle commander Hoot Gibson on his reaction as he saw pictures from the Shuttle's robot arm of gouged and missing tiles along its underbelly. Shades of Columbia - but this was mission STS-27, over fourteen years earlier. Yet mission control discounted the reports from orbit, perhaps misled by the poor quality of the downlinked images that resulted from encryption demanded by the mission's secretive military profile. In the end, Atlantis made it back, but with visible damage along her right flank. But like most classified DoD missions of the time, little was reported, and NASA was arguably wary of drawing attention to the near-loss of only the second flight since the Challenger disaster. But if this near-miss had been better known, might NASA have been more concerned about indications of debris damage during the launch of STS-107?
posted by Major Clanger at 3:36 AM PST - 28 comments

The trailer for "After Last Season" quietly appeared on the Apple site recently. But what is it? Some suggest a hoax, others a parody. Apple lists it as a comedy, IMDB as a thriller. [more inside]
posted by outlier at 2:39 AM PST - 82 comments

Digital Poetics is a film blog with a proposal for an interesting experiment called 10/40/70: write a film review of a DVD with three screen captures taken at arbitrary intervals (10, 40, 70 minutes into the film) and see how it changes the way you look at films. This 10/40/70 approach has led to some interesting interpretations of The Conversation, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Blue Velvet, Godard's Vivre Sa Vie, and 12 Angry Men, as well as a contrarian appreciation of Hudson Hawk. The blog Spectacular Attractions has even upped the ante by using a random number generator to determine where to select screen caps. Results include Jaws Randomised and This Is Spinal Tap Randomised with Two Brains. It's like Dogme 95, but for film bloggers.
posted by jonp72 at 9:33 PM PST - 20 comments

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets) says Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, in the next issue of The Atlantic. He was previously Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department at the IMF from March 2007-August 2008. [more inside]
posted by Rafaelloello at 6:20 PM PST - 48 comments

Coincidental to the publishing of her memoir, Candy Spelling - the widow of legendary television producer Aaron Spelling - is selling her Beverly Hills mansion for $150 million. (Daughter Tori Spelling is not expected to share in the proceeds.)
posted by Joe Beese at 4:47 PM PST - 21 comments

Genus Vanessa butterflies are migrating now in North America, and you can help track them by submitting your observations. They could use a lot more data for their interactive map.
posted by the Real Dan at 2:08 PM PST - 5 comments

"The monster inside my son" A moving testimonial of a mother's struggle w/ her son's autism and violence. [SALON]
posted by cgs at 1:56 PM PST - 94 comments

We all love Sudoku, and we like to play it. But now there is KenKen, a new version that includes simple mathematical equations. [previously in MeFi]
posted by dov3 at 1:47 PM PST - 39 comments

Think having children will make you happy? Think again, suggests Nattavudh Powdthavee – you’re experiencing a focusing illusion [pdf]. [via.]
posted by you just lost the game at 1:39 PM PST - 163 comments

Friday Flash Fun*: Конструктор: Engineer of the People, in which you are an engineer working in a top-secret semiconductor facility called H3, designing top-secret integrated circuits based on specifications provided to you. *For certain values of 'fun'
posted by daniel_charms at 1:35 PM PST - 36 comments

What is the logical consequence of noting the fact that the terrorist groups that make a difference on planet Earth—such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the PLO, Colombia's FARC—are extensions of, respectively, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and Venezuela? It is the negation of the U.S. government's favorite axiom. It means that when George W. Bush spoke, and when Barack Obama speaks, of America being "at war" against "extremism" or "extremists" they are either being stupid or acting stupid to avoid dealing with the nasty fact that many governments wage indirect warfare.

International relations professor Angelo M. Codevilla argues that Osama bin Laden is not quite influential, not quite relevant, and probably dead. (multipage version)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:45 PM PST - 31 comments

Creator of the Cosby sweater acknowledges they're possibly the most horrible things you've ever seen. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster at 11:58 AM PST - 38 comments

Has the UKs GCSE Science exam been dumbed down too far? See how well you do for yourself.
posted by Artw at 11:52 AM PST - 100 comments

COMPLETE STREETS are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users. Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and bus riders of all ages and abilities are able to safely move along and across a complete street. Senator Tom Harkin (IA) and Representative Doris Matsui (CA-5) have introduced the Complete Streets Act of 2009 into the US Senate (S. 584) and House (H.R. 1443), to ensure that federal transportation infrastructure investments provide safe travel for Americans whether they are driving, bicycling, walking, or taking public transportation. They were joined by original co-sponsors Sen. Tom Carper (DE), Rep. Ellen Tauscher (CA-10), Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14), and Rep. David Wu (OR-1). Check out press releases from the Coalition (pdf), from Congresswoman Matsui, or from Senator Harkin for more information. Blog posts at The Infrastructurist and the Transportation For America campaign explain how the bills relate to the recent economic recovery package and the impact they could have across the country. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 11:47 AM PST - 21 comments

Bike fanatic Didi Senft, who's been building crazy cycles for years, shows off his latest "angular" bikes.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 11:44 AM PST - 19 comments

Imagedump is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a collection of "the best, funniest or coolest images" from a given month, as curated by a 19-year-old Dutch kid named Marco Kuiper.
posted by dersins at 11:39 AM PST - 19 comments

The Fed's Public Private Partnership Program, promises to clear down as much as $1T worth of "legacy assets" from banks balance sheets. Globally, equity markets responded positively. But what about assets held off balance sheet? [more inside]
posted by Mutant at 11:14 AM PST - 27 comments

The sky is a really big place, right? So how did a Boeing 737 and a Legacy 600 private jet manage to collide head-on at 37,000 feet over the Amazon jungle in Brazil? William Langewiesche's detailed analysis of the 2006 crash--which killed all 154 aboard the 737--provides some answers. [more inside]
posted by flug at 10:45 AM PST - 22 comments

When the economy slows down, ticket writing speeds up. Traffic cameras spark anger from citizens. Researchers find that they increase crashes. Find the red light cameras near you. Download a free warning system to your iPhone or Blackberry. In Mississippi? You're in luck. Red light cameras have been banned. In the Chicago area? Too bad. Speed cameras are coming too.
posted by desjardins at 10:41 AM PST - 53 comments

Bob Claster was a DJ on KCRW in Los Angeles. In the 80's he had a comedy show called Funny Stuff and he would interview comedians. He has many of these interviews online as mp3s. He interviewed Tom Lehrer, Douglas Adams, Danny Arnold (a.k.a. Barney Miller), Peter Cook, Terry Jones, two interviews with John Cleese, one solo and another with Michael Palin, Emo Philips, Billy Connolly, Mort Sahl, Quentin Crisp, "Brother Theodore" Gottlieb, June Foray and Bill Scott (a.k.a. Rocky and Bullwinkle and an epic five-part interview with Stan Freberg, the subject of my last post.
posted by Kattullus at 10:13 AM PST - 7 comments

"In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order."
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:49 AM PST - 129 comments

John Gruber of Daring Fireball:

"My friend Merlin Mann and I had a session at SXSW Interactive about two weeks ago. It certainly wasn’t a panel, and it wasn’t really a presentation. It was more like an hour-long duet rant, the main goal of which was to inspire anyone who wants to publish or write on the web to pursue their obsessions in a serious way. We got the audio recording of the session from SXSW a few days ago, recorded short intro and outro segments, and Merlin spliced it together and has published it on his 43 Folders podcast. I encourage you to go ahead and listen to it."

posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:28 AM PST - 26 comments

Obama holds Internet 'town hall' meeting (previously) (previously). What was the #1 issue on the public's mind? Well, the legalization of marijuana set the stage as the #2 question under "Health Care Reform", the #1 and #2 questions under "Green Jobs and Energy", the #1 - #4 questions under "Financial Stability", the #1 and #3 questions under "Jobs", and #1 - #7 under "Budget". Clearly, this is one of the most important issue on the public's mind. What was Obama's response? It was "equivalent to a parent telling a child 'No.' and when asked why? 'Because I said so.'" [more inside]
posted by tybeet at 9:05 AM PST - 114 comments

Flash Friday: Nevermore 3 The latest game in the Nevermore series by Adam Westerman. [more inside]
posted by Fleebnork at 8:57 AM PST - 11 comments

Mariano's Gonna Cut You, and other stat-and-graph filled baseball analysis from Beyond the Boxscore. [more inside]
posted by Mach5 at 8:48 AM PST - 12 comments

How designers fail — "During college at the University of Arizona in 1992, I learned with other design freshman that revisions were part of the discipline; if you cried at critique you were a wimp, and the computer was just a finishing tool. . . . But something has happened since I was a college student in 1992: students just don’t believe these things."
posted by camcgee at 8:28 AM PST - 64 comments

The winner of this years Diagram Prize for the oddest book title is "The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais." Runners up were "Curbside Colon Consultation," and my favorite Baboon Metaphysics.
posted by Xurando at 8:27 AM PST - 15 comments

"The newsroom collectively screamed—via a chain of famous quotes with not too subtle undertones that staffers e-mailed out to the all-staff list. We designated a dog as the employee of the month." An Insider's View: The Strange Final Days Of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. There's a loss of dignity when you lose your job. Those who stayed at the online PI faced a different indignity. And what to do with thousands of newspaper racks. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 7:54 AM PST - 6 comments

Larry Glick, aka Commander Glick, aka The Godfathah Lorenzo Glickiano, AM Night-Owl Talk-Radio Hero, 1922-2009. Hear a recent interview with Larry, and remembrances by Tom Bergeron (Glick's mentee), at WBZ's site. [previously - my first MetaFilter FPP]
posted by not_on_display at 7:36 AM PST - 10 comments

A long time ago in an art gallery far far away: Star Wars as Classic Art via
posted by The Whelk at 7:26 AM PST - 12 comments

It's time to learn about . . . the Stylophone! (YouTube link) This very portable instrument has been used in some famous songs, and has inspired many to do Stylophone versions of their own faves like Pacman, Star Wars Death March, and The Model. The Stylophone master of all time is quirky Brett Domino, who not only made the short film in the main link but does this lovely 80's Hits Medley. (All links go directly or indirectly to YouTube.) [via ZoomForum] [more inside]
posted by Outlawyr at 6:54 AM PST - 27 comments

Beethoven's Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 9 in A, Op. 47 (audio) was originally dedicated to the black violin virtuoso George Bridgetower after he gave such a brilliant rendering of the piece that prompted Beethoven to jump from his seat and embrace him. Bridgetower was a musical child prodigy and composer who, despite rampant racial prejudice, reached "unusual heights in the music world of his day". Having lived and performed in major European cities such as London, Paris, and Vienna, he would later die forgotten and in poverty. A personal disagreement with Bridgetower led Beethoven to dedicate the sonata to the famous violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer instead who, incidentally, never played it in public deeming it “outrageously unintelligible”. [more inside]
posted by lucia__is__dada at 6:44 AM PST - 10 comments

morenewmath.com = pithy definitions + equations
posted by Bango Skank at 6:39 AM PST - 13 comments

The making of Damien Hirst's "For The Love Of God" (previously)
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:38 AM PST - 55 comments

Contenders for this year's Badass of the Year award will have a tough time topping Italian surgeon Claudio Vitale, who completed a delicate brain surgery despite having a heart attack during the procedure. He pushed himself to complete the surgery when he realized that his patient was unlikely to survive if he halted the operation.
posted by baphomet at 12:52 AM PST - 46 comments

The trailer for producer Spike Jonze's troubled adaptation of the award-winning children's story Where the Wild Things Are has been released. It's been a long time coming. If you don't have time for the videos, here's the poster. [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:41 PM PST - 148 comments

Are plasma crystals alive? Cosmic dust can, in the presence of plasma, creates formations known as plasma crystals. An international team of researchers published a study in the Aug.14, 2007, issue of the New Journal of Physics (PDF here, abstract here) that indicates that these crystals may be more sophisticated than anyone realized. In simulations involving cosmic dust, the researchers witnessed the formation of plasma crystals displaying some of the elementary characteristics of life -- DNA-like structure, autonomous behavior, reproduction and evolution. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 9:39 PM PST - 47 comments

If you're a LEED AP (or not) you'll get this: California interested in banning black cars.
posted by wallstreet1929 at 9:38 PM PST - 47 comments

The Hope Chest: Bad News from the Past is a new blog of old newspaper clippings, mostly from Detroit and Chicago in the 1930s, with true crime and other bizarre stories. Examples include Tries To Shoot A Cat And Hits Automobilist, Driver Loses His Arm Giving Traffic Signal, and Pastor Writes Spicy Book. Other highlights are a phony cop attacking a pornographer with acid and the teenage girl who became a tattooed atheist bandit.
posted by jonp72 at 8:06 PM PST - 10 comments

KaBOOM! This past Friday, the MythBusters exploded 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate (25% of the same material used in the Oklahoma City bombing,) at a rock quarry in Yolo County, CA for an upcoming episode. But the explosion was apparently a wee bit bigger than they expected. It shattered windows in nearby Esparto and was large enough to be picked up as a "small event" ground tremor by National Geographical Survey sensors. Which myth were they busting, you ask? [more inside]
posted by zarq at 5:01 PM PST - 72 comments

Mechanical Icon is a new project by Marshall Poe (previously). It will eventually be 200 short Ken-Burns-like video meditations on famous photographs from history. The first six-minute "Introduction" in particular is very good.
posted by stbalbach at 4:49 PM PST - 3 comments

Sarah Palin understands the importance of religion in politics. That's why the Political Action Committee preparing for her 2012 presidential bid is being run by John Coale - an OT-VII Scientologist. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 4:37 PM PST - 75 comments

Oxford Professor & Fellow of the Royal Society James Murray uses mathematical modelling to predict whether a marriage will survive or end in divorce, with 94% accuracy. His lecture to the Royal Society will be available for view on demand within two days.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:48 PM PST - 44 comments

NPR article and slide show of the works of Julius Shulman. If you've seen anything by Shulman, you've seen this one. Gas station buffs probably favor this. And, if this one wasn't in Playboy, it should have been! And, bunches more though a google image search. And, at 98, he's still capturing images!
posted by HuronBob at 3:26 PM PST - 5 comments

Nasa is using friction stir welding to build its new space craft. No blowtorch, no solder, no sparks, no smoke, no ozone and no radiation. Instead, it uses friction to heat materials and then "stir" them together at a molecular level.
posted by lizbunny at 2:43 PM PST - 48 comments

The Wellesley College Daily Police Log is available online. Unfortunately, the individual days are PDFs. But it gives a glimpse into the gritty realities of day-to-day policing. Case Closed.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Home of the Underdogs (previously, previouslier) has been resurrected -- and enhanced with community-driven features (user comments, user added reviews, user ratings, etc.) -- by Lord_Pall. That is all. [via mefi projects]
posted by cog_nate at 2:21 PM PST - 55 comments

The best driver never to win the Indy 500. Despite winning in midgets, stock cars, and both the Sebring and Daytona road races, he will always be best known for the one race he didn't win - despite running in it for eighteen consecutive years. Though he would like to be remembered "just as old me. I enjoyed racing," if you ask a Gurney, Andretti or Foyt and they'll tell you he's "a soft-spoken Texas lead foot with enormous natural talent." Race driving legend Lloyd Ruby passes away at age 81 in his hometown of Wichita Falls, Texas.
posted by quartzcity at 2:12 PM PST - 9 comments

Three relatively new webcomics in the PBF and/or Cyanide+Happiness mode: Buttersafe, Dirtfarm, and Quiet Glen Mind Police [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:05 PM PST - 18 comments

"Sexting": a disturbing new teenage trend.
posted by Caduceus at 1:12 PM PST - 127 comments

Danish 70's Interior Design, Porno Style. sorta NSFW-ish?
posted by 1f2frfbf at 12:30 PM PST - 19 comments

Pop Songs Interpreted
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:24 PM PST - 16 comments

Lone Wolf and Cub -- White Heaven in Hell :: Baby Cart to Hades :: In the Land of Demons :: At the River Styx :: [alternate soundtrack]
posted by vronsky at 12:17 PM PST - 31 comments

Dan Seals -- half of the 1970s pop duo England Dan and John Ford Coley, and a hit country musician in later decades -- passed away Wednesday night in Nashville at age 61. The duo's hits included the FM staple "I'd Really Love To See You Tonight" and "Nights are Forever." In Dan's later years, he was working with his older brother Jimmy (the Seals in Seals & Crofts) as Seals & Seals.
posted by porn in the woods at 11:59 AM PST - 21 comments

A dot in the sky becomes a rock in the hand. An asteroid near miss (as opposed to the more recent near hit) is the first time an object first seen in space is brought back to the laboratory. [more inside]
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 11:34 AM PST - 7 comments

Yoko Ono's flickr page has a ton of gems, some of which combine illustrations from the John Lennon Anthology with first-hand accounts of their relationship by Yoko: Introduction, Ascot, New York City, The Lost Weekend, Dakota. [via].
posted by lunit at 10:58 AM PST - 27 comments

Nihongodict is an AJAXy online Japanese-English dictionary. The list of matches auto-updates as you type. You can enter (or paste in) romaji, Kanji or kana, and use character maps for hiragana and katakana. Results can be bookmarked. [more inside]
posted by kurumi at 10:45 AM PST - 35 comments

Until it ceased operations in 2002, Fort Worth's Tandy Subway was the only privately-owned subway line in the United States. Efforts to restore some of the equipment are underway.
posted by drstein at 10:08 AM PST - 20 comments

Kate Rich has run the Feral Trade grocery business trading goods along social networks since 2003. Feral Trade forges new, 'wild' trade routes between art, business and social interaction. Goods hitchhike on other sources of movement, harnessing the surplus freight potential of social and cultural travel to haul grocery items intercity, often using other artists and curators as mules. An online courier database provides a live, public view of all movements in the network.
posted by furtive at 9:49 AM PST - 18 comments

Oregon! Oregon! A Centennial Fable in Three Acts is a musical comedy by famed radio comedian and Looney Tunes voice actor Stan Freberg that was commissioned in 1959 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Oregon statehood. This year, on the 150th anniversary, Stan Freberg and Pink Martini will revive the musical with a new 4th act written by Freberg (check out the complete Pink Martini concert on the page). For more Freberg goodness check out these 15 episodes of his radio show and this 1999 interview which includes some of his classic sketches (sketches in RealAudio format).
posted by Kattullus at 9:38 AM PST - 40 comments

Some images of rare and obscure Alan Moore material from Slovobooks.
posted by Artw at 8:47 AM PST - 19 comments

With threats of strikes and an emergency budget due you might assume the Irish government would be more concerned with economics than artwork. You’d be wrong. After discovering the two “uncomissioned” portraits of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen the gardaí (Irish police) have gotten involved. [more inside]
posted by Fence at 8:07 AM PST - 14 comments

Dear FileFront User: We regret to inform you that due to the current economic conditions we are forced to indefinitely suspend the FileFront site operations on March 30, 2009. If you have uploaded files, images or posted blogs, or if you would like to download some of your favorite files, please take this opportunity to download them before March 30th when the site will be suspended. We would like to give a warm thank you to all of you who have been part of the FileFront communities we have built together. Your support has had a meaningful impact for all of us here at FileFront. Again, we want to give you a sincere “thank you” for your support over the years and wish you all the very best. Keep gaming alive, FileFront Management and Team.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:53 AM PST - 34 comments

The Museum of Modern Art began working in late 2007 to renovate its Web site substantially for the first time since 2002. It knew that it wouldn’t be just updating a few pieces — it would be entering a whole new era. Earlier this month, the new site launched, and is an almost complete reconstruction of how the museum presents itself online. It features livelier images from its collection and exhibitions, increased use of video and the new interactive calendars and maps.
posted by netbros at 7:34 AM PST - 12 comments

On Tuesday, Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan took the opportunity to "skewer" Gordon Brown in the kind of biting rhetoric rarely, if ever, seen in UK parliament. Despite having alerted UK press organisations, including his own part-time employer, Hannan's speech was not picked up by the UK press until... it started getting a heavy push from the US punditocracy. [more inside]
posted by MuffinMan at 6:42 AM PST - 46 comments

Wikirank is an analytical tool that measures the popularity of trending topics on wikipedia. You can compare up to four topics and generate nifty embeddable graphs.
posted by peacay at 6:39 AM PST - 9 comments

Beta-registration has already started for Onlive, a revolutionary cloud-gaming service that promises to put an end to costly PC hardware upgrades, videogame piracy and the entire console industy and game retail sectors. There's just one small problem: it can't possibly work.
posted by permafrost at 6:33 AM PST - 64 comments

"How do you talk about something like gangsta rap from a conservative perspective?" he said. "Are you going to critique it, or just disagree with it?" Friedersdorf tried gamely to square that circle in a piece exploring his conflicted feelings about dancing to Lil Jon at a wedding, but it was an essay that could have been written only so many times. A post-mortem on Culture11. (previously)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:53 AM PST - 33 comments

From cops vs. hoods and other toughies to mad science and dramatic ledges and bridgewalkers, a vast and entertaining collection of vintage pulp art categorized into themes.
posted by madamjujujive at 3:52 AM PST - 17 comments

Once dubbed the Picture of the Century, the first Earthrise, photographed in 1966 by NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1, presented "a stunning juxtaposition of planet and moon that no earthling had ever seen before." After initially inspiring awe, the original image was almost destroyed. In the mad rush of the space race, the pictures and data from early missions were warehoused and forgotten. Many at NASA believed that the original high-resolution images, stored on fragile tapes that could only be read by obsolete equipment, would be nearly impossible to retrieve, but one woman was determined to see them restored. Via.
posted by amyms at 1:20 AM PST - 34 comments

Julie Brown, Chris Elliott, Kathy Griffin, Bobcat Goldthwait and others spoof Madonna in Medusa: Dare To Be Truthful: Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:20 AM PST - 9 comments

People die and different folk celebrate and mourn in various ways. However, while it does seem as if everyone is blogging about baseball and boxing or UFC during these times that try men's souls'... not everyone can write about it for the CTV network. John will be missed by both Blue Jay and Expo fans and perhaps fight fans as well. Please take a moment of your time to click on some links, thank you.
posted by christopher.taylor at 1:08 AM PST - 3 comments

Granted, a quick glance at the tacky vintage table and its 25-cent entry fee turns off many “serious gamblers,” but anyone that’s playing Sigma Derby couldn’t care less: it’s just that much fun. The snickers and wise-cracks roll off our backs the moment those five jumpy mechanical equines hit the tracks (which happens about once every 90 seconds). One thing is for certain however, you just gotta bet the 200:1 shot.
posted by clearly at 8:11 PM PST - 20 comments

Bill Orban developed the "Five Basic Exercises" or 5BX program for the Royal Canadian Air force in the late 50s. Apart from the primary aim of getting people into shape it was designed to be simple to perform, to work on all the body, to require nothing in terms of special equipment or large spaces, to accommodate enough progression to cater for reformed couch potato and budding athlete alike and to fit into a time slot of 11 minutes including warm up. [Women, for whatever reason, were prescribed 10 exercises in 12 minutes with XBX]. The book of the exercises was translated into 13 languages and sold 23 million copies around the world before falling into obscurity in the 80s. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 5:52 PM PST - 34 comments

In what has been described as "a major blow to online free speech in Canada", an Ontario court has ordered the owners of FreeDominion.ca to disclose all personal information on eight anonymous posters to the chat site - including email and IP addresses. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 4:17 PM PST - 34 comments

Wired.com is really pimping the Terminator franchise right now. With the success of the television series and the upcoming fourth installment hitting the big screens at the end of May, is the continuing appeal simply science fiction geekdom or is the concept really a deep philosophical metaphor? [more inside]
posted by Drainage! at 3:56 PM PST - 101 comments

Internet Archive - probably the single largest depository of Open Source content (and the Wayback Machine) - has transitioned its data center from racks of Linux machines to a Sun MD, basically a 3 petabyte data center housed in a liquid cooled shipping container, currently sitting in Sun's Santa Clara campus court yard. Sun and IA have put together an interesting interactive tour of how it works and what it looks like. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 3:52 PM PST - 36 comments

American historian John Hope Franklin died today at the age of 94. Among his many achievements: authoring From Slavery to Freedom: a History of African Americans. Originally published in 1947, it remains the standard work on African American history. Franklin also did research for the appellants in the historic Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Case. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 3:12 PM PST - 29 comments

Sick of worrying about the global financial crisis? Got global warming fatigue? Here's a whole new threat to worry about: NASA is warning that the world is ill-prepared for a Carrington event that wil melt electricity grids world-wide with 90 seconds notice. If it's any consolation, it's going to look real pretty
posted by girlgenius at 3:09 PM PST - 60 comments

The American National Academy of Sciences recently released a report that punched a few holes in the credibility of the forensic sciences: often seen (and portrayed) as infallible, in practice they're non-standardized, subjective (warning: pdf with gory image), accepted without rigorous testing (pdf), and lousy with dilettantes. A Canadian inquiry into the work of a pathologist whose testimony wrongly convicted a man of anally raping his four-year-niece to death says that forensic science is useful, but that we're doing it wrong. It's beginning to dawn that what we used to think of as a few bad apples may actually be symptoms of a deep rot in the field itself. [more inside]
posted by hayvac at 2:04 PM PST - 29 comments

Innsmouth: The Musical. Carol of the Old Ones. Shoggoth, Shoggoth, Shoggoth. If I Were A Deep One. I Saw My Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth. Away In A Madhouse. Freddy the Red Brained Mi-Go. I'm Dreaming of a Dead City. Awake Ye Scary Great Old Ones. The Cultist Song. Byakhee, Byakhee. [more inside]
posted by absalom at 2:01 PM PST - 14 comments

I for one welcome our new untooned overlords. especially
posted by plaidhatter at 1:54 PM PST - 14 comments

60-foot penis painted on roof Sorry. I tried to resist posting this, I really did. But you don't see that headline every day. And then I discovered it was not the first. And then I stopped laughing when I read what this "Christian" blogger thought about it. Then I read the subsequent comments and also this page and felt better again. And as a headline it beats all of these.
posted by magpie68 at 1:40 PM PST - 69 comments

On March 7, 2009, TornadoVideos.net (TVN) launched the beta version of their Live Streaming system. It's an interactive map that tracks each member of the TVN team as they criss-cross the country chasing storms, complete with live video. You can sign up (main page, top left: "Chase notifications") to be alerted when a chase is in progress. [more inside]
posted by nitsuj at 1:22 PM PST - 8 comments

Cat Shit One: The animated series Trailer . Loosely based on Apocalypse Meow.
posted by srboisvert at 11:50 AM PST - 24 comments

So bored you could watch plants grow? Okay, start with Corn [0:35] and Radishes [0:46]. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 11:40 AM PST - 25 comments

Open For Questions. Metafilter's Own™ box and klangklangston "skim the White House's Open For Questions, posting the best and brightest queries the American public can manage." [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by dersins at 11:06 AM PST - 63 comments

Are you looking to review your art history knowledge but find google too chaotic, and Prof. Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe's site is overwhelming and has a few too many dead links? Maybe wikipedia lacks the visuals you associate with an art history review, and Art cyclopedia could be a bit more straight-forward? Then The Art Browser might be the thing for you. The site combines brief descriptions of movements and artists from wikipedia, classifications from Art cyclopedia, and large images from Art.com for compact visual overview of art history. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:29 AM PST - 9 comments

Are we living in an age of "Mass Intelligence" or "Commodified Intelligence"? The Economist's Intelligent Life spin-off debates whether the masses are "wising up" rather than "dumbing down" or if, in fact, we have ended up consuming rather than appreciating culture.
posted by patricio at 8:05 AM PST - 38 comments

We Got The Tweet: The Week's 50 Best Rock Star Twitters. I think it is safe to say that all of us unreservedly love three things: indie rock, twitter and Ryan Adams. That's a given. Well this Stereogum post has them all! The weeks best tweets from all your favorite indie rock stars, including Ryan Adams hijacking his new wife Mandy Moore's (no I can't let that go) twitter account to make a bunch of tweets until she has to take the computer away from him. lol! [more inside]
posted by ND¢ at 7:41 AM PST - 100 comments

For most of us, science arrives in our lives packaged neatly as fact. But how did it get that way? Science is an active process of observation and investigation. Evidence: How Do We Know What We Know? [HTML version, Flash version also available] examines that process, revealing the ways in which ideas and information become knowledge and understanding. In this case study in human origins, the folks from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology explore how scientific evidence is being used to shape our current understanding of ourselves: What makes us human—and how did we get this way?
posted by netbros at 7:18 AM PST - 15 comments

Letter from an AIG bonus recipient - The resignation letter of an AIG executive explaining his point of view on the bonus furor. The proverbial other side of the story.
posted by Argyle at 6:09 AM PST - 293 comments

Osama bin Ladin and David Bowie [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:17 AM PST - 46 comments

There have been a lot of descriptions of our new president, but being in "full commanding denial" is a new and, sadly, insightful one. Clusterf*ck Nation's Jim Kunstler observes that the bailout "is predicated on the idea that the mechanisms of wealth production -- even of illusory wealth, such as the fortunes created by trading securitized unpayable debt -- can keep chugging along, spinning off limitless additional suburban villas, chain stores, car trips, and deep-fried snacks." For a different view, the folks over at the excellent Baseline Scenario have been doing some interesting thinking about The Cultural Costs of Bailout Nation. For an even bigger big picture view, Dmitry Orlov's original analysis of the USSR vs. USA collapse in Superpower Collapse Best Practices seems to be even more resonant in his recent appearances. Maybe it's time to give Full Commanding Denial another chance ....
posted by Adamchik at 12:25 AM PST - 80 comments

A year ago today we celebrated Holger Czukay's birthday, so why not do so again this year with some CAN videos? Paperhouse, Spoon, On German TV in 1971, Mother Sky, Halleluhwah, Vernal Equinox
posted by ornate insect at 7:32 PM PST - 17 comments

Twilight Of The Autocrats: Will the global economic downturn usher in a new era of democracy, or will things only get worse? [first link via]
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 7:24 PM PST - 15 comments

JetBytes is a free, no-signup, one-off file-sharing service.
posted by swift at 6:18 PM PST - 25 comments

OpenForQuestions at WhiteHouse.gov is asking you to vote for the questions you want Obama to address Thursday night. Like digg, but more governmentally.
posted by GatorDavid at 5:26 PM PST - 67 comments

Fox News, keeping it classy, recently aired a comedy segment ridiculing the Canadian military's efforts in Afghanistan. On the overnight programme, host Greg Gutfeld and friends joked about Canada's plan to pull out troops in 2011 to "do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white Capri pants." He also suggested invading Canada seeing as how they "have no real army", and mocked the last name of one of the Canadian generals as being unmasculine. [more inside]
posted by spoobnooble at 5:13 PM PST - 136 comments

A solar updraft tower generates electricity with nothing more than a greenhouse and a tall chimney. A 195 meter tall prototype in Spain cheaply operated at 50 kW for years. Now there are plans to build others, including a 40 MW tower, 750 meters tall (near twice as tall as the current tallest structure in the EU). Two others, a 200 MW tower in Australia (previously discussed) or a 400 MW tower in Namibia could become the tallest structure of any kind if built: 1km and 1.5km tall, respectively. Yet even those are dwarfed by the theoretical super chimney which could stand 5km tall and 1km wide. Such a tower would use the Earth's atmosphere itself as the greenhouse, could cause rain, reduce global warming and generate over 300,000 MW of "green" electricity. [more inside]
posted by brenton at 4:39 PM PST - 61 comments

After the Crisis Once this economic crisis blows over, a lot of companies will need their logos redesigned. Here's a dozen or so.
posted by man vs sun at 4:15 PM PST - 22 comments

"The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?"
posted by Joe Beese at 4:02 PM PST - 87 comments

Antipode Map. Find where the other side of the planet is instantly. Note that if you if you actually do manage to dig a tunnel through to the other side and jump in it will take you 42 minutes to get there.
posted by loquacious at 3:49 PM PST - 63 comments

You may want to skip the US DVD version of "Let the Right One In." The Magnolia/Magnet release of the indie horror movie darling dumbs down the Swedish-to-English translation for the subtitles for the US DVD and Blu-ray versions. (via)
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:40 PM PST - 93 comments

Times Square before Disney: Ads for 1970s "Leisure Spas" (SLYT)
posted by CunningLinguist at 2:29 PM PST - 33 comments

The Ancient World's Longest Underground Aqueduct. "Roman engineers chipped an aqueduct through more than 100 kilometers of stone to connect water to cities in the ancient province of Syria. The monumental effort took more than a century, says the German researcher who discovered it." How Did the Romans Accomplish Such a Feat? [Via]
posted by homunculus at 2:15 PM PST - 23 comments

Watch anonymous Wikipedia edits as they happen, where they happen.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:56 PM PST - 42 comments

We all admired Capt. Sullenberger's cold blood on the Hudson. His fellow pilot Chafik Garbi, however, placed in similar circumstances, performed rather less well.
posted by Skeptic at 1:30 PM PST - 37 comments

Photographer Pirkle Jones, best known for his images of California's migrant workers and changing landscape (including a collaboration with Dorothea Lange) and his iconic Black Panther pictures, has died at 95.
posted by scody at 1:00 PM PST - 8 comments

Two weeks after Alain Bashung's final live performance at the Victoires de la Musique awards, France mourns the passing of the renowned poet-rocker who died on 14 March of lung cancer. The rest of the world says 'Who?' (wiki). An appreciation from the Times correspondent Charles Bremner. Some clips from Bashung's career: Madame rêve, Gaby Oh! Gaby, Osez Josephine, Volontaire (with Noir Desir), Sur un trapeze, La nuit je mens, the epic Comme un lego.
posted by grounded at 12:39 PM PST - 6 comments

In the mood for a light realtime strategy game? Try Breaking the Tower. It's quite a bit like Settlers, but it's more streamlined.
Runs in the browser, requires java
posted by boo_radley at 12:28 PM PST - 27 comments

Remember that time you were asked about the coolest thing you ever saw on the internet and all that came to mind was (previously mentioned) The Website is Down? Well it appears there was a part2 released. I cannot be the only one happy to see this. [more inside]
posted by will wait 4 tanjents at 12:01 PM PST - 31 comments

Host Master and the Conquest of Humor. A point and click adventure about Tim Schafer gathering jokes for the GDC. Pixel hunting on a level not for the faint of heart.
posted by juv3nal at 11:32 AM PST - 30 comments

No Nonsense Self Defense is a website that features many great essays about violence and self-defense, including “High Risk Behavior And Knowing Where You Are,”“Are Martial Arts Self-Defense?,”“The Best Way to Get Attacked,”“The Economy And Stress Violence,”and “Who's Going To Rob You?." But my absolute favorite section is "Psychology and Survival." If I can convince you to read only one of these links, please let it be that last one.
posted by jason's_planet at 11:31 AM PST - 70 comments

A Quiet Revolution Grows in the Muslim World "In many of the scores of countries that are predominantly Muslim, the latest generation of activists is redefining society in novel ways. This new soft revolution is distinct from three earlier waves of change--the Islamic revival of the 1970s, the rise of extremism in the 1980s and the growth of Muslim political parties in the 1990s. Today's revolution is more vibrantly Islamic than ever. Yet it is also decidedly antijihadist and ambivalent about Islamist political parties. Culturally, it is deeply conservative, but its goal is to adapt to the 21st century. Politically, it rejects secularism and Westernization but craves changes compatible with modern global trends. The soft revolution is more about groping for identity and direction than expressing piety. The new revolutionaries are synthesizing Koranic values with the ways of life spawned by the Internet, satellite television and Facebook. For them, Islam, you might say, is the path to change rather than the goal itself."
posted by nooneyouknow at 11:15 AM PST - 24 comments

Over twelve years in the making, filmed on five continents, with a running time of over nine hours, easily the most terrifying flatware horror movie released this year. A Richard Gale film. [via]
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 10:22 AM PST - 38 comments

In the 1860’s, while the US was busy crushing its agrarian revolution, the Russians were busy expanding their empire towards Afghanistan and cleansing the Caucuses of those pesky Circassians, Chechens, and Tartars (to name a few) in a little known places like Abkhazia, the British were busy expanding their empire towards Afghanistan and extinguishing the last outposts of “mutineers,” and the Qing Dynasty of China was losing its grip on its Empire due to a cult of longhaired Christians lead by Jesus’s Chinese little brother. Alimkul, the de facto Khan of Khotan took advantage of the chaos by sending his greatest general, Yakub Beg, to Kashgar... [more inside]
posted by Pollomacho at 9:50 AM PST - 31 comments

Bad luck: some people seem to treat the subject rather lightly and consider themselves the unluckiest person ever if they lose a long game of Pokemon, or because of some rather benign school occurrences. Sometimes people fall victim to such unlikely and improbable events that they may be tempted to declare themselves cursed. But it would be hard to beat the hard-luck of a Japanese man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi. On August 6th, 1945, he was in Hiroshima on a business trip when the first A-bomb dropped on Japan exploded. He suffered some burns, but was considered well enough that he could leave Hiroshima the next day and go home. To Nagasaki.
posted by clevershark at 9:12 AM PST - 63 comments

Orton and Halliwell first came to the public attention not as writers but through an elaborate and extended prank played out at their local library, altering book covers and adding new blurbs to dust jackets. Incensed at the poor choice of books at Essex Road, their local library, they began stealing books. These were smuggled out, dust jackets altered, new blurbs written on inside flaps and then surreptitiously returned. [more inside]
posted by lucia__is__dada at 8:45 AM PST - 31 comments

After months of pre-eruptive activity, Alaska's Mount Redoubt has erupted 6 times since Sunday night. Telegraphing its eruption with massive shallow earthquake activity in the range of 26 earthquakes every 10 minutes, the volcano, located around 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, spewed an ash column 10km high, and is expected to continue erupting for weeks or months. The last time this massive volcano erupted in 1989 a commercial airliner was caught in the ash column, causing the engines to seize and the plane to lose two miles of altitude before the engines were restarted. That eruption, which lasted for 5 months, produced this spectacular photo. Follow this amazing event at the Alaska Volcano Observatory. [more inside]
posted by baphomet at 8:29 AM PST - 35 comments

What happens when payments to a surrogate mother from an infertile couple suddenly stop, through no fault of either party? [via]
posted by jaimev at 8:07 AM PST - 33 comments

Thor Steinar, a German fashion brand, has run into heavy criticism recently due to the fact that their clothing was adopted by a number of far-right Neo-Nazi types. Much of the debate revolves around the question of whether or not founder Axel Kopelke intentionally designed the company's original logo to attract this particular demographic, leading to protests and vandalism at retail stores selling the brand. But will skinheads feel the need to change brands now that the company has been bought out by a Dubai-based Arab investor?
posted by mannequito at 8:05 AM PST - 47 comments

From the very familiar to the "exotic", from Art Deco design to jazzy and snazzy mid-century graphics, from touting booze to touting tobacco, from "Vargas girl"-esque teasers to presidents of the United States, from 24-hour waffle restaurants to diaper services, from celebrations of the iconic cocktail to the... um, McDonald's Party House, the Matchbooks & Collectable Matchbooks Flickr group has it all.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:50 AM PST - 9 comments

The Highlights is an online arts journal. It consists of web-based projects and essays by artists. An example from the current issue, Master of None, where the author posits that a new model of work for artists can exist, one where the artist retains agency while also getting paid to do complementary work which is informed by the subtlety, strangeness, and sure-footed temperament of the artist’s persona. Two years of journals in the archives. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 7:03 AM PST - 9 comments

You've read the book, attended the seminars and pondered the accumulation of surplus value – now see the musical.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:29 AM PST - 11 comments

Election Fraud in Kentucky. "I think this is the first documented case of election fraud in the U.S. using electronic voting machines (there have been lots of documented cases of errors and voting problems, but this one involves actual maliciousness)."
posted by chunking express at 6:20 AM PST - 35 comments

The e-cigarette may be soon be outlawed with an imminent crackdown looming. But are e-cigs really that dangerous?
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:02 AM PST - 65 comments

Vintage Supermarket Photos
posted by srboisvert at 2:58 AM PST - 42 comments

EEEEeyyyyyaaaaahhahahahahaaaaaa!!!!!
posted by 5imian at 9:45 PM PST - 61 comments

Antarctica travel blog, done Big Picture style. Kevin Fox, formerly a designer at Yahoo and Google (who wrote a great response to Doug Bowman's design-by-metrics post) took a trip to Antarctica a couple months back and has been slowly updating a mini-site, exhaustively describing and showing photos from each part of each day he was down there. There are icebergs. There are penguins. There is swimming. There is drinking. It's all done in a wonderful large image Big Picture style that makes me drop everything whenever the feed updates. Start at the top and read the whole way through.
posted by mathowie at 8:47 PM PST - 23 comments

Under The Volcano, a Hypertextual & Illustrated Companion to the 1947 semi-autobiographical novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:01 PM PST - 16 comments

Dead.AtYourAge.Com is a handy website that tells you about noteworthy people who died at exactly your age (or thereabouts). Like, in my case, Dimebag Darrell.
posted by jonmc at 7:56 PM PST - 91 comments

"The war has uprooted 4.7 million people from their homes. So where are they?" With the election of Obama and the economic crisis, the topic of Iraq has fallen by the wayside. As hard as things may be right now, Iraqis have been going through far worse for years now. If you're curious about what they have to say, hear them tell it in their own words. Iraqi Refugee Stories. [more inside]
posted by wander at 6:49 PM PST - 16 comments

March 19, 1979 - The United States House of Representatives goes live on television for the first time in history. Footage from the House floor aired on a network created by a consortium of American cable companies. The first member of Congress to speak? Al Gore (Sorry, only seems to be available on Real Player. Embedded video, in case weird link fails). [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 6:42 PM PST - 17 comments

In the summer of 2007, artist and medical student Satre Stuelke started the Radiology Art project. Dedicated to the deeper visualization of various objects that hold unique cultural importance in modern society, this project intends to plant a seed of scientific creativity in the minds of all those inclined to participate.
posted by Rinku at 6:01 PM PST - 8 comments

China proposes replacing the dollar as the world's standard currency. [more inside]
posted by ornate insect at 6:01 PM PST - 63 comments

Writing, seemingly, a book a day since his birth in 1946, Alan Dean Foster, 2008 Grand Master of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, still finds a great deal of time for travel. Come and share his journeying. [more inside]
posted by turgid dahlia at 4:37 PM PST - 55 comments

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage premiered on PBS on September 28, 1980. (Previously). With Carl Sagan as guide, on a "cosmic journey across space and time," on a "spaceship of the imagination," few shows inspired as many people to investigate science, many of whom went on to be scientists. [more inside]
posted by waitingtoderail at 3:53 PM PST - 38 comments

Clark Little takes amazing photos of waves. See more at his website.
posted by various at 1:58 PM PST - 42 comments

"Ready, aim ... fail, why setting goals can backfire."
posted by doobiedoo at 12:41 PM PST - 56 comments

Today marks the launch of the Tata Nano. Some see this car as the next Ipod. Some have grave environmental concerns. (previously)
posted by Xurando at 11:18 AM PST - 60 comments

1980s pop music hasbeen + swing big band = OMIGOD NO MAKE IT STOP.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:15 AM PST - 102 comments

Who will be our era's Duncan Fletcher? Fed up with widespread financial sector double-dealing, profiteering and opportunism in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression, a soft-spoken, conservative Democrat senator from Jacksonville, Florida stepped up to play an instrumental role in shaping post-Depression era financial policies. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 10:56 AM PST - 31 comments

Author Dennis Cooper discusses the secret passage in practical terms. With practical examples for the handyman and notable buildings featuring secret passages in the United States, such as Doug Carlston's Broderbund Manor.
posted by boo_radley at 10:51 AM PST - 25 comments

Everything you ever wanted to read about left-wing political theory but were afraid to look up. [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 8:55 AM PST - 67 comments

"Infandous street corner Cromwell" George Galloway MP banned from entering Canada. Justified on 'National Security' grounds, specifically Section 34(1) of the Immigration Act. George Galloway reacts to Canadian Immigraton Spokesman Alykhan Velshi on Channel 4. Velshi suggests this is 'not a freedom of speech issue' but in this day and age of technology is the notion of banning individuals crossing geographical borders due to opinions held absurd. It would seem the Canadian Government think not. Intellectual Protectionism rears its head and the marmite of international politics basks in the publicity. Domestic navel gazing ensues.
posted by numberstation at 6:41 AM PST - 96 comments

The US Attorney's office has submitted email correspondence between Bernie Madoff and his victims, some of whom are more deserving than others. Via
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:07 AM PST - 60 comments

Stories that Fly is a citizen media project that features a growing collection of digital stories about general aviation. The stories are contributed by student journalists, aviators, and interested community members and cover regional airports, events, and people in the Ohio aviation community.
posted by netbros at 4:40 AM PST - 3 comments

Rethink Afghanistan: Robert Greenwald is releasing his latest documentary online. Parts one and two are already available.
posted by anotherpanacea at 4:16 AM PST - 8 comments

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Rouen in France and gave a speech in which he describes, as an aspiring young writer in Turkey in the 70's, the comfort and guidance he got from a certain letter written from Istanbul by Flaubert. [more inside]
posted by lucia__is__dada at 2:40 AM PST - 5 comments

Despite The Republican Talking Points, There's A Difference Between Obama And Marx: One Of Them's Not A Socialist. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 9:12 PM PST - 154 comments

You know that guitar sound at the start of "Touch Me I'm Sick"? Or when Keith plays the big riff in "Satisfaction"? That's fuzz. I love fuzz, and I was very happy to stumble across this fine documentary about fuzz pedals and their makers. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 7, Part 8 Should be enough there to sustain your interest for a while... (Previously...)
posted by awfurby at 8:38 PM PST - 28 comments

David Cronenburg's Alien: novelisation by JG Ballard. Starsky and Hutch: novelisation by JG Ballard.
posted by WPW at 8:10 PM PST - 23 comments

Nicholas Hughes has taken his own life. A marine biologist specializing in Alaskan stream fish, he has been preceded in death by his mother, Sylvia and his father, Ted.
posted by felix betachat at 7:07 PM PST - 49 comments

First Person Shooters don't always have to cost you money. Free Doom and Starsiege: Tribes are two of the most well known free FPS around, but inside this post is a list of 32 more for you to checkout, download legally for free and enjoy. [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:53 PM PST - 51 comments

Chartres: Cathedral of Notre-Dame offers photographs, diagrams, antique prints, and maps of Chartres Cathedral. And that's not the only virtual Chartres site: there's a tour courtesy of San Jose SU and a more elaborate tour (requires Quicktime) offered by the Art History department at Ithaca College. Among other things, Great Buildings features some 3D models (additional, albeit free, software required to view). Speaking of virtual experiences, you can walk the Chartres labyrinth (see here for a more technical description). And don't forget video, including this National Geographic short on the cathedral's architecture; you can also listen to the bells.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:59 PM PST - 9 comments

"The general public is not aware of how doomed black dogs are when they are brought to a pound.” Does Does black dog bias influence rescuers when it comes to adoption? Empirical evidence doesn't exist, but rescue groups insist that it's a real concern. Now some groups, including Black Pearl Dogs and Start Seeing Black Dogs are raising awareness and providing free PR and Marketing materials to rescue organizations in an attempt to decrease time spent in shelters and euthanasia rates for black dogs.
posted by Ufez Jones at 4:14 PM PST - 60 comments

According to Senior Harvard AIDS Prevention Researcher Dr. Edward Green, condoms not only are not helping to prevent the AIDS crisis, but are actually making the problem worse.
posted by Roach at 3:32 PM PST - 47 comments

Short recipe segments from Gordon Ramsay's "The F Word." Seabass with sorrel sauce::Black Bream on a bed of petite pois with baby onions and pancetta::Escalope of chicken with sautéed potatoes and red chard::Duck breast in gooseberry sauce::Lemon Sole en papillote::Seabass and pepper sauce:: Turkey with truffle butter::Monkfish with a mussels broth::Poached chicken in morel sauce::Pheasant with a smooth bread sauce::Stuffed saddle of lamb with apricot and cumin::Dover sole with shrimp butter::Smoked paprika chicken stroganoff::Brocolli Soup::Brill with a red wine sauce::Tagliatelle with rabbit fricassee::Eggs on Toast::Rib Eye Steak ::Pan Glazed Fillet of Beef::Rack of lamb:: Stuffed chicken legs with sausage meat and marsala sauce::Beef Wellington
posted by vronsky at 3:21 PM PST - 74 comments

The Dictionary of American Regional English is nearing completion.
posted by teamparka at 1:23 PM PST - 43 comments

Bus tours of the houses of AIG executives, who are mostly not home or hiding behind security. [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 1:22 PM PST - 44 comments

Zhang Peng’s elaborate photographs have been called both "beautiful" and "disgusting". You can see some of them here and here.
posted by chiraena at 10:23 AM PST - 38 comments

"Proud Mary". "Born on the Bayou". "Green River". "Bad Moon Rising". "Lodi". "Fortunate Son". (previously) [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 8:52 AM PST - 76 comments

Extravagant Crowd - Carl Van Vechten’s Portraits of Women and Photos of African Americans. Previous post by ND¢: Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten 1932-1964. Also, public domain works from Wikimedia Commons. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 8:08 AM PST - 3 comments

NSFW-filter: Playboy Archive has 53 vintage issues of America's favorite gentleman's magazine up for free (legitimately). Requires a download of Microsoft's Silverlight. [more inside]
posted by bardic at 4:53 AM PST - 128 comments

No, you're not drunk, it's really a pink elephant. Pink dolphin unavailable for comment.
posted by baphomet at 2:27 AM PST - 16 comments

Conficker C is scary as hell. Conficker C represents a best-of-breed specimen of malware, with its swiss-army-knife-from-hell approach to digging in, staying hidden, and making your life generally miserable. Telltale symptoms: you can't view such web sites as Microsoft.com, symantec.com, avast.com, or any other computer security-related sites the worm authors have thought to include in the blacklist; you can't run any of the superb Sysinternals utilities, or many other utilities, because they get killed within a second of starting them up; your antiviral software is impotent. But none of that is the point of the worm. [more inside]
posted by e.e. coli at 9:14 PM PST - 225 comments

Knowledge, in Real Time. "A new picture of science — and possibly future innovation — comes into focus with the mapping of scientists’ online research behavior."
posted by homunculus at 8:55 PM PST - 13 comments

Perhaps the most edifying one minute a twenty nine seconds you'll spend on the internet today is right here. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:36 PM PST - 63 comments

Mike Carano staged a live version of Star Trek's "Spock's Brain" episode. He talks about it here and shows clips from the show.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 8:01 PM PST - 34 comments

More paintings that I like: This time, they are by Kristin Cammermeyer. Here is a statement about the paintings. Here are some examples that I particularly like. [more inside]
posted by wittgenstein at 5:44 PM PST - 21 comments

In 1919 while at Cornell University future children's author, essayist and New Yorker magazine editor Elwyn Brooks (E.B.) White took heed of the advice of his English professor, William Strunk, Jr., to "omit needless words" in his writing. Strunk advised such -- and more -- to his students in a self-published compositional guide known on campus as "the Little Book." In 1935 his pamphlet was revised and published under the title The Elements and Practice of Composition. In 1957, 11 years after Strunk's death, White wrote a nostalgic article about his professor and his grammar and style guide for the New Yorker. Persuaded two years later by Macmillan editor Jack Case to revise and expand Strunk's manual, White co-authored the book The Elements of Style (New York Times review, June 9, 1959] often referred to as Strunk and White. Since its publication the book has sold more than 10 million copies. The literary world is now celebrating the book's golden anniversary. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 5:17 PM PST - 89 comments

SmARThistory is an edited online art history resource to augment or replace traditional art history texts. For a given artwork, smARThistory brings together podcasts, video clips, images, links to other resources, and commentary, providing a rich context for the work. Indexed by timeline, artistic style, artist and theme.
posted by netbros at 4:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Batman Logo Evolution
posted by Artw at 3:27 PM PST - 37 comments

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has a web site, about constitutional rights. Sometime this summer they're going to roll out two games for students to play to teach them about their rights under the Constitution.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:49 PM PST - 21 comments

Who knew that FAP FAP FAP meant Fixed Action Pattern? Prof. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University did. This is his three hour lecture on the Neurobiology of Primate Sexuality from 2002. Part 2
posted by srboisvert at 12:25 PM PST - 8 comments

MathTV is a real problem solver for many. It is also found on YouTube, and is free. Here is some background.
posted by Brian B. at 10:44 AM PST - 8 comments

Reviews and thoughts on the Battlestar Galatica finale, and a few answers from show creator Ron Moore
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:51 AM PST - 432 comments

Leggman's The Tick Super Fanpage!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:56 AM PST - 38 comments

Matt Taibbifilter: Among other things, the GAO report noted that the entire OTS had only one insurance specialist on staff — and this despite the fact that it was the primary regulator for the world's largest insurer! This week's MeFi stories have generally failed to explain the reasoning that caused the recession, even though Jon Stewart was basically on the mark. Now, Rolling Stone's only reporter lays it all out The Big Takeover, a typical combination of zealous snark and the overlooked, damning facts needed to clear up a ridiculously complicated story.
posted by shii at 11:16 PM PST - 111 comments

rethinking the lipstick index - a nice find: there's an old Greek play called Lysistrata, in which the women of Greece go on a sex strike to stop the Peloponnesian War. Did it work? The play maybe was just a play, but in the last decade there have been (successful?!) sex strikes in Liberia, Colombia, Naples, Sudan... this site gets into some research about ancient women's ceremonies being a coordinated sex strike to get the men to hunt, and that they painted their faces red to suggest menstrual blood... and now i can't help but think of lipstick, and blush, and then there's the lipstick index, the idea that lipstick sales go up during hard times, (supposedly) because its the cheapest female self-indulgence product; but now i wonder... some primal impulse...
posted by jojo-dancer at 11:09 PM PST - 30 comments

More than 600 Universal Newsreels at Internet Archive, both whole and partial reels (the same collection, with a few more newsreels is also on YouTube but it's in lower quality). Newsreels were short collections of current events that ran before feature films. They ran from the start of the film era up into the 1960s. This collection goes from the early 30s through the mid 60s. Here are a few interesting ones: Eleanor Roosevelt tells a joke, 1935 car industry workers strike, Australian who was orphaned in China and raised by Chinese parents returns to Australia, FDR inaugurated, Enos the chimpanzee goes into space and returns to Earth, Vietnam War protest marches in New York, San Francisco and Rome, Busby Babes plane crash, Gagarin hugged by Kruschev, Truman brings the funny, Seattle be-in and Nuremberg trials.
posted by Kattullus at 8:24 PM PST - 19 comments

In Portland, Oregon sits the Wilkinson residence, designed by Robert Oshatz. It is kind of neat. [via]
posted by cashman at 7:59 PM PST - 30 comments

Naked People.
posted by swift at 6:33 PM PST - 113 comments

Well, I'll tell you, Yanni would sound great on this system at The Great Theater in Ephesus, Turkey. A log cabin in the Bluegrass mountains would be another perfect setting for this system. Wow - the possibilities are endless.
posted by squalor at 6:28 PM PST - 60 comments

Moments [more inside]
posted by flatluigi at 4:19 PM PST - 4 comments

Following the death of his sister to brain cancer, Motoi Yamamoto adopted salt as his primary artistic medium. In Japanese culture salt is not only a necessary element to sustain human life, but it is also a symbol of purification. He uses salt in loose form to create intricate labyrinth patterns on the gallery floor or in baked brick form to construct large interior structures. As with the labyrinths and unnavigable passageways, Motoi Yamamoto views his installations as exercises which are at once futile yet necessary to his healing.
posted by netbros at 4:04 PM PST - 25 comments

Thanks to the LUA scripting support in NES emulator FCEUX, you can do things like drag and drop enemies and powerups, alter gravity, give mario a jetpack, or make him shoot magic missiles. Super Mario Brothers not your thing? Perhaps you'd rather just have it play Pinball for you.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:00 PM PST - 14 comments

Has CREEP become this era's Free Bird to be played by every band at the end of every concert and covered by everybody?
posted by Xurando at 3:14 PM PST - 81 comments

This is not Werner Herzog. This is his blog.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:27 PM PST - 66 comments

I both loved and resented that wealth of warmth which Elisabeth brought to me in those unexpected hours of the night. I was usually in the midst of a sound sleep when she got into my bed, and thrilling as I found the ministrations of her fat little fingers, it also meant my being kept awake for hours and hours. Besides, though in my conscious nature I knew nothing about what was going on, I must have had a feeling that my sister was bringing to my life as accomplished facts sensations whose real value to a boy was in their being discovered as part of the experience of growing up. She was presenting me with triumphs I should by right attain only by my own efforts in a much more restricted world… [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 2:09 PM PST - 11 comments

It's Friday, what better time to relish in the carefree world that was Leave It to Beaver. Even though it was "just" a TV show, how many of us, back in our youth, could relate to anxiety of being given the dreaded note from a teacher? Of course, as with any syndicated sitcom, there are stories behind the various actors. And other stories as well... [more inside]
posted by Oriole Adams at 1:59 PM PST - 19 comments

Rorschach’s Journal (On a Boring Night).
posted by homunculus at 1:50 PM PST - 41 comments

If you have eaten a tomato this winter, chances are very good that it was picked by a person who lives in virtual slavery.
posted by Ostara at 1:34 PM PST - 55 comments

Do Your Own Adventure with Sue Teller: Customizing Your Kicks & Making Mash-Ups. [Warning: Extremely Obvious Product Placement.] [more inside]
posted by defenestration at 12:45 PM PST - 7 comments

Former Black Panther and civil rights activist Richard Aoki passed away Sunday from medical complications. [more inside]
posted by lunit at 12:18 PM PST - 9 comments

AIG corporate memo, leaked to Gawker, advises employees on how not to fall victim to the populist horde calling for their heads.
posted by VicNebulous at 12:02 PM PST - 77 comments

Because it's Friday: Wiener Dog On A Minimoog. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 11:02 AM PST - 46 comments

"All of the nomenclatural, bibliographic, and specimen data accumulated in MBG’s electronic databases during the past 25 years are publicly available here. This system has over one million scientific names and 3.5 million specimen records." (Description from website.) Searchable by scientific or common name, the database includes brief descriptions, images and references (with some links to full text in Botanicus), and specimen and distribution lists that are available in Google Maps and Earth. Quite a nice resource for anyone interested in botany. [more inside]
posted by cog_nate at 10:54 AM PST - 3 comments

The latest drain on public resources: a sausage-pony. [more inside]
posted by bokeh at 10:42 AM PST - 31 comments

I’m thankful for the opportunity I had to work at Google. I learned more than I thought I would.... But I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.

And with that Douglas Bowman, the great web designer and CSS guru whose hiring was considered a big coup three years ago, quits Google for Twitter. [more inside]
posted by dw at 10:35 AM PST - 87 comments

How To Be A Bat [Life in Motion] Carl Zimmer has a lengthy post about Bats over at Discover magazine's website. Several slow motion videos of bat flight including a cool matlabish model of a bat flight vortex. As with all flying takoffs are optional and landings are mandatory so they also have slow motion video of two point and four point landings as well as well as some more pedestrian videos.
posted by srboisvert at 10:04 AM PST - 21 comments

What do the following cars have in common? The Chrysler Neon. The Daihatsu Charade. The Dodge Viper SRT-10. The Ferrari SuperAmerica. The Fiat Croma. The Hummer H2. The Hyundai Terracan. The Hyundai Trajet. The Rover 75. The CityRover. The Smart Cabrio. The Tata Safari. Give up? Each one of the cars listed above sold exactly one new (as in, not previously registered) unit last year in the UK, according to the Daily Telegraph. This makes them the most exclusive cars of 2008.
posted by clevershark at 9:19 AM PST - 57 comments

Thunderdome Filter: In two separate incidents Texas schools have gotten a jump on any sort of dystopic future scenarios by staging illegal forced fights between those in their care. Corpus Christi State School night-staff made disabled residents get out of bed and then taped them fighting each other in over 20 incidents during 2008. South Oak Cliff High School had a policy between 2003 and 2005 of settling disputes between troubled students by having them fight it out in a steel cage in the boy's locker room while students and faculty looked on. Several arrests have been made in the Corpus Christi case and the South Oak Cliff one is just coming to public attention.
posted by CheshireCat at 9:12 AM PST - 64 comments

Need to woo that special someone? The Ewens Brothers will sing your requests live on the air every friday. They sing together. They sing solo. But they always sing with passion! (And sometimes an open shirt. Frankie Valli must be so proud!)
posted by manosthf at 9:11 AM PST - 1 comment

Diana Eng (from Season 2 of Project Runway) has come out with a new book for the DIY fashion geek called: Fashion Geek! (Via Project Rungay.) Gives me something to do while I save up for one of these.
posted by JoanArkham at 8:23 AM PST - 10 comments

Ed Piskor became interested in alternative comics at the tender age of nine [according to Wikipedia] after watching Harvey Pekar reading one of his stories in a documentary [most likely this one]. Fast-forward a decade or so, and Ed's getting the call from Pekar himself, asking Ed to draw some comics for him. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 7:59 AM PST - 4 comments

Ken Mink became a national feel-good story late last year when, at age 73, he joined the basketball team of Roane State Community College in Tennessee. At the end of an early season game, with his team up big, Ken was subbed in and managed to draw a foul and make two free throws. Fame followed. But is this feel-good story really all its cracked up to be?
posted by Mountain Goatse at 7:58 AM PST - 27 comments

Friday Flash Fun: Music Catch 2, move your cursor around to collect objects. Yellow are good, Red are bad, and purple are special. [more inside]
posted by schyler523 at 7:47 AM PST - 11 comments

Looking for a reason to celebrate today, or just a reason to skip out on your obligations? You could look through Religious seasonal days of celebration and holy days , check if today is covered by Holiday for Every Day yet, or keep things simple and rely on a Calendar of the Saints like the Catholic feast days or Greek Saints Days from the Orthodox Ministry Access Calendar. If you like to be more traditional, you could go with the Medievalist's On-line Calendar of Saints, which only lists people recognized as saints in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Or, if you feel lucky, check for special Google logos (designed by Dennis Hwang). For instance, today is the first day of Spring, and the 40th anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:43 AM PST - 6 comments

Who's talking about a payroll tax holiday? Not just the insane. [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 7:27 AM PST - 37 comments

Hey kids, let's go way back, and spend a little quality time with Tampa Red, shall we? Cause, you know, you can't get that stuff no more, and if you missed him, you missed a good man.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:05 AM PST - 7 comments

Friday Flash JavaScript Fun! Balldroppings (ha.) is a gravity-based game where balls drop at regular intervals from a particular point in the screen and you draw lines to make them bounce. The excellent part: every time the balls bounce off a line, they sing. [more inside]
posted by LMGM at 5:54 AM PST - 19 comments

Where did all the money go? is just one of the enties to GOOD's financial crisis infographic competition. [more inside]
posted by pharm at 3:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Product Panic - Bruce Sterling on industrial design in the slump.
posted by WPW at 1:36 AM PST - 20 comments

... . -. -.. -.-- --- ..- .-. ..-. .-. .. . -. -.. ... ... . -.-. .-. . - -- . ... ... .- --. . ... --..-- .- -. -.. -.-. --- -. ..-. ..- ... . -.-- --- ..- .-. . -. . -- .. . ... --..-- .-- .. - .... - .... .. ... -- --- .-. ... . -.-. --- -.. . --. . -. . .-. .- - --- .-. .-.-.-
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:08 PM PST - 109 comments

Impressively bearded, Oneness pentecostal, prog rock sensation and prolific troll Steven Winter would like the corrupt scum who run facebook to stop cooperating with the false-christian devils. Also, he'd like women to stop speaking in church, thanks.
posted by muddylemon at 9:47 PM PST - 33 comments

ASIAN DRILLPOP! Lurid junk culture artifacts from Japan, Korea, Thailand and India. Mostly not safe for work. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 7:54 PM PST - 27 comments

On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II.
posted by jbiz at 6:56 PM PST - 136 comments

LiveNewsCameras.com ― international live streaming television news aggregator.
posted by netbros at 3:44 PM PST - 9 comments

Muppets' Exclusive La Choy Fire Breathing Dragon! While on the road to success, Jim Henson's creations were used in the advertising world. The La Choy pitch is a great insight into the workshop's early genius. [more inside]
posted by Frasermoo at 3:40 PM PST - 28 comments

The MIT faculty unanimously adopted a university-wide Open Access mandate. Open Access got a big boost yesterday because of MIT's move. [more inside]
posted by tarheelcoxn at 3:19 PM PST - 46 comments

It's scary out there. It can make you just want to hide.
posted by Joe Beese at 1:59 PM PST - 73 comments

Almost-Friday-Flash-Fun: Hex Empire. A simple but engaging hexagon based strategy game. (via)
posted by Caduceus at 1:48 PM PST - 42 comments

IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement. "During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive." Can Israel dismiss its own troops' stories from Gaza? [Via]
posted by homunculus at 1:45 PM PST - 93 comments

Little Red Riding Hood, creatively animated and retold. [3 min video]
posted by knave at 1:30 PM PST - 25 comments

Thirteen year old Matt Milligan is a gifted photographer despite suffering from Cerebral Palsy. He uses a monopod, or his parents stabilizing his arms, to help minimize distortion from his shaky arms.[via.]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 12:21 PM PST - 14 comments

Commercial artists have always had it tough, and photographers are no exception. Magazines are folding. Advertising is down. And to make things worse, this week large companies like Omnicom and GM shifted the financial burden to the artist. Some say production insurance, commonly used in film, is the answer. Others recommend fighting the already bad contracts by demanding payment before usage rights are released. Of course, if things go wrong you can always file for bankruptcy.
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 11:38 AM PST - 54 comments

The sales of a book by Madame de Lafayette, "La Princesse de Clèves", are up in France and there have been public readings of it in theatres and universities. The reason? Sarkozy hates it. As Sarkozy's popularity plummets, the "17th century tale of thwarted love" gets unexpected attention beyond the classroom. Badges inscribed with "I am reading The Princess of Clèves" were the most popular item at the opening of the Paris book fair this week. [more inside]
posted by lucia__is__dada at 9:06 AM PST - 29 comments

Cool video of an undersea volcano erupting off Tonga. Spectacular clouds began spewing out of the sea on Monday about 10km from the southwest coast off the main island of Tongatapu, where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered. More on these volcanism blogs.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:55 AM PST - 39 comments

The Top 100 Wedding Blogs (and Twitters) to follow in 2009 [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:49 AM PST - 40 comments

Captain's Log, supplemental.
posted by digaman at 8:05 AM PST - 101 comments

The best looking bikes on the web. Good background and links as well as mouth-watering images.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:50 AM PST - 37 comments

Do you know how to make a frog drunk? I bet you don't. But I do. I fired my pot up one morning and got it going real good. It had just started running high shots. That is what you call it when it first starts to come out. For so many jugs, then it turns to backins. Anyway here come hopping up to the still a damn big frog. I thought to myself ol' boy I'll make you drunk as hell.
Legendary Appalachian moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton was arrested by the ATF in March 2008 [PDF]. At his arrest, agents found guns, three 1000-gallon stills, hundreds of gallons of sour mash, and over 800 gallons of white lightning. This week at 61 years old, and faced with 18 months in prison, he committed suicide.
posted by Who_Am_I at 6:24 AM PST - 78 comments

It's Spring And It's Mountain Oyster Time Probably NSFW
posted by Xurando at 6:07 AM PST - 36 comments

You can take with you. A colleague of mine showed me this page and asked if I knew what it was all about. I suggested, doll houses. He said you're warm. After a few more guesses I gave up. When he told was it was about, it all clicked. I live in Taiwan and know quite a bit about funeral ceremonies here. I've seen a couple of cars and planes...but never have I seen items like these or these or these. Talk about going out in style! All of this stuff is made out of paper and is set afire! As for the prices....just divide by 34 to get US dollars.
posted by rmmcclay at 5:53 AM PST - 7 comments

D-Box seating is now installed in 2 American cinemas. An obvious choice for debuting the motion-controlled seating, The Fast and The Furious promises movie-goers in LA and Surprise (!), AZ a racing, whiplashing good ride. [more inside]
posted by njbradburn at 5:53 AM PST - 25 comments

Explosive art; "weapons" paintings by San Minn are not shown in his native Burma where Rappers, journalists and comedians have discovered a new crime – helping people devastated by cyclone Nargis. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 4:15 AM PST - 5 comments

FoxNews copy-n-pastes Focus on the Family propaganda as news. Longtime MeFi user owillis caught the fact that FoxNews took the press release of a supposedly independent student pro-life group called Live Action/Live Action Films and essentially reprinted it verbatim. Bad journalism, sure... but how does this little student group afford to send its people across the country to try to entrap Planned Parenthood workers, and how do they get big-name attention on FoxNews and other major conservative media sources? Well, it turns out that Live Action was rather quietly founded by Stephen Reed, who is a key surrogate of James Dobson/ Focus on the Family/ the Family Research Council... and the media sources in question have close ties to Dobson and a longstanding history of parroting his talking points.
posted by markkraft at 12:21 AM PST - 42 comments

Movie posters carry the movie in one still image. But they're also a great overview of trends, both artistic and popular. Modern major film posters are common enough, and if you're looking for some discussion of modern posters, Movie Poster Addict might be your scene. But dig deeper and you come across quality versions of foreign films, such as Mexican posters (deep link to a section of Pulp Morgue) or hand painted posters from Russia, India and Pakistan, even the US. MeFi's own flapjax at midnite shared a collection of recent finds from the 1960s and '70s on in this Flickr set. [flapjax at midnite's collection via mefi projects] Some-what pre-vious-ly on Me-ta-Filter. And not from MetaFilter, but from our favorite list site: 20 baffling foreign movie posters.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:31 PM PST - 13 comments

Today Kansas became one step closer to raising its state minimum wage and shedding its embarrassing position as lowest set state minimum wage in the nation at $2.65 per hour. (Kansas minimum wage is lower than Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands, though 5 states currently have no minimum wage whatsoever.) The Kansas Department of Labor estimates that over 20,000 Kansans earn less than the federal minimum wage. After passing the Kansas Senate by a vote of 33-7, will the Speaker of the House allow a vote on Senate Bill 160?
posted by jlowen at 10:26 PM PST - 71 comments

The Giving Tree (1973), animated short based on Shel Silverstein's 1964 children's story and narrated by the author. [more inside]
posted by the_bone at 10:21 PM PST - 36 comments

Ken MacLeod, Paul Cornell, Iain [M] Banks and Ian Watson comment on the relationship between science fiction and science fact.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 9:07 PM PST - 49 comments

Wikileaks has posted the complete list of websites that the Australian Government intends to block under its proposed opt-out internet censorship scheme. The Government has flagged plans to expand the blacklist to 10,000 sites or more. [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:45 PM PST - 78 comments

Paul Ford is back with six-word reviews of SxSW 2009 music (previously in 2008). Also be sure to check out Paul's (another Paul's) SxSW Artist Catalog (previously) for further SxSW music metadata goodness.
posted by shadytrees at 8:11 PM PST - 12 comments

ImprovEverywhere has a gallery opening in the New York Subway. "In the course of making the art labels, the mundane stuff of the platform really did become weirdly compelling and beautiful. I wasn’t sure if everyone else would have that experience, or if we would be busy consciously pretending that these random objects were art. In the course of the event, some other friends who came made brilliant observations about the pieces that helped bring my mindset firmly back into of-course-this-is-art, rather than viewing the subway as a collection of quick fixes over time. It’s wonderful how we can decide to create a collective reality, and how it can sometimes catch us up within itself. I’m glad other folks also got caught up in "Wow.. This might really be art!", and that some non-agents got such a kick out of it!"
posted by Kattullus at 8:05 PM PST - 48 comments

The 2009 Archie Awards honor Air Traffic Controllers, who, from time to time, perform remarkably.
posted by exogenous at 6:31 PM PST - 4 comments

So you go to be spaceman. If the space race had taken a few different turns, we might have ended up with a historical exhibit that looked like the one cooked up by the American Dream Technical Institute. [more inside]
posted by mikepop at 5:40 PM PST - 6 comments

Za and qi are now worth more than money, power, and sex. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:10 PM PST - 53 comments

Five ways 'common sense' lies to you - a description of some everyday logical fallacies and how they effect us in a larger scale.
posted by flatluigi at 3:56 PM PST - 70 comments

Your favourite record label sucks. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:54 PM PST - 33 comments

Dolphins at SeaWorld Orlando make and play with bubble rings. Others learn by watching. (SLYP) via [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 3:51 PM PST - 17 comments

American Houndsman is a site dedicated to showcasing vintage hound hunting. Back when hunters didn't have all the fancy equipment and gadgets of today, it was a time that hunting was simple. Fetch the dogs, the light, and the gun and off to the woods for a night's hunt. Features vintage photographs of beloved coon dawgs, even the ones still learning, and stories of hunting dogs in days gone by. There's even a coon dog cemetery where the best of the best are laid to rest. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 3:38 PM PST - 11 comments

Dave of Low Light Mixes spins together all manner of textural musical goodness into solid, themed sonic experiences. Component parts include but are not limited to ambient, jazz, "jazz", noise, field recordings and one hell of a lot of Brian Eno.
posted by colinmarshall at 2:53 PM PST - 2 comments

Sitcom Maps from DanMeth.com
posted by blue_beetle at 2:25 PM PST - 45 comments

Which way are the winds blowing in the world today? From New Calvinism to Ecological Intelligence, here are 10 ideas that are changing the world right now.
posted by daniel_charms at 1:24 PM PST - 14 comments

No conflict of interest there, no sir. Organic food fans and small farmers alike are saying if HR 875 is passed, it will mean the end of organic farming in the United States. An overstatement? Perhaps, but HR 875 has serious flaws. The bill, introduced by Rosa DeLauro last month (who happens to be married to Stanley Greenburg of Monsanto, the world's largest producer of herbicides, chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds), is here. [more inside]
posted by bitter-girl.com at 1:02 PM PST - 56 comments

The Cat Wig, The Inflatable Dartboard, et al. Plus, two inventions that sound bad, but aren't.
posted by forrestal at 12:46 PM PST - 22 comments

LET IT DIE: Douglas Rushkoff on the Economy.
posted by homunculus at 12:10 PM PST - 163 comments

Fantasy Meets Reality. The very best works of science fiction illuminate controversial current events and the intricacies of human nature. So, it's no surprise that the United Nations Public Information Department and the Sci Fi (SyFy?) Channel co-hosted a panel yesterday evening on "humanitarian concerns" at the UN, with the creators and actors of Battlestar Galactica -- a show which regularly explores those themes. A 2-hour video webcast is archived here. (RealPlayer video). Entertainment Weekly has an additional write-up. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:07 PM PST - 57 comments

Fly-Post —a community event site dedicated to the art and utility of the promotional flyer. Post flyers about your event, or search for flyers by location, event, or keyword. Browse by best designs, or the latest posts. It's in beta and serving only a few U.S. cities right now, but looks promising.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 10:54 AM PST - 6 comments

A Life Well Wasted is a new podcast about video games and the people who love them, created by freelance writer Robert Ashley. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave at 10:00 AM PST - 20 comments

Familial genetic profiling of law enforcement DNA databases has already been used to succesfully establish both guilt and innocence. Legal and moral questions on these expanded techniques abound and are comprehensively explored by a speaker at a recent FBI symposium on the topic. In the author's words, scenarios previously limited to movies like Minority Report are unfolding quietly, before most of us have thought about the consequences. (Via)
posted by protorp at 9:57 AM PST - 29 comments

21 years after a crippling motorcycle accident, a paraplegic man is miraculously cured by a spider bite, then promptly gets arrested.
posted by empath at 9:54 AM PST - 60 comments

Dora Grows Up. Nickelodeon and Mattel have introduced a whole new look for beloved cartoon Dora the Explorer. But the new look has people asking, Is Dora too sexy? Nick and Mattel try to smooth things over.
posted by lunit at 9:18 AM PST - 135 comments

NASA Interim Problem Report 119V-0080: The bat that went up with the Space Shuttle Discovery.
posted by ardgedee at 8:57 AM PST - 65 comments

SpyBox A digital camera inside a parcel looks out through a small hole and captures images of its journey through the postal system. (via) Separately, the pinhole parcel project sent pinhole cameras through the regular postal service, and along the way they recorded their journey on the photographic negative, “creating highly unpredictable, abstract imagery.”
posted by desjardins at 8:54 AM PST - 10 comments

In 1996, sixteen children and one adult died in Dublane, Scotland after Thomas Hamilton walked into a school armed with four handguns. In 2009, journalist Paula Murray tracked down and befriended several of the survivors on Facebook, waited until they turned eighteen, and then wrote this article for the Sunday Express. [more inside]
posted by permafrost at 8:29 AM PST - 66 comments

JetBlue's timely introduction to commercial air travel for CEOs only (no minions, lackeys, or "regular" people allowed). Chapter 1, chapter2 and chapter 3.
posted by jim in austin at 7:41 AM PST - 45 comments

Things that go boom and flash and make pretty colors. DIY fireworks. From the the relatively benign Roman Candle to the fifty foot tall Cremora Fireball. (via Neatorama) previous explosive goodies: Pyroboy, Crump and pyro page
posted by caddis at 7:19 AM PST - 7 comments

Latvian copyright agency in Latvia wrote emails to over 500 local bloggers asking them to pay copyright fees for embedded YouTube videos (so far only one english post). Even more - in an interview spokesperson announced, that in Latvia YouTube is, in fact, operating illegally. If you dare to translate with google, more information can be found in latvian.
posted by laacz at 7:14 AM PST - 6 comments

Can't wait till Friday Flash Fun: Atomic Kaos 2 Orbits is a puzzle-ish game where you are trying to remove all the atoms from the playing field through a chain of explosions.
posted by schyler523 at 6:25 AM PST - 6 comments

Those of Love(+), those of Sex(+), those of Hearbreak(+), those of People and Places (+), those of Politics and Protest (+). The Guardian's journalists purloin you with "1,000 Songs You Must Hear". The plus links lead to people's outraged suggestions of those that are missing from each category. Perfect for when 10, 100, 500 or 3,000 are just the wrong numbers.
posted by rongorongo at 5:07 AM PST - 20 comments

Clearly you are not yet beautiful enough. Not to worry, there's help from Japan & Kyrgystan: Placenta 30,000 contains 30,000 mg of 100% undiluted horse-origin placenta. [more inside]
posted by slater at 1:42 AM PST - 56 comments

Finnish female singer Carola Standertskjöld -- All Alone Am I::Kielletyt leikit::Perfidia::chain of fools '69::::Exotic Carola
posted by vronsky at 9:13 PM PST - 7 comments

Sixteen states already have laws [PDF] related to abortion ultrasounds . Eleven more states have recently introduced bills that demand that a woman who wants an abortion be forced to look at the ultrasound, while a doctor describes what she is seeing. All of these bills are because the legislators believe that adoption is the only choice a woman should make. This essay, On Living Pro-Lifer's Choice for Women, explores the difficulties faced by birth mothers who choose that path.
posted by dejah420 at 8:09 PM PST - 494 comments

The 56-Euros-and-a-balloon teenage Catalonian space program.
posted by digaman at 6:46 PM PST - 37 comments

Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr was a prison warden, a monk, a lawyer and a religiously-oriented psychologist, and yet he was actually none of those things. Now known as "The Great Imposter", Demara held many careers as he faked his way through life, but his most famous exploit was to masquerade as surgeon Joseph Cyr aboard the HMCS Cayuga, a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer, during the Korean War. [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:01 PM PST - 22 comments

For St. Patrick's Day, rather than show you how to knit your own leprechaun or make a hat out of a ice cream container (because who the hell wants to do that), I'm going to help you with your after party cleanup. You'll have lots of bottle caps and wine corks lying about afterwards, so here are some ideas on what to do with them. [more inside]
posted by orange swan at 4:04 PM PST - 15 comments

Modok March Madness. via Drawn.
posted by signal at 3:33 PM PST - 4 comments

Wonder how many of the original Woodstock performers are still alive? The Woodstock Death Count reveals that the percentage is not as low as one might imagine after Jeff Kay steps up to the plate and crunches the numbers, again. FYI: He is also responsible for counting the number of f-words in the HBO series Deadwood (which Drudge Report linked to) and this (previously mentioned) internet sensation.)
posted by will wait 4 tanjents at 3:31 PM PST - 45 comments

Vague Terrain is a web based digital arts publication that showcases the creative practice of a variety of artists, musicians and scholars. Vague Terrain 13: citySCENE is their freshly launched project on urban representation that catalogs how cartography, infrastructure and locative media shape perception in the contemporary city. An example is Joyce Walks, a Google maps mashup which remaps routes from James Joyce's Ulysses to any city in the world, generating walking maps. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by netbros at 3:14 PM PST - 2 comments

Good morning, Crono! (Cf.) Starting this Friday, the Vintage Game Club will play through the RPG classic Chrono Trigger, a game beloved and praised but perhaps not well understood. The discussion is beginning here (little substance so far). [more inside]
posted by grobstein at 2:53 PM PST - 45 comments

Write Your Own Irish Memoir! Francesco Marciuliano, creator of Medium Large and writer for Sally Forth presents his Irish Memoir generator I Can't Find Me Legs: A Tale of Growing Up Poor, Catholic and Eventually Blind in Ireland.
posted by tommasz at 1:48 PM PST - 25 comments

Newspaperman, war hero, blacklist front, distinguished screenwriter, co-creator of Mr. Magoo, novelist at age 90... Millard Kaufman is dead at 92.
posted by ubiquity at 1:43 PM PST - 17 comments

It's harder to be more obscure and unheralded than John Henry Timmis IV. He barely even tried to sell his own music, almost always giving copies away of his impossibly rare loner-punk 45's. Dieing in 2002, almost 15 years after his last single, from complications resulting from alcoholism, after suffering from the degenerative ear/skull disease mastoiditis-- his potential hardly tapped... until now. Film buffs may know him as the director/producer of the longest movie ever made, The Cure for Insomnia staring Lee Groban reading his same titled 4,080 page poem spliced with porn and heavy metal, clocking in at 87 hours. Virtually unknown until the song "Death Trip" appeared on an obscure bootleg punk compilation Staring Down the Barrel. Interest peaked enough for Plastic Crimewave's Secret History of Chicago Music article to have a write up on him and Drag City/Galactic Zoo to reissue his forgotten masterpiece, Cosmic Lighting. [more inside]
posted by wcfields at 1:15 PM PST - 7 comments

Research shows that a new trend for pre-teens is posting how-to videos explaining the finer points of crushing up smarties, inhaling the dust, and then puffing out powered sugar.

Smarties: America’s favorite candy wafer roll! Of course you can eat them. But did you know kids are smoking them? How to smoke Smarties with the best! What do you do in the face of such unwelcome PR? Perhaps the best option is silence. Learn in 7 easy steps, Better than candy cigarettes. Some of these videos have been around since 2007 so why are they catching on now? This is the American candy, not to be confused with the European chocolate confectionery. (via and via) (related previously)
posted by cjorgensen at 12:59 PM PST - 68 comments

The future is now! Her name is HRP 4C, coming soon to your dreams (or nightmares) from JapanCorp. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:48 PM PST - 52 comments

"Two hours of Irish punk rock, new wave, underground and just plain rock-n-roll THUNDER" courtesy of Last Days of Man on Earth 2.0
posted by jtron at 12:17 PM PST - 3 comments

Ladies and Gentlemen, your official 2009 Bracket. Previously.
posted by wayofthedodo at 11:30 AM PST - 33 comments

OK, how about visiting a very cold place next? This is where you will learn all about the Loopwheeler, a loom that spins slowly to cut down on thread tension and create airier and supposedly softer fabric. The link takes you on a detailed journey from threads to fabric to graphics and finally to the finished product. The company comes recommended by John Mayer. Last year Loopwheeler worked with Nike to produce some sweatshirts that can be found in the US.
posted by rmless at 11:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Suffering from a bad case of cosmic dread? Have you voyaged too far into the midst of the black seas of infinity? Concerned about invisible abominations stalking you in the dead of night? Fortunately, there's help. (SLYT).
posted by clockworkjoe at 11:17 AM PST - 20 comments

Scenery: check. Hiking boots: check. Spicy sausage: check. Immodesty: check.
posted by william_boot at 10:42 AM PST - 38 comments

Hip Hop Zelda. It's a booty call from Hyrule, a love letter in rhyme to your childhood featuring some of the best independent and mainstream Hip Hop artists. MF Doom, Edan and Aesop Rock get tossed together with Dr. Dre, Common, and Jay Z in this surprisingly compelling mashup of old Legend of Zelda tunes. If the TriForce Rules Everything Around You, hit up the link above to stream the album, or download it for free here. [more inside]
posted by shmegegge at 10:31 AM PST - 23 comments

Tattoos that really just aren't very good at all.
posted by mudpuppie at 10:23 AM PST - 100 comments

1. Make a penny whistle from pvc or copper pipe. 2. Learn how to play it. 3. Away ye go! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
posted by bokeh at 10:20 AM PST - 8 comments

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Now watch the greatest fight in movie history (SLYT).
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:15 AM PST - 27 comments

Extreme Shepherding! X-Treme Art!! YEAAAAH!!1! (SLYT )
posted by maryh at 9:34 AM PST - 20 comments

Nationalize. Reorganize. Decentralize. anewwayforward.org wants you to organize a protest on April 11^th to express your frustration and disapproval with how our elected officials have handled the economic crisis.
posted by geos at 9:17 AM PST - 62 comments

Making use of the space left between short shelves and high ceilings, Pentagram worked with some artists to make some fantastic murals in New York City elementary school libraries.
posted by mikepop at 9:08 AM PST - 12 comments

"I now find myself with more than 22,000 16mm educational films in my house." At the site A/V Geeks, you can watch a decent portion of this huge collection online. [more inside]
posted by tractorfeed at 9:05 AM PST - 17 comments

Agustina Vivero, known also as Cumbio, a name derived from Cumbia Villera, a favorite music of hers. She is openly lesbian, 17, has a book, and is becoming quite famous, all from her photos.
posted by jester69 at 8:54 AM PST - 20 comments

Eclectic Micks - Irish comicbook artists posting a sketch a day.
posted by Artw at 8:01 AM PST - 2 comments

The Leisure Society would seem to have appeared fully formed from nowhere. They spring out of the Wilkommen Collective, a Brighton based consortium which also includes Sons of Noel and Adrian , Shoreline and many others. Like a baroque style UK version of Elephant 6 only with added busking skills.
posted by RegMcF at 7:51 AM PST - 4 comments

The Philadelphia Inquirer's final frazzled days...
posted by VicNebulous at 7:47 AM PST - 12 comments

Here are some of Ireland's current and past crop of Irish traditional singers, for your perusal and enjoyment this fine St. Paddy's Day.
posted by LN at 7:35 AM PST - 8 comments

Cables: Don’t like ‘em. Despite the rise of wireless technologies, the back of your computer or stereo is likely a tangle of wires. No matter how carefully you first connect them, they are soon gleefully entangled into a snarled mass. Mathematics offers insight into the problem.
posted by bitmage at 7:21 AM PST - 54 comments

Real men catch fish like this.
posted by dg at 5:15 AM PST - 46 comments

I don't imagine it'll be everyone's cup of tea, but there'll certainly be some of you who'll find a measure of enjoyment in the viewing of Nightmare Tank's whimsical death machines and/or severed heads.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:42 AM PST - 12 comments

Filmed in 1998, this little-seen Elliott Smith promo video succeeds because it highlights the late singer's goofball side as he searches for an elusive robot hand. Directed by Steve Hanft. Elliott Smith in Strange Parallel. [more inside]
posted by one teak forest at 12:46 AM PST - 10 comments

Legend of the Seeker is a syndicated TV show based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels from some of the people behind the mid-90s Hercules show and Xena: Warrior Princess. It is in a similar vein, yet now with more earnestness. The entire series is available on Hulu for your enjoyment.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 11:15 PM PST - 58 comments

They follow you on the escalator and bother you at the bus stop. They spook your horses and frighten your children. But deep down, they just want to be loved. Belgian animators Thijs de Cloedt and Wouter Sel from Volstok Telefunken have imagined monsters for all occasions. [Website in Flemish]
posted by embrangled at 10:46 PM PST - 14 comments

The enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare wrote a book called Candy that got him into trouble with Frederick the Great. Philosophers were unknown yet, and the fundamental stake was one of religious toleration slightly confused with defeatism.
posted by Wolof at 10:08 PM PST - 73 comments

Dear valued customer [pdf]: There is currently a global shortage of acetonitrile that is likely to last into the first half of 2009. So, er, don't wait: Tackle the acetonitrile shortage!
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:04 PM PST - 49 comments

Ringo's Dada Japanese TV songs/ ads 197? For those of us who have consumed everything else. On the Internet this is the last subway stop. (and will cheer u up) #2
#1
(there are more)
posted by celerystick at 8:24 PM PST - 17 comments

What You Can Learn from Reinhold Niebuhr.
posted by homunculus at 8:16 PM PST - 11 comments

He was fired from his university for challenging the most prominent evangelist in the country. He was put on trial for criticizing American war policy. He became an inspiration for the back-to-the-land movement. At the age of 100, he chose to stop eating.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:14 PM PST - 13 comments

The Search for Lilly E. Gray In the Salt Lake City Cemetery, there is a gravestone for a woman named Lilly E. Gray with an inscription that reads, "VICTIM OF THE BEAST 666." Many people have attempted to research this stone and Lilly, but strangely always hit a brick wall, as there is no information aside from her obituary, which states only that she died in a local hospital from natural causes. Flickr, Find A Grave and About.com for more spookiness.
posted by deborah at 7:39 PM PST - 30 comments

The owner of a camera stolen in Krakow and bought on E-Bay is reunitied with their pictures An amazing story about an international effort to track down the owner of a camera stolen in Krakow, Poland. The camera was bought on E-Bay and found to have 1100 pictures on it. Through some fantastic work by members of the Australian Photography Forum, the owner of the camera was found by analysing the pictures.
posted by Man_in_staysis at 7:34 PM PST - 5 comments

A space shuttle is fired to sky. People from all around the place gets a camera and shoots it. They publish the photos on Twitter. Result: Awesomeness.
posted by lipsum at 7:02 PM PST - 35 comments

Face In Hole [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 5:04 PM PST - 23 comments

Newspapers might be dying, but does it matter? Here's what journalism 2.0 looks like: Spot.us is crowd-funded news for the masses, ReportingOn is Twitter for journalists, Everyblock is ultra-hyperlocal and Connectifyed tells us it'll analyze our social networks.
posted by nospecialfx at 4:43 PM PST - 41 comments

Interrogation techniques used by the CIA on al-Qaeda suspects "constituted torture", according to a report by the International Red Cross.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 4:38 PM PST - 27 comments

Sci Fi has a new name. Now it's SyFy. The Sci Fi Channel is distancing itself from its geek demographic by rebranding its network. The former SyFy Portal website (a nerd news outlet) has been rebranded "Airlock Alpha" after selling the name to an "undisclosed recipient".
posted by crossoverman at 4:33 PM PST - 252 comments

Art Spiegelman, author of award-winning graphic novel series Maus and the man behind upcoming McSweeney's release Be a Nose!, "was once banned from Robert Crumb’s house, loves chicken fat and hates the term 'graphic novel'". [more inside]
posted by teamparka at 3:21 PM PST - 60 comments

There's a showdown in Ann Arbor, MI between geeks and suits. It starts when local public tax-funded parking garages start posting the number of available spaces on their site. A few geeks decide to make it more useful while driving so they code up some asterisk hacks to scrape the page and bridge the web content to a phone and presto! you can call to hear which garages have the most spaces available for parking. Not so fast says the city and they shut down access to the site from the app and stop publishing real-time stats (mostly grumbling about a loss of "control"). Geeks are in an uproar (mostly trying to teach the suits what "public domain data" means). This long ass blog post tells the entire tale from both sides of the fight.
posted by mathowie at 1:57 PM PST - 55 comments

Russ Thompson is the Hummingbird Whisperer (SLVid).
posted by Dipsomaniac at 1:53 PM PST - 26 comments

Hanna Rosin has written a piece for the Atlantic claiming that the actual health benefits of breast-feeding are surprisingly thin, far thinner than most popular literature indicates. This is pretty controversial following "decades of indoctrination delivered with evangelical fervor," causing American women "to take it as an article of faith that if they don’t breast-feed their children, they'll grow up to be underachievers plagued with health problems and lacking a bond with their mother". [more inside]
posted by ND¢ at 1:21 PM PST - 108 comments

Sennheiser, a family-run company with an interesting history of searching for audiophile quality, has created what it boasts as "the new standard for audiophile headphones." But will it matter in the long run, when the next generation of listeners enjoys the "sizzle sound" associated with lower bitrate MP3s? (via) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:42 PM PST - 118 comments

Tara Wheeler, Miss Virginia 2008, will shave her head if she can raise $500,000 for pediatric cancer research by April 11th.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:36 PM PST - 40 comments

Kelly G lifts people and asks them questions. Annoying, obnoxious, but everyone has to have a hobby. [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 11:05 AM PST - 24 comments

Chas Freeman says goodbye. While not a direct appointee of President Obama or in a position to make policy, Chas Freeman found himself the middle of a firestorm over being selected as chairman of the NIC. [more inside]
posted by cimbrog at 10:50 AM PST - 30 comments

Having grown tired of all the ludicrous conspiracy theories about Barack Obama not being eligible to hold the office of the President, one lone writer gives us his own deranged take with "The Obama Proxy". The descendants of the Melchocki Indians will not be amused.
posted by ELF Radio at 10:35 AM PST - 23 comments

The Inamo restaurant in London's fashionable SoHo district isn't known for its splendid food or accommodating waitresses. Instead, this new Asian fusion eatery is getting raves for its use of a touch pad-projection system that allows diners to send food orders directly to the chefs and makes the dining experience fully interactive. It's all one graphic application, with new iconography for signs and menus, graphic wallpaper and tablecloths, shopfront etched patterns and illuminated screens. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 10:31 AM PST - 38 comments

Photomontage timeline, 1850-2007. Spirit photography, trick photography, comic montages, Photoshop, etc. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 10:27 AM PST - 16 comments

Build giant steam powered robots to defend the Union in the American Civil War.
posted by Lord_Pall at 10:14 AM PST - 24 comments

Asymmetrical Information and Hooker-nomics.
posted by chunking express at 9:03 AM PST - 59 comments

Bay Area resident Michelle Hamilton has been adopting and caring for dozens of abandoned and neglected animals in the past decade, racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt. To call this a "predicament" for Hamilton is a little misleading. She sees only one option when faced with the choice of paying for the care or treatment for an animal in need: she pays, regardless of cost.
posted by porn in the woods at 8:52 AM PST - 45 comments

Hey, role-players! Want a break from rules-light, cinematic systems? Nostalgic for the days when dungeons were sprawling and tough and the centerpiece of your gaming night? Well, Monte Cook is there for you with Dungeon-a-Day. Using a unique subscription business-model, he's building a mega-dungeon just for you. New content is released every day, complete with encounters, maps, photos, podcasts, and diagrams. Basically, it's an attempt to use contemporary networked tools to deliver a very old-school experience. (And no, I don't work for Monte - I just think this is awesome!)
posted by macross city flaneur at 8:42 AM PST - 18 comments

James Madison is more responsible than any other single American for one of the nation's greatest characteristics -- religious freedom.
posted by VicNebulous at 7:20 AM PST - 14 comments

"Libertarians Are Dumb, or Why We Eat Heinz Ketchup"
posted by expriest at 6:03 AM PST - 174 comments

When Wrekin Construction went into administration last week, it blamed the Royal Bank of Scotland for demanding repayment of an overdraft. However, the 2007 accounts show that among the assets of the company is a ruby it called the "Gem of Tanzania". Wrekin had bought the stone off one of its shareholders for £11m worth of shares - more than four times the record for a single ruby at auction. [more inside]
posted by Electric Dragon at 5:21 AM PST - 20 comments

In light of the Salvadoran right’s fear-mongering campaign in advance of the Central American nation’s Sunday presidential election, which has sought to portray leftist candidate Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Martí Liberation Front (FMLN) as a kind of dangerous foreign agent of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, perhaps it’s instructive to consider the political history of the past four years.

posted by aniola at 4:34 AM PST - 11 comments

"Lies about surgical sterility requirements. Questions about their sex lives. Outright threats. Here's what faces families in Georgia when their luck runs out."
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:54 AM PST - 90 comments

Welcome to Dog Time. My name is Yorick. • Episode 1 • Dog Under a Blanket • Cool Dogs Only • Christman Special • Gamer Dogz • Snowy Fun Time Edition • My Dog is Scared of the Floor • “Walk” the “Dog” • Cosplay Dog
posted by cthuljew at 10:50 PM PST - 27 comments

The days when America’s leading intellectuals contained a strong cadre of serious Christians are over. There is no Thomas Merton in our day; no Reinhold Niebuhr, Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. In the arguments spawned by the new atheist wave, the Christian respondents have been underwhelming.

American Religious Identification Survey, 2008
posted by leotrotsky at 8:29 PM PST - 165 comments

Miru Kim: Making art of New York's urban ruins. "At the 2008 EG Conference, artist Miru Kim talks about her work. Kim explores industrial ruins underneath New York and then photographs herself in them, nude -- to bring these massive, dangerous, hidden spaces into sharp focus." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 8:00 PM PST - 52 comments

On the heels of news about $165 million to be paid as bonuses to AIG employees, the company has released a list of "the counterparties involved in credit default swaps and other transactions in which bailout funds were used to meet A.I.G. obligations." In other words, where your bailout money went. More background here.
posted by jourman2 at 7:14 PM PST - 74 comments

Western musical intervals are derived from speech tendencies, according to Duke scientists. Specifically, "most of the 12 chromatic scale intervals correspond to peaks of relative power in the normalized spectrum of human vocalizations." A somewhat more layperson-friendly summary of the study is here. [more inside]
posted by univac at 6:52 PM PST - 41 comments

Meet batting stance guy. The NY Times has a neat profile on Gar Ryness, who has the most marketable least-marketable skill in America. He does your favorite old-school players, as well as most of the current MLB team lineups, including the (non-Dutch) stars of the WBC. He's made video appearances for several teams (and MLB TV), and has quickly become a fan and player favorite for his uncanny depictions of players' idiosyncratic moves in the batter's box. In terms of virtual baseball, batting stance guy is slightly more awesome than this.
posted by ericbop at 5:37 PM PST - 20 comments

A great lecture on global warming given by Professor Stephen Schneider at Stanford University Professor Schneider discusses the pitfalls of presenting scientific ideas on global warming to the public.
posted by nola at 4:02 PM PST - 13 comments

50 years ago today, we said goodbye to Pork Pie Hat. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 3:58 PM PST - 12 comments

The Seattle P-I is known for its in depth, epic, investigative reports. As the print edition closes down this week here is a look at one report that made the PI great: The Health of the Puget Sound. [more inside]
posted by Glibpaxman at 3:18 PM PST - 13 comments

Quintessential English village Linkenholt is on sale for £22.5m [more inside]
posted by ornate insect at 1:31 PM PST - 31 comments

British academics Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett believe they've discovered the underlying cause of all modern society's ills: inequality. In their book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, they explain how health and social problems follow a strikingly similar pattern, being closely correlated with income distribution (pdf). To spread the word, they've founded The Equality Trust
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 12:31 PM PST - 95 comments

Actor Rainn Wilson has launched a community-driven discussion blog focused on life's big questions, such as do we get what we pray for?, why do we spend so much time talking about other people?, and do the imaginations of adults need a serious kick in the balls?
posted by Roach at 12:31 PM PST - 27 comments

Butt nuts. Muffin fruits. Cashew apples. Jaboitcabas. Kinbaran. Miracle fruit (whose extract, miraculin, has been banned as a food additive by the FDA.) Bignays, gourkas, sapotes, mombins, langsats, and jaboticabas. The semi-ferocious rat-tailed papaya (parody.) [more inside]
posted by peggynature at 11:56 AM PST - 35 comments

Korea blog the Marmot's Hole reports on the crisis in Madagascar: Madagascar’s defense minister has resigned after security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters Saturday (in late January), killing 28. More than 100 have been killed since anti-government protests began two weeks ago. And what may have been the impetus for the protests? The final straw for many was the mooted plan to lease one million acres in the south of the country to the Korean firm Daewoo for intensive farming. Malagasy people have deep ties with their land and this was seen by many as a betrayal by their president. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 11:53 AM PST - 18 comments

5 second films, original independent films exactly 5 seconds long [via Ovablastic]
posted by lizbunny at 11:40 AM PST - 23 comments

The Saddest Cat in the World by Maria Konstantinov
posted by Korou at 11:28 AM PST - 49 comments

When and if the dinochicken is created, Horner looks forward to bringing it out on a leash during lectures. (book)
posted by Pants! at 11:03 AM PST - 23 comments

An article describing the experience of getting (and recovering from) hypothermia. [more inside]
posted by rmd1023 at 10:03 AM PST - 20 comments

"R, and G, and B" is a very well-curated — and, seemingly as yet undiscovered — film review blog by the video artist Blake Williams covering pictures by filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Carl Dreyer, Michael Haneke, Stanley Kubrick and, best of all, Abbas Kiarostami.
posted by colinmarshall at 9:58 AM PST - 17 comments

"A friend of mine has come up with an idea to stem the tide of bile. He wants people to post, as a comment, on as many opinion-garnering web pages as possible, as often as they can be bothered, the phrase: 'It just goes to show you can't be too careful!'" [more inside]
posted by WPW at 9:35 AM PST - 54 comments

Book Burning: For Your Health! "...under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute." (via Neil Gaiman's twitter stream)
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 8:57 AM PST - 40 comments

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience is organized around thirteen defining migrations that have formed and transformed African America and the nation. From The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture [prev], more than 16,500 pages of text, 8,300 illustrations, and 60+ maps. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 8:44 AM PST - 3 comments

Now is the time for a less selfish capitalism - "we should stop the worship of money and create a more humane society where the quality of human experience is the criterion... accelerated economic growth is not a goal for which we should make large sacrifices." Lord Layard challenges the orthodoxy; perhaps it's time to rein in the banks and try trickle-up bailouts? btw Richard Layard's 2003 LSE happiness lectures I think were pretty influential in reorienting economics back towards a more 'utility-based' approach in recent years, cf. Giddens on 'third way' politics re: Blair, New Labour and now Brown, viz. "to build tomorrow today..." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:24 AM PST - 14 comments

Verminology is a specimen garden of monsters and beasts of the most pestiferous and meddlesome sort, drawn by fingertip on iPhone, using Brushes app. New additions daily. Also be sure to check out Toadbriar for dolls, paintings, sculpture, and Faerie fun! From MeFi's own Lou Stuells. [via mefi projects].
posted by cjorgensen at 8:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Eddie Doyle, 69, has been laid off from his job in Boston. Who is Eddie Doyle? Nobody special, just a bartender at a bar in Boston (that used to be) called The Bull & Finch. If that doesn't sound familiar, you might have seen the outside of it in the credits of a little television show in the 80s. The show brought thousands to the bar each day but the current recession has taken its toll and the owner, who has been friends with Eddie for 40 years, had to make some tough choices. [more inside]
posted by tommasz at 7:20 AM PST - 37 comments

Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp: A tale of human ingenuity.
posted by pharm at 7:15 AM PST - 13 comments

South Korea has one of the world's highest suicide rates (previously). The phenomenon has been acute in the entertainment world. In the past two years, over ten Korean celebrities (mostly actors, actresses, and singers) have taken their own lives. Most of them were under 30. The latest death was that of 26 year-old actress Jang Ja-yeon, star of the popular comedy-drama "Boys Over Flowers." Initial reports stated that Jang's death was yet another in a tragic line of Korean celebrities succumbing to depression due to the pressures of stardom and (according to one foreign commenter) the inability to "admit that there is a lot of intense depression and mental illness in Korea." But there's also an emerging twist in Jang's death. Her suicide note has been found, and it turns out that her death wasn't due to relative intangibles of depression and mental illness. In fact, she was allegedly being beaten and raped by various higher-ups in the Korean entertainment business, and the names of the guilty are beginning to come out (one of whom has apparently fled to Japan).
posted by bardic at 6:20 AM PST - 39 comments

Everything is going to be alright. [more inside]
posted by Substrata at 6:13 AM PST - 28 comments

The Musical Mystery of Connie Converse
"To survive at all, I expect I must drift back down through the other half of the twentieth twentieth, which I already know pretty well, the hundredth hundredth, which I have only read and heard about. I might survive there quite a few years - who knows?"

This was the cryptic note Connie Converse left her family in 1974, and no one heard from her again. She had spent the 1950's in New York City, trying to promote her music- haunting, melancholy folk tunes, but never made a go of it. Her songs very nearly disappeared into the ether, but thanks to Lau derrete Records, her first album is now available to the public, fifty years after the songs were recorded. (via Spinning On Air)
posted by kimdog at 6:09 AM PST - 13 comments

Professor Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize Laureate for Medicine, is no stranger to controversy. Recently, he has been touting his approval for the ignominiously debunked "water memory" theories of the late French immunologist Dr. Jacques Benveniste. This is not altogether surprising, given that Montagnier has filed a patent application for a method for characterising "biologically active biochemical elements" based on Benveniste's more outlandish theories. But there's more... [more inside]
posted by Skeptic at 4:42 AM PST - 13 comments

Up in Maple country The season is right for making maple syrup. Grades a,b,d; colors are factors. The international market is a factor. Visit lovely Cape Breton. [more inside]
posted by longsleeves at 3:32 AM PST - 19 comments

The novlist Julie Myerson has written a book, The Lost Child, about her son's addiction to cannabis, the violent behaviour she says this caused and her tough love policy. Extract. Her son is angry that she's published it, and says his parents over-reacted: "I wasn't doing anything that most other teenagers do, but such was their naive terror of drugs they were acting like six-year-olds". It comes out through MumsNet that Julie Myerson was the anonymous author of a Guardian column, "Living with Teenagers," which described her children's behaviour candidly without their knowledge. Extract. Myerson first denied this. The Guardian discusses whether it was right to publish the columns. Myerson is interviewed about whether she was right to publish The Lost Child. Her partner, and son's father, Jonathan Myerson supports her: This is an emergency. Her son says she's addicted to writing. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy at 12:55 AM PST - 158 comments

Washington Post reports that the American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year. The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses.
posted by dejah420 at 10:55 PM PST - 91 comments

Cockroaches, these nasty things, are susceptible to an environmentally friendly solution, perhaps, much like these ingenious things.
posted by nervousfritz at 9:45 PM PST - 25 comments

Clay Shirky writes about what is killing newspapers and what will replace them.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:30 PM PST - 101 comments

"The Elders of Zion, the venerable and shadowy Jewish organization that controls the international banking industry, news media and Hollywood, has announced that it is disbanding so that members can retire to Florida and live out their golden years on the golf course." [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 5:07 PM PST - 48 comments

Vizualizations and infographics to help you understand the financial crisis
posted by desjardins at 4:06 PM PST - 14 comments

A new California proposition attempts to neutralize Prop 8 by substituting "domestic partnership" for "marriage" in state laws, thus leaving marriage to the Mormons and other interested parties. Getting the government out of marriage entirely has been proposed countless times before. (Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4)
posted by benzenedream at 3:24 PM PST - 141 comments

What the Hashtag?! is a Twitter wiki (a twiki?) that explains most of those inscrutable acronyms and helps users find the sweetest tweets on any given topic. If you set up the TwitterBot, you can investigate hashtags on the fly. For other topics, though, you may wish to tweet your local librarian.
posted by GrammarMoses at 2:55 PM PST - 46 comments

When communism crumbled in 1989 it created an opportunity for wildlife. The Iron Curtain that divided communist Eastern Europe from the capitalist West had created a no-man's-land protected by barbed wire and minefields - a last haven for many rare animals and plants.
posted by nam3d at 1:24 PM PST - 19 comments

The Czech Republic offers surgical castration as a "voluntary" option to sex offenders, whose rate of recidivism in some studies then drops precipitously. Officials at the Council of Europe are outraged, calling the punishment "invasive, irreversible and mutilating." Atul Gawande noted 10 years ago that, despite his reservations, castration works - at least against a subclass of offenders: the pedophiles and sadists.
posted by shivohum at 12:49 PM PST - 84 comments

Not all groups with synthesizers in the 1970s and 1980s were lame Top 40 acts with keytars. Some groups of the era used synths for spastic keyboard bleeps, herky-jerky tempos, and angst-ridden aggression in a style now classified by record collector geeks as synthpunk, minimal synth, or minimal wave. Several famous New Wave acts dabbled in the style before providing soundtracks for Molly Ringwald movies (OMD, Electricty) or singing about waitresses in cocktail bars (the Human League, Being Boiled), but vintage videos from synth punk acts all over the world can be found all over YouTube. [more inside]
posted by jonp72 at 11:59 AM PST - 29 comments

Malaria is one of the world’s most serious health problems. No single approach has yet to fully conquer either the disease or the disease vector, the mosquito. The most common electronic means of killing mosquitoes, the “bug zapper” is not particularly effective. Using lasers to kill mosquitoes has previously been thought of as completely ridiculous. Now the concept is being taken seriously.
posted by Tube at 10:38 AM PST - 33 comments

"The debaptism certificate started out as a kind of satirical comment on the idea that you could be enrolled in a church before you could talk, but it seems to have taken off from there. People are beginning to take it seriously."
posted by WPW at 7:27 AM PST - 189 comments

Illustration Friday is a weekly illustration challenge. A topic is posted every Friday and then participants have all week to come up with their own interpretation. Check out the illustrator interviews. Here you'll find motivations, processes and styles, with links to the fine contemporary artists. From MeFi's own annathea. [via mefi projects]
posted by netbros at 7:14 AM PST - 4 comments

Watercolors of people on death row. Part I, Part II.
posted by sveskemus at 6:18 AM PST - 19 comments

Robots ruined the economy. But even robots are affected by bad financial times. Nonetheless, robots help relieve the stress of financial worries. There are worse things than a financial crisis.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:44 AM PST - 20 comments

West treats East. "To help traumatized Tibetan monks, doctors in Boston turn to cross-cultural medicine." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 12:34 AM PST - 16 comments

Society for German Idealism. Kant on the Web. North American Kant Society. North American Fichte Society. Hegel Society of America. Hegel Resource. Hegel. More Hegel. Schelling. Kant. Herder. Schiller.
posted by ornate insect at 6:30 PM PST - 39 comments

Holi - The Festival of Colors on the Big Picture. More about Holi. What else can you do on Holi? [pre vious ly]
posted by not_on_display at 4:58 PM PST - 19 comments

The Pentagon plans to spend $400 million to develop a giant blimp that will float 65,000 feet above the Earth for 10 years, providing unblinking and intricate radar surveillance of the vehicles, planes and even people below. [more inside]
posted by gman at 4:57 PM PST - 106 comments

Will the US become more progressive in the future or will advances in neuroscience cause the abandonment of the "equality premise"? [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 4:20 PM PST - 74 comments

For the fourteenth year, Yo La Tengo will murder the classics tonight. (Previously: 2002 2006 2007 2008) [more inside]
posted by roll truck roll at 4:18 PM PST - 61 comments

In the spirit of Friday being game day, I give you Broken Picture Telephone; a pictoral version of the classic game of telephone (also known as Chinese Whispers.) Previously on MeFi.
posted by ob at 2:20 PM PST - 180 comments

Don't want to empty the compost bin this week? How about a raise? Just sm00ve the negotiations.
posted by Pants! at 1:02 PM PST - 22 comments

"America's Lost Band"...1964...The Remains. Opening act for The Beatles first US tour. One of the great what-might-have-been (but didn't) stories of American music of the 60’s.
posted by ecorrocio at 1:00 PM PST - 23 comments

Detroit's Beatiful, Horrible Decline: Photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre's work in Motor City. More photography capturing abandoned properties in Detroit. (Previously, and more previously)
posted by rollbiz at 12:26 PM PST - 56 comments

Google introduces phone service. At the moment, the service is restricted but it should be publicly available within weeks. List of features and how they work here. Click on "Place calls" to see how basic calls would work. Highlights include free phone calls within the U.S. and reportedly lower-than-Skype rates for international calls.
posted by storybored at 12:01 PM PST - 91 comments

The art of David Dees. The art of David Dees. [more inside]
posted by tehloki at 11:53 AM PST - 32 comments

Friday Flash Fun: Green Moon Lab! Manipulate gravity and momentum to get to the exit in this sleek, simple, Portal-esque physics puzzler. Contains twenty levels plus an unlockable challenge mode. A little weak in the writing department, but the drunken swooping gameplay more than makes up for it. (via)
posted by Rhaomi at 10:07 AM PST - 16 comments

A guide to Storyreading. "For over ten years now, various friends and I have been getting together on occasion to read stories aloud to each other. This activity—graced with the unlovely but utilitarian name "story reading"—can be a great deal of fun, but can also be rife with pitfalls of various sorts. This guide is an attempt to help others to run story readings. Note that reading stories is different from—and, generally, much easier than—telling stories; while people do occasionally tell stories at these gatherings (and it usually goes over well), that's not the primary emphasis...The origins of our approach to story readings are lost in the mists of antiquity. The idea may have sprung fully-fledged from a conversation I had with DH about a Delany essay called "On Pure Storytelling"; or it may've been derived from MK's reading The Princess Bride aloud, which in turn may've been inspired by folks at Yale who were doing much the same thing. Whatever the history, it's clear that other groups—notably one in Boston—have been having similar sorts of readings for at least as long as we have." [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 10:06 AM PST - 19 comments

Lockheed Martin Unveils Exoskeleton Technology At the Association of the US Army Winter Symposium last month, Lockheed Martin unveiled the Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC) [more inside]
posted by njbradburn at 9:36 AM PST - 67 comments

The niftiest thing at Coin Op World? The mp3 files of Classic Arcade Sounds. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 9:19 AM PST - 27 comments

Hilarious and incisive piece by Tom Wolfe about (pre-Crisis) hedge fund managers, tensions between old and new money in Greenwich, on Park Ave., etc.
posted by VicNebulous at 8:53 AM PST - 20 comments

Kate Beaton, Historical Cartoonist
posted by flatluigi at 8:40 AM PST - 66 comments

14 large color photos from the Farm Security Administration. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave at 8:36 AM PST - 32 comments

How Science Fiction Found Religion
posted by shoesfullofdust at 7:27 AM PST - 70 comments

"With Germany arming at breakneck speed, England lost in a pacifist dream, France corrupt and torn by dissension, America remote and indifferent... do you not tremble for your children?" ― Winston Churchill, 1935. The World War II Database connects people, events, photographs, and other elements of history in relational db form to tell the story of the 20th century's 2nd great war.
posted by netbros at 7:03 AM PST - 12 comments

Bell Choir [more inside]
posted by Mblue at 3:56 AM PST - 21 comments

For 40 years starting in 1950 the huge - 18 x 60 foot - Kodak Coloramas hung in the east balcony of New York's Grand Central Terminal. Photos were enlarged onto successive strips of Ektacolor print film, each 19 inches wide and about 20 feet long, and after processing, 41 such strips were spliced together with transparent tape to make one, giant 18 x 60 foot display transparency. [more inside]
posted by woodblock100 at 3:51 AM PST - 17 comments

"I understand you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a f*ckin game." (parts 1 2 3) After trading blows over the last couple weeks, CNBC's Mad Money host Jim Cramer appeared opposite Jon Stewart as a guest on The Daily Show. While Cramer worked to keep his poise during the awkward exchange, the evisceration may call to mind Jon's appearance on Crossfire.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 1:04 AM PST - 273 comments

From the late sixties to late seventies, many adventurers set out on an overland trek from Istanbul to India or Nepal using the route known as The Hippie Trail. The starting off point from Europe was typically the Pudding Shop in Istanbul. There, you could meet others and arrange transportation, usually by bus. The route was flexible, but the typical route was from Istanbul through Tehran, Herat, Kabul, Peshawar, Lahore to Goa or Kathmandu.The Islamic revolution in Iran and Russian invasion of Afghanistan brought the trail to an end in 1979, but some people are trying to start it back up (sans Afghanistan, the Khyber is still pretty dangerous). [more inside]
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 12:09 AM PST - 25 comments

Shoot the fast shinies with your fast shiny! Ponies for all!
posted by leotrotsky at 11:08 PM PST - 17 comments

A Medical Madoff: Anesthesiologist Faked Data in 21 Studies. "A pioneering anesthesiologist has been implicated in a massive research fraud that has altered the way millions of patients are treated for pain during and after orthopedic surgeries."
posted by homunculus at 10:10 PM PST - 45 comments

An Informal Catalog of Slit-Scan Video Artworks and References
"Slitscan^w imaging techniques are used to create static images of time-based phenomena. In traditional film photography, slit scan images are created by exposing film as it slides past a slit-shaped aperture. In the digital realm, thin slices are extracted from a sequence of video frames, and concatenated into a new image." [via] [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 10:07 PM PST - 11 comments

“I can't make anyone Jewish with a called shot.” “I cannot start the game pregnant.” “My medical supply bag will contain more than just a bone-saw and a bottle of whiskey.” “My halfling cannot take the flaw, 'Obsession: Ring of Invisibility.'” “Even if he was a paragon of humanity in his alternate dimension, Good Hitler is not an appropriate superhero concept.” “No more Crazy Ivans while I'm driving the AT-AT.” “I do not have to check before each adventure that my fellow adventurers are not doppelgangers, Cylons or pod people.” “'Everybody Wang Chung tonight' is not an acceptable use of the Mass Suggestion spell.” 1250 things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG. (SLLJ)
posted by Navelgazer at 7:22 PM PST - 71 comments

Stories about caonima, grass-mud horses have become a popular meme with their own theme song [Flash] in China. If you don't speak Chinese it's surprisingly hard to find out why: the name sounds rude. Sometimes juvenile humor can be the best way to poke fun at the ever-present government censorship.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:07 PM PST - 27 comments

Enjoy a couple of old (youtube) Vespa commercials and some BONUS CHEESECAKE; Girls On Vespas (flickr).
posted by snsranch at 4:38 PM PST - 30 comments

"Ah, the mythical $100 home. We hear about these low-priced “opportunities” in down-on-their-luck cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland, but we never meet anyone who has taken the plunge. Understandable really, for if they were actually worth anything then they would cost real money, right? Who would do such a preposterous thing?" Amongst others, artists who have hope for the future and money to invest. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:45 PM PST - 35 comments

idaft [via]
posted by cashman at 3:32 PM PST - 16 comments

The Second Pass is an exclusively online publication devoted to reviews, essays, and blog posts about books new and old. It is updated every weekday. [via]
posted by sciurus at 3:21 PM PST - 7 comments

What Does $1 Trillion Look Like?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:38 PM PST - 75 comments

The most awesome action sequence you'll see today. [via]
posted by clearly at 1:44 PM PST - 78 comments

Breakfast at Sulimay's with Bill, Moon, Joe and Ann: 1 featuring reviews of The Thermals, Joanna Newsom, The Decemberists, and Clipse. l 2 with The Knife, Deerhoof, and Paul Wall featuring 'lil Keke. l 5 with Asha, TI, Toby Mac. 6 with the Shins , !!!, and Common. l 7 with Bjork , Wilco , and Black Reble Motorcycle club. l 9 with Santogold, Portishead and Death Cab for Cutie! more (v) yt
posted by vronsky at 1:13 PM PST - 19 comments

And now ladies and gentlemen introducing for the first time a new singing television star: Uncle Pecos. [more inside]
posted by Smedleyman at 1:08 PM PST - 12 comments

In 1985, less than a week after the Palace of Justice siege in Bogota left 11 members of the Supreme Court dead, the ice-clad Nevada del Ruiz volcano erupted, wiping out the Colombian town of Armero in a huge wave of mud and water. Most links contain disturbing and NSFW images. [more inside]
posted by jontyjago at 12:27 PM PST - 8 comments

"But no people. That’s the dream here. And that’s why nobody faces the pretty durn obvious fact that after the apocalypse, alliances, partnerships, gangs, whatever you want to call them, are going to be tighter, stricter, more important than ever. Because that’s no fun" The Omega Nerd: The War Nerd talks about survival porn, water, Mormons, and Mongols.
posted by The Whelk at 12:02 PM PST - 25 comments

Why are these companies free? In which we learn about "negative enterprise value" and an interesting prospect of using a market collapse to get free money. "Seemingly, a buyer who can afford all of the shares can end up being paid to own these companies."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:34 AM PST - 28 comments

Talent-show Filter: 14-year-old Kepa Police versus 30 hula hoops. (SLYT)
posted by hermitosis at 11:15 AM PST - 27 comments

America is doomed. Why? Soccer.
posted by Artw at 10:59 AM PST - 150 comments

A Handy Guide to What the Hell Just Happened in Darfur. [more inside]
posted by lullaby at 10:37 AM PST - 47 comments

@metatweetfilter Can you believe digerati like John Battelle bought into shilling Proctor & Gamble for the price of a ticket to Cincinnati?! [more inside]
posted by humannaire at 10:34 AM PST - 66 comments

100 fantastic animated shorts for a century of animation. Almost all entries with video.
posted by louche mustachio at 10:20 AM PST - 7 comments

Dare Devil Alma Skinner started riding the Wall of Death at the age of 18, doing the same tricks as the men (including her future husband, Skid Skinner). Hear her reminisce -- she did it "for money reasons." [Real Media grumble.] She died in 2008 at the age of 98. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 10:00 AM PST - 6 comments

An interview with Elmo and Ricky Gervais. (SLYT)
posted by hifiparasol at 9:27 AM PST - 28 comments

"With this blog, I want to use the Folkways Anthology as a roadmap to explore American folk music and maybe other countries traditions along the way. I’ll use texts, images, music and videos gathered from my personal collection and from the net to make this work-in-progress enjoyable and educational the best I can." (via)
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:15 AM PST - 17 comments

"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves." Also: male gaze on the Gender Ads Project. Laura Mulvey's original 1975 essay on Male Gaze in cinema.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 7:57 AM PST - 248 comments

Will El Salvador become the next Pink Tide nation? FMLN leader Mauricio Funes is running for president. Elections on Sunday. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 7:32 AM PST - 8 comments

Iraqi shoe-thrower sentenced to three years in jail. Can an internet campaign for his release be far behind?
posted by Silky Slim at 7:30 AM PST - 67 comments

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist.
posted by chunking express at 6:03 AM PST - 59 comments

The Smallest Manned Navy in the World [more inside]
posted by bokeh at 5:16 AM PST - 17 comments

Steve Souders works on web performance and open source initiatives. His book, High Performance Web Sites, explains his best practices for performance, and is a bestseller. Steve is the creator of YSlow, the performance analysis extension to Firebug. He always shares best practices, for example, 14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites, and the very informative State of Performance featuring his predictions for web performance in 2009. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 4:54 AM PST - 13 comments

These subjects still fascinate me after a lifetime of interest: faster-than-light speed, alternate time streams, parallel universes, time travel, antiparticles moving backward in time, time loops, and the recurring themes of paradox -- all serious but astonishing ideas of science. Something about them inspires infinite possibilities. Am I not alone?
posted by ember at 1:19 AM PST - 64 comments

A Bicycle Built for Two Thousand
posted by flatluigi at 1:01 AM PST - 42 comments

How to manipulate the market. (SLYT)
posted by ryoshu at 11:54 PM PST - 64 comments

Good grief! Described as "arguably the longest story ever told by one human being", the entire run -- just shy of 50 years -- of Charles Schulz's Peanuts can now, legally, be read online. [more inside]
posted by evilcolonel at 11:14 PM PST - 100 comments

India’s New Face. "Meet Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat and the brightest star in the Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party. Under Modi, Gujarat has become an economic dynamo. But he also presided over India’s worst communal riots in decades, a 2002 slaughter that left almost 2,000 Muslims dead. Exploiting the insecurities and tensions stoked by India’s opening to the world, Modi has turned his state into a stronghold of Hindu extremism, shredding Gandhi’s vision of secular coexistence in the process. One day, he could be governing the world’s largest democracy." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 10:00 PM PST - 11 comments

Frank Miller's Charlie Brown. [via Andrew Sullivan]
posted by LarryC at 9:56 PM PST - 30 comments

A Crooked Gambling Supplies catalog from 1960, a 1914 Cyclopedia of 5,000 Puzzles, dozens of magic posters from the '20s to the '40s, and more fun ephemera from Old Catalog's flickr sets.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:24 PM PST - 15 comments

Die Hardererer by Nicholas Chatfield-Taylor. Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Die Hard with a Vengeance and Live Free or Die Hard edited down to only the frames containing fire. NSFW.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:45 PM PST - 75 comments

Tilt-shift video fun! Timelapse video of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras by Keith Loutit. [previously]
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:06 PM PST - 29 comments

On June 8, 1783, the volcano Laki in south Iceland tore open a 16-mile fissure that erupted over nine cubic miles of lava. Not only would this eruption kill over 50% of Iceland's livestock population, leading to famine which killed approximately 25% of the population; its effects were felt the world over, with flourine, sulfur dioxide, ash, sand and drastically cooled tempertaures from the blotted-out sun reaching as far afield as North America and Africa. The eruption lasted for nearly eight months. And from the day the eruption began, a humble priest named Jón Steingrímsson would make his mark in history. [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:38 PM PST - 24 comments

Tetris HD
posted by empath at 4:26 PM PST - 69 comments

[NSFW] It's almost time to Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys -- the final episode of the Trailer Park Boys aired in December, 2008. (As Bubbles says, "It's a dirty, sassy liquor. So sassy.") Producer Mike Clattenburg says that there will be a second movie, "Countdown to Liquor Day", to be released late in 2009. After that, though, the TPB franchise will buy the great double-wide in the sky. [pervyously, preevisilly or however th' fuck you say it.] [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 3:25 PM PST - 58 comments

The piece is attached via a network cable to the internet. The needle indicates results.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:22 PM PST - 15 comments

Ross Douthat, senior editor of The Atlantic and co-author of Grand New Party [nyt review], has been chosen as a new opinion columnist for the New York Times, replacing William Kristol and joining David Brooks as one of the paper's conservative voices.
posted by billysumday at 3:10 PM PST - 44 comments

Jordan Mechner's way-ahead-of-its-time PC game "The Last Express," revered for its animation and innovative storytelling, has been recut into a single 75-minute animated narrative playthrough. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 2:37 PM PST - 21 comments

"Loot the Baedeker I did, all the details of a time and place I had never been to, right down to the names of the diplomatic corps." - Thomas Pynchon from Slow Learner.
Baedeker's were the de facto travel guide for international men of leisure: "Baedeker’s publications, which covered most of Europe, became so popular that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was quoted as saying that he stationed himself at a particular palace window each noon because “It’s written in Baedeker that I watch the changing of the guard from that window, and the people have come to expect it.” Baedeker maps online. Baedeker books online.
Are the old ones the best ones?
posted by vacapinta at 2:03 PM PST - 13 comments

Alice Randall is best known, perhaps, for her novel The Wind Done Gone, a parody of Gone With the Wind that tackles the earlier book's treatment of race. But Randall, a Vanderbilt professor and Harvard graduate, isn't just a novelist: she's a country music songwriter, the first black woman to have a No. 1 song on the country music charts. [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 2:01 PM PST - 9 comments

On December 9, 2008, Maine resident Amber Cummings shot and killed her husband. James Cummings was an abusive neo-nazi millionaire who was furious over Obama's election, and appears to have been making a dirty bomb. [more inside]
posted by ornate insect at 1:25 PM PST - 152 comments

"Meet Officer Vaughan Ettienne, the bodybuilder who learned the hard way you shouldn't write like a thug online, or a jury might just suspect you of mistreating a suspect." Ettienne arrested Gary Waters for gun possession. At trial "the defense found things Ettienne said online and turned them against him." "Mr. Waters, on parole from a burglary conviction when he was arrested, beat the most serious charge, the felony possession of a 9 millimeter Beretta and a bagful of ammunition. He was convicted of resisting arrest, a misdemeanor."
posted by ericb at 1:21 PM PST - 23 comments

Aimee Mullins has better legs than you.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:45 PM PST - 50 comments

We've very much enjoyed the beautiful work of the NYT graphic and infovisual design staff before, but what about when those glorious graphs and interactive adventures don't turn out as expected? Still pretty neat.
posted by carsonb at 12:08 PM PST - 16 comments

The Technorati Attention Index. The 50 web sites blogs link to the most. #1: YouTube. #2. NYT etc.. updated monthly.
posted by stbalbach at 11:48 AM PST - 23 comments

Need an Excuse to Stay Home to Watch March Madness? You can always get your souviners, your your junkfood tie-ins, even your Facebook tie-ins, but an enterprising urology practice has a tie-in which promises the gift that keeps on giving, and an excuse to be on the couch, albeit gingerly, for at least part of the tourney.
posted by Danf at 11:24 AM PST - 8 comments

Shockingly, a novel about a Nazi officer who abets murder squads, transports Jews to Auschwitz, has sex with his twin sister, possibly kills his parents and then dies rich, old and reflective has caused a trans-Atlantic controversy among literary critics. Published in the original French three years ago, the English translation of Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones hit American bookstores this week. [more inside]
posted by zoomorphic at 9:49 AM PST - 86 comments

MIT demo of some very interesting wearable tech (~7 mins vid from TED)
posted by peacay at 9:10 AM PST - 49 comments

"For me, capitalism has never been an abstract concept. It is a real, concrete part of everyday life." President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on the future of capitalism.
posted by geoff. at 8:57 AM PST - 43 comments

Mindless SLYT Post! A turtle celebrates Hump Day!
posted by cloeburner at 8:47 AM PST - 31 comments

The videogames industry's not known for its subtlety when promoting its wares. Controversy has often been a successful part of their marketing campaigns. But is this a step too far? They'll have to go some way to cause more chaos than these guys
posted by muggsy1079 at 7:19 AM PST - 86 comments

“There is nothing like this in the United States," said Leone. "We’ve looked." The Workhouse Arts Center near Occoquan, VA opened in September 2008 on the grounds of a former prison that was founded by President Theodore Roosevelt as a rehabilitation facility for Washington, DC criminals. Its extensive agrarian projects were intended to put them in touch with nature, but by 1917 security tightened and suffragettes protesting before the White House endured harsh treatment there. The city continued sending inmates to the overcrowded facility until Congress ordered the prison to be shuttered. For years it stood empty, but now the historic buildings are being transformed into studios for local artists (previously).
posted by woodway at 7:08 AM PST - 11 comments

Movie posters that are just one letter off.
posted by zardoz at 6:22 AM PST - 45 comments

Sociological Images. A branch of the journal Contexts from the American Sociological Association. What does "organic" look like? What happens after the oil boom dries up in a town? There are many discussions about the way bodies are shown. Privilege and Poverty in Vogue India. They also go behind your back and add content to previous posts. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 5:35 AM PST - 12 comments

The Swedish JAK bank (site in Swedish) is, in effect, a strongly ethics-driven co-operative bank which has declined to have any external commercial interests. It lends money to its approx 30,000 members free of charge, and has managed to stay in business doing so since 1965. Wikipedia has more. Also; Documentary about JAK on YouTube (part 2, part 3, part 4)
posted by SharQ at 5:01 AM PST - 22 comments

Where does your water come from? Global water supply chart. Global freshwater resources from the UN.
posted by baphomet at 11:41 PM PST - 40 comments

ανα χρονοϛ. Photography by Roberto Kusterle (NSFW). [Via]
posted by homunculus at 9:49 PM PST - 21 comments

Somewhat quietly within the past couple weeks, two major newspapers, on each side of the Atlantic, have opened up their data and content APIs. Last month, on their Open blog, the New York Times introduced their Developer Network. Then just yesterday, on their DataBlog and OpenPlatformBlog, the Guardian launched Open Platform. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 9:31 PM PST - 18 comments

Breaking Lincoln news: possible last photo of the 16th President surfaces on same day a hidden message is discovered secreted in his pocket watch.
posted by CunningLinguist at 9:13 PM PST - 44 comments

Meet Arlo Weiner, America's Most Stylish 8-Year-Old.
posted by miss lynnster at 8:52 PM PST - 123 comments

Welcome to the Garden States of the Mughal Empire.
posted by hadjiboy at 8:38 PM PST - 7 comments

The Zine Library has hundreds of zines in pdf format for your perusal. They are organized into categories ranging from the common political (anarchism, political prisoners & animal liberation) and identity based zines (indigenous, race & gender) to the more esoteric (anarchist history, primitivism & theory) as well as the useful (cooking, DIY & organizing manuals) and arty (art, comics & music). Now, zines are by their very nature hit and miss but there are some real treasures to be found. I recommend these three: [all links pdf] The Rebel's Dark Laughter - The Writings of Bruno Filippi, Barefoot in the Kitchen and Delivery from Below, Resistance from Above - Electricity and the Politics of Struggle in Tembisa, South Africa. Note: Many if not most zines are set up to be printed out and bound together in chapbooks. That requires a bit of going back and forth when reading in pdf-format, but they wouldn't be real zines if they were straightforward to read ;) Don't know what a zine is? A pretty good overview is provided by zine librarian Jenna Freedman in Zines Are Not Blogs: A Not Unbiased Analysis. [This site has been posted previously but was buried deep in the weeds of more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 8:35 PM PST - 16 comments

A Day in the Life of Abbey Road; (sorry for the prosaic lead-in link - at least I didn't use the word "iconic!") Enjoy watching Beatles' fans and locals negotiate London's famous Abbey Road crosswalk. I miss album covers; I'm of the generation of high school kids who spent a zillion hours flipping through them in record stores. The best of them - like Abbey Road - could be high-impact and sometimes accompanied their records like a kind of graphic mini-novel. What were some of your favorites and why?
posted by Dex Quire at 7:33 PM PST - 42 comments

Lucie DeBelkova is a photographer. She has traveled to at least 76 countries, including Mongolia, Scotland and Iran. Here is one of her favorite photos. Here is another. And here is her flickr stream. Enjoy!
posted by jason's_planet at 3:40 PM PST - 17 comments

Chris Chameleon is an Afrikaans musician who talks a bit about his native language's origins in this intro to his song Klein Klein Jakkalsies. [more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 3:04 PM PST - 4 comments

John J Marley (Gloria's husband) is Northern Ireland's answer to Lazlo Toth -- writing actual posted mail from his home at Comfydown Cottage, Carryduff, Belfast, to correspond with a variety of corporations and heads-of-state. Whether it's asking Irwin's Bakery to employ his wife Gloria (he's her husband), asking Virgin Atlantic if Gloria could take one of their 747's for a spin, or petitioning Kellogg's for adult-themed cereals, he always (well, almost always) receives an appreciative reply to his polite yet bizarre correspondence. [via cjorgensen; previously]
posted by not_on_display at 2:45 PM PST - 21 comments

This month marks both the birth and the death of Bobby Driscoll, child star, Peter Pan, "Walt Disney's golden boy." He was penniless, drug-addled and buried in an unmarked grave by the age of 31. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 1:57 PM PST - 26 comments

Missiles! and girls! [SLYT]
posted by sonic meat machine at 1:17 PM PST - 25 comments

Unhappy with the way the election turned out, but unwilling to move? Don't worry, Presidential Candidate Chuck Norris has your back.
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 1:13 PM PST - 111 comments

"Traitors" - Martin McGuinness' description of those who carried out attacks on a PSNI member in Craigavon and British solidiers in Antrim: "These people - they are traitors to the island of Ireland. They have betrayed the political desires, hopes and aspirations of all of the people who live on this island. And they don't deserve to be supported by anyone." [more inside]
posted by tiny crocodile at 1:06 PM PST - 36 comments

They are known as “quants” because they do quantitative finance. Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money. "They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street." [spoiler inside] [more inside]
posted by dersins at 12:36 PM PST - 38 comments

In the spirit of 100 Days / 100 Dances: 32 Songs in 8 Minutes. [more inside]
posted by Vervain at 11:25 AM PST - 13 comments

In the wake of a rather large meteor narrowly missing earth, loud booms have been heard from coast to coast. Here's hoping that's the end of it and there isn't something, larger on the way...
posted by zeoslap at 11:10 AM PST - 63 comments

Ever wondered what comes next, and why? The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences has the answers. (Previously.)
posted by parudox at 10:37 AM PST - 33 comments

The Official Creebobby Comics Archetype Times Table
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:41 AM PST - 18 comments

"Serious problems" found at nation's airport security checkpoints. Local TV station KSTP found that airport employees, including cleaning staff, are often allowed to enter secured areas of airports at night without anyone checking their identification badge or the bags and other belongings they bring into the so-called sterile areas. [more inside]
posted by BigLankyBastard at 9:41 AM PST - 49 comments

La Revolution Des Crabes (SLYT, French w/ subtitles) [more inside]
posted by Challahtronix at 9:08 AM PST - 4 comments

Encounter Critical is the awesomest Fantasy/Sci-Fi RPG to come out of an alternate 1979. Full list of game-related resources here (Yahoo group, reg req'd).
posted by mkultra at 9:04 AM PST - 17 comments

The "Raiders" Story Conference In 1978 George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan spent five consecutive nine-hour days hashing out the characters and plot for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The 125-page transcript of their meetings, unreleased before now, details their insane talent and techniques for populist storytelling. (It also makes one wonder what happened to George Lucas, a man who once had a math formula for exciting cinema.) via Ain't It Cool News, unfortunately
posted by incomple at 8:46 AM PST - 135 comments

"Prince announces a triple album set available from Target. Unless he’s going to write a hit song and play in each and every store in the chain, this is a bad deal. We’ve got enough Prince music. We want two CDs and a third of a protege? I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a life. And Prince hasn’t put out a good album in this century. ... How many people are going to tell their friends about Prince’s new album? None. No one has hipped me to a new Prince track in fifteen years. The release of his album is a dead end. He’s abused our trust. When you e-mail me an unsolicited track you abuse my trust. When you add me to your mailing list without asking first, you abuse my trust. When you focus on marketing as opposed to music, you’ve got your head up your ass." - Bob Lefsetz (previously)
posted by Joe Beese at 7:28 AM PST - 104 comments

"The function of aid is not to make us feel better about ourselves; it is to promote development, and if a well-informed African tells us that we are inadvertently having the opposite effect, we had better take heed".

Time to stop aid for Africa? An argument against. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 6:16 AM PST - 77 comments

"We are urging music stations all over the U.S. to send us photos of their gold and platinum records." Hearings are starting on the RIAA's new pet bill. They're feeling the pinch and would like a few of their gold records back. [more inside]
posted by arcanecrowbar at 2:46 AM PST - 74 comments

GODZILLA BUKKAKE (prolly SFW) I blame Warren Ellis although he claims he tried to stop it.
posted by Parannoyed at 1:12 AM PST - 33 comments

Vector Defenders [flash game, some NSFW]. Ep 1: Icons Alliance, Ep 2: The Ink Quest, Ep 3: The Return Of The Type.
posted by tellurian at 12:02 AM PST - 17 comments

Destination: Out, an astounding mp3 blog devoted to mostly out-of-print free jazz and improv records, has been linked a few times on Ask, but never gotten the main-page exposure it deserves. Until now. The editors' selections are always interesting and written about well, and they're ready to go to the mat for the music. (The interview with Marsalis by the Bad Plus to which that's a response is also well worth reading.) But the real impetus for this post is only tangentially related to jazz: recently they got saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa to do a guest post on Indian (mostly Carnatic) music, and it won't be long before the links expire. Fall to! [more inside]
posted by kenko at 11:47 PM PST - 18 comments

World of Goo was released last year on PC and Wii and, despite an 82% piracy rate (previously), still went on to become one of the best selling games of 2008 and win a swag of awards. In a recent blog post (the first of seven) the developer, 2D Boy, has been detailing the early days of development for World of Goo. But just don't read about this proto-Goo... play it! They have made this early version of the game available to download for free. And don't forget that the soundtrack to the completed game is also still free and available for download.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:33 PM PST - 65 comments

Guitar chord progression generator. Guitar chord charts. Have fun!
posted by baphomet at 9:42 PM PST - 16 comments

Quit Lying About Roosevelt! "Amity Shlaes, the GOP's Great Depression philosopher-queen, couldn't be more dangerously wrong." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 9:35 PM PST - 36 comments

Canstruction is a design/build competition currently held in cities throughout North America. Teams of architects, engineers, and students compete to design and build giant structures made entirely from full cans of food. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 9:01 PM PST - 10 comments

60 minutes goes along with the FDIC to take over a bank. Via calculated risk. [more inside]
posted by jourman2 at 8:39 PM PST - 24 comments

A devastating document is met with silence in Turkey. "According to a long-hidden document that belonged to the interior minister of the Ottoman Empire, 972,000 Ottoman Armenians disappeared from official population records from 1915 through 1916." [more inside]
posted by terranova at 8:15 PM PST - 52 comments

The Periodic Table of Typefaces (fully-readable close-up) Two great nerd-memes (Periodic Tables and Font Collecting) that look great together. After looking it over, I'm happy to say it has no room for Comic Sans or Arial or Hobo, but sad to say it's also missing my personal guilty pleasure, Bookman. What's in it (or not in it) to your liking?
posted by wendell at 8:04 PM PST - 37 comments

In 1916, Hugo Ball would fulfill his own dadaist manifesto by reciting his own nonsense poetry at the Cabaret Voltaire (not that Cabaret Voltaire), while wearing a Cubist costume or a cylinder with the number 13 covering his face. Ball's poem, Gadji Beri Bimba, inspired the Talking Heads song, I Zimbra, but his most famous poem is Karawane, a pioneering example of sound poetry. Karawane has more conventional avant-garde versions on YouTube, but none is more surreal than the recitation from memory by Marie Osmond (yes, that Marie Osmond) from a 1980s broadcast of Ripley's Believe It Or Not!
posted by jonp72 at 7:53 PM PST - 21 comments

And finally tonight, Jesus...
posted by finite at 5:46 PM PST - 81 comments

Web Tech Guy and Angry [Museum] Staff Person. A very funny animation for the museums workers and librarians subset of Mefites. From Michael Edson at Smithsonian 2.0.
posted by LarryC at 4:57 PM PST - 47 comments

Make your own ice cream, in a restaurant, using coffee creamer and a glass of ice.
posted by mudpuppie at 3:07 PM PST - 132 comments

A Beached Fin Whale Closes a Popular Beach . . . .It had been foundering in the surf, and just beyond the surf, for several days. They may bury it or they may tow it out to sea to become a whale fall. [more inside]
posted by Danf at 2:47 PM PST - 21 comments

Music that makes you dumb. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi at 2:37 PM PST - 102 comments

Don't Look Back: the latest game from Terry Cavanagh. For the platformer/greek mythology enthusiast in all of us.
posted by stresstwig at 2:25 PM PST - 24 comments