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Deep vein thrombosis is generally a topic that comes up with regards to airline seating and other periods of prolonged immobility (previously). Anna Brown was a homeless woman and constantly on the move, so doctors in the emergency room thought that her complaints of leg pain were just drug-seeking behavior. Unfortunately, drug seeking is a major problem in ERs in the United States. [more inside]
posted by gracedissolved at 8:13 PM PST - 59 comments

On March 11 United States Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales allegedly murdered 17 Afghan civilians. A reporter from Australia's SBS is the first journalist to interview survivors of the deadly Kandahar massacre.(via)
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 8:12 PM PST - 64 comments

Micah True, an ultrarunner profied in Christopher McDougall's book, Born to Run, has gone missing in New Mexico, after heading out for a 12 mile run on Tuesday. Known as Caballo Blanco in McDougall's book, he helped launch the recent barefoot running craze.
posted by katinka-katinka at 6:17 PM PST - 52 comments

The Guardian has a feature today on computer science education in the UK It includes short interviews with teenagers who use coding (for fun or work), an article on encouraging girls to get involved in computer science, an editorial encouraging an overhaul of the UK's system of teaching computing, and some discussion of Young Rewired State, a group that offers "festivals of code" to help kids learn to "program the world around them", and also encouraging use of open data.
posted by chapps at 5:13 PM PST - 19 comments

Before hip-hop beefs, there were response records, also known as answer songs, usually replies to well-known songs. There are a few key eras: blues and R&B recorded music in the 1930s through 1950s, including a number of responses to "Work With Me, Annie" (1954), recorded by Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, with answers including "Annie had a Baby," and "The Wallflower" by Etta James; and Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" (1953), with a quick response by Louis Innis and Charlie Gore, made a mere week after the original was released, and Rufus Thomas' "Bear Cat" (1953), Sun Records' first hit. Country, rock & roll, doo-wop and pop music picked up where the blues left off, with most activity in the 1950s to 60s. Two examples from this era are "Are You Lonesome To-night" and "Who Put The Bomp," and responses to both. The most well known from the next decade was Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" (1974), a response to Neil Young's "Southern Man" (1970) and "Alabama" (1972). Until the 2000s, no answer songs had charted as high as the original hits. That changed with Frankee's "F.U.R.B. (Fuck You Right Back)" (2004), a response to Eamon's "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" (2003), which was the first answer song to reach number 1 in the UK. Six years later and across the pond, Katy Perry's "California Gurls" was a response to "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z. It was the first answer song to reach No. 1 in the Billboard Hot 100. More Responses inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:04 PM PST - 53 comments

4 non-supercharged Model A Fords from 1931 rack around a gravel course in 2012.
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:33 PM PST - 25 comments

After 61 years of marriage, Charles D. Snelling killed his Alzheimer's-stricken wife before turning a gun on himself. Months before, in response to a David Brooks column, he submitted a 5,000-word personal essay where he reminisced on his life, his marriage, his wife's disease and his role as a caretaker.
posted by falameufilho at 12:42 PM PST - 143 comments

With Season 2 of Game of Thrones to begin on Sunday, it's important to review the various life and parenting lessons we've learned from the show.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:56 AM PST - 276 comments

At the age of 49 years and 4 months, Jamie Moyer of the Colorado Rockies is the oldest baseball player to ever earn a regular roster spot on a Major League Baseball team (Satchel Paige pitched 3 innings in a 1965 game at age 59 as a publicity stunt). There are many current players, including some of the game's best, who weren't even born when Moyer made his MLB debut, making Moyer's feat all the more impressive.
posted by reenum at 11:55 AM PST - 32 comments

Voting via clicker with real time data visualization is happening in schools, churches, and loads of other organizations throughout the world. This NY Times piece examines how clicker voting is shaking things up.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 11:50 AM PST - 10 comments

Urban Trials Riding in Melbourne looks a lot like bike parkour; amazing and more than a bit insane.
posted by quin at 9:14 AM PST - 37 comments

Google Maps comes to exciting new platform: The 8-bit NES.
posted by GuyZero at 9:13 AM PST - 66 comments

Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a "socially disruptive" narcissist.... [more inside]
posted by latkes at 9:04 AM PST - 79 comments

A column by John Brownlee over at Cult of Mac yesterday highlighted his privacy concerns about the app Girls Around Me -- which used a mashup of FourSquare check-ins, Google Maps and Facebook public profile information to show the user women who were nearby. In response to the story, Foursquare cut off the app's API access to their data, effectively knocking it out of commission. CNET: How to prevent friends checking you into locations at Facebook Places. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:27 AM PST - 95 comments

The Online Musical started as a 2010 University of Virginia student project to create an interactive online musical based on audience feeback , called Musical: The Online Musical. It continued after that project finished, moving on to mini musicals (Thomas Jefferson: The Musical, Pokemon: The Musical, Where's Waldo?: The Musical), and other musical works (a dub step treatment of Les Miserables). Their most recent project is less musical, more dystopian: The Beanie Baby Hunger Games. [more inside]
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:56 AM PST - 12 comments

Language of the Land: Journeys into Literary America: The inspiration for this exhibition was the Library of Congress's collection of literary maps--maps that acknowledge the contributions of authors to a specific state or region as well as those that depict the geographical locations in works of fiction or fantasy. Throughout the exhibition, these colorful and varied maps reflect the contributions of authors to specific states or regions and locate their imagined people and places. Through these maps, authors' words, images, and characters, Language of the Land presents a tapestry of the impressions that endure in our collective imagination of the American land and its culture. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:43 AM PST - 4 comments

The Quietest Place on Planet Earth Measured at -9.4dB, this is the quietest place on earth. There is a standing bet that anyone lasting 45 minutes in the chamber, in the dark, earns a case of beer of their choice. No one has lasted more than a half hour.
posted by sanka at 6:40 PM PST - 124 comments

Down To Fax: We're Chatroulette for fax machines.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:38 PM PST - 28 comments

A self-identified hipster re-presents: the American hipster.
What comes next?
posted by iamkimiam at 5:55 PM PST - 87 comments

Orson Welles' final interview, conducted October 10, 1985. He died two hours later, at age 70. via
posted by timshel at 5:10 PM PST - 41 comments

Fantasy Paper Minatures does exactly what it says on the tin. [more inside]
posted by absalom at 4:08 PM PST - 11 comments

Bombshell investigation reveals vast majority of landmark cancer studies cannot be replicated. In a shocking discovery, C. Glenn Begley, former researcher at Amgen Inc, and a team working with him, has found that 47 out of 53 so called "landmark" basic studies on cancer -- a high proportion of them from university labs -- cannot be replicated, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future. These were papers in top journals, from reputable labs, which achieved landmark status with frequent citations. The consequences for cancer research are far-reaching. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 3:47 PM PST - 78 comments

@Sheboyganscan attempts to transcribe everything that comes over the Sheboygan, Wisconsin police scanner. The fine folks at Something Awful have cherry picked a few gems.
posted by The Whelk at 3:30 PM PST - 55 comments

Alexis Rivera, Transgender Rights Advocate, Dies In California Masen Davis, Executive Director of Transgender Law Center, in a statement: "She understood that we are stronger together, and she kept organizing until the very end. Alexis' death is a reminder that the fight for equality -- and against AIDS -- is far from over."
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 3:06 PM PST - 26 comments

Hundreds of musicians criss-cross the country daily on their way to the next gig. How do they deal with the boredom? This way
posted by kenaldo at 2:28 PM PST - 65 comments

Back in September of 2011, a group of protesters from Defend Life, held a demonstration in front of Robert Frost Middle School in Rockville, MD. The daughter of Todd Stave, the landlord for Reproductive Health Services in Germantown, attends this school. Todd Stave, no stranger to having protests targeted at him, decided to fight back. He founded the group Voice of Choice, to calmy call the people who call the homes of abortion providers and those with other connections to clinics. Their stated goal is to "[use] peaceful methods to neutralize those who use bullying tactics."
posted by Hactar at 1:35 PM PST - 107 comments

Two researchers have reviewed the body of research on the effects of birth control pills on both women and men’s perceptions of attractiveness, and have come to some provocative conclusions. “If you don’t take into account society maybe we’re all animals, but in social situations I don’t think there are many women who change who they would mate with at different times of the month. It might change desires or perceptions but, gee whiz, that’s a long stretch to changing who you would date, or even who you would go to dinner with”
posted by goalyeehah at 12:55 PM PST - 58 comments

Will Self: Walking is political A century ago, 90% of Londoners' journeys under six miles were made on foot. Now we are alienated from the physical reality of our cities. Will Self on the importance of walking in the fight against corporate control
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:29 AM PST - 54 comments

Sounds from a Room is a series of live music performances streamed once a month from A Room for London, a boat installed on a London rooftop. [more inside]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:59 AM PST - 7 comments

From blimps to bugs, an explosion in aerial drones is transforming the way America fights and thinks about its wars. Predator drones, the Cessna-sized workhorses that have dominated unmanned flight since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are by now a brand name, known and feared around the world. But far less known is the sheer size, variety and audaciousness of a rapidly expanding drone universe, along with the dilemmas that come with it.(via) [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 9:07 AM PST - 66 comments

“It is startlingly loud,” he warns, “and it's loud enough that you can actually feel the sound wave going through your torso.” On East Brother Island in California, lightstation keeper Peter Berkhout is caretaker to one of the last working vintage foghorns in the United States.
posted by Laminda at 8:48 AM PST - 30 comments

"We figured they’d cheat; they were Hezbollah, after all. But none of us—a team of four Western journalists—thought we’d be dodging military-grade flash bangs when we initiated this 'friendly' paintball match." Paintballing With Hezbollah.
posted by HumanComplex at 8:32 AM PST - 53 comments

Alberto Seveso creates mesmerizing photographic sculptures of ink underwater.
posted by quin at 8:02 AM PST - 24 comments

Birth of a Book [Vimeo] A short vignette of a book being created using traditional printing methods. For the Daily Telegraph. Shot at Smith-Settle Printers, Leeds, England. The book being printed is Suzanne St Albans’ 'Mango and Mimosa' published as part of the Slightly Foxed series. Shot, Directed & Edited by @Glen Milner
posted by Fizz at 7:00 AM PST - 4 comments

Food Network Magazine's 100 Greatest Cooking Tips (of All Time) goes beyond the basic "taste-as-you-go" kind of advice (though it's in there). [more inside]
posted by lizbunny at 6:37 AM PST - 188 comments

An illustrated guide to common logical fallacies as well as well as a very nice worked example of the fallacies involved in Cardinal Keith O'Brien's recent(ish) article against gay marriage.
posted by DRMacIver at 5:07 AM PST - 123 comments

Since 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has based its estimates of how many children in the United States have autism on surveillance reports from its Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. Every two years, researchers count how many 8-year-olds have an autism spectrum disorder in about a dozen communities across the nation. According to a new report released by the CDC yesterday, (pdf), the latest data estimate that 1 in 88 American children has some form of autism spectrum disorder. (1 in 54 boys and 1 in 252 girls.) That's a 78% increase compared to a decade ago. The report, which analyzed data from 2008, indicates a 23 percent rise in diagnoses of ASDs over a two-year period. (Last link has autoplaying video)
posted by zarq at 5:02 AM PST - 41 comments

Slap Shot: The Only Honest Sports Movie
posted by edgeways at 4:33 AM PST - 62 comments

John Lanchester on Marx in the LRB.
posted by pharm at 3:05 AM PST - 22 comments

The top 25 American writers, as determined by the amount of scholarship on them. Literary flowchart by Jimmy Chen.
posted by stbalbach at 11:42 PM PST - 70 comments

The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast presents... readings of The Hound and The Temple.
posted by Artw at 10:53 PM PST - 14 comments

High resolution wiring diagram of a brain.
posted by Packed Lunch at 9:27 PM PST - 27 comments

“Vermin!” “Abortion!” “Sewer-rat!” “Crritic!”
posted by latkes at 8:27 PM PST - 12 comments

"How do you like your blue eyed boy, Mr. Death?" Harry Crews has died at the age of 76. He was an author, a teacher, a boxer, a raconteur. But mostly, he was a writer.
posted by Optamystic at 7:27 PM PST - 30 comments

Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez is one of the world's foremost facial transplant surgeons. He and his team performed a 36 hour facial transplant surgery, the most extensive one to date, on a man who lost his face in a gun accident 15 years ago. The transplant included a donor tongue and set of teeth. In honor of the advancements modern medicine has made in facial transplant surgery, CBS News recently ran a gallery of facial transplant recipients. (Warning: disturbing, yet hopeful, images inside.)
posted by GnomeChompsky at 6:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Josef Hoflehner took a series of black & white wide-angle shots of planes that appear to be flying very close to the beach. [Previously]
posted by gman at 6:29 PM PST - 27 comments

Amazing Paper Sculptures. Brooklyn based artist Lauren Clay "creates these three-dimensional sculptures out of papier-mâché and painted cut paper (among many other things) that go far beyond the limits of paper’s two-dimensionality."
posted by sweetkid at 6:24 PM PST - 5 comments

Swimming on the Hot Side: An elite team of nuclear divers are risking their lives to help save a troubled industry. The Life of a Nuclear Diver
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:44 PM PST - 71 comments

5 years after a think tank study (PDF) recommended its retirement, Canada says goodbye to the penny. Previous penny pinching 1 2
posted by yellowbinder at 3:36 PM PST - 102 comments

A Woman's Story
posted by spiderskull at 2:49 PM PST - 69 comments

"NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year-olds. It sure inspired me, and with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore." An undersea expendition funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has discovered the spent rocket engines used to power Apollo 11.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:17 PM PST - 59 comments

In 2007, a 15th-century illuminated manuscript returned to the George Peabody Library in Baltimore after going missing over 40 years ago. [more inside]
posted by Quietgal at 1:20 PM PST - 12 comments

Arrested drunk guy sings Bohemian Rhapsody.
posted by cmoj at 12:09 PM PST - 87 comments

I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges' ass cracks... among other abuses.

A sobering look into the world of Dartmouth College's fraternities. Single page view.
posted by Rumple at 11:56 AM PST - 226 comments

Ron Burgundy will return to the big screen. During Conan O'Brien's show on Wednesday night, Will Ferrell announced in character that a sequel to Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is happening. [more inside]
posted by jabberjaw at 11:32 AM PST - 86 comments

Eke out a peaceful life in the wilderness in Make No Wonder, a new HTML5 game by MeFi's own Matthew Hollett. [via mefi projects]
posted by theodolite at 11:01 AM PST - 106 comments

The Gendered Advertising Remixer lets you set the video of one toy ad to the audio of another.
posted by Zarkonnen at 10:55 AM PST - 32 comments

The Enduring Consequences of Unemployment. It is perhaps no surprise that "....workers who lost jobs during the recession of the early 1980s were making 20 percent less than their peers two decades later." Or that unemployment is also bad for your health.... "lA worker laid off at age 40 could expect to die at least a year sooner than his peers." What frames the issue starkly though is that unemployed people gradually lost the ability to read. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 10:54 AM PST - 83 comments

Go to bed, Tao Lin. Cole Styker, author of Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4Chan's Army Conquered the Web interviews and considers Tao Lin and 'trollgaze'. [more inside]
posted by shakespeherian at 10:50 AM PST - 42 comments

Thomas Zwijsen performs Nylon Maiden: Aces High, The Trooper, and Wasted Years.
posted by Ardiril at 10:23 AM PST - 19 comments

The Nelson Mandela Digital Archive has gone live. The archive organizes Mandela’s papers chronologically and thematically. You can jump into sections covering his Early Life, Prison Years, and Presidential Years, or explore his extensive book collections and work with youngsters or see his first recorded interview from 1961. (via)
posted by infini at 10:01 AM PST - 2 comments

And yet, we don't know exactly when the game came out. In fact, talk to enough people and you'll come to find out that we can't even agree on the year...

Sad But True: We Can't Prove When Super Mario Bros. Came Out
posted by griphus at 9:46 AM PST - 47 comments

A short history of privatisation in the UK: 1979-2012
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:28 AM PST - 46 comments

"I get up every morning at 5, go for a half-hour walk in the desert, come home and have a cup of coffee, sit down at the desk and ask myself what I would say if I were him, and what I would do if I were her. I think curiosity is actually a moral virtue. I think a person who is curious is slightly more moral than one who is not curious, because sometimes he enters into the skin of another. I think a curious person is even a better lover than one who is not curious. Even my political approach to the Palestinian question, for example, sprang from curiosity. I am not a Middle East expert or a historian or a strategist. I simply asked myself, at a very young age, what it would be like if I were one of them. So, that’s what I do − get up in the morning and ask myself: What if?" - Israeli writer Amos Oz reflects on his life, on Israel, on writing, and discusses his newest work [more inside]
posted by beisny at 9:15 AM PST - 4 comments

The results of the 2012 Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest are in. The winner: Occupeep DC. Runners up: Peepius Maximus, What People Think Peeps Are (based on the popular meme), The Black Peep (based off of DC's Black Cat music venue), and Just Peeped (based off of the 2011 British Royal Wedding). In addition to the finalists, check out Peeps in Washington, Political Peeps, the full gallery of submissions that the Post received this year, and the winners from 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007. (Peepiously, peepiouslier, peepiousliest)
posted by schmod at 8:03 AM PST - 18 comments

Dutch astronaut and physician André Kuipers brought his camera aboard the International Space Station and took some photos in his spare time, the results are breathtaking. [more inside]
posted by quin at 8:00 AM PST - 34 comments

The worst linux PC ever. Running on an 8-bit microcontroller. …it takes two hours to boot up to a bash prompt, and four more to load up Ubuntu and login.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:51 AM PST - 46 comments

Who Was Casanova? "Today, Casanova is so surrounded by myth that many people almost believe he was a fictional character. (Perhaps it’s hard to take seriously a man who has been portrayed by Tony Curtis, Donald Sutherland, Heath Ledger and even Vincent Price, in a Bob Hope comedy, Casanova’s Big Night [and many more].)" [more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:44 AM PST - 20 comments

Downton Arby's. (SLYahooVideo)
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:25 AM PST - 37 comments

25 years ago today, the professional wrestling boom sparked by the Captain Lou Albano/Cyndi Lauper "Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection" reached its zenith with WrestleMania III - whose attendance record of 93,173 for a live indoor "sporting" event in North America stood until 2010. The match between "Macho Man" Randy Savage and Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat is prized by aficionados as one of the greatest in wrestling history. Look into the videoscope! [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 5:03 AM PST - 72 comments

Skittles’ new level of fame has quickly become a kind of marketing crisis that is threatening to hurt the company even as sales improve.
posted by Renoroc at 4:34 AM PST - 88 comments

How can one describe it? For fuck’s sake, it is a quest saga and it has a talking horse. There are puns on the word ‘neigh’. Christopher Priest on the 2012 Clarke Award shortlist, the self-described "most prestigious award for science fiction in Britain".
posted by Hartster at 1:02 AM PST - 226 comments

In 1982 the manga, Akira (previously) , began its run. It would ultimately spawn a film that would lead the way for the growth of the anime medium outside of Japan. An attempted Americanized remake (previouslyer) was in production before being ultimately canceled. The manga’s creator, Katsuhiro Otomo, in the meantime, had taken a 20 year break from long-form manga. It was recently announced that this break was coming to an end and that Otomo would be working on a new long-form shonen series.
posted by sendai sleep master at 12:35 AM PST - 30 comments

Why I’m Suing Barack Obama [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 10:01 PM PST - 98 comments

But shouldn't consumers have some context to evaluate what they are viewing? Shampoo bottles and Tuna cans assure us that animals were unharmed. Shouldn't we know if porn actors are subject to out-of-control STD rates, or are forced to do things against their will? At a minimum, a Porn housekeeping seal of approval would tell us by, and for whom, the porn was made. It might make you think twice before downloading that random YouPorn video or chatting with a "horny Russian slut" at LiveJasmin.

Erika Christakis proposes a Fair Trade label for pornography.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:43 PM PST - 47 comments

On Wednesday 29 March 2012, the first mass same-sex TV wedding in Australia was broadcast. [more inside]
posted by malibustacey9999 at 6:47 PM PST - 22 comments

Bathroom door never closes? Talking to self in british accent? You might be living alone. (SLvideo)
posted by hot_monster at 6:26 PM PST - 91 comments

World Map: Metal Bands per 100,000 People. Previously.
posted by Evilspork at 5:21 PM PST - 50 comments

Earlier this year, Steve Martin penned a loving tribute to Earl Scruggs, published in New Yorker. "Some nights he had the stars of North Carolina shooting from his fingertips. Before him, no one had ever played the banjo like he did. After him, everyone played the banjo like he did, or at least tried." A few minutes ago, Steve Martin offered a rare somber tweet: "Earl Scruggs, the most important banjo player who ever lived, has passed on." One could do worse than spend some time watching and listening to Earl Scruggs perform.
posted by spock at 5:19 PM PST - 103 comments

Catch up on The Simpsons. Quickly [slyt]
posted by yerfatma at 4:36 PM PST - 34 comments

A potentially dangerous situation is developing off the coast of Scotland. An off-shore drilling platform is leaking substantial quantities of gas contaminated with hydrogen sulphide. Much as here, the comments thread is as interesting as the post at The Oil Drum itself.
posted by indices at 4:26 PM PST - 67 comments

The West Virginia Surf Report is picking up where they left off [McDonald's McSkillet burrito] (previously), Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality has recently been updated with picture comparison and comedic review of: Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco Supreme [more inside]
posted by TangerineGurl at 4:11 PM PST - 42 comments

Poet Adrienne Rich, celebrated over her 60-plus-year career with the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the National Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and many other awards, and known for both her vivid and original poetry and her advocacy of feminist and civil rights causes, has died at the age of 82. Read, watch, listen.
posted by aught at 2:26 PM PST - 107 comments

Animated map of current wind in the U.S.
posted by grouse at 1:41 PM PST - 54 comments

KEXP 90.3 FM is a Seattle, WA-based radio station, officially "a service of University of Washington," but it's more complex than that. The first University of Washington radio station started broadcasting in 1952. Five decades, a few station organizational shifts, plus three call letter and frequency changes later, KEXP was (re)born in 2001. Along the way, the station spread the sound of 1990s Seattle indie rock, started streaming "CD quality" MP3 audio of their broadcast in 2000, and they have an ever-growing collection of recordings of live in-station performances, including over 2,000 videos on YouTube. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:10 PM PST - 35 comments

One Tricorder per child.
posted by christopher.taylor at 12:49 PM PST - 31 comments

WebGL, the 3D technology that's associated with HTML5, continues to make giant strides in diverse areas:

Exploration of human anatomy: Zygote Body, released yesterday, and BioDigital Human, the successors to Google Body (previously)

World Visualisation: WebGL Earth, Nokia's 3D Map of the entire earth (previously). WorldWeather and The WebGL Globe, a Google project that displays all kinds of data. Also: Where Does My Tweet Go?

Games: browser ports of Team Fortess 2, Quake 3 and Rage (a developer’s diary). SkidRacer, an entire game in WebGL. Mini Mass Effect (not yet playable, sadly).

Musicals: Lights.

Tools: 3Notes.js, a visual scene editor. Developer documentation. More resources.

[more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:41 PM PST - 27 comments

Fact Check!
posted by latkes at 12:31 PM PST - 32 comments

NPR: "Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world." Now, nearly ten years after his death, thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time. "It's part of what Lomax envisioned for [his] collection — long before the age of the Internet." (Mr. Lomax, Previously on MeFi) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:02 PM PST - 26 comments

Boston Dynamics is getting close to mastering quadrupedal motion with Big Dog and Cheetah (previously). And are working on bipedal motion with Petman (previously), but how about a robot that is able to leap (up to the top of) tall buildings in a single bound? Sand Flea! [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 11:42 AM PST - 50 comments

You may have seen the news footage about a guy in a Batman suit being pulled over in suburban DC. It turns out that there is a lot more to the story.
posted by COD at 11:37 AM PST - 74 comments

Born in 1942, Colin Fulcher was better known – though not by much – as Barney Bubbles, who worked prolifically from the 1960s until his suicide in 1983. A graphic artist, designer, art and video director who preferred to remain behind the scenes (he only rarely signed his work, and when he did, often used obscure pseudonyms), Bubbles' revolutionary and innovative practice encompassed record sleeves, band posters and videos for Hawkwind (and their friend/collaborator Michael Moorcock), Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and the Blockheads (including their iconic logo), Billy Bragg, The Specials and Depeche Mode. A retrosective of his work, Reasons To Be Cheerful, and its associated blog has a comprehensive overview of Bubbles' diverse body of work. Designer and artist John Coulthart offers up his perspective; Creative Review get behind his creative processes; a new Radio 4 documentary, In Search of Barney Bubbles , covers his work and often troubled life.
posted by Len at 11:04 AM PST - 10 comments

Guy comes out of closet on Facebook to friends who are entirely too geeky to care. [more inside]
posted by Argyle at 11:02 AM PST - 70 comments

The mentality of your generation just boggles my mind. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by crackingdes at 10:24 AM PST - 185 comments

The Who held a contest for the best fanvid of their song, 5:15. The other entries.
posted by Ardiril at 10:08 AM PST - 16 comments

Sodajerker is a songwriting team from Liverpool. But Simon Barber and Brian O'Connor are also the co-hosts of the iTunes podcast Sodajerker on Songwriting, a programme featuring hour-long interviews with some of the world’s most successful songwriters including Jimmy Webb, Andy Partridge, Todd Rundgren and many others. [more inside]
posted by unSane at 9:40 AM PST - 7 comments

The fate of havenco analyzed. (Full law review article by same author: here.) [more inside]
posted by advil at 9:26 AM PST - 17 comments

No line of unlicensed Star Wars figures is as sought after as the Turkish line known as Uzay. STARS WAR UZAY set includes: Stormtroper, Imperial Stormtoper, Head Man, Chewbacca (Monkey Man), Artoo-Detoo, Imperial T E Fighter Pilot and See-Threep.
posted by timshel at 9:25 AM PST - 28 comments

Murdoch's Scandal - Lowell Bergman (the journalist portrayed by Al Pacino in The Insider) has investigated News Corporation for PBS Frontline [transcript]. He depicts Rupert Murdoch's British operation as a criminal enterprise, routinely hacking the voicemail and computers of innocent people, and using bribery and coercion to infiltrate police and government over decades. Enemies are ruthlessly "monstered" by the tabloids. Bergman also spoke to NPR's Fresh Air [transcript]. But the hits keep coming: in recent days News Corp has been accused of hacking rival pay TV services and promoting pirated receiver cards in both the UK and Australia. With the looming possibility of prosecution under America's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, how long will shareholders consider Rupert Murdoch irreplaceable? [Previous 1 2 3 4]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:54 AM PST - 57 comments

This is an animated documentary about Mohammad Mostafaei who is an Iranian lawyer in exile in Norway. Mostafaei specialized in advocating for defendants who faced the death penalty and the animation focuses on one of these cases, that of Behnoud Shojaee. The animation features Paul Bettany reading Mostafaei's words, is a part of Amnesty International's campaign against the death penalty.
posted by Kattullus at 8:34 AM PST - 3 comments

The Duel - An amazing-stop motion Lego skirmish relying almost exclusively on practical effects.
posted by quin at 7:55 AM PST - 16 comments

Got questions about your bike or bicycling in general? Surly bikes' Skip Bernet has answers to just about any bike forum post ever written.
posted by barnacles at 7:38 AM PST - 86 comments

Following an amendment in the recent Conservative Party budget, VAT on 'Baked Goods' will be re-instated. In response, the question of whether or not David Cameron once ate a Greggs pasty infects the British press. The Telegraph have a live blog covering what has been termed by some Pasty Gate
posted by 0bvious at 7:35 AM PST - 61 comments

It's like a synthesizer control interface made out of molded jello. "Noisy jelly is a game where the player has to cook and shape his own musical material, based on coloured jelly."
posted by February28 at 7:35 AM PST - 7 comments

An elephant uses a Galaxy Note, proving that not everybody looks ridiculous while using a phablet.
posted by schmod at 7:26 AM PST - 54 comments

Romeyn Hough's American Woods is one of the most astonishing books of the late 19th century, a 14-volume set containing a thorough survey of the trees of the U.S., complete with thinly sliced samples of the wood of each tree. Complete sets of this mammoth undertaking are today rare and highly prized.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:19 AM PST - 4 comments

Jake Cole of the film blog Not Just Movies discusses the semi-legendary hour-long debate about Monty Python's Life of Brian on the BBC Four program Friday Night, Saturday Morning. The debate features Pythons John Cleese and Michael Palin on one side and opposite them broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:05 AM PST - 38 comments

Twenty-four years after the original, Maxis (sans Wil Wright) is rebooting SimCity. RPS' preview states that, thanks to the bottom-up approach of the Glassbox engine, each entity "...will be its own discrete software agent, running its own little simulation of its own little life." In their own preview, IGN state that having animations reflect behind-the-scenes processes will "[give] the players tangible signals that they need to step in..." However, is there trouble in (simulated) paradise already?
posted by griphus at 7:04 AM PST - 114 comments

Poo-Powered Rickshaw Unveiled At The Denver Zoo Poop. Is there anything it can't do? On Wednesday, The Denver Zoo introduced what is believed to be the world's first poo-powered motorized tuk tuk showcasing The Denver Zoo's very own patent-pending gasification technology.
posted by novenator at 3:49 AM PST - 24 comments

Do you know The Treniers? Back in the 40s and 50s, they straddled the lines between jump blues, swing, early rock'n'roll, jazz dance, hep jive and comedy. They were a whole hella fun, and they happened to be the backing band for what must be the best dance performance Jerry Lewis ever gave the world. That particular clip, BTW, from a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis "Colgate Comedy Hour" in 1954, is purported to be the first rock'n'roll performance on national television, and it may well have been.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:53 AM PST - 14 comments

Because sometimes you just want to watch a huge tire roll down a hill
posted by clearly at 2:29 AM PST - 64 comments

Linden Gledhill is trying to grow snowflakes in his garage by passing 2000 volts through a cold moist chamber, as previously achieved by a team at Caltech [more inside]
posted by looeee at 2:10 AM PST - 4 comments

An expert committee has found that the President of Hungary, Dr. Pál Schmitt, is not guilty of plagiarism, despite extensive parts of his doctoral thesis being copied from multiple sources. The fault, the committee claims, was not his, but that of his supervisors. The Contrarian Hungarian and The Hungarian Spectrum have detailed analysis of the allegations and the committee’s report, while the Urban Dictionary has coined a new term in honor of the scandal. Other European politicians have faced with similar claims recently with differing results.
posted by vac2003 at 12:53 AM PST - 32 comments

Experimental novelist and critic Christine Brooke-Rose has died. The Guardian has an obituary and an appreciation. [more inside]
posted by twirlip at 11:36 PM PST - 12 comments

"Hilton Kramer, whose clear, incisive style and combative temperament made him one of the most influential critics of his era, both at The New York Times, where he was the chief art critic for almost a decade, and at The New Criterion, which he edited from its founding in 1982, died early Tuesday in Harpswell, Me. He was 84." [more inside]
posted by anewnadir at 11:35 PM PST - 14 comments

The Winter Of The Beard [1h47m] is a documentary which chronicles the lives of nine men across six months. Each was provided a video camera and weekly interview questions to document his own experience. The resulting 600 hours of intimate footage revealed a group of men traversing the same rite of passage from disparate vantage points. Throughout the process, the men told stories from their pasts, shared likes and dislikes, and confessed personal fears and aspirations. They laughed and cried, hid and came alive behind their beards. The tireless taping captured bad days and good ones, and it is in this framework that the individual stories stand out and the beards fade into the background. From a son dealing with his father's descent into Alzheimer's, to financial and marital struggles, to the birth of a child, THE WINTER OF THE BEARD [trailer, 2m58s] reveals the trials and tribulations of what it means to drastically alter one's appearance and otherwise go on living life. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:47 PM PST - 29 comments

Guide to buying a top hat - Charles Henry Wolfenbloode gives advice on buying a topper.
posted by unliteral at 7:49 PM PST - 81 comments

Fender Factory Tour 1959 - Leo Fender in the second shot. Freddie Tavares at 7:26. A day when "everything was done by hand... It is amazing to realize that every guitar made that year is now worth a small fortune." The 1959-63 era Stratocaster is called one of the 50 guitars to play before you die. (via the q-ster)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:38 PM PST - 15 comments

Most of us reading on the blue lived through at least a portion of it. Forty-plus years of tension between the world's two superpowers and their allies. That's right: The Cold War. Then, they made a documentary. Aired on CNN in 1998, and never released on DVD, the 24 episode, 20 hour series features tons of archival footage, along with many interviews with individuals directly involved at some of the highest levels. You might not be able to see it on DVD, but you can watch the full series on Youtube, starting with Part 1: Comrades (1917-1945).
posted by symbioid at 6:36 PM PST - 77 comments

The Mind is a Metaphor. A database of thousands of metaphors organized by category, like 18th century, Liquid, or Jacobite. It's maintained by University of Virginia English Professor Brad Pasanek.
posted by shivohum at 6:06 PM PST - 19 comments

I am sure more than a few of you are involved in gli.tc/h, and thus prepared to discuss extrafile, brainchild of one Kim Asendorf (previously), in greater detail. New image formats for artistic purpose, anyone?
posted by zachhouston at 5:13 PM PST - 16 comments

So Tara Tiger Brown of Forbes.com wrote an article begging fake geek girls to go away. Leigh Alexander of Sexy Videogameland responds with "This is the worst kind of thing to me, because not only is it sad for her, but it sucks for all of us. Women in our space, having once been something of a scarcity, face particular challenges. We lack for companions and mentors. " Followed by The Mary Sue's Susana Polo "So yes, I understand the desire to weed the “posers” out of your personal life and interactions. But I have never, actually, in the flesh, met a “fake” geek girl. Or guy. "
posted by The Whelk at 4:31 PM PST - 204 comments

The epic struggle of Man Versus Goose continues apace.
posted by ironjelly at 3:36 PM PST - 71 comments

Are Western states true democracies? Has democracy become a casualty of the financial crisis? Can you have too much democracy? -- The Browser's best articles on democracy from the last 12 months.
posted by Philosopher's Beard at 3:16 PM PST - 30 comments

"Not only did the .30-30 go through, but this is you." Ballistics expert Paul Harrell demonstrates the stopping power of various objects. [more inside]
posted by dubold at 2:15 PM PST - 67 comments

"At Roc the Mic, Stargate carries on a glorious and disappearing New York tradition that stretches back to the Brill Building days of the late fifties and early sixties, when songwriting teams such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry cranked out hits for the top pop acts of the day; and further back still, to the nineteen-tens and twenties, when the Broadway-to-Sixth Avenue reach of West Twenty-eighth Street, known as Tin Pan Alley, for the sound of pianos coming from the upper floors, was the center of the music-publishing industry. With their managers, Blacksmith and Danny D., orchestrating demand, Stargate has become one of the very few writer-producers whom labels approach when they absolutely must have a hit single, or a “bullet,” as Hermansen calls it, to market an album with." The New Yorker - The hitmakers behind Rihanna
posted by beisny at 1:09 PM PST - 29 comments

This morning marked day two of marathon proceedings in what's likely the most momentous and politically-charged Supreme Court case since Bush v. Gore: the effort to strike down President Obama's landmark health care reform law. While yesterday was a sleepy affair of obscure technical debate, today's hearings targeted the heart of the law -- the individual mandate that requires most Americans to purchase insurance by 2014. With lower courts delivering a split decision before today, administration lawyers held some hope that at least one conservative justice could be persuaded to uphold the provision, which amortizes the risk that makes universal coverage possible. But after a day of deeply skeptical questioning by swing justice Anthony Kennedy and his fellow conservatives [transcript - audio], the mandate looks to be in grave trouble, with CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin going as far as calling the day "a train wreck" for the administration. But it's far from a done deal, with a third day of hearings tomorrow and a final decision not expected until June.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:55 PM PST - 372 comments

The Media Map: Who's Reading What And Where: [Forbes] We worked with Bitly and its data on millions of Web clicks to find the most influential media outlets in the country. This map shows which news sources are read and shared at above-average levels by state. Roll over and click on the media outlets below to see where they influence readers and which stories were big hits. Updated monthly to reflect the latest trends. More about the map.
posted by Fizz at 12:51 PM PST - 19 comments

What do John McCain, Rick Santorum, and George Voinovich have in common? They have all been seated at the Senate's candy desk throughout their careers. [more inside]
posted by Bukvoed at 12:48 PM PST - 35 comments

After a 4 year hiatus, memepool is back.
posted by metl_lord at 12:47 PM PST - 119 comments

So You Think You Can't Do That On Television? Interview with Geoffrey Darby, inventor of green slime and co-creator of a show that many 80's kids will remember.
posted by rodmandirect at 12:44 PM PST - 19 comments

Behind the scenes in the making of M.I.A.'s Bad Girls video. (Previously on MeFi)
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:30 AM PST - 41 comments

Docket Item 132-2 a.k.a NOM Desposition Exhibit 12 a.k.a "National Strategy for Winning the Marriage Battle" was unsealed yesterday along with many others and the Human Rights Campaign have been busy scouring the documents. [more inside]
posted by Talez at 10:17 AM PST - 45 comments

Ballet dancers of the Staatsballett Berlin at 1000 FPS, to the sound of Radiohead. Also: TimeTwist [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 10:11 AM PST - 13 comments

The GOP’s woman problem is that it has a serious problem with women. Frank Rich on George Stephanopoulos's unanswered question, how the Republicans have shifted to being the party of misogyny since the 70s, and why Mitt Romney would be just as bad as Rick Santorum.
posted by Artw at 10:01 AM PST - 157 comments

BrowserQuest: Mozilla's Massively Multiplayer HTML5 Experiment
posted by azarbayejani at 9:00 AM PST - 53 comments

Amalie Noether: The Mighty Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of
posted by jjray at 8:21 AM PST - 49 comments

Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Illuminated Manuscripts. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 7:40 AM PST - 53 comments

Bonus level unlocked: A deathmatch game of Goldeneye being played inside of the map for Kakariko village from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:22 AM PST - 15 comments

The Ethnic Aisle discusses race and multiculturalism in Toronto. Their current "issue" is about Hair. [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 7:08 AM PST - 3 comments

RGB is an exhibition by artist Carnovsky which layers primary colored images on top on one another with unexpected, disorienting, and often fascinating results. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:03 AM PST - 13 comments

Microworlds is the blog of biology student Daniel Stoupin, and he also has a photography website as well. His chosen subject is microphotography, especially of living things. Perhaps the best place to start is his latest post, where he uses fluorescent dyes to take pictures of a rotting flea embryo. Other favorites are shells of microscopic crustaceans, colorful plant seed fluorescence and mosquito larva in polarized light. He has also made a video, and explains the process here.
posted by Kattullus at 4:53 AM PST - 15 comments

Emotions ran high (video) as city and state leaders met to work out a deal to address Detroit's looming budget crisis. The threat of state imposition of an emergency financial manager has some residents fearful of the ulterior motives of state officials: [more inside]
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 1:53 AM PST - 26 comments

Ontario’s highest court has legalized brothels in a sweeping decision that condemned current prostitution laws for adding to the hazards of a highly dangerous profession.
posted by BEE-EATING CAT-EATER at 12:01 AM PST - 67 comments

Wikipaintings is a fantastic resource, a well curated database of the world's great paintings that will blow your mind. Click the logo in the top left corner for a collection of a random artist's work in chronological order. Their popular artists and popular artworks. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:45 PM PST - 25 comments

Presenting for your perusal: "The Conservative Teen", a new magazine designed to instill the right values in today's youth.
posted by reenum at 6:38 PM PST - 156 comments

In December 1974, there was a memorial service at St. James Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue for Louise Fitzhugh, author and illustrator of Harriet the Spy, the groundbreaking children's novel that has sold 2.5 million copies since its publication in 1964. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 6:25 PM PST - 45 comments

Pope Benedict XVI has revived many dormant style traditions and introduced a few fashion innovations of his own. Also, he often wears fanciful hats. Examples: A Sombrero, A camauro (camel skin hat of red wool or velvet with white ermine), a free baseball cap, a wide brim red cappello romano, (I.E. saturno), a Yarmulke (a little zucchetto), Mitra Pretiosa, Papal Tiara (there are many in existence) and so many more. A Time Magazine gallery. Also: Papal shoes & slippers. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 5:17 PM PST - 71 comments

MAIL SUPREMACY - How the Daily Mail Conquered England. 'In January, its Web arm, Mail Online, surpassed that of the New York Times as the most visited newspaper site in the world, drawing fifty-two million unique visitors a month. The Mail is the most powerful newspaper in Great Britain. A middle-market tabloid, with a daily readership of four and a half million, it reaches four times as many people as the Guardian, while being taken more seriously than the one paper that outsells it, the Sun. The Mail’s closest analogue in the American media is perhaps Fox News.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 4:15 PM PST - 61 comments

The Adjunct Project: Profs on Food Stamps(via) [more inside]
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 3:58 PM PST - 109 comments

For how long have you been an observer of New York dicks, and what inspired you to put them together in a book?
posted by latkes at 3:41 PM PST - 21 comments

In December 1974, New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh's front-page account (paywall) of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program documented their illegal domestic intelligence operations against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States. The article eventually prompted investigations by the Rockefeller Commission and the Church and Pike committees. "There have been other reports on the CIA's doping of civilians, but they have mostly dished about activities in New York City. Accounts of what actually occurred in San Francisco have been sparse and sporadic. But newly declassified CIA records, recent interviews, and a personal diary of [George H. White,] an operative at Stanford Special Collections shed more light on the breadth of the San Francisco operation." SF Weekly: "Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA doped San Francisco citizens with LSD." MK-ULTRA: Previously on Metafilter. (Via)
posted by zarq at 3:32 PM PST - 29 comments

On The Social Psychology of Flatulence
posted by empath at 12:51 PM PST - 88 comments

In the book version of The Hunger Games, the tributes Rue and Thresh from District 11 are described as having "dark brown skin." In the film version of The Hunger Games, Rue and Thresh are played by Amandla Stenberg and Dayo Okeniyi, who are both black. However, a surprising number of fans (presumably the same ones who complained when Idris Elba played Heimdall in Thor - previously) are upset that black people were cast in these roles rather than the white people they imagined. Hunger Games Tweets provides continuing coverage of whatever the hell these people were thinking.
posted by mightygodking at 11:16 AM PST - 308 comments

" Thus in today’s China one confronts the paradox of a communist regime that is at ideological loggerheads with left-leaning intellectuals, but which finds pro-Western, liberal intellectuals on the whole quite congenial." Richard Wolin is Dreaming In Chinese...
posted by artof.mulata at 10:37 AM PST - 12 comments

The mystery of Mallrats finally revelaed : was it really a sailboat?
posted by bonehead at 10:16 AM PST - 61 comments

Animator & copyleft activist Nina Paley sat down with a group of teenagers and asked them how they would prefer to support the artists they liked.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 10:03 AM PST - 67 comments

Exploring Cardiff's Roath Lock studios, home of Doctor Who, Casualty, Upstairs Downstairs and the Welsh language Pobol y Cwm. Oh yeah, and there's a trailer for Doctor Who series 7, in which Farscape fans will catch a glimpse of Ben Browder.
posted by Artw at 9:58 AM PST - 25 comments

Why Won't They Listen? Haidt diverges from other psychologists who have analyzed the left’s electoral failures. The usual argument of these psycho-­pundits is that conservative politicians manipulate voters’ neural roots — playing on our craving for authority, for example — to trick people into voting against their interests. But Haidt treats electoral success as a kind of evolutionary fitness test. He figures that if voters like Republican messages, there’s something in Republican messages worth liking. He chides psychologists who try to “explain away” conservatism, treating it as a pathology. Conservatism thrives because it fits how people think, and that’s what validates it. Workers who vote Republican aren’t fools. In Haidt’s words, they’re “voting for their moral interests.”
posted by shivohum at 9:57 AM PST - 52 comments

"Herman Cain's latest crazy ad has launched (so to speak), and features a bunny rabbit which represents 'small business' that is hurled into the air with a catapult and then blown to bits with a rifle. It's a follow-up to his goldfish snuff film."*
posted by ericb at 8:46 AM PST - 105 comments

In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of They Might Be Giants' album Apollo 18, a group of designers have made a collection of interactive fiction games based on each track of the album.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:19 AM PST - 58 comments

Mad Men is back. And so is Vulture with another of their always-enjoyable recaps.
posted by lohmannn at 7:47 AM PST - 464 comments

After three horses used in the production of Luck had to be euthanized due to injury, HBO decided to pull the plug on the horse racing drama. Perhaps for the first time since Eight Belles broke down following the running of the Kentucky Derby in 2008, the deaths and subsequent decision to cancel the show have again cast a national spotlight on the darker side of the US horse racing industry, a business “still mired in a culture of drugs and lax regulation and a fatal breakdown rate that remains far worse than in most of the world.”
posted by lovermont at 7:45 AM PST - 41 comments

Bo Xilai, former Party Secretary of Chongqing and current Politburo member, was recently sacked by Chinese leadership. He is well known for his economic success at growing Chongqing, and his flamboyant leadership style which included the revival of “Red Culture”[previously]. [more inside]
posted by HabeasCorpus at 7:42 AM PST - 16 comments

What is keif? More importantly, is it easier to produce it using techno, folksy guitar pop, violin rap, or with a chatty Canadian gabbing away?
posted by Meatbomb at 7:39 AM PST - 9 comments

10 Amazing Old Things That Still Work! [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:00 AM PST - 80 comments

Kefirpedia aims to be the authority of all things kefir-related on the Internet, using evidence-based research (not just hype!) and community collaboration for know-how and recipes.
posted by Deathalicious at 5:14 AM PST - 15 comments

The New York Times isn't known for trenchant sports analysis, but in this article, Mike Tanier throws down stats to back up the problem behind the Jet's Tebow acquisition: Tim Tebow, though a "gifted athlete," lacks passing mechanics.
posted by Gordion Knott at 4:56 AM PST - 77 comments

Dana Nieder explains how an ACC patent fight may substantially delay her daughter learning to speak. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 2:07 AM PST - 125 comments

Shoutmennonitenames.com generates Mennonite names (shouting not included, except for an exclamation mark). Does what it says on the well-worn tin passed down through the generations. [more inside]
posted by oneironaut at 12:01 AM PST - 47 comments

The Titanoboa commutes (more). The Titanoboa disco (more). The Titanoboa vs. T-Rex. Titanoboa: Monster Snake. previously.
posted by stbalbach at 11:59 PM PST - 3 comments

Artist Bas Van Oerle presents a series of propaganda posters for the 2012 Republican presidential contenders. Ron Paul For The Youth Vote. Fields of Santorum. Love Me Romney. Join The Cosmonewts.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 11:05 PM PST - 35 comments

In an act of social media blasphemy, Texas researcher Dean Terry has added an "Enemy" feature to Facebook.
posted by dunkadunc at 9:34 PM PST - 62 comments

Hairballs: Myths and Realities behind some Medical Curiosities (possibly NSFLunch) [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 8:26 PM PST - 51 comments

Yoga Breakdancing
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:57 PM PST - 30 comments

The Nakagin Capsule Tower (slyt) is a prime example of the uniquely Japanese architecture known as "Metabolism", as well as the main inspiration for Tokyo's famous Capsule Hotels. The most unique feature of this building style is the interchangeability of the individual units, supposedly to allow it to adapt to changes in density and lifestyle (although that plan hasn't exactly panned out). Local residents are calling for the tower to be demolished, although a group of architects are trying to preserve it as an architectural landmark [more inside]
posted by steamynachos at 5:41 PM PST - 14 comments

DriveABLE, is a driver testing program, primarily for seniors, implemented across Canada and in the United States and Australia. Questions have been raised about the lack of consistency and accuracy in the testing. With only a 15% pass rate, drivers are complaining about the unfamiliar technology (youtube - DriveABLE computer use demo) and the lack of services in rural areas, where a senior may have to drive several hundred kilometres, to complete the mandatory computer test. [more inside]
posted by what's her name at 5:21 PM PST - 55 comments

recto|verso is a place where the staff of F.A. Bernett Books showcase some of the more spectacular, interesting, unusual and puzzling items they have come across. Discoveries of note include: Both Sides of Broadway, Then and Now, a building-by-building sequential photographic survey of the most famous street in America. The most influential graphic arts publication of late-1920s Tokyo, Gendai Shogyo Bijutsu Zenshu. Felix Vallotton’s Reinvention of the Woodcut, credited by many art historians of his time (and ours) as having modernized and revitalized the form in Western art. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 4:31 PM PST - 5 comments

Cows being released from winter housing react to being let free in a meadow
posted by The Whelk at 3:47 PM PST - 168 comments

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is well-known for having been a child prodigy. A previously unknown composition of his, dated c. 1767, when he would have been 11 years old, (PDF of score) had it's premiere earlier this week. [more inside]
posted by bardophile at 2:48 PM PST - 31 comments

Director James Cameron is currently 32,160 feet underwater and descending further, solo, to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. [more inside]
posted by memebake at 2:24 PM PST - 198 comments

24 hours with designer Karl Lagerfeld "I don't like hot drinks, very strange. I drink Diet Coke from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed. I can even drink it in the middle of the night, and I can sleep." [more inside]
posted by insectosaurus at 2:13 PM PST - 68 comments

You may have heard that they made a movie of the The Hunger Games. While others discuss its dystopian vision of a barbaric future America, we will concern ourselves with something more important: the clothes. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 1:43 PM PST - 83 comments

For years, my self-education was stupid and wasteful. I learned by consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff's Notes. How inefficient! [...] What if we could compile a list of the best textbooks on every subject? That would be extremely useful.

Less Wrong, a community dedicated to rationality, is compiling a list of The Best Textbooks on Every Subject.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:59 AM PST - 47 comments

The internet phenomena of My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic [pre-vi-ous-ly] has been through a bit of a stir last month. Beloved fan character Derpy Hooves has become canon. And then her entrance was edited, much to the chagrin of fans. [more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim at 11:17 AM PST - 129 comments

HBO Documentary: Child of Rage: (1989) "Story of Beth, a six-year-old child who had faced the loss of a mother, physical abuse, and sexual abuse all before the age of 19 months. Both Beth and her younger brother Jonathan were put up for adoption. They were adopted by a minister and his wife. This unsuspecting couple quickly learned that something was extremely wrong with Beth. This terrifying and disturbing documentary traces Beth as she goes through therapy in Colorado. The video explains that Beth suffers from Reactive Attachment Disorder. [Via]."
posted by Fizz at 10:45 AM PST - 44 comments

Two year old William Stokkebroe clears the dance floor and impresses everyone with his jive.
posted by gman at 10:26 AM PST - 14 comments

Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi has died in Lisbon. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 10:13 AM PST - 9 comments

On Angela Davis.
posted by latkes at 9:26 AM PST - 10 comments

"Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?" [Vimeo] During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders set up a static camera in room 666 of the Hotel Martinez and provided selected film directors (inc. Spielberg, Godard, Fassbinder & Herzog) a list of questions to answer concerning the future of cinema. Each director was given one 16 mm reel (approximately 11 minutes) to answer.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:08 AM PST - 20 comments

Screenshots of Despair [more inside]
posted by pantsrobot at 8:41 AM PST - 23 comments

Movies as Code
posted by cashman at 8:23 AM PST - 19 comments

The Naked Rambler now in prison for 6 years for nudity Six years ago, Naked Rambler Stephen Gough's hike from Land's End to John O'Groats brought him media fame – and a prison sentence. Then another, and another, and… why has he been locked up ever since?
posted by novenator at 7:34 AM PST - 122 comments

I kept going out with the rescue workers and one day we came upon this scene that was so sad that the rescue workers gave me a vest to cross the police line. I shot the scene a bunch of different ways, but the way that worked best was just showing it from the front. These people were killed by one single bullet. The woman is far into her pregnancy. The hit man came in from the left-hand side of the car and fired a bullet into the man’s head when they were embracing and killed both of them.

The violence is really hard to show in a way that is humane. It is almost impossible to give any kind of dignity to the people that have died, because of how horribly they have been maimed. Taking pictures of those things, you feel like you are supporting what the narcos are doing because you are spreading out their message of horror. So I really became obsessed with making a picture that was intimate – while still showing violence – and encompassed humanity and dignity. I wanted to give these people a story.
posted by barnacles at 7:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Beautiful HD video of whirlpools flowing around rocks, courtesy of NASA and neatorama.
posted by mediareport at 6:51 AM PST - 10 comments

The last man to remember St Kilda. Norman John Gillies was five years old when he, and all the other residents, left the remote Scottish island of St Kilda in 1930. Fortunately, we still have photos and films of island life, including 1928's 'St Kilda, Britain's Loneliest Island' (part 1, part 2). (St Kilda on MeFi, previously and previouslier.)
posted by Catseye at 5:01 AM PST - 26 comments

Doomtree is a hip-hop collective from Minneapolis featuring Dessa, P.O.S., Sims, Cecil Otter and Mike Mictlan with producers Paper Tiger and Lazerbeak. [more inside]
posted by eyeballkid at 3:02 AM PST - 13 comments

What Happens When a 35-Year-Old Man Retakes The SAT?
posted by Sassyfras at 10:35 PM PST - 212 comments

Market Capitalization-to-GDP is an indicator described by Warren Buffet as "probably the best single measure of where [stock market] valuations stand at any given moment." Here is a historical graph of this indicator along with twenty other historical indicator charts covering the US S&P, Japanese Tokyo Stock Exchange and Indian Sensex indices. The indicators include P/E ratios and dividend yields. Also of note: which currencies are under or overvalued according to purchasing power parity.. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:13 PM PST - 16 comments

Bouldering is a climbing sport that requires no rope, only grip strength, chalk, a crash mat, and nerve. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:25 PM PST - 25 comments

One of the neater aspects of astronomy is that amateurs often make significant contributions to the field. A few nights ago Wayne Jaeschke found a strange cloud feature in his Mars images. He posted his findings to the site Cloudy Nights. It created a bit of a buzz there, as well as the wider media, (even MSNBC!). It has also piqued the interest of the pros. Researchers working with the Mars Thermal Emission Imaging System onboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft and the Mars Color Imager onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Observer are looking over their data to try to figure out exactly what it is they're seeing.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:13 PM PST - 18 comments

The mathematical theory behind shockwave traffic jams was developed more than 20 years ago using models that show jams appearing from nowhere on roads carrying their maximum capacity of free-flowing traffic - typically triggered by a single driver slowing down. After that first vehicle brakes, the driver behind must also slow, and a shockwave jam of bunching cars appears, traveling backwards through the traffic. The theory has frequently been modeled in computer simulations, and seems to fit with observations of real traffic, but had never been recreated experimentally until recently (PDF of SCIENCE). The authors also released video of their experiments which has since been posted to YouTube. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 8:01 PM PST - 42 comments

"Economy class syndrome" is a myth -- but stay away from that window seat. [more inside]
posted by dontjumplarry at 6:58 PM PST - 45 comments

Just a little over a year ago 20 million tons of debris were generated by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, much of that is now drifting eastward. [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 6:26 PM PST - 16 comments

"Why are small businesses such frequent targets? Because they offer hackers the easiest path to your financial information. In fact, security consultants say, there’s an entire underground industry built around extracting customers’ credit card numbers from retailers’ point-of-sale systems." Slate: Why it’s so easy for hackers to steal financial information from restaurants
posted by beisny at 5:43 PM PST - 20 comments

Deadmau5 makes a new artists's career on his live stream: starring deadmau5 and some dude called Chris. (SLYT; NSFW profanity)
posted by nickrussell at 5:17 PM PST - 14 comments

Virtual Heart Transplant Surgery [more inside]
posted by crunchland at 4:26 PM PST - 36 comments

The Legend of Korra - the sequel series to Avatar: the Last Airbender - is set to premiere on April 14. This weekend you can watch the first two episodes at Korra Nation.
posted by curious nu at 2:27 PM PST - 71 comments

The American Repertory Theater presents a musical by The Lisps about the Civil War, Ada Lovelace, and the Singularity, including such songs as Singularity, which is breathtakingly terrible but ever so catchy. [more inside]
posted by dmd at 1:45 PM PST - 23 comments

Rick Santorum's Dystopia of the Year 2014
posted by Artw at 1:40 PM PST - 122 comments

In the sixty-odd years since their composition, the Four Last Songs have acquired in many people’s minds an unassailable status as simply the most beautiful music known to them, to be listened to in a dimly lit room and a state of rapt meditation, surrendering to the extraordinary spell of profound, other-worldly calm that they cast. This is not surprising. They were, indeed, the last things of any significance that Strauss wrote, between May and September 1948, at the age of eighty-four. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 1:32 PM PST - 11 comments

How to Write Like a Scientist
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:03 PM PST - 67 comments

'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her 8th Grade Students
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:53 AM PST - 80 comments

Remembering Wernher von Braun on his 100th Birthday.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:49 AM PST - 85 comments

In honor of International Women's Day and Women's History Month, the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) is pleased to present a sampling of images documenting women scientists and engineers from around the world, most of whom were pioneers in their respective fields, or were the first women to receive advanced graduate degrees in their discipline (via). [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 11:14 AM PST - 3 comments

But this season, PBS chose to move Independent Lens and P.O.V. to a new time slot -- 10 pm, ET, on Thursday nights. This may not seem like such a big deal at first, until you know that on Thursday nights stations can broadcast any program they like in prime time, whether it's part of the PBS schedule or not. Many take the opportunity to offers viewers locally produced programs, British sitcoms or reruns of Antiques Roadshow. As a result, episodes of the independent documentary series can now be run anywhere local stations choose to fit them in (here in New York, WNET airs the films at 11 p.m. on Sundays) or maybe not at all.

Bill Moyers writes an open letter to PBS about scheduling changes which have ruined PBS as Tuesday night destination for documentary television.
posted by hippybear at 10:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Travel Posters for Lazy People.
posted by quin at 10:33 AM PST - 26 comments

The (Totally) Phantom Menace ... light sabre duelling techniques examined [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:27 AM PST - 64 comments

The GOP has released their sunnily-named Path to Prosperity Budget (PDF), offering it as a stark choice in the upcoming 2012 elections. Paul Ryan makes their case in their new video "The Path to Prosperity Budget: Your Country. Your Future. Your Choice." Conservatives argue for it. Liberals argue this is the death-knell for the middle class. Has the end-game arrived?
posted by Benny Andajetz at 10:20 AM PST - 41 comments

The Red Hook Criterium is "an unsanctioned race held at night featuring a fixed gear criterium and a 5km running race held over multiple laps of a short technical circuit. The field consists of elite athletes, track stars, amateur runners, professional cyclists, bike messengers, and urban cyclists." First held in 2008, the Crit has steadily gained momentum, recognition and exposure. In recent years it has spread to Milan (highlights, footage). The 5th running of the Red Hook Crit is being held tonight. Red Hook Crit website and promotional design by MeFi's own fidgets.
posted by nathancaswell at 9:27 AM PST - 8 comments

Ten Lessons from the Iraq War
posted by latkes at 9:21 AM PST - 86 comments

The Gallery of Default Anonymity What being nobody looks like all over the web.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:03 AM PST - 27 comments

Stranded dolphins saved by beachgoers. (video)
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 8:53 AM PST - 28 comments

The Dystopian Timeline to The Hunger Games [INFOGRAPHIC] .
posted by Fizz at 8:22 AM PST - 89 comments

VGJUNK looks at "Gonbee no I'm Sorry", a strange Japanese arcade maze game released in 1985 by Banpresto and Sega that mocked notoriously corrupt former Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei "Shogun of Darkness" Tanaka, who was convicted in 1983 of taking 1.8 million dollars from Lockheed Martin in exchange for letting them sell planes to the national airline.
posted by JHarris at 6:53 AM PST - 14 comments

Kate Beaton, on loss and home. [more inside]
posted by kagredon at 11:22 PM PST - 41 comments

Organized irreligion! This weekend , Washington, D.C. will be invaded by the voice of reason. A free rally featuring Tim Minchin, Paul Provenza, Richard Dawkins, Eddie Izzard, Adam Savage, James Randi, Bad Religion, and many others, in what is anticipated to be the largest gathering of non-believers in America.
"If we don't organize, we will be the only ones not organized. Religion will be organized. We won't be organized. That means we lose... and they win."
posted by markkraft at 11:17 PM PST - 462 comments

Where is the physician outrage? Metafilter's own jscalzi played host to an anonymous post by an outraged physician who put forth a five point plan for civil disobedience in the face of legislators demanding that physicians prescribe transvaginal ultrasounds to women who may choose to abort.
posted by ChrisR at 10:57 PM PST - 81 comments

Why iced coffee costs so much more than the hot stuff.
posted by reenum at 8:12 PM PST - 78 comments

Photo set: drugstore shelves (1970).
posted by jjray at 7:04 PM PST - 37 comments

Maria Dmitrienko, a member of the Kazakh national shooting team, won a competition in Kuwait. At the medal ceremony, the organizers played the fake Kazakh national anthem from the movie "Borat", which praises Kazakhstan for its potassium exports and claims that it has the cleanest prostitutes in the region. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:49 PM PST - 38 comments

The true story of a lost child who never forgot his home, a mother who never gave up hope, and google earth.
posted by Kerasia at 4:37 PM PST - 34 comments

Yung Jake, who also has a great song about datamoshing, drops a new track on internet fame as a means to acquiring internet fame. It appears to be accompanied by some sort of internetface http://e.m-bed.de/d that isn't loading. Maybe if you stopped clicking on the link it would work...
posted by zachhouston at 3:35 PM PST - 10 comments

Opeth's 'I Feel the Dark' juxtaposed with Dali/Disney's 'Destino', pairing a sound lush enough to match the visuals. [more inside]
posted by FatherDagon at 2:49 PM PST - 15 comments

We've discussed subblue/Tom Beddard and Mandlebulbs before, but two months ago L'Eclaireur Sévigné asked him to create a few animations for their 147-screen exhibition. And here are the hypnotic, terrifying results.
posted by The Whelk at 2:45 PM PST - 11 comments

In the late fall of 1965, lexicographer Frederic Gomes Cassidy dispatched a fleet of Word Wagons from a Madison, Wisconsin parking lot. His team of graduate students and volunteers, armed with Cassidy's 1,847-item questionnaire were attempting to compile and decipher all regional dialects and idioms found in America. Cassidy passed away in 2000, but colleagues continued on, and the fifth volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) has been completed. [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 2:41 PM PST - 18 comments

From Dan Lewis, the same guy who writes Now I Know, the daily e-newsletter of interesting stories ("Every morning, I share something interesting I’ve learned over the last few weeks. It began in June of 2010. As of January 1, 2012, 35,000 people are subscribed." Previously. Archives.), comes the nascent Fact and a Photo tumblr. Already, there's a picture of a swimming pig.
posted by not_on_display at 2:22 PM PST - 9 comments

Michael Mann's "Thief" is a film of style, substance, and violently felt emotion, all wrapped up in one of the most intelligent thrillers I've seen. - Roger Ebert [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 1:27 PM PST - 49 comments

Orbiter Autopsies "What NASA will learn from dissecting Space Shuttles Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour" before they transition into retirement. (From the May 2012 issue of Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine.)
posted by zarq at 1:10 PM PST - 13 comments

Humanity’s long war with the nefarious space-cat Kilrathi has been revived in the fan made Wing Commander Saga : The Darkest Dawn! [more inside]
posted by stratastar at 12:54 PM PST - 35 comments

The newly launched Roads & Kingdoms describes itself as an online journal of food, politics, music and travel [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:32 PM PST - 6 comments

If you’re elected president,” asked one guest at a 2007 hedge fund managers event for Obama, “what will you do to the taxes on the people in this room?” “I’ll raise them,” Obama fired back. The managers, who share social circles and an educational background with Obama, approved of his style. These days, however, the bloom is off the rose. In The Big Split, Alec MacGillis investigates the souring of a 20 year relationship between Democrats and high finance, and surmises that it's the administration's rhetoric more than its policy that has upset the masters of the financial universe.
posted by the mad poster! at 11:50 AM PST - 82 comments

Nadia Naffe describes herself as a former accomplice to James O'Keefe (oh so Previously) but last year filed a harassment claim against him, which was dismissed in December. Now she is telling all on her blog: [more inside]
posted by waraw at 11:20 AM PST - 53 comments

“A trio of girls set out to change the male-dominated environment of the Seven Oaks college campus, and to rescue their fellow students from depression, grunge and low standards of every kind.” After a 14-year absence, director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco) returns with Damsels in Distress (trailer on site), opening April 6 in New York and Los Angeles. The New York Times Magazine did a story on Stillman’s return on March 16. (Previously)
posted by Clustercuss at 10:39 AM PST - 51 comments

The Fungarium & The Millenium Seed Bank Partnership:

A Pair of 5-minute Documentaries on the Research Institutions at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. (Previously 1 , Previously 2)
posted by lemuring at 10:31 AM PST - 4 comments

Faux Loko
posted by josher71 at 10:04 AM PST - 82 comments

Näher an der Klassik (Closer to the Classical) is an advertising campaign for the Berlin Philharmonic which features macro photographs that turn the inner spaces of musical instruments into lovely, cathedral-like spaces.
posted by quin at 9:44 AM PST - 9 comments

Can your Partners in Health co-founder college president World Bank president do this?
posted by lukemeister at 9:00 AM PST - 36 comments

Not satisfied with his previous attempt at generating sonnets randomly, mefi's own moonmilk has created a twitter bot that searches for lines of iambic pentameter, and a site where the results are assembled into sonnet form. [more inside]
posted by kenko at 8:34 AM PST - 55 comments

By George by Maira Kalman [NYTimes.com] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:16 AM PST - 3 comments

The Sweatbox "the documentary Disney doesn't want you to see" (95-minute SLYT), was made when Sting wrote songs for "Kingdom of the Sun" and his filmmaker wife Trudie Styler got insider access to the production. What? You say there was no Disney movie "Kingdom of the Sun"? I meant "The Emperor's New Groove". Rarely has the decline of an Institution been better documented.
This may or may not be Disney property and may or may not be taken down any minute, but it has survived on YouTube for over 48 hours after getting blogged-about a dozen times.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:11 AM PST - 95 comments

Artist Doug Aiken's projection installation, Song 1 on the façade of the donut-shaped Hirshhorn Museum in DC opened last night. The work is a looped video installation of many people singing "I Only Have Eyes for You." It's very atmospheric and finally brings some art that enlivens the somewhat strange shape of the museum's exterior. I heard him speak and then got to see the installation. It's beautiful. If you're in DC definitely come down to the National Mall after dusk (projection runs nightly until midnight).
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 8:11 AM PST - 6 comments

Young the Giant's excellent cover of R. Kelly's Ignition (Remix) kicks off this season of A. V. Club's Undercover series in some style. The song has been covered extensively since it came out, in styles ranging from bedroom ukulele to ivy a capella to basement indie. It was also covered by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and inspired Dave Chapelle's pisstake. John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats has been a long-time fan, usually adding a minute of the song as a coda to his cover of The Boys Are Back in Town. Darnielle, and some friends, gave us 100 Reasons Why "Ignition - Remix" Is So Damned Great.
posted by Kattullus at 8:08 AM PST - 42 comments

To the Iranian people. To all the fathers, mothers, children, brothers and sisters. For there to be a war between us, first we must be afraid of each other, we must hate. I'm not afraid of you, I don't hate you. I don t even know you. No Iranian ever did me no harm. I never even met an Iranian...Just one in Paris in a museum. Nice dude. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 8:05 AM PST - 76 comments

Legendary Food Company Plans to Rebrand Itself
posted by Renoroc at 7:44 AM PST - 145 comments

In September 2011, Welshman Ian Neale, claimed to have grown the world's heaviest swede. This bold claim caught the eye of Snoop Dogg who invited him via youtube to attend his gig in Cardiff so they could chat about horticultural matters. [more inside]
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 7:12 AM PST - 47 comments

"The world is full of 'bad books'; not just uninteresting, or ill-informed, or morally repugnant books, but books that set out to present or defend positions that are insupportable in logic….Often these bad books become quite popular, and frequently gain a wider audience than good books on the same subjects. In discouraging my students from relying on such bad books, I began to wonder why they are popular." [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:05 AM PST - 133 comments

Hungarian designer Martzi Hegedűs has created a single typeface, titled Frustro, on the sole premise of making it impossible.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:02 AM PST - 21 comments

The Turkana Basin Institute and the Kenya National Museums are digitizing their fossil collections. Look around their virtual laboratory and collections and get up close and personal with some of paleoanthropology's most important fossils. There are over 20,000 specimens that are housed in the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi as well as in the laboratories of the Turkana Basin Institute to the east and west of Lake Turkana. These range in age from 28 million years to several thousand years in age and have been recovered over the past six decades of exploration of the fossil rich deposits around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:43 AM PST - 3 comments

How do I find Waldo with Mathematica?
posted by OmieWise at 6:15 AM PST - 10 comments

17 Vintage Comic Book Covers Where Superman is a Complete Sociopath.
posted by marxchivist at 5:57 AM PST - 40 comments

Bill Moyers' scathing 1987 special report on our secret government.(SLYT)(via)(trigger warning: pictures and video of dead bodies) It includes an in-depth look at the Iran-Contra Affair and much, much more. Note: sound cuts out for a couple of minutes during the intro because of copyrighted song. Sound returns around 3:20.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:23 AM PST - 19 comments

In the latest (ongoing) Economist debate (run Oxford-style), security expert Bruce Schneier and architect of the TSA Kip Hawley are facing off to respectively defend and attack the motion "This house believes that changes made to airport security since 9/11 have done more harm than good." Overview. Opening statements. Rebuttals. (Surprisingly cogent) comments from the floor.
posted by unSane at 5:20 AM PST - 32 comments

40 vintage European posters
posted by mippy at 5:17 AM PST - 9 comments

First there was the doomed cyborg Acoustic Kitty. Then the vaguely ominous man-outrunning robot cheetah. Now we have super stealth Robojelly, a robotic jellyfish.
posted by sunnichka at 9:10 PM PST - 17 comments

The Château de Marqueyssac is a 17th century chateau and gardens located at Vézac, in France. The chateau was built at the end of the 17th century on cliffs overlooking the Dordogne Valley. The original garden à la française featured terraces, alleys, and a kitchen garden surrounding the chateau. In the 1860s, the new owner, began to plant thousands of boxwood trees - today there are over 150,000 - and had them carved in fantastic shapes, many in groups of rounded shapes like flocks of sheep. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 5:45 PM PST - 12 comments

Last night, the founders of Geeklist and a female product manager got into a twitter fight about a video featuring their logo. A reporter for the Guardian Storified the whole fight and titled it "OH HAI SEXISM". Then, the entire internet got mad. The founders of geek list issued a "non-apology" apology. The founders Christian Sanz and Reuben Katz are now looking for redemption. [more inside]
posted by antheawatson at 5:20 PM PST - 827 comments

Frank Bruni (previously) announced in his blog column today that he has recently been diagnosed with gout. The New York Times' restaurant critic for years, he links his condition to a predisposition combined with his personal habits and his professional experiences with alcohol and fatty meats. He chronicled his food writing in his memoir Born Round. The American College of Rheumatology, PubMed, and The Mayo Clinic all provide factsheets on gout. Bruni wonders, "Why must it take something like [gout] for so many of us to pivot in a healthier direction?"
posted by knile at 3:37 PM PST - 65 comments

Push Stitchery Some stiched images are Not Safe For Work (but none the worse for all that) [more inside]
posted by stonepharisee at 3:03 PM PST - 9 comments

The World's Best Referee: Rob Smyth tells the story of referee Abraham Klein.
posted by hoyland at 3:00 PM PST - 12 comments

Cinavia DRM: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blu-ray’s Self-Destruction The latest Blu-Ray anti piracy technology uses audio watermarking to shut down unauthorised uses. Anandtech's Ganesh T S argues that it is a harbinger of doom. [more inside]
posted by Sebmojo at 2:40 PM PST - 83 comments

'HOME' an exhibition by Ian 'Kid Zoom' Strange In October 2011, after three years living in New York, artist Ian Strange [Kid Zoom] returned to Australia to create a major new installation work housed in Cockatoo Island's prestigious Turbine Hall. The exhibition featured a full-scale reproduction of his childhood home and a film documenting the violent destruction of three Holden commodores. This video documents what resulted.
posted by Freen at 2:29 PM PST - 15 comments

MIT's new laser camera can see around corners (excellent explanatory video included). [more inside]
posted by darkstar at 1:57 PM PST - 36 comments

What's it like to play Bach with synaesthesia?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:46 PM PST - 16 comments

Vernor Vinge is optimistic about the collapse of civilization
posted by Artw at 1:29 PM PST - 46 comments

Fresh tofu in Japan is far better than it is anywhere else, and the tofu in Kyoto is generally held to be the best in the country. This is generally attributed to the skill, refined court and/or temple-influenced culture and the quality of the local water. ... During my week in Kyoto, I was able to pursue one family business’s vision of what tofu should be from beginning to end. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 1:20 PM PST - 29 comments

The Loess Plateau in China’s Northwest is home to more than 50 million people. Centuries of overuse led to one of the highest erosion rates in the world and widespread poverty. Two projects (results) set out to restore the Loess Plateau. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 1:10 PM PST - 7 comments

Celebrities Read Tweets About Themselves (SLYT)
posted by zombieflanders at 1:08 PM PST - 19 comments

Cat Power performing Metal Heart live in 1998
posted by defenestration at 12:56 PM PST - 22 comments

Cathy's Requiem for a Dream - the novel, illustrated with panels from the Cathy comic strip. [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 12:44 PM PST - 14 comments

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
posted by chunking express at 12:38 PM PST - 83 comments

/dev/sigh :: user-contributed scenes from the sometimes frustrating world of software and web development.
posted by milquetoast at 11:23 AM PST - 43 comments

A great deal of poetry was written about the Great War, much of it by soldiers in the trenches. Two period books of World War I poetry and poets are The Muse in Arms and For remembrance, available in a variety of formats at archive.org. There is also The First World War Digital Poetry Archive which mostly has things from the most well-known authors, but many of these are available as scans of the original documents. (The interface is a little iffy on the DPA; click on a person, then use the search for "any poem" to get a full listing of what's available)
posted by curious nu at 11:19 AM PST - 9 comments

"The result feels like musicians threatening to become content-producers, churning out a steady stream of conversation topics and half-formed ideas without quality control."
The Tumblr trap: Is Internet culture turning musicians into content-producers?
posted by dunkadunc at 10:35 AM PST - 59 comments

A series circuit of 1 battery, 1 resistor, 3 switches, and 3 LEDs. What happens when you turn on each switch? [more inside]
posted by 0xFCAF at 10:05 AM PST - 90 comments

Since 2010, over 3,000 children throughout northern Uganda have come down with nodding disease, a degenerative neurological condition, reports CNN. [more inside]
posted by naturalog at 9:52 AM PST - 18 comments

Pop Culture Math: Artist Matt Cowan breaks down pop-culture icons into basic formulas. [more inside]
posted by quin at 9:43 AM PST - 11 comments

Last Saturday 23-year old professional soccer player Fabrice Muamba suffered cardiac arrest while playing in front of a packed stadium. The medical staff rushed to his aid, as did a cardiologist who happened to be in the crowd. Muamba's heart was stopped for 78 minutes, but he survived and seems to be making good progress. Here, the doctors involved tell their remarkable stories of the incident.
posted by philipy at 9:40 AM PST - 46 comments

Feminist banquet or confrontational gynocentrism? You decide. From 1974 to 1979 Judy Chicago orchestrated the creation of The Dinner Party, a collaboration with hundreds of artists, craftspeople and volunteers. Now permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum, this project has sparked controversy, analysis and discussion, and was considered quite shocking when initially unveiled. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 8:57 AM PST - 96 comments

Imagine one person in America directed Star Wars, the original Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes, Alien and Blade Runner -- basically, all the big sci-fi hits except Star Trek. In Japan, that man existed, and his name was Noburo Ishiguro. He directed Super Dimension Fortress Macross (which became the first part of Robotech), Space Battleship Yamato (called Star Blazers in the U.S.), the classics Super Dimension Century Orguss and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and more. Basically, he had his hand in almost all the major sci-fi anime of the '70s and early '80s except Gundam...

While many of his works were subjected to questionable translation practices (such as changing any mention of sake to "with water from a favourite spring on Earth" in Yamato) when they were adapted for Western audiences in the 1980s, the popularity of his works helped lay the foundation for anime fandom as we know it today.

On Wednesday, Studio Nue co-founder Haruka Takachiho reported that Noboru Ishiguro passed away at age 73.

(Via Topless Robot & Anime News Network)
posted by radwolf76 at 8:51 AM PST - 61 comments

"A space station is a serious place. We're doing serious research." Rovio and NASA further explore the classic avain-porcine rivalry (and microgravity) through a Space Act Agreement. Angry Birds: Space is launching today.
posted by obscurator at 8:38 AM PST - 20 comments

John Abbott plays metal covers on the piano. On the 20th March, he uploaded a 39 minute video of himself playing Mastodon's 2004 concept album, Leviathan, in its entirety. [more inside]
posted by knapah at 8:01 AM PST - 13 comments

A Corgi's-eye view of a hike in LA (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by Aizkolari at 7:49 AM PST - 24 comments

Why are software development estimates regularly off by a factor of 2-3? Scroll down a page to learn why writing software is like a horror hike from San Francisco to Newport Beach.
posted by storybored at 7:23 AM PST - 75 comments

The XKCD Holistic Browser allows you to type in a web address and get sent to one typed by someone else. (NB: Results may be NSFW or even outright harmful. Take suitable precautions.)
posted by jedicus at 6:54 AM PST - 98 comments

When artist Troy Gua wanted a new project to cheer himself up with, he hit on the idea of making a tribute to his favorite musician. Le Petit Prince, a 1/6 scale doll of The Purple One, was born.
posted by BoringPostcards at 6:14 AM PST - 19 comments

At the 2012 International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, several freestyle pizza dough throwers competed in the World Pizza Games including Japanese Kazuya Akaogi who took home the Gold Medal in Freestyle Acrobatics.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:01 AM PST - 11 comments

Has your garden been ravaged by the marauding squirrel hordes? Has your bird feeder been pillaged? Tired of shaking your fist at the neighbor children? Learn how to use Python to tap into computer vision libraries and build an automated sentry water cannon capable of soaking intruders.
posted by DU at 5:43 AM PST - 34 comments

The IMDB says of the Canadian-produced, early 90s Nickelodeon show Turkey Television: A series comprised entirely of short (several per episode) comedy sketches. Unfortunately practically nothing of the show survives on the internet today, other than two clips: the theme songs from the two formats of the show and a commercial showing off some archive clips. Page on the Classic Nick Wiki - Everything2 node [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 5:21 AM PST - 25 comments

The fugitive Malcolm Naden has been captured by police after a long drawn manhunt in the north of New South Wales. [more inside]
posted by Philby at 4:26 AM PST - 22 comments

"He is the kind of boy who is bound to be rather a problem in any school or community, being in some respects definitely anti-social." Alan Turing's school reports.
posted by verstegan at 3:23 AM PST - 34 comments

Jake Kelly is a Cleveland, OH, based comic and concert artist. One of many rock artists in the area, he is prominently known for his really great concert fliers, promoting upcoming shows at venues around town. Last year, he completed a collaborative project titled 10 Imaginary Movies, where he created fake movie posters with local artist John G. He has also created murals for a number of area locations including The Grog Shop, Melt Bar and Grilled, and the Arts Collinwood Community Center. [more inside]
posted by bwilms at 3:00 AM PST - 5 comments

Nipples at the Met: "A database of all the nipples on view in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Updated regularly
posted by vacapinta at 12:18 AM PST - 41 comments

Women in the bondage and kink scene are speaking out about sexual assaults in the community, and calling for change. Kitty Stryker, KinkyLittleGirl, Perverted Negress, and Maggie Mayhem share their experiences

A Field Guide to Creepy Dom (All links as likely as not to be NSFW)

posted by Blasdelb at 10:34 PM PST - 68 comments

Moments before the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in the small town of Padua, Minnesota was about to begin, a truck fire broke out at the end of the block. Fortunately, the all-volunteer firefighting crew from nearby Sedan, Minnesota was on hand to celebrate their 125th anniversary, and to raise money to pay for their new fire hall and truck. One of their members was set to drive the new fire truck in the parade, and the others were on a float, dressed in drag to entertain the crowd. Firemen in Drag Put Out Truck Fire.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:14 PM PST - 42 comments

Bonne Fête Job Dog is a comic about a dog with a job.
posted by Memo at 8:21 PM PST - 12 comments

So you're a senior and prom is approaching. The last big event of your high school career, and you don't have a date. What to do? Maybe use your Twitter account to ask Internet porn stars to go with you. Alas, it turns out your school district is the enemy of fun.
posted by Flannery Culp at 6:57 PM PST - 181 comments

Nature Valley Trail View is sort of a "street view" for 300 miles of hiking trails in Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Great Smokies National Parks.
posted by stbalbach at 6:34 PM PST - 8 comments

Supreme Court Expands Right to Counsel in Plea Bargains. In a legal landscape that has enforced a right to counsel for criminal defendants, but not, practically speaking, a right to effective counsel except in extreme circumstances (ie: when you can prove that but for the gross incompetence of your counsel, the outcome of the case would have been different) and where the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved through plea bargaining, these two cases may be hugely influential in increasing the rights of the accused.
posted by likeatoaster at 5:06 PM PST - 41 comments

Google now has street view of the Amazon basin.
posted by special-k at 3:38 PM PST - 32 comments

Is Boeing's 737 an airplane prone to problems? [single-page version here]
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:32 PM PST - 49 comments

White Out + Pen + Newspaper Photos and Captions = White-Out News.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:15 PM PST - 28 comments

60 years ago, two moments in musical history took place in Cleveland, Ohio: The first, being the original Moondog Coronation Ball, hosted by disc jockey Alan "Moondog" Freed; the event was hailed as the first ever rock concert, and continues in spirit with a commemorative anniversary performance featuring Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees, Sam Moore, and Creedence Clearwater Revisited. The second event was the subsequent riot which broke loose that evening, when a printing error on the venue's tickets caused twice the audience's standing capacity to be sold. Frustrated and impatient concertgoers surged into the building, which led to cancellation, a formal apology from Freed, and the cementing of the 50's music scene as dangerous and unruly.
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:49 PM PST - 5 comments

Enemies, A Love Story, an oral history of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert that first appeared in the premiere issue of The Chicagoan, has been published today as an eBook single by Now and Then Reader. Slate has a lengthy free excerpt, which includes an amusing anecdotal report that the two men began every taping with a game of patty cake. Writer Josh Schollmeyer, executive editor of Playboy, based the 25,000-word article on interviews with 36 participants and observers of the two men who "essentially invented televised film criticism." (Via)
posted by zarq at 2:43 PM PST - 24 comments

The AV Club's Todd Van der Werf enters the Dungeon "I’ve been at this for three days straight, and I need to start getting back to my everyday life, to start settling back into my real role as a TV critic with -3 dexterity. I go through the motions of playing the good guy, of standing in front of doors as we open them, in case they’re booby-trapped. This, of course, is how I end up getting splashed with copious amounts of acid, which begins to eat away at my health. (“It’s not a second-edition game unless there’s a room full of acid,” Brett says, and everyone agrees.) Instantly, I’m into it."
posted by Sebmojo at 2:18 PM PST - 52 comments

Bitches in Bookshops SLYT NSFW
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:28 PM PST - 64 comments

Could you run a marathon without training? [bbc.co.uk] "London Marathon entrants have a month of training left for what’s seen as one of the greatest feats of human endurance. Yet Irish twins Jedward claim they completed the Los Angeles marathon without any training. So is it possible to run one on a whim?"
posted by Fizz at 12:08 PM PST - 110 comments

Despised by the rock establishment which they assaulted with every turn, Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics were so far ahead of their time in so many ways it is hard to know where to begin. They synthesized punk and metal before it was cool to do so, used chain saws and other noise put through amplifiers, and their stage shows were second to none. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 11:05 AM PST - 44 comments

Space is Key: An evil little flash game. Press space to jump. That's it.
posted by rouftop at 10:47 AM PST - 58 comments

Chick-Fil-A is known as much for supporting anti-gay organizations as it is for its tasty chicken. Nevertheless, drag queen divas assure you it's okay to Chow Down (at Chick-Fil-A).
posted by Lou Stuells at 10:09 AM PST - 171 comments

Otters who look like Benedict Cumberbatch. Koalas who look like David Mitchell. Hedgehogs who look like Martin Freeman. Celebrities who look like mattresses abandoned on the streets of London E17.
(Previously.)
posted by genghis at 10:02 AM PST - 79 comments

32 all new episodes of: Trapped. In. The. Closet. (The Alien is back and It has brought friends along.)
posted by 0bvious at 9:50 AM PST - 36 comments

"The calculator itself is just over 250x200x100 blocks. It contains 2 6-digit BCD number selectors, 2 BCD-to-binary decoders, 3 binary-to-BCD decoders, 6 BCD adders and subtractors, a 20 bit (output) multiplier, 10 bit divider, a memory bank and additional circuitry for the graphing function." Yes, someone built a working scientific calculator, in Minecraft.
posted by jbickers at 9:44 AM PST - 46 comments

The Violin Maker: A brief look into the world of master luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz. [more inside]
posted by quin at 9:42 AM PST - 6 comments

How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick: "Now, in response to The_Quiet_Earth’s question about time-traveling marines, Erwin started typing. He posted his answer in a series of comments in the thread. Within an hour, he was an online celebrity. Within three hours, a film producer had reached out to him. Within two weeks, he was offered a deal to write a movie based on his Reddit comments. Within two months, he had taken a leave from his job to become a full-time Hollywood screenwriter." [more inside]
posted by marcusesses at 8:32 AM PST - 162 comments

Too Smart to Fail : "A résumé filled with grievous errors in the period 1996–2006 is not only a non-problem for further advances in the world of consensus; it is something of a prerequisite. Our intellectual powers that be not only forgive the mistakes; they require them. You must have been wrong back then in order to have a chance to be taken seriously today; only by having gotten things wrong can you demonstrate that you are trustworthy, a member of the team. (Those who got things right all along, on the other hand, might be dubbed “premature market skeptics”—people who doubted the consensus before the consensus acknowledged it was all right to doubt.)" —Thomas Frank, The Baffler
posted by enn at 8:23 AM PST - 44 comments

Darth Vader Tai Chi (SLYT)
posted by Deathalicious at 8:19 AM PST - 14 comments

Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack is the 10th anniversary revision of Mechaton, a fast-paced table-top game of giant robot combat. Giant robots made of LEGO! [more inside]
posted by Idler King at 7:53 AM PST - 12 comments

What do you get when you cross mundane daily life with Batman? Ordinary Batman Adventures (contains animated GIFs).
posted by fings at 7:37 AM PST - 19 comments

"From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex." (Teju Cole, The Atlantic)
posted by naju at 7:36 AM PST - 93 comments

Arrested for speaking out! When does an "open-palm pat on the shoulder" become assault? When it's the Vice President's shoulder, that's when. The Supreme Court of the United States (previously) will today hear arguments in the matter of Reichle v. Howards. [more inside]
posted by gauche at 6:48 AM PST - 39 comments

British high-street games retailer Game - who also own their once-rival chain, Gamestation - files for administration. After a tense few months involving supply chain issues and cutting prices to stay afloat, the options for purchasing physical games are dwindling, leaving the also-beleagured HMV, the music chain hoping to stay afloat by concentrating on gaming, and the all-powerful supermarkets.
posted by mippy at 5:58 AM PST - 25 comments

Incredible Whale Encounter - Mother Gray Whale Lifts Her Calf Out of the Water (SLYT)
posted by merelyglib at 11:44 PM PST - 76 comments

"Fahkin' hate green screen. Pay significant amounts of money never to do it again. You cannot fake adrenaline." - The man, the legend, Jason Statham.
posted by Artw at 7:45 PM PST - 94 comments

The Sydney Harbour Bridge - the widest, although not the longest, long-span bridge in the world - has turned 80. [more inside]
posted by malibustacey9999 at 6:46 PM PST - 25 comments

With the number of LSAT test takers in sharp decline, has the law school tuition bubble finally burst?
posted by reenum at 6:41 PM PST - 77 comments

Ambient bus arrival monitor from hacked Linksys WRT54GL. Transport for London has a wonderful service called Countdown that can give live bus arrival times. For example, here's a page showing live buses passing No. 10 Downing St. Underlying this is a simple JSON API that, while not public, seems to be usable by the average programmer. So with its details deciphered (hardly hard since the web site uses the API) John Graham-Cumming set about building an ambient bus monitor into a model London bus. The idea is to glance at the model bus and see the times of the next two real buses you're likely to want to catch, and know when to leave the house.
posted by netbros at 4:01 PM PST - 35 comments

The Jimmy McNulty Gambit: Joseph Kony, Foxconn, and "The Wire" [more inside]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 3:26 PM PST - 46 comments

TIGsource is a blog about indie video games that also has a very active forum community of both amateur and professional indie game designers/programmers/artists. About two months ago one of the forum members (Daid) whipped up a tool to display the art images of a particular thread so he could find something, and it turns out it's a pretty great thing just to browse for its own sake, which you can do here. Updated once a day and, obviously, image intensive. [previous tigsource mentions]
posted by curious nu at 2:53 PM PST - 5 comments

Hebrew University in conjunction with the California Institute of Technology and Princeton University Press are in the process of digitizing and releasing on the Internet Albert Einstein's personal letters, academic correspondence, love letters, and scientific manuscripts.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 2:41 PM PST - 6 comments

Is there nothing a Wii controller can't do? YouTube tutorial in 14 parts DIY human bird-wings . [more inside]
posted by hortense at 2:37 PM PST - 122 comments

You're bummed that you're one of many who couldn't get tickets to the eight concerts of eight full albums in eight days at the Museum of Modern Art. Let DJ Food console you with a month of posts dedicated to Kraftwerk, including old and rare pictures and graphics, and six hours of songs that cover, sample, or are inspired by Kraftwerk, and even how to play Kraftwerk songs on your Casio pocket calculator. If you just want to hear Kraftwerk do their thing, here are three ^{(incl. tracklist)} live sets ^{(partial tracklist)} from recent years ^(tracklist). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:01 PM PST - 19 comments

The United Stated Geological Survey has finished a six-year effort to map the surface of Jupiter's moon Io. [more inside]
posted by Quonab at 1:32 PM PST - 31 comments

The Overlook Hotel: "Ephemera related to Stanley Kubrick's Masterpiece of Modern Horror, The Shining."
posted by kirkaracha at 1:30 PM PST - 44 comments

(Monsters) do so best when they believe in themselves. Author and academic China Miéville discusses prose style, weird fiction and the pratfalls of imbuing monsters with "meaning." [more inside]
posted by joechip at 12:43 PM PST - 63 comments

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has just opened a new exhibition The Art of Video Games. If you're in DC, it's up until the end of September and then will be traveling to other museums.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 11:55 AM PST - 33 comments

Iron Lady lost in Russian translation. [Guardian.co.uk] Speaking to a crowd of supporters, Margaret Thatcher, as played by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, explains what she would do as prime minister: "Crush the working class, crush the scum, the yobs."
posted by Fizz at 11:55 AM PST - 25 comments

Frida Kahlo produced art that was self-reflecting — 55 of her 143 known paintings were self-portraits. A cache of her 6,500 personal photographs was unsealed in 2007, and a small selection of those -- 259 total images -- are now on display in an exhibition entitled "Frida Kahlo: Her Photos," at the Artisphere in Arlington, VA until March 25th. Images: Washington Post, WJLA and NPR. PBS: Interview with exhibit curator Pablo Ortiz Monasterio. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:46 AM PST - 8 comments

In the wake of Louis C.K.'s tremendously successful experiment (previously 1, 2), Aziz Ansari of Parks and Recreation fame has released his own self-produced comedy special, "Dangerously Delicious," straight to fans and DRM free.
posted by paradoxflow at 11:12 AM PST - 50 comments

Chuck Jones draws and discusses Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote and Pepe le Pew and Warner Bros. and the producer Eddie Selzer (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:00 AM PST - 14 comments

Will the Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up? (SLYT, but incredible)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:44 AM PST - 132 comments

What animates a sushi master? What drives someone to be so focused, to be a god of small things?
posted by Trurl at 9:55 AM PST - 61 comments

"Nearly every second, a user on Twitter tweets about what time it is." Chirpclock makes use of this as an interesting way of keeping track of the time.
posted by quin at 9:40 AM PST - 36 comments

The Realm of Blade: Why Nintendo Will Always Rule.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:16 AM PST - 35 comments

4x5 Kodachromes from the American war effort in 1942.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:01 AM PST - 31 comments

Brendan Fitzpatrick took x-ray photographs of flowers that can be magnified by clicking on them.
posted by gman at 8:33 AM PST - 11 comments

Shit Men Say to Men Who Say Shit to Women on the Street, a project by Stop Street Harassment and Meet Us On the Street for International Anti-Street Harassment Week (which runs through the 24th). [more inside]
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 8:04 AM PST - 196 comments

"Andrea Yates' story tracks so many of the themes we talk about all the time today. The role of religion in family life. The cognitive dissonance of so many marriages. Lingering stigmas about mental illness, especially as they relate to postpartum depression. The Yates trial was a big deal 10 years ago — even though it was overshadowed by the fallout from 9/11." The Atlantic looks back at the Andrea Yates case and how she's doing now.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:25 AM PST - 141 comments

Who wants to be in a spelling bee? Tricky and difficult are neither, but fiendish is a way to spend too much time. It does have quite a few words adopted into English, but everyone should know how to spell burrito.
posted by freshwater at 6:59 AM PST - 57 comments

"The Secret Gestural Prehistory of Mobile Devices is cultural anthropology. It seeks to recover those moments of intuitive prehensile dexterity, when the famous and the ordinary alike felt the unconscious desire to occupy their hands for an as yet unknown purpose. Like Roy Neary's obsession with the image of Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), this gesture was vague, uncanny and compelling. It is the intimation in images of a gestural second nature to come." [more inside]
posted by taz at 5:50 AM PST - 16 comments

"This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about," Zimmerman told dispatchers. The dispatcher, hearing heavy breathing on the phone, asked Zimmerman: "Are you following him?" "Yeah," Zimmerman said. "Okay, we don’t need you to do that," the dispatcher responded.

On February 26, 17 year-old Trayvon Martin was killed by a 28 year-old man named George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Police did not arrest Zimmerman; under Florida's Stand Your Ground law Zimmerman was, according to the local police, acting in self-defense as Martin attacked him in his role as neighborhood watch captain. However, this is not the story that emerges from newly released 911 tapes - rather, the picture that emerges is of Zimmerman as aggressor and Martin as a scared kid, trying to run away. Ta-Nehisi Coates has been writing about the case, and now the FBI and Department of Justice are now investigating. Previously.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:53 AM PST - 1486 comments

Lego print ads with minimalist characters. Galleries of previous ads (there's some overlap in these older galleries).
posted by ersatzkat at 3:38 AM PST - 16 comments

"I just love Old Milwaukee. That’s my official answer." Over the past few months, Will Ferrell has been creating local-market commercials for Old Milwaukee beer. [more inside]
posted by roll truck roll at 11:15 PM PST - 68 comments

Classic seafood and fish recipes, from a time when it was cheap and plentiful, and often cured in salt.
posted by Brian B. at 9:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Stereographic drawings from Dain Fagerholm.
posted by unliteral at 9:07 PM PST - 21 comments

OneTinyHand.com - Not safe for sanity.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:15 PM PST - 44 comments

Live in America? Find out if your house will be underwater in 2100 and plan your sandbag purchasing well in advance.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:53 PM PST - 46 comments

How TV show titles are picked, aka why "Friends" wasn't named "Across The Hall".
posted by reenum at 6:19 PM PST - 70 comments

Substituting effort for ability turns out to be a winning formula for underdogs in all walks of life: Malcolm Gladwell on how unconventional strategies and effort can beat the odds.
posted by latkes at 6:18 PM PST - 53 comments

Auroras Underfoot is a short documentary about auroras by NASA, which uses high-definition images taken by International Space Station science officer Don Pettit of aurora from orbit. Pettit writes about the difficulties of taking photographs from orbit and other subjects on his blog.
posted by Kattullus at 5:03 PM PST - 5 comments

Why don't you like Community? "Community isn’t a hit under the usual means, but it’s a big fish in a new TV comedy ecosystem, one where the way you make money isn’t by attracting the largest audience, but the most passionate one. " A point-counterpoint from the Onion AV Club.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:32 PM PST - 127 comments

NEO Scavenger is a hex-based, turn-based scavenging/survival/mystery RPG. Dig through abandoned buildings! Punch a looter to death! Get eaten by a Dogman! Contract cholera! Die of cholera! Flash-based browser game, under active development; the current demo lets you explore the landscape and play with the game's mechanics at length. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 4:25 PM PST - 23 comments

About 2 miles into the park... things start to get strange. A forbidding padlocked wrought-iron gate, surrounded by a low lying stone wall sits nestled on the edge of the trail.... Strange rusted debris starts to appear on the side of the paths. What looks like an old water filtration system, broken pieces of farm equipment, half buried sinks, strange concrete slabs with graffiti . A lovely little steam appears and makes delightful background noises, lizards and birds scatter about your feet. And then you see it. A burned-out overgrown concrete building completely covered with graffiti. Cartoon of Hitler? Check. Declaration of undying teenage love? Check.... The bunker of the building is exposed and filled with trash; a metal cage sits menacingly in the corner, and outside a series of stone steps wind up to what seems to have once been a sustenance garden. The steps then continue all the way to the top of the canyon (3,000 steps in all) and ghosts of America Nazis patrolling the wilds fill your head. Baby, we aren't at the Grove anymore... We are at the Los Angeles Nazi Compound! Well, it's actually the ruins of a small community built by Nazi sympathizers, in the hills outside of greater Los Angeles. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:40 PM PST - 48 comments

Learning his return to Earth from the International Space Station might be delayed for possibly up to two months, NASA astronaut Ron Garan sings the blues from the Soyuz spacecraft that will take him home. Eventually. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:11 PM PST - 59 comments

“I bought into this idea for a long time that it was superior labor productivity that caused most manufacturing job losses,” said Rob Atkinson, of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. “Then I began to dig into the numbers.” An upcoming report argues that the price savings that U.S. factories have realized from outsourcing have incorrectly shown up as gains in U.S. output and productivity. This bias may have accounted for as much as half of the growth of U.S. manufacturing output from 1997 to 2007. (sl Wash. Post link to print version so everyone can read it.)
posted by Benny Andajetz at 1:04 PM PST - 27 comments

A beautiful proposal from one hockey fan to another. Unfortunately, the first commentator felt the need to rain on their parade... (SLJezebel) [more inside]
posted by Slackermagee at 12:09 PM PST - 32 comments

Listen to the Bug Bytes episode Scrub a Dub Bug, then head on over to youtube where you can see various insects cleaning themselves: Lacewing, bumblebee, probably a bee, praying mantis, parasitic wasp
posted by oonh at 11:47 AM PST - 8 comments

Alphabet Soup: Restaurant names are becoming more complicated and enigmatic. Christopher Hirst asks the experts what’s going on.
posted by Fizz at 11:43 AM PST - 52 comments

A Fascinating Representation of Earthquake Data From 2011 (SLYT)
posted by 4ster at 11:12 AM PST - 28 comments

French hospitals have rooms where medical students (internes) can rest, lunch and vent off steam between calls, but these salles de garde are not your usual staff room. They are brightly decorated with lively mural paintings showing the current internes, the doctors and other hospital staff engaging in very (very) explicit sex acts. The frescos are done by the students themselves or commissioned from local artists, and are replaced on a regular basis. Here are some choice examples (sorted by hospital): Ambroise Paré, Cochin, Widal, Louis Mourier, Saint-Louis, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Institut Gustave Roussy (ibid) (ibid), Lariboisière, Robert Debré, Saint-Cloud, Tenon. Many other images can be seen on the website of an association of former internes. [Totally NSFW unless you're a medical student training in France] [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 10:40 AM PST - 200 comments

"A futuristic buddy cop movie costarring Whoopi Goldberg and a dinosaur? How could that possibly go wrong?" Theodore Rex: The Best of the Worst. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 9:43 AM PST - 103 comments

Some have said the protest song is dead. However UK rapper Plan B looks set to change that by releasing 'ill Manors' raging against the demonisation of the young urban poor. Ill Manors is also the name of a film Plan B had directed under the name of Ben Drew. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:40 AM PST - 26 comments

Astronomer’s Paradise - A beautiful time-lapse video of Paranal Observatory in action.
posted by quin at 9:33 AM PST - 6 comments

You'll never guess which State is least corrupt in the USA!
posted by Renoroc at 8:22 AM PST - 110 comments

Although officially abolished in 1981, slavery still exists in Mauritania. CNN Special Report includes a twenty-two minute video and offers a look inside a country where an estimated 10 - 20% are still enslaved.
posted by gman at 5:49 AM PST - 59 comments

UK Prime Minister David Cameron unveils plan to lease motorways in England. David Cameron will clear the way for a multibillion-pound semi-privatisation of trunk roads and motorways as he announces plans to allow sovereign wealth funds from countries such as China to lease roads in England. Guardian liveblog.
posted by panaceanot at 5:36 AM PST - 127 comments

Role Playing Game pioneer Mohammed Al Rahman Barker died last week (PDF). Inspired through playing dungeons and Dragons, M. A. R. Barker created what is possibly the world's second RPG, Empire of the Petal Throne, set in the world of Tekumel, a world he would continue to keep building for the rest of his life. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 5:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Having Twins With a Surrogate — in India
posted by wondrous strange snow at 5:20 AM PST - 29 comments

Rambo Amadeus - Euro Neuro , Montenegros rapping donkey-riding entry to the 2012 Eurovision Contest. "Euro skeptik, analfabetik, try not to be hermetic. Euro Neuro don’t be skeptik, hermetic, pathetic, analfabetic forget old cosmetic you need new poetic, estetic eclectic, dialectic."
posted by dabitch at 1:27 AM PST - 61 comments

Attacking the Washington, D.C. Internet Voting System (PDF). "When we inspected the terminal server’s logs, we noticed that several other attackers [from Iran, New Jersey, India, and China] were attempting to guess the SSH login passwords." J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, describes how thoroughly he and his team were able to penetrate a pilot Internet voting system run by the District of Columbia, as part of an open public test in 2010. An earlier report on the attack. Via comp.risks. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 12:43 AM PST - 56 comments

Neil Gaiman writes a poem about nudity (in collaboration with Olivia De Berandinis). Katie West responds. Neil approves. [consider the entire post NSFW] [more inside]
posted by nadawi at 10:35 PM PST - 83 comments

Several tablet and smartphone LEDs, at 80x magnification, including the new iPad (3), the Galaxy Nexus, and the Nintendo 3DS.
posted by ignignokt at 8:34 PM PST - 36 comments

Turkish football fans have probably kept many flare companies in business over the years, but when the Turkish FA banned flares from stadiums, their brand of pyromaniac fun seemed to be over. The fans of Super Lig club Eskisehirspor had other ideas, though. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 6:58 PM PST - 39 comments

In Mexico, extortion is a booming offshoot of drug war. 'From mom-and-pop businesses to mid-size construction projects to some of Mexico's wealthiest citizens, almost every segment of the economy and society has been subjected to extortion schemes, authorities and records indicate. Even priests aren't safe. Extortionists have shut entire school systems, crippled real estate developments, driven legions of entrepreneurs into hiding or out of the country.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 6:32 PM PST - 32 comments

From Japan, a way to rapidly cool down your car on a hot day. (SLYT)
posted by reenum at 3:55 PM PST - 108 comments

'These plants, native only to Sumatra, bloom very infrequently (only 140 times in cultivation since 1889) and then only for one or two nights before collapsing. Until it opens, there’s no noticeable odor. After that there’s little doubt where the name “Corpse Flower” comes from.'
Tonight, Cornell University's Titan Arum is expected to bloom. Live feed here.
(previous blooms on the blue)
posted by womprat78 at 2:54 PM PST - 49 comments

On June 3, 1961, a poor drifter named Clarence Gideon was seen getting into a cab with a bottle of wine, some smokes, and some cash in his pockets as he left the Bay Harbor Pool Room. Police had been called to investigate a broken cigarette machine and promptly found and arrested Gideon. Unable to afford an attorney and forced by the trial judge to represent himself, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. After having his petition for a writ of Habeus Corpus denied by the Florida Supreme Court, he petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court. 49 years ago today, the court ruled unanimously in his favor, setting a lasting, fundamental precedent. His case was sent back down to Florida, and with proper representation, he was acquitted.
posted by disillusioned at 2:39 PM PST - 51 comments

Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride is a 75 minute film documenting Hunter S. Thompson's life and death, focussing mainly on his relationships with Hollywood celebrities and other public figures. In 8 parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
posted by hippybear at 1:18 PM PST - 15 comments

Blogger-writer Andrew Sullivan proudly attended Obama's latest state dinner for Cameron with his husband, in an open display of growing acceptance of same-sex marriage possibly by the powers-to-be. Michael Shaw's always-insightful BagNews (but not MS himself in this post) notes that there were 3 bearded men in the photograph.
posted by growabrain at 12:17 PM PST - 59 comments

Build Your Own Little Free Library. Check out some others. These too. The scoop and the FAQ. "Question #1: Won't People steal the books? No. You can't steal a free book. And if you have a good steward and lots of active users, eventually someone who tries to "steal" books will realize that it's not a good thing to do."
posted by storybored at 11:36 AM PST - 54 comments

Amazing macro photos of ants "at work" and "at play." There are many, many more photos here. My favorite is the weightlifting ant. Ants are incredibly strong for their size, as this amazing picture of an ant holding a snail shows.
posted by desjardins at 11:09 AM PST - 30 comments

Record Shops is a new web site that's attempting to list all record shops world wide. Allows you to rate/review shops you're familiar with and scope out the scene in places you're travelling to.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 10:36 AM PST - 34 comments

W. C. Fields appeared in the Earl Carroll Vanities in 1928. George Mann, part of the dance team of Barto & Mann, was on the same bill, and captured Fields in The Mormon's Prayers.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:22 AM PST - 13 comments

Surfing at Byron Bay: Jorgelina "Lina" Reyero shows off the beauty of Wategos Beach at Byron Bay, Australia with a camera mounted to her surfboard.
posted by quin at 9:31 AM PST - 38 comments

In June 1979, I left Paris, returning home to San Francisco without saying farewell to Barthes. Why advertise my failure? I left Paris without fulfilling my reason for coming. His letter arrived in October. Barthes explained that he was retiring from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes at the end of the year. If I wished to complete my thesis under his direction, then I would have to have it written and in his hands by the 15th of December. No extension was possible. The date was a deadline. "A vous de jouer," he wrote. "Your move."

- Deadline [pdf] by Stewart Lindh, Roland Barthes' last doctoral student, is an account of how he wrote his Ph.D. thesis.
posted by Kattullus at 9:31 AM PST - 28 comments

Included in this month's Patch Tuesday was MS12-020, which is a remote exploit in Microsoft's widely deployed Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Microsoft projected an exploit would be out 'within a month', but a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) appeared on a Chinese website within a few days. Professionals are concerned. The discoverer of the vulnerability noted that the PoC included the exact packet he had crafted to help Microsoft understand he issue; this points to a leak in the MAPP early vulnerability sharing program. A full remote exploit isn't out yet, but is expected soon.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 9:20 AM PST - 33 comments

Honeybees are responsible for pollinating 1/3 of all our food crops, and represent 80% of all insect pollination. But honeybees have been dying off in huge numbers in the last few years. We've discussed Colony Collapse Disorder here before, but now scientists may have found the cause.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 7:45 AM PST - 87 comments

Punks Not Dead.... but it can get you killed. Punk rock in oppresive regimes.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:28 AM PST - 8 comments

Welcome to the world of Britain's working poor. The Rowleys belong to a section of society not much mentioned in ministerial and media dispatches. They are neither the very wealthy affected by the 50p tax nor the "squeezed middle" expressing anxiety about child benefit and this week's budget; nor are the Rowleys representative of the long-term unemployed or one of the 120,000 "troubled families" in which the government is investing £448m over the next three years. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 5:34 AM PST - 105 comments

Alex Chilton (of the band Big Star) died two years ago today. Here's a choir singing Big Star's song "Thirteen."
posted by BoringPostcards at 12:07 AM PST - 26 comments

John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian immigrant to the United States and later accused and convicted of serving in the Nazi SS as a concentration camp guard, has died.
posted by downing street memo at 9:56 PM PST - 40 comments

Spaceships that became other spaceships: The Millennium Falcon, The Colonial Viper, The Eagle Transporter - from the blog of Gavin Rothery, visual effects designer on Moon. Previously.
posted by Artw at 9:52 PM PST - 33 comments

Glen Hansard meets Van Morrison [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 9:08 PM PST - 15 comments

Hot, hot, hot new PROMETHEUS trailer! It looks to me that Ridley Scott has returned Paul W.S. Anderson's favors and gotten Event Horizon right, this time. Enjoy!
posted by vhsiv at 8:06 PM PST - 294 comments

Mass Effect 3, a blockbuster video game (previously: 1, 2), and no stranger to controversy, is encountering controversy of a different sort over the series ending. Some fans feel it is incomplete and lacks closure, over 90% by some polls. It opens up interesting questions, such as: how are video games different than other media? Do consumers of video games have a reasonable right to ask for another ending, or is it akin to asking for modifications to the Mona Lisa? Many spoilers inside. [more inside]
posted by brool at 6:27 PM PST - 247 comments

O'Brien is tryin' to learn to talk Hawai'ian / To his Honolulu Lou / He's sighin' and cryin' / And all the time he's tryin' / Just to say "I love you true" / He's sighin' and lyin' in Irish and Hawai'ian / To his wife and Lulu, too . . Meanwhile, another gent from the Emerald Isle was indulging in blissful fantasy: Sure the shamrocks were growing on Broadway / Every girl was an Irish colleen / And the town of New York was the county of Cork / All the buildings were painted green / 'twas only an Irishman's dream. Happy St. Patrick's Day! [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:58 PM PST - 3 comments

Lil B Loopkicks Camp 2011 Sampler | Brandon "Lil B" McCuien (born April 4, 1990) is a Street Tumbler from Little Rock, Arkansas. He started cheering when he was 7 and is now currently a cheerleader in Garland, Texas. In July 2010, he showed that he had taken an interest to freerunning by releasing an outdoor freerunning sampler. | Team Loopkicks is a martial arts demonstration team that promote the art of sport karate and tricking which is a combination of kicks, flips, and twists
posted by nickyskye at 2:03 PM PST - 21 comments

Hailed as heroes in Mexico for fighting with and defending the country against American invasion and reviled as traitors in the US for desertion, about 50 Irish immigrants were hung en masse after defeat in the Mexican-American War. A musical collaboration by The Chieftains, Ry Cooder and Latino musicians tell the history of the 'San Patricios'. (Related NPR story) For more background on the San Patricios, the fascinating documentary Saol John Riley, part 1 and part 2 follows Kerry singer songwriter Charlie O'Brien as he revisits sites associated with Patricio leader John Riley to discover the revolutionary hero's fate. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 1:54 PM PST - 24 comments

The Tiny Hippo
posted by misha at 12:58 PM PST - 38 comments

"It was hot as blazes as we tore through the south side, pulling up at lights all the people laughing at the white kids doing their little dance in the car." John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats performs 'The Sign,' by Ace of Base, interspersed with a story about the song and hand-signal dancing.
posted by kaibutsu at 12:08 PM PST - 29 comments

Tom Monaghan had a dream: To create a law school and surrounding community that would adhere strictly to Catholic values. Things have not gone according to plan. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 10:37 AM PST - 102 comments

Brooke Shaden is an LA-based fine-art photographer. (Note: none of the directly linked images are NSFW but there is some fine-art nudity in the photostream.) [more inside]
posted by mstokes650 at 10:28 AM PST - 14 comments

Design Decoded, a new blog on Smithsonian.com, kicks off with a seven part series on the century-long process behind creating and marketing the perfect citrus. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:37 AM PST - 10 comments

Parahawking in Nepal: beautiful footage of paragliders working with raptors to find thermals. [more inside]
posted by quin at 8:59 AM PST - 11 comments

Happy St. Patrick's Day, MetaFilter!
posted by jason's_planet at 8:51 AM PST - 37 comments

Fans of BBC series Planet Earth will once again be thrilled by the power of nature in HD as Discovery Channel airs the new series Frozen Planet, made by the BBC Natural History Unit, which created the original series. Entertainment Weekly has a lengthy interview with the series producer and director about Frozen Planet and the making of the series. The series premieres on Discovery Channel on March 18 at 8pm.
posted by hippybear at 8:28 AM PST - 33 comments

Welcome to the Sex Nerd Sandra podcast! [more inside]
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:00 AM PST - 10 comments

What is a fractional dimension?
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:39 AM PST - 62 comments

"The Detroit metropolitan area is covered with freeways. Ever freeway you could possible imagine has been built. And they have solved the problem that they identified, which was congestion. The city of Detroit doesn’t really have a problem with congestion anymore. That’s the least of their problems". How demolishing freeways is reviving American cities. [via][bonus]
posted by unSane at 6:00 AM PST - 83 comments

Extracts from Escape From Camp 14 - How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp. There was torture, starvation, betrayals and executions, but to Shin In Geun, Camp 14 – a prison for the political enemies of North Korea – was home. Then one day came the chance to flee…
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:56 AM PST - 25 comments

So just how do you translate the death metal growl to sign language? (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 5:07 AM PST - 42 comments

Earth in perspective:

• Stratocam takes the most beautiful landscape satellite photographs from Google Maps, as voted on by visitors, and switches them every few seconds, with a fullscreen mode.
• ChronoZoom is an interactive, zoomable HTML5 timeline of the entire history of the universe, from the Big Bang to Homo Sapiens, with embedded video and lectures.

posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 1:55 AM PST - 10 comments

The Chase Another day out on the town for the girls (Animated Short)
posted by manny_calavera at 1:23 AM PST - 9 comments

In Way, two strangers learn to speak. A game (download/installation required) in which you are one of those strangers.
posted by arsey at 10:04 PM PST - 21 comments

The Swedish Chef (Muppet Wiki) is the incomprehensible preparer of foodstuffs for The Muppet Show. A rather literal variation of the Live-Hand Muppet concept, the Swedish Chef is a humanoid character, with human hands rather than gloves. An annotated list of every televised appearance of the Swedish Chef is after the fold... Børk! Børk! Børk! [Click here to view the thread translated fully into Mock Swedish] [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:30 PM PST - 45 comments

"I am Darth Vader, an Extraterrestrial from the Planet Vulcan!" - The 80's attack in an amazingly detailed and frenetic video for The Death Set's "They Come to Get Us." [SLYT]
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:51 PM PST - 28 comments

A fourth-grader's first ski jump (SLYT). [more inside]
posted by Ritchie at 6:20 PM PST - 61 comments

I Was a Cookbook Ghostwriter [SLNYT]
posted by furtive at 5:59 PM PST - 22 comments

"Sure, he's noble and regal and dangerous and deadly. But sometimes Darkseid does some dumb stuff."
posted by griphus at 5:15 PM PST - 76 comments

How Three Germans Are Cloning the Web
"Launched out of a loft in New York City’s Garment District last June, Fab had sales of $20 million in its first six months and is on track to earn $100 million in 2012....Six months after Fab launched, it was knocked off. An e-commerce design site called Bamarang opened for business in Germany, the U.K., France, Australia, and Brazil...
Bamarang is the creation of Oliver, Marc, and Alexander Samwer, a trio of German brothers who have a wildly successful business model: Find a promising Internet business, in the U.S., and clone it internationally. Since starting their first dot-clone in 1999, a German version of EBay, they’ve duplicated Airbnb, eHarmony, Pinterest, and other high-profile businesses. In total, they’ve launched more than 100 companies." [SLYBloombergBusinessweek]
posted by FirstMateKate at 3:21 PM PST - 51 comments

Brené Brown: Listening to shame. Filmed this month at TED in Long Beach, CA. (YouTube) Also see: The Power of Vulnerability (yt, previously on MeFi), and The Price of Invulnerability. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 2:09 PM PST - 16 comments

Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen trilogy is to be concluded with Boneland, over 50 years after it started.
posted by Artw at 1:49 PM PST - 30 comments

Several factors came together to bring about a Golden Age of postcards (Google books), including the introduction of inexpensive cameras and film development from Eastman Kodak. From around 1906 to 1915, the publishing of printed postcards doubled every six months. Along with pictures of real people and places, tall tale postcards were also made in increasing quantities. William H. "Dad" Martin was the first to make and sell outlandish postcards (previously), making collages of real images and photographing the result, dodging and burning the new image to make the composite images blend into something vaguely believable. Alfred Stanley Johnson, Jr. followed Martin's success, but they weren't the only ones to make tall tale postcards.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:29 PM PST - 12 comments

RUIN: a post-apocalyptic animated short. [via]
posted by brundlefly at 12:53 PM PST - 56 comments

A jury found a former Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi guilty of 15 charges of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation (under a relatively new New Jersey hate-crime statute) for secretly recording his roommate Tyler Clementi, who later committed suicide.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 12:20 PM PST - 186 comments

In Inside The Matrix James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace and The Shadow Factory, reports about the NSA's new US$ 2 billion data center being built in a remote corner of Utah. A follow up of sorts to last year's Post-9/11, NSA 'Enemies' Include Us, Inside the Matrix marks the first time a former NSA official has gone on the record to reveal details of the scope and scale of the NSA's domestic intercept program, codenamed Stellar Wind.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:49 AM PST - 67 comments

The story of the ABBA sound. 8 minute Swedish documentary. Click the "CC" button for subtitles.
posted by rollick at 11:36 AM PST - 56 comments

Introducing Dotsies: The Space-Saving Font
posted by Confess, Fletch at 11:26 AM PST - 69 comments

A treasure trove of Disney animation artifacts. Things like Scar Pencil Tests, a Bambi wire model, and character doodles from the Aristocats.
posted by DbanksDog27 at 10:57 AM PST - 11 comments

Ira Glass retracts the This American Life episode "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory". Mike Daisey responds. [more inside]
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 10:42 AM PST - 530 comments

Gil Cohen-Magen takes pictures of daily life among Hassidic and Holy Land communities.
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:23 AM PST - 3 comments

Today the Icarus Experiment released their measurement on the speed of neutrinos from CERN. Within small errors, they find them to be traveling at the speed of light, in accordance with the theory of relativity. [more inside]
posted by physicsmatt at 9:23 AM PST - 44 comments

The Sci-Fi Film Alphabet. [more inside]
posted by quin at 8:42 AM PST - 34 comments

Water your brain so you can grow stuff in there.
posted by iamkimiam at 8:25 AM PST - 45 comments

The Family Hour: An Oral History of The Sopranos
[single-page print version]

EDIE FALCO (Carmela Soprano): After we shot the pilot, David said, “Well, that was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, no one will ever watch this show, but you guys have been great.” And that was the end. Or so we thought.

posted by kirkaracha at 8:17 AM PST - 60 comments

Remarked by her contemporary Coco Chanel as "That Italian artist who makes clothes" Elsa Schiaparelli (New Yorker - Janet Flanner) bought Surrealism to fashion. She was one of the most influential creators of Parisian haute couture in the era between the two World Wars. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 6:18 AM PST - 12 comments

Twelve bus tickets from the 1930s
posted by mippy at 5:02 AM PST - 32 comments

Bruce Springsteen's SXSW 2012 Keynote Address
posted by Optamystic at 2:16 AM PST - 42 comments

Classic Hollywood Guide on how to react when you screw up a scene. Movie bloopers with Bogie, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Errol Flynn, Claude Rains, Kay Francis, Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, George Brent, Merle Oberon, Patricia Neal, Mickey Rooney and more.
posted by Wonton Cruelty at 1:45 AM PST - 26 comments

About two years ago, Ryan Matheson visited Canada. Canadian customs checked out his notebook computer and found a Japanese manga on it which the customs official decided was out of line. Matheson was charged with possession of, and importation of, child porn. After two years of legal maneuvering, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund just announced that Matheson "has agreed to plead to a non-criminal code regulatory offense under the Customs Act of Canada. As a result of the agreement, Matheson will not stand trial." He also won't be listed as a sex offender, in Canada or anywhere else, and he won't have a criminal record.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:13 PM PST - 197 comments

Touted as the cure for what ails public education, charter schools have historical roots that are rarely discussed. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:11 PM PST - 38 comments

"If it were just the NCAA tournament bracket, March Madness would be far less mad than it is. Something about the reminder of how much joy we get in filling out a bracket has led writers and talkers deep into the great time-wasting ether, creating brackets on everything you could possible dream of bracketing."

One writer thought about this, took a step back, and created a bracket tournament to discuss the best possible subjects/entries for a pop-culture, food, and sports bracket tournament. [more inside]
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:10 PM PST - 28 comments

The Sun has been in a bit of a mood lately, spitting out some pretty big flares (including the second largest one of the current magnetic cycle) Be sure to scroll down for the photo of the entire Sun, it will change the way you think about it.
posted by HuronBob at 7:38 PM PST - 61 comments

Sarah Fimm wants to inspire people to use their creative talents to promote human rights. To that end, she's encouraging people to take portions of her and fellow artists' works Everything Becomes Whole" - music, lyrics, images and music video - to create new presentations focusing attention on ending slavery. [more inside]
posted by grimjeer at 4:35 PM PST - 17 comments

It being bracket season, The Weather Channel has devised an epic Weather Song tournament for those not interested in college athletics. It consists of four weather-related phenomena, with underdogs and favorites abounding. "Have you Ever Seen the Rain" trounced "the crowd-favorite Weather Girls' It's Raining Men" in the first round of the Rain Region. Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" upset Bananarama's summer-related hit in the Seasons Region. Voting is still open until tomorrow for round two of the Sun and Elements regions.
posted by obscurator at 2:34 PM PST - 39 comments

Rise of the TIMBIs: Forget the BRICs. Andrew Leung of CHINAWatch responds.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:22 PM PST - 10 comments

This is the Occupy movement we should really be worried about. The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 2:05 PM PST - 302 comments

Beautiful HD video, with enhanced sound, of STS-117 and STS-127 booster rockets launching and returning to Earth . Previously.
posted by swift at 2:00 PM PST - 29 comments

Quora: What do all the controls in an airplane cockpit do?
posted by zarq at 1:56 PM PST - 70 comments

We've all heard about the proliferation of CCTV in the UK. Now, accounting firm Ernst & Young has a new scheme for the Brits: Uninsured drivers won't be able to fill up. [more inside]
posted by symbioid at 1:43 PM PST - 53 comments

E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Master of the Universe, an adults-only Twilight fanfiction posted under the pseudonym Snowqueens Icedragon. The erotica re-imagining of Bella Swan as a 21-year-old college student and Edward Cullen as a 27-year-old billionaire -- with BDSM tastes -- was published by Australia's Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing in May 2011; names and details linking it to Stephenie Meyer's bestselling trilogy were changed (...for the most part). In recent months, the book has gone viral, selling more than 250,000 copies (over 90% in ebook format) and landing the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. Last week, E.L. James sold republishing rights for the Fifty Shades trilogy to Vintage Books in a seven-figure deal. [more inside]
posted by changeling at 1:17 PM PST - 96 comments

Notes from a Videodrome test screening
posted by Artw at 1:13 PM PST - 62 comments

Plenty of people collect Disneyana, the toys, books, animation cels, and theme-park souvenirs. Then there are those fans who collect information and details on the Disney parks themselves, collecting official park maps or drawing up their own ride blueprints, assembling the design history behind the attractions, and even collecting vintage tickets and ticket books. Yesterland (previously: 1, 2, 3) is an ever-growing collection of Disneyland history, and has an updated collection of links to similar fan sites and Imagineering blogs, which is a whole collection of rabbit holes of nostalgia and behind-the-scense information. So grab a riding crop and pretend like it's the 60s all over again!
posted by filthy light thief at 12:56 PM PST - 9 comments

The Keith Haring Foundation is posting Haring's journals to Tumblr for the duration of the exhibition Keith Haring: 1978–1982, opening tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum.
posted by gyusan at 11:34 AM PST - 14 comments

The greatest hits from Arnold Schwarzenegger commentary track for 'Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines'. SLYT, Possibly NSFW, previous
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:36 AM PST - 102 comments

The Hacker Shelf is nice crowd-sourced guide to (legally) free books on various computational and mathematical subjects. The topics page gives you an idea of the breadth of material available.
posted by philipy at 9:56 AM PST - 24 comments

Still a Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser reflects on his book's tenth anniversary (previously).
posted by box at 8:37 AM PST - 84 comments

Time Out HK counts down the 100 Greatest Hong Kong Films (along with a mind map of the perfect HK film), while lovehkfilm.com begins its series on the Top 100 Hong Kong Films of the Eighties.
posted by milquetoast at 8:34 AM PST - 56 comments

"So far, 2012 is shaping up to be a great year for archery, what with The Hunger Games coming in March, then Brave, followed by Hawkeye in The Avengers." An archery coach analyzes the technique in three upcoming movies.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:31 AM PST - 56 comments

"Vitamin R goes straight to the head. Ruby will teach you to express your ideas through a computer. You will be writing stories for a machine. The language will become a tool for you to better connect your mind to the world." Slate compiles the mystery of _why. (Previously).
posted by oulipian at 7:08 AM PST - 72 comments

Why Nations Fail - In a nutshell: "Proximately, prosperity is generated by investment and innovation, but these are acts of faith: investors and innovators must have credible reasons to think that, if successful, they will not be plundered by the powerful. For the polity to provide such reassurance, two conditions have to hold: power has to be centralised and the institutions of power have to be inclusive." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:54 AM PST - 78 comments

"In short, the types of things that [tabletop RPG] players want are bad for the game."
posted by griphus at 6:17 AM PST - 64 comments

National Geographic photographer Mattias Klum talks about having a face to face run in with an endangered Asiatic lioness while shooting in the wild. [more inside]
posted by quin at 5:43 AM PST - 29 comments

Another day, another story of a Goldman Sachs employee quitting. This one, though, isn't filing any op-eds - rather, he's starting up his own custom condom business, TheyFit, which offers 95 different sizes. Warning: puns ahead.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:31 AM PST - 37 comments

Oh yeah. There he is, Mr. RL Burnside, in the year of nineteen and seventy eight, Independence, Mississippi, porch fulla kids, singin' about when his first wife left him, million-dollar smile on his face. And there he is again, with his guitar and amp, out by the barb wire fence, a poor boy a long way from home. These two little gems just added to the Alan Lomax Archive YouTube channel, where you'll also find some wonderful newly-uploaded clips (filmed in 1983) from fretless banjo plucker Tommy Jarrell, the toast of Toast, North Carolina.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:56 AM PST - 9 comments

Pipe Dream [2001, CGI (previously)]
Pipe Dream [2011, physical (another video) (yet another)] [MLYT]
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:49 PM PST - 26 comments

Whilst searching for more images of La Milo (mentioned in this post), I stumbled across the David Elliot theatrical postcard collection. In it were some pictures of Blanche Arral. [more inside]
posted by unliteral at 8:03 PM PST - 5 comments

Pennsylvania has adopted what may be the most anti-democratic, anti-environmental law in the country, giving gas companies the right to drill anywhere, overturn local zoning laws, seize private property and muzzle physicians from disclosing specific health impacts from drilling fluids on patients. This American Life on fracking in Pennsylvania. Fracking: Anatomy of a Free Market Failure. Previously in Pennsylvania. [more inside]
posted by gerryblog at 5:46 PM PST - 88 comments

The Man Who Broke Atlantic City Don Johnson (no, not that one) won nearly $6 million playing blackjack in one night, single-handedly decimating the monthly revenue of Atlantic City’s Tropicana casino. Not long before that, he’d taken the Borgata for $5 million and Caesars for $4 million. Here’s how he did it.
posted by modernnomad at 5:00 PM PST - 93 comments

Official Spoiler Etiquette. The stars of your favorite TV shows (assuming your favorite TV shows include The Wire, Heroes, Walking Dead, Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, or True Blood) teach you how not to ruin them for your friends.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:23 PM PST - 140 comments

The current generation has gone through the fads of planking (previously 1 and 2), cone-ing (previously), owling, leisure diving (both previously), and even Tebowing (previously). Posing-for-pictures fads are not a new thing, though. In 1959, near the end of the relatively well-known phone booth stuffing craze, there was hunkering.
posted by Boxenmacher at 3:54 PM PST - 28 comments

Last weekend, the annual Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup took place in Sweetwater Texas, as it has since 1958. Previously 1, Previously 2, plus on the Simpsons. Sponsored by the Jaycess, it attracts a huge crowd and lots of press, but when Danny Mendez, a zoologist and host of Urban Jungles Radio showed up to see for himself what it was like, he was refused entry and given a citation for Criminal Trespassing. What sort of issues would a zoologist be concerned about and why the Sweetwater Jaycees not want Danny (as well as Sky Stevens, a Texas biology student, Wildlife enthusiast and contributor to the show) not to even enter to see a beauty pageant? [more inside]
posted by katinka-katinka at 3:49 PM PST - 31 comments

An intrepid American reporter tests out perineal re-education , a state-sponsored wonder of the French health care system. She plays a game she nicknames Pole Position (and a friend gets to play Cooter Pac-Man). Bonus: many gentle euphemisms for vagina (Earlier test here from the NYT).
posted by elgilito at 3:22 PM PST - 30 comments

The British newspaper The Guardian has obtained a cache of 3,000 emails purported to have been exchanged between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, his wife, and a close circle of advisers and friends. The personal emails allegedly show Assad dismissing his government's proposed reforms, mocking the efforts of Arab League monitors to spot military tanks besieging cities, as well as Assad's wife placing extravagant shopping orders, sometimes through intermediaries. [more inside]
posted by BobbyVan at 2:25 PM PST - 35 comments

A comparison of Sarah Palin's media appearances versus Julianne Moore's reenactment of them in the movie Game Change.
posted by gman at 1:23 PM PST - 134 comments

This is the coolest thing in the world. For reals. It's "Dueling Banjos"... played on two giant Tesla Coils. That's... pretty dang amazing. As if that's not enough, perhaps you'll like the Nyan Cat theme? Or perhaps Sweet Home Alabama, for jonmc? Or In The Hall of the Mountain King, for the most awesome remake of M ever? [more inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 1:12 PM PST - 42 comments

Entries for the International Teletext Art Festival are currently being broadcast on teletext pages 525-545 of Finnish broadcaster YLE. [more inside]
posted by rollick at 12:47 PM PST - 9 comments

"Much of the history of Black people, particularly our intimate history, is still unseen and unexplored." Beautifully understated, The Black Vernacular is a communal memorial to this history. [more inside]
posted by sudama at 12:36 PM PST - 12 comments

Grantland held a March Madness-type bracket this past week to determine the greatest character from HBO's 2002-2008 series "The Wire". The idea came from a conversation between Grantland's Editor-in-Chief, Bill Simmons, and President Obama. Voting took place via Grantland's Facebook page. Spoilers from the results and TV show are within. [more inside]
posted by Jeff Morris at 12:35 PM PST - 103 comments

Why is "It's a Small World (After All)" so deeply, universally irritating?
posted by desjardins at 12:14 PM PST - 111 comments

"Ken Campbell’s production of Illuminatus! made Wagner’s Ring seem like a frog’s arsehole"
posted by Artw at 12:07 PM PST - 19 comments

The fact that Chinese internet access is censored and monitored is not new, but Sina Weibo (新浪微博, literally "Sina Microblog,"), handles the task differently. Commonly referred to by the generic name Weibo, the social service that is likened to Twitter and Facebook is more open in what you can post, but searches for certain words are blocked. Without context, a list of blocked searches is fairly abstract. Blocked on Weibo adds translations and context to the blocked words. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:03 PM PST - 14 comments

Doodletown, NY, from the Dutch "dood dal" meaning "dead valley" a ghost town since the 1960s, lies just an hour north of New York City in Bear Mountain State Park [more inside]
posted by aloiv2 at 11:55 AM PST - 9 comments

Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan, is brash and grandiose—and wildly attractive to young strivers seeking success. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:55 AM PST - 23 comments

Apparently big in Japan but gaining interest in other countries, raising and keeping giant beetles is a lucrative pet industry. If keeping the strongest creature on Earth for its size isn't your cup of tea, you could instead keep a tank of predatory diving beetles. Just make sure there aren't any escape routes.
posted by vegartanipla at 11:40 AM PST - 20 comments

Do you enjoy the work of independent musicians? Do you like Capcom's Mega Man X series of video games? Then you'll love OverClocked Remix's latest album, Maverick Rising. The free five-disc album features 62 tracks by 49 artists in a collection totaling over 4 1/2 hours of Mega Man X music remixes spanning 8 of the primary games in the series and a few extra goodies.
posted by Servo5678 at 11:39 AM PST - 3 comments

As fans of Community get ready for the show's return from hiatus tomorrow night, AV Club writer Todd VanDerWerff, who writes the weekly episode reviews of the show, drew attention to something odd that happened while the show was off the air. The discussion in his review of the last episode before the break Regional Holiday Music, didn't die down after people had put in their two cents about the episode and his review. People kept talking, and not just about the show. The show's fans developed their own self-contained piece of the web. Last week, the post passed 30,000 comments (now at 35,000): [more inside]
posted by dry white toast at 10:56 AM PST - 63 comments

Lytro, the 6-year-old[1] consumer plenoptic camera start-up started shipping their first light field camera to end users last week. Reviews have been mostly positive with regards to the technology and industrial design, but also warn users of specialized hardware and software that is difficult to use, the "poor quality"[2] display, and low resulting image quality. However everyone seems to agree that light field technology is the way of the future and is here to stay. Previously. [more inside]
posted by jeffamaphone at 10:53 AM PST - 70 comments

A new working paper by economists Charles Courtemanche (University of Louisville) and Daniela Zapata (UNC-Greensboro) shows that Massachusetts 2006 uniform healthcare coverage caused improvements for numerous health outcomes. To the degree that the Massachusetts experiment is a guide for the federal Affordable Care Act, this study provides some guidance for guessing which individuals and approximately how much the benefits of the program will be. [more inside]
posted by scunning at 10:44 AM PST - 24 comments

Mother Jones: The 10 'Occupy' candidates vying for seats in the US House Of Representatives and Senate and their prospects.
posted by The Whelk at 10:04 AM PST - 26 comments

Only two buttons from the top: The European Women's Championship in Gaziantep, Turkey is the first where the brand new European Chess Union Dress Code regulations [pdf] apply. The men’s championship, which will take place this month in Plovdiv, Bulgaria will follow. ECU General Secretary Sava Stoisavljevic answers some questions. Players respond. [more inside]
posted by procrastinator at 9:53 AM PST - 27 comments

In our continuing series on pin-up girls of the past (previously and previously previously), this lady's costume was a source of some puzzlement. Welcome to the wonderful world of Poses Plastiques. [more inside]
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:32 AM PST - 22 comments

Damien Hirst: 'I still believe art is more powerful than money' Damien Hirst has gone from mouthy YBA to global brand over the past 25 years – and become the world's richest living artist on the way. Here he talks about money, mortality and his first retrospective in Britain [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:15 AM PST - 36 comments

History is made: the ICC has made their first ruling; Lubanga is guilty, and the use of child soldiers is now clearly against international law. [NYT] [BBC] [Guardian] [actual judgement] [judgement summary] [more inside]
posted by jaduncan at 7:43 AM PST - 25 comments

What is the minimal number of clues necessary to create a uniquely solvable Sudoku puzzle? It turns out to be 17, though it took fancy symmetry arguments and nearly a year of computer time to prove it. But no need to read the paper when you can watch the video.
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:55 AM PST - 54 comments

A short and sweet pregnancy [slyt] The impending arrival of a baby inspired this happy couple to track their pregnancy in a short time-lapse video.
posted by gaspode at 5:35 AM PST - 75 comments

Wine De-Corking Machine: designed by mechanical sculptor Rob Higgs, this amazingly elaborate Rube Goldberg styled device weighs over 770 pounds and took about three years to build. [more inside]
posted by quin at 5:35 AM PST - 42 comments

'Bike Thief' [NYTimes] The filmmaker Casey Neistat conducts an experiment in New York City, where he locks up his own bike and brazenly tries to steal it, to determine whether onlookers or the police would intervene. [More]
posted by Fizz at 5:03 AM PST - 64 comments

A Tough Oil World Why High Gas Prices Are Here to Stay by Michael Klare (via)
It was the easy oil—that’s what fueled our prosperity. Back in the fall The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health highlighted The five key areas that illustrate the potential health fallout of petroleum scarcity.
posted by adamvasco at 4:07 AM PST - 61 comments

Transcript of a recent 90-minute interview with Alan Moore: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5, page 6, page 7
posted by timshel at 3:15 AM PST - 58 comments

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs. New York Time Op-Ed. March 14th 2012:

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

[more inside]
posted by Skygazer at 2:41 AM PST - 147 comments

Cities in dissolution. "It’s a game for anyone who has ever wondered what happens in the grandest house in town once the lights go out at night. It’s for anyone who has ever seen two men slumped at a hotel bar and wondered what other secrets are contained in such temporary lives. Thief is a game for anyone who has ever walked through a city at night and thought, which parts are still breathing and what does each seclusion contain." Rockpapershotgun's Adam Smith thinks about cities.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:57 AM PST - 7 comments

A guy videotapes his father trying out Windows 8 for the first time.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:51 AM PST - 127 comments

Wrecking Crew Orchestra (original Japanese site) are a young dance crew from Japan. Last week, they put on a light-synchronized performance in electroluminescent suits that has to be seen to be believed.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 10:48 PM PST - 21 comments

"Why I left Google": James Whittaker joined Google from Microsoft in 2009. Now he want back to MS, and explained why he left Google
posted by growabrain at 9:29 PM PST - 128 comments

The Encyclopedia Britannica is going out of print.
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:35 PM PST - 110 comments

A Patent Lie: How Yahoo Weaponized My Work by [MeFi's own] waxpancake, aka Andy Baio.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:30 PM PST - 96 comments

Having heard way to many similar stories, Dr. Kate Clancy, author of the popular Scientific American blog Context and Variation, has recently run two accounts written by graduate students about their experiences with sexual harassment in the hopes that they will spark a wider discussion. The comments in the second article are uncharacteristically amazing and include several more women sharing their experiences. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 7:01 PM PST - 94 comments

The nation is awash with a new black market commodity... Across the country, retailers are finding massive amounts of this product missing. In West St. Paul, Minnesota, one enterprising individual has taken $25,000 dollars of this chemical that some Police Departments are calling liquid gold: Tide Detergent
posted by symbioid at 6:57 PM PST - 100 comments

The Best 26-Minute Argument that Game Consoles Are Dying* [more inside]
posted by d1rge at 6:30 PM PST - 83 comments

The bad economy has forced some women into arrangements with less than ideal men.
posted by reenum at 6:02 PM PST - 51 comments

Civil rights activist, (and adopted Newfie) dies at 88 As reported previously, Philips was the sole black survivor in a shipwreck of US navy vessels of the coast of Newfoundland. The kindness shown to him by those who nursed him in the tiny town, where no one had seen a black man before, inspired Phillips' life of activism for civil rights. A good reminder of the power of small kindnesses ...
posted by chapps at 5:59 PM PST - 14 comments

JetBlue names all of its jets with a variant of "blue" in the title. Blue Suede Shoes. Bright Lights, Blue City. The Name is Blue. JetBlue. If You Can Read This, You're Too Blue Close.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:55 PM PST - 86 comments

According to a procedure done at the Detroit Medical Center, and published in the Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, Nasal Packing With Strips of Cured Pork is effective against a rare platelet disorder.
posted by obscurator at 1:46 PM PST - 67 comments

Why this lady is wearing a horse costume. previously.

"For the drama and the way it may happen to be played, and the plot or moral or meaning of it, nobody seems particularly to care. The point of interest is, first, the dancing; next, the dancers, and last, the scenery."

[more inside]
posted by zamboni at 1:29 PM PST - 24 comments

“For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to relitigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.” -- Gary Trudeau

"Only once in the long history of "Doonesbury" has Garry Trudeau’s syndicate ever intensely objected to one of his story arcs. It was 1985, a documentary purporting to show the reactions of a fetus had been released, and Trudeau satirized the film "The Silent Scream" with his own “prequel" strips featuring “little Timmy,” a 12-minute-old embryo. Those strips never saw wide release in newspapers. Now, Trudeau has decided to take on the abortion wars head-on for the first time in "Doonesbury’s" four decades in a series of strips depicting mandatory vaginal ultrasounds as rape." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:26 PM PST - 259 comments

McDonalds menu items from around the world. And part 2.
posted by storybored at 12:07 PM PST - 73 comments

Just the First Frame - Just the first frame of the best comics on the web. You decide if you want to read the rest.
posted by Artw at 11:57 AM PST - 20 comments

"It's either a whore house, or it isn't. Suzy either took a job there, or she didn't.

The play doesn't give satisfaction here and it leaves an audience wondering. My position is that she took the job all right but she wasn't any good at it. In the book, Fauna explains that Suzy's no good as a hustler because she's got a streak of lady in her. I wish we could keep this thought because it explains a lot in a short time."

Pipe Dream, a little-known and rarely performed Rodgers and Hammerstein musical based on John Steinbeck's novels Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, will be revived this month in a concert production at New York City Center [SLYT] for the first time in decades. The musical had not been available for performance for years due to rights issues. [more inside]
posted by gusandrews at 11:48 AM PST - 9 comments

Some (slightly generalized) classic Nintendo games are NP-Hard. [pdf] [more inside]
posted by albrecht at 11:01 AM PST - 57 comments

Exquisite Beast is a tag-team tumblr, featuring an illustrated evolution that started with this little beastie, drawn by Evan Dahm (Rice Boy comics | Making Places worldbuilding blog). The next evolution was by Yuko Ota (Johnny Wander comic | forthcoming Lucky Penny comic), the other half of this illustrious duo. But their creature does not have a simple linear evolution chart, as seen in this cladogram showing the various fan-made offshoots. Some are linked from the Exquisite Beast posts, but you can find more from the Exquisite Beast tumblr tag.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:36 AM PST - 7 comments

A squirrel enjoys playing with a ball, to the tune of "The Mighty Mouse Theme". Strangely satisfying.
posted by The Whelk at 9:54 AM PST - 25 comments

The Santorum Strategy Linguist George Lakoff explains how Santorum is helping reinforce right wing beliefs.
posted by drezdn at 9:52 AM PST - 121 comments

In 2003 a building housing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC) was slated for demolition to make way for updated facilities. Artist Anna Schuleit was commissioned to memorialize its rich history. Schuleit: The concept for Bloom came to me as a site-specific installation to mark the transition of the life and history of the institution toward its closure, from its physical state to the remembered with 28,000 potted flowering plants. More images available here.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:02 AM PST - 14 comments

Remember iamamiwhoami? Jonna Lee's previously mysterious little music project complete with codes and secrets, has begun releasing new song-length videos every couple of weeks. On Valentines Day, Sever, then Drops. Today, Good Worker. The videos are just as odd as when the project first started.
posted by cashman at 8:49 AM PST - 8 comments

Sometime tonight the winner of the 2012 running of The Last Great Race will cross the finish line. [more inside]
posted by Runes at 8:10 AM PST - 32 comments

After I hung up the phone, I went to the bedroom and woke my wife, Lori. "Honey," I said. "You're not going to believe this, but I just got off the phone with a guy who's in charge of video game world records, and he said the world record for Game Boy Tetris is 327 lines, and he wants us to go to New Hampshire this spring so you can try to break the world record live in front of the judges at the world's largest classic video game tournament. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 7:34 AM PST - 62 comments

How NOT to celebrate St. Patrick's Day
posted by Renoroc at 7:20 AM PST - 181 comments

"Homicide Watch is a community-driven reporting project covering every murder in the District of Columbia. Using original reporting, court documents, social media, and the help of victims’ and suspects’ friends, family, neighbors and others, we cover every homicide from crime to conviction." [more inside]
posted by BobbyVan at 7:19 AM PST - 8 comments

Oh, just some kids trying to play "Dueling Banjos".
posted by FishBike at 6:59 AM PST - 70 comments

Susan Cain prefers listening to talking, reading to socializing... but she's a good speaker with an interesting message. (SLYT)
posted by sngbk at 6:58 AM PST - 30 comments

Nat Morris built a machine that gives his dog a treat and takes photos when people tweet to @FeedToby. [more inside]
posted by quin at 5:30 AM PST - 42 comments

In a new working paper provocatively entitled Law Deans in Jail, Emory law professors Morgan Cloud and George Shepherd

examine the widespread reports of lying by law schools and their administrators, and the publication of these fabrications by U.S. News, and explain how the reported conduct could constitute federal crimes, [specifically] mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, and racketeering.

Advisory: 77-page PDF; click on the link on the top-left to download the full paper. [Abstract]. Previously. Previouslier. [Via the always trenchant Margaret Soltan].
posted by Sonny Jim at 5:28 AM PST - 45 comments

Quadrotors? Check. Flying Delorean? Check. Roads? No need. While a full-size model may still be a few years away, this crafty Russian tinkerer has constructed his very own hover-conversion model Delorean, and the results are pretty darn cool. (SLYT)
posted by ShutterBun at 1:12 AM PST - 16 comments

Here are two stories about men hiding themselves under toilets for strange/unknown/sexual reasons. [1] [2a] [2b]. NSFW, NSF people who don't want to read about men hiding under toilets.
posted by Meatbomb at 12:22 AM PST - 59 comments

Tag Challenge! "The infamous Panther Five has pulled an audacious new heist: they’ve stolen the world’s 3rd most expensive jewel, the Adly Diamond, from the Overholt Showroom in Washington, DC. Now they’ve split up and fled—dispersed to five different cities. We’re offering a reward to help find them. We’ll release their mugshots here on game day: March 31, 2012."

If you can get a team together that can cover these 5 cities, then you've got a shot at $5000 (USD).
Washington, DC | New York City | London | Stockholm | Bratislava [more inside]
posted by juliplease at 9:10 PM PST - 27 comments

Bees have different “personalities”, with some showing a stronger willingness or desire to seek adventure than others, according to a study by entomologists at the University of Illinois.
posted by Trurl at 6:25 PM PST - 16 comments

Exotic dancers, 1890s. [more inside]
posted by latkes at 6:16 PM PST - 106 comments

"Would you let a skull pick you up at a bus stop? Definitely not. But on Twitter you find yourself doing all sorts of things you wouldn't otherwise do. And once you've entered the Enchanted E-Forest, lured in there by cute bunnies and playful kittens, you can find yourself wandering around in it for quite some time. You might even find yourself climbing the odd tree—the very odd tree—or taking refuge in the odd hollow log—the very odd hollow log—because cute bunnies and playful kittens are not the only things alive in the mirkwoods of the Web. Or the webs of the mirkwoods. Paths can get tangled there. Plots can get thickened. Games are afoot."
posted by vidur at 3:52 PM PST - 56 comments

Weak Interactions is a blog that looks at the science in Breaking Bad and the non-science in Fringe.
posted by reenum at 3:36 PM PST - 55 comments

Homeless people are being used as mobile hotspots at SXSW, as part of a project called Homeless Hotspots. According to the official website, "Homeless Hotspots is a charitable innovation initiative by BBH New York. It attempts to modernize the Street Newspaper model employed to support homeless populations." Reactions online have been mixed. Some commentators are outraged, while others wonder whether the project is helpful or exploitative.
posted by asnider at 3:14 PM PST - 72 comments

"If you strung all of the opening scenes from the various seasons [of Breaking Bad] together in chronological order, would the show's basic narrative make sense?" [more inside]
posted by invitapriore at 2:12 PM PST - 45 comments

The 3D printer uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a hardened line of solid polymer, just a few hundred nanometers wide. This fine resolution enables the creation of intricately structured sculptures as tiny as a grain of sand. "Until now, this technique used to be quite slow", says Professor Jürgen Stampfl from the Institute of Materials Science and Technology at the TU Vienna. "The printing speed used to be measured in millimeters per second – our device can do five meters in one second." In two-photon lithography, this is a world record. Article and video.
posted by curious nu at 2:10 PM PST - 36 comments

After numerous failed doomsday predictions, Family Radio founder Harold Camping announced this month that he has no plans to predict ever again the day of God's Judgment. He also issued an apology to listeners, admitting that he was wrong. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 12:37 PM PST - 92 comments

A Didactic Tale to Illustrate Just How Much the (new NYC) Teacher Rating System Pisses Me Off.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:53 AM PST - 65 comments

Simon Cowell (aka 'Karaoke Sauron') has for some time dominated Saturday nights on UK TV, but he now faces a challenge... [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:53 AM PST - 23 comments

Have online comment sections become 'a joke'?
posted by Artw at 11:44 AM PST - 178 comments

It is not very often that we have the opportunity to create a graphic equivalent of a drug fueled rant bringing all of our collective skills to bear. And it is almost unfathomable that we could actually do something like this and benefit a good cause. The Buck team dug deep, channeling our inner gonzo, to direct and produce this homage promoting Good Books, the online bookseller that passes all its profits through to Oxfam.

Amazing animation from the production/design company Buck.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 11:27 AM PST - 14 comments

Today expensively educated graphic artists sit at expensive designer tables in expensive offices, solely in order to put "Ithaca is gorges", rainbows, and band names on t-shirts all day … but even this quasi-preindustrial situation has now come to an end. Riesenmaschine's collaborators have succeeded in automating the production of modern t-shirt designs. The chance shirt machine mechanically produces, from a chance combination of a chance picture and chance text, in a chance font and chance colors, a chance design existing only once.
posted by kenko at 11:25 AM PST - 58 comments

The Brixton Fairies and the South London Gay Community Centre, Brixton 1974-6 "This fascinating story about Brixton’s legendary gay community of the 1970s was posted up on the urban75 bulletin boards, and thanks to the author Ian Townson, I’m now able to repost an illustrated version, giving a wonderful insight into a long lost part of Brixton life."
posted by Abiezer at 10:51 AM PST - 5 comments

"But maybe the single most remarkable example of 20th-century totalitarian invective against jazz that Skvorecky ever relayed was here in the intro to The Bass Saxophone, where he recalls -- faithfully, he assures us ("they had engraved themselves deeply on my mind") -- a set of regulations, issued by a Gauleiter -- a regional official for the Reich -- as binding on all local dance orchestras during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia." (via)
posted by SpiffyRob at 10:17 AM PST - 34 comments

Berndnaut is fascinated by anything in between. Corridors and clouds, not yet there and not yet solid. What if a sculpture were to be nothing but thin air, smoke or scent?
posted by filthy light thief at 10:06 AM PST - 20 comments

Though no longer a Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain has resumed publicizing his bold, marginally practical flat-tax plan (previously). Cain Connections has released several new videos including: "9-9-9 The Movie: Slaying the Tax Monster," [YT] a 5-minute animation, and "This is the Economy on Stimulus," a bleak, child-narrated criticism of the stimulus. [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 8:26 AM PST - 113 comments

Animated projections of the hyperbolic plane. The author also makes jewelry, sculptures.
posted by phrontist at 8:22 AM PST - 14 comments

Introducing The Curator’s Code - a standardized system for honoring discovery and intellectual labor, using two unicode characters. But is it dead in the water already? [via] ↬
posted by cashman at 7:13 AM PST - 58 comments

When you need to get past that cat bully in the alley, you must be willing to have a Cat Fight!
posted by quin at 5:24 AM PST - 19 comments

Guitarist Etta Baker worked in a textile mill, raised nine children, and didn’t take her music to the stage until she was 60 years old. Fortunately for all of us, she continued to play and record right up until her death in 2006 at the age of 93.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:45 AM PST - 11 comments

Thursday, President Barack Obama signed the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. [more inside]
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 10:44 PM PST - 188 comments

The earliest surviving Charles Dickens film, thought lost since 1954, has been re-found in the British Film Institute's archive. The Death of Poor Joe (YouTube HD, IMDB, Wikipedia), a one minute-long silent film based on an episode in Dickens' novel Bleak House, was filmed in 1901.
posted by stbalbach at 9:35 PM PST - 8 comments

On the 15th anniversary of the TV debut of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an interview with James Marsters, reflecting on his time on the show, and his relationship to it.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:17 PM PST - 232 comments

In 1996, Yale psychologist John Bargh published a much cited paper (pdf) demonstrating the "priming effect" --- in a nutshell, subjects who had to unscramble sentences mentioning the elderly walked slower when leaving the examination room than control subjects. This year, Stéphane Doyen and his co-authors attempted to replicate Bargh's experiment, but were unable to reproduce the priming effect --- instead assembling evidence that it was the experimenter's knowledge of the study topic which created the apparent "priming". Is Bargh's famous experiment flawed? Or is Doyen's paper a pile of horseshit published in a two-bit for-profit online journal, as Bargh's strident critique suggests? Or is Bargh full of it himself? And who gets to decide what counts as good science these days anyway?
posted by Diablevert at 7:55 PM PST - 51 comments

How to Climb Mount Erebus on Your Day Off. [more inside]
posted by unSane at 7:45 PM PST - 80 comments

"It’s been nearly 6 years since the series finale of The West Wing, and more than 12 since the one-hour drama, which [Aaron] Sorkin created and largely wrote, first walked and talked its way through NBC’s Wednesday-night lineup; and yet you might think the series never ended, given the currency it still seems to enjoy in Washington, the frequency with which it comes up in D.C. conversations and is quoted or referenced on political blogs. In part this is because the smart, nerdy—they might prefer “precocious”—kids who grew up in the early part of the last decade worshipping the cool, technocratic charm of Sorkin’s characters have today matured into the young policy prodigies and press operatives who advise, brief, and excuse the behavior of the most powerful people in the country."
posted by zarq at 7:14 PM PST - 133 comments

Few Examples of Lisp Code Typography. From 1953 to 2012. (Via Lambda the Ultimate.)
posted by skynxnex at 4:09 PM PST - 38 comments

"Nature is not always the best designer, at least when it comes to things that humans must build and maintain. So the newest artificial heart doesn’t imitate the cardiac muscle at all. Instead, it whirs like a little propeller, pushing blood through the body at a steady rate. After 500 million years of evolution accustoming the human body to blood moving through us in spurts, a pulse may not be necessary. That, in any case, is the point of view of the 50-odd calves, and no fewer than three human beings, who have gotten along just fine with their blood coursing through them as evenly as Freon through an air conditioner."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:07 PM PST - 103 comments

In the spring of 1945, three weeks after VE Day, Private First Class Kurt Vonnegut, Jr wrote a letter home to inform his family that he was alive. His infantry unit had been smashed by Panzer divisions in the Ardennes; his unmarked POW train attacked by the RAF; miraculously, he and a handful of fellow prisoners escaped incineration by American and British bombers. "Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden – possibly the world’s most beautiful city", Vonnegut wrote. "But not me."

- Survivor: How Kurt Vonnegut created a novel, a cult following and one of the most loyal readerships in American Fiction by Thomas Meaney in The Times Literary Supplement.
posted by Kattullus at 3:45 PM PST - 82 comments

On the one year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, the Economist magazine now considers Nuclear energy to be "the dream that failed", in an issue with articles covering the history, safety issues, handling of nuclear waste, and costs (with emphasis on China) of nuclear power. [more inside]
posted by vidur at 3:41 PM PST - 50 comments

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Don’t even go there! You know as well as I do, I’ve literally been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and to be honest with you at the end of the day when push comes to shove and it all boils down to it if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Know what I mean? Basically, what I’m trying to say is with all due respect between you and me screenwriting is not rocket science, it’s about breaking the mold, thinking outside the box, giving it 110% 24/7. And I think we can all agree clichés suck but, hey, it’s a job. You gotta do what you gotta do. Just remember you’re writing for an audience and there’s no “I” in . . . you get the picture.

—Definitive List of Cliched Dialogue, Go Into The Story
posted by ob1quixote at 2:11 PM PST - 114 comments

"The sorrow of loss, the pain of being unable to regain those lost cherished moments, but the wherewithal to keep on." Vermont musician Anais Mitchell asked director Jay Sansone to make a video for her song "Coming Down". Jay turned to neglected cans of film in his grandparents' abandoned house. The result is a beautifully emotional combination of sound and vision.
posted by Mellon Udrigle at 12:55 PM PST - 5 comments

Studio Legend: Alan Parsons on "Dark Side of the Moon"
posted by Ardiril at 12:51 PM PST - 27 comments

A series of short animations explaining critical thinking. Created for children and pretty good for adults too.
posted by latkes at 12:28 PM PST - 25 comments

365 Lucky Days, by Canadian artist Lucky Jackson.
posted by growabrain at 12:23 PM PST - 1 comment

Following the March 2011 earthquake in Japan, commercials largely disappeared from television. To fill space between the news reports and lists of missing people, the Ad Council of Japan put together a number of PSAs. Since there were only five or ten of them, the PSAs played thousands of times over the course of a few months, searing themselves into the memory of the Japanese public. Most were typical messages about common courtesy, perseverance, listening to your kids, conservation, and international support. But one PSA in particular quickly took on a life of its own, instantly being mashed up with a classic Japanese TV trope: Robot Transformation Sequences! [more inside]
posted by azuresunday at 12:13 PM PST - 36 comments

How Corporations Corrupt Science at the Public's Expense: Report looks at methods of corporate abuse, suggests steps toward reform [Full Report (PDF)] [Executive Summary (PDF)] [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 11:17 AM PST - 27 comments

This is Chris Barnes performing Hammer Smashed Face in Moscow. This is Chris Barnes shilling for his local auto mall in Tampa. [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 10:13 AM PST - 20 comments

Let's Get Lost - Chet Baker documentary by Bruce Weber 120 min
There will never be another you A remembrance of Chet Baker by Bruce Weber
See also chetbakertribute.com [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:03 AM PST - 20 comments

The myth of 1812: How Canadians see the war we want to see. [Globe and Mail]
posted by Fizz at 8:47 AM PST - 64 comments

Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System. Michelle Alexander argues that ubiquitous plea bargains have allowed America's politicians and judicial system to short-circuit constitutional due process and ignore the mechanics of mass incarceration. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation.
posted by the mad poster! at 8:28 AM PST - 80 comments

Virginia Postrel calls for making birth control pills available over the counter. [more inside]
posted by melissam at 8:12 AM PST - 94 comments

If you're celebrating St. Patrick's Day or March Madness in New York, the State Liquor Authority can help plan your festivities with this handy guide to every establishment in the state of New York licensed to sell alcohol. [more inside]
posted by cedar at 8:10 AM PST - 8 comments

Need a spouse or uncooperative business associate taken care of? Have no fear! HitmanForHire.net is here.
posted by reenum at 7:48 AM PST - 24 comments

Cartier has decided to celebrate its 165 years in business by taking two years to produce an incredible short film.
posted by Atreides at 7:32 AM PST - 53 comments

The Monday and Tuesday after moving the clocks ahead one hour in March is associated with a 10 percent increase in the risk of having a heart attack. Heart Attacks Rise Following Daylight Saving Time.
posted by twoleftfeet at 7:09 AM PST - 41 comments

Photographer Ondrej Pakan takes macro pictures of insects. Pakan's portfolio on 500px. (completely SFW in spite of the "nudity" warning, unless you work with prudish insects) [more inside]
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 6:59 AM PST - 9 comments

Tally Hall is the best new band I've heard in years, hands-down. They're an American rock band best known for the excellent Good Day video and the cult Albino Blacksheep hit Banana Man. They've released two albums, each masterpieces; the first one is exuberant and youthful and, sometimes, utterly cryptic, while the second is stripped down but astonishingly contemplative and even spiritual, easily one of the best-written pop albums I've ever heard. If you're in the mood for something smart and warm and wonderful, there're... [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 6:45 AM PST - 25 comments

Jim Henson's Red Book "In June 1965, 28-year-old Jim Henson started a written log of his activities in what became known as “The Red Book.” He noted what had happened up until that point (deemed “Ancient History”) and then recorded anything that he felt was worth recording as single line journal entries until the end of 1988." via retroist.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:34 AM PST - 7 comments

Douglas Adams would have been 60 today. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:37 AM PST - 66 comments

America is Stealing the World's Doctors
posted by Renoroc at 5:14 AM PST - 52 comments

More diversity in sci-fi webcomix? Yes please: Athena Wheatley, or Warp & Weft features a black female scientist from the 19th century time-travelling to 9283. Fun, and looks good: Moebius meets Futurama meets Adventure Time (and sexy too! occasionaly cartoonishly NSFW)
posted by Tom-B at 4:32 AM PST - 4 comments

"I draw with a Biro pen, i paint with anything. I often run into the sea." Mark Powell draws old people on old envelopes with a plain old ballpoint pen. [more inside]
posted by taz at 3:07 AM PST - 11 comments

An oddly perky video of a real estate agent showing a real estate columnist around an old bank building and semi-attached house for sale (3:51). The building was offered on eBay, had its listing removed, and then reinstated. The reason for the video and the eBay concern? The bank (but not the house) had previously been rented to a group of serial killers. [more inside]
posted by harriet vane at 1:21 AM PST - 20 comments

Old Book Illustrations are vintage pictures that were originally wood engravings or woodcuts, etchings or metal engravings. Old Book Art is pictures, drawings, maps and other images from antiquarian, public-domain books and other old documents. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 8:11 PM PST - 8 comments

Kayfabe Memories has a small book's worth of material on the history of professional wrestling's regional territories and the grapplers who animated them.
posted by Trurl at 7:37 PM PST - 9 comments

Best. TED Talk. Ever. As the 'spinning beach ball of death' (Apple's Wait Cursor) does much more than slow down a three-minute presentation (SLImprovAnywhere)
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:13 PM PST - 106 comments

Does the success of Trent Reznor, Clint Mansell and others suggest an end to the dominance of the traditional orchestral soundtrack?
posted by Artw at 7:06 PM PST - 62 comments

"It all started with wondering what it was really like to be tapped on the shoulder and told that you are the savior of mankind. Ten years of thinking about that, and I began writing." He was James Oliver Rigney, Jr., a Vietnam vet who went on to get a degree in physics from The Citadel, and was then a nuclear engineer for the US Navy. He put all that behind him and started writing a variety of fantasy novels under various aliases. As Reagan O'Neal, he wrote the Fallon trilogy of historical fantasy in the early 1980s, which he followed up with a quick series of Conan novels as Robert Jordan. Under this pen name, he spent a decade planning and four years writing The Eye of the World, the first book in The Wheel of Time, an epic storyline in a fantasy world. Jordan had planned out the broad story arc from the beginning to the "final scene in the final book," but he died before his epic tale could be completed. A young author, Brandon Sanderson, was chosen by Rigney's wife and editor, Harriet McDougal, to complete the portions of the tale left as a loose collection of notes. One last book became three, and just last month, the release date of the final book was set: January 8, 2013, in the final month of the Year of the Dragon. Now that the end is in sight, you might feel the pull of nostalgia to finish the series, or maybe you're interested to see what all this fuss is about. With around 11,000 pages, 635 chapters, and more than four million words, it's a complex, daunting world to (re)enter. Fear not, the internet is here to help. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 5:09 PM PST - 66 comments

Vulture is running a March Madness Drama Derby to determine the greatest TV Drama of the past 25 years. [more inside]
posted by dustyasymptotes at 4:56 PM PST - 33 comments

Ever wonder what a GPS looks like on an airplane?
posted by deathpanels at 4:05 PM PST - 49 comments

"[It] is the shape, size and color of a baby eggplant.” Jeff Winkler on the time he broke his penis.
posted by dragoon at 2:08 PM PST - 80 comments

Walking down Zürich's Lindenhofstrasse, you might stop in surprise by a relief depicting two men and a woman, draped in gauzy robes, each one calmly carrying their own severed head. There is no explanatory sign. Don't worry, though: Felix, Regula and Exuperantius are just the city's cephalophoric patron saints. [more inside]
posted by daisyk at 12:54 PM PST - 16 comments

Here's the trailer for the 50 years in the waiting movie of On The Road.
posted by Xurando at 12:04 PM PST - 67 comments

When life imitates The Onion: Hooking Kids on Sex II. [more inside]
posted by troll at 11:56 AM PST - 140 comments

Jon Gomm plays the guitar and sings.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:39 AM PST - 11 comments

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. Japan, still feeling the aftershocks of the earthquake, the tsunami, the Fukushima exclusion zone... An opportunity for everyone to reflect on the disaster, share stories, and contemplate the impact of a year ago and what it means today.
posted by markkraft at 11:10 AM PST - 10 comments

How will the world end? Encased in ice? Crumbling apart due to over mining? Or maybe beset by amphibious monsters and loathsome animals of huge size creeping their way towards us? An article by Herbert C. Fyfe from 1900, illustrated by Warwick Goble. [more inside]
posted by dng at 10:40 AM PST - 31 comments

Trike drifting looks to be an incredibly dangerous and wildly fun sport. [via]
posted by quin at 10:18 AM PST - 50 comments

Mary Brown, a 56-year-old Florida woman who owned a small auto repair shop but had no health insurance, became the lead plaintiff challenging President Obama's healthcare law because she was passionate about the issue. Brown "doesn't have insurance. She doesn't want to pay for it. And she doesn't want the government to tell her she has to have it," said Karen Harned, a lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business. Brown is a plaintiff in the federation's case, which the Supreme Court plans to hear later this month. But court records reveal that Brown and her husband filed for bankruptcy last fall with $4,500 in unpaid medical bills. Those bills could change Brown from a symbol of proud independence into an example of exactly the problem the healthcare law was intended to address. [more inside]
posted by gerryblog at 8:38 AM PST - 189 comments

One of the most popular stories on the Amazon Kindle marketplace is ...Wesley Crusher Slash Fic?. (i09)
posted by The Whelk at 8:24 AM PST - 23 comments

If Batman is a child's fantasy, then Spider-Man is very much rooted in being a teenager. When we're first introduced to Peter Parker in Amazing Fantasy #15, he's an outsider who feels isolated from everyone around him. He's miserable and resentful, but not because of some sort of defining tragedy, but because that's how you feel when you're a teenager. When he gets the one thing he wants -- the power that makes him stronger, faster and more popular than anyone else -- he promptly screws up and loses one of the only people that truly cared about him. (via Chris Sims @ Comics Alliance)
posted by radwolf76 at 5:03 AM PST - 43 comments

RIP Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, French comics and conceptual artist. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:30 AM PST - 132 comments

"Patrick wants to bang all the Kardashian sisters... Page four... And then... wait how does Channing Tatum come into play?" Since 1:00 a.m. last night @BretEastonEllis has been live-tweeting notes on a possible sequel to American Psycho, story of Patrick Bateman —serial killer and Manhattan businessman. "Up to 14 pages of notes..." [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:30 AM PST - 66 comments

Un Hommage à Thomas Pynchon's Rainbow [PDF, NSFW (language)] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:35 AM PST - 12 comments

Take Wikipedia: 87% of its contributors are male; a bigger discrepancy than Pinterest by any count. However, when discussing Wikipedia, it certainly is not the norm to go on and on about how male the site is. Instead, it is far more common for the site to be praised for its “neutral point of view.” Pinterest as a tool for analyzing difference vs. dominance feminism. Via The Beheld.
posted by latkes at 8:48 PM PST - 125 comments

Yahoo! Screen launched its live stand-up comedy streaming service on February 23 with Bill Maher's CrazyStupidPolitics. The show is still available to watch (recorded, obviously) via Yahoo!, and also on YouTube. (about 1 hour)
posted by hippybear at 8:17 PM PST - 13 comments

With a “chief scientist” specializing in consumer behavior, an “analytics department” monitoring voter trends, and a squad of dozens huddled at computer screens editing video or writing code, the sprawling office complex inside One Prudential Plaza looks like a corporate research and development lab — Ping-Pong table and all. But it is home to the largely secret engine of President Obama’s re-election campaign, where scores of political strategists, data analysts, corporate marketers and Web producers are sifting through information gleaned from Facebook, voter logs and hundreds of thousands of telephone or in-person conversations to reassemble and re-energize the scattered coalition of supporters who swept Mr. Obama into the White House four years ago.
posted by Trurl at 7:25 PM PST - 58 comments

Dys4ia is a new Flash game by Anna Anthropy/Auntie Pixelante about her recent experiences as a trans woman. It is brief, touching, high-polish, and low-res. It possibly represents a new form of diaristic game design. (via gamefilter)
posted by nobody at 5:58 PM PST - 24 comments

Sierra DeMulder is one of the most accomplished and recognizable young women in the world of slam poetry. The two-time National Poetry Slam champion has spent the past five years energizing audiences at colleges and poetry events across the nation, seamlessly weaving complex issues of identity and gender with the honesty of heartbreak. Her piece 'Paper Dolls', recently shared on Project Unbreakable (previously), is very, very good. TRIGGER WARNING - subject matter pertains to sexual assault.
posted by lazaruslong at 5:22 PM PST - 30 comments

The Kaspersky analysts over at Securelist uncovered some interesting things deep in the bowels of the code of a trojan. The hooks of the trojan are written using standard, well known languages and interfaces (C++, DLLs and such), but the payload, upon analysis, seems to be written using some heretofore unknown programming language. Can you figure out what language the Duqu trojan is written in? (via Lambda the Ultimate Programming Blog)
posted by symbioid at 3:18 PM PST - 94 comments

14 Year Old Buys House in Florida Meet Willow Tufano, age 14: Lady Gaga fan, animal lover, landlord. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 2:15 PM PST - 99 comments

"I know you are out there, just wanting to put your wig on, just like me. And I know you're just waiting to have a good time. Just put a little ball earring on, a little bad sunglasses, and a big, bad wig on, 'cause it's good. It feels good, works, it does." It is, or was, Wigstock, an annual outdoor drag festival held in NYC, starting in 1985 by "Lady" Bunny and friends. Each year the party grew, moving to Union Square in 1991, then to Christopher Street waterfront in 1994 to deal with the expanding crowd. 2001 was supposed to be the last year, but the party came back in 2003, in conjunction with the annual HOWL festival. That carried the tradition on for another two years, and Wigstock's official website is stuck in 2005, a reminder of the festivities that were. You can reminisce with Gawker, or take a short journey back to 1987 with Wigstock: The Movie (part 1 of 4), not to be confused with the longer film of the same name, capturing Wigstock 1995 (part 1 of 8).
posted by filthy light thief at 12:57 PM PST - 18 comments

Andy Ihnatko writes a charmingly enthusiastic post about listening to the same aria, from the same production, sung in two very different ways: by the star, and by the understudy: Rachele Gilmore’s 100 MPH Fastball [more inside]
posted by danny the boy at 12:30 PM PST - 41 comments

Flannery O'Connor reads A Good Man is Hard to Find aloud at Vanderbilt University in 1959. [more inside]
posted by jquinby at 12:23 PM PST - 36 comments

Got no gears so you best not dis me / yeah bitch, it's a motherfuckin fixie
posted by unSane at 11:46 AM PST - 75 comments

When kevin wins, the planet loses! is a tumblr that collects pixel art from a variety of videogames to showcase the beautiful work that lies in the background of the action. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 11:43 AM PST - 15 comments

Friday dreams. Simon Raymonde, bassist of Cocteau Twins, writes: A rare nostalgia moment: i didnt think any footage from the Heaven or Las Vegas tour in 1990 existed and i remember how cool it was being able to have a lighting designer for the first time that tour but have never seen how our stage looked from the audience till tonight so this is a treat to me. The whole concert in on youtube now pretty much. And my god, what a voice Elizabeth had on this tour, absolutely perfect on every song. Some rare good memories. [more inside]
posted by timshel at 11:18 AM PST - 48 comments

No GLaDOS. No Chell. No portals. Set in the 1980s. Competitive multiplayer. Multiple endings. The Portal 2 That Could Have Been.
posted by Artw at 11:17 AM PST - 44 comments

The Seven Lady Godivas: The True Facts Concerning History's Barest Family is a Dr. Seuss book for adults, which features nude women in every panel.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:09 AM PST - 30 comments

Firesign Theater's Peter Bergman Dead at 73 of Complications from Leukemia. Peter Bergman, founding member of The Firesign Theatre has passed on to that great Humbolt County in the sky.
posted by SPUTNIK at 10:54 AM PST - 88 comments

The most insane letter ever written by a child to a TV weatherman.
posted by scalefree at 10:05 AM PST - 102 comments

Did the Met betray rape victims to avoid bad PR? "Former Metropolitan Police officer -- and Lib Dem mayoral candidate -- Brian Paddick has appeared at the Leveson Inquiry, and his witness statement contains an astonishing allegation against his ex-employers. In a section about the Metropolitan Police Service's attempt to improve its image in the media, Paddick details the "negative commentary" on Ian Blair after he took over as Met commissioner. "The Met went from being very open to being almost paranoid," he writes. One of the consequences of this, he adds, was that he was asked to "water-down" a report critical of the Met's handling of rape cases." [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 8:45 AM PST - 13 comments

James Killian Spratt is a sculptor and Edgar Rice Burroughs fan who, in addition to sculpting pieces for the Barsoomian board game Jetan, has created an illustrated adaptation of the first book in the Barsoom series, A Princess of Mars: "The characters are highly underclad, yet oblivious to it; it's their normal way, and they don't see much naughty or titillating about it. The men are men and the women are women and blood is red and scary. I set out to be honest with the nudity and violence, and the devil take Pollyanna, she needs to grow up anyway." The on-going graphic interpretation, begun in 2000, is presently on chapter 21 of the 28 chapter book. [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:32 AM PST - 36 comments

Part weird bestiary, part alien zodiac, the crystalline characters of René Lalique appear far too ethereal to ride on the noses of mere motorcars. [slideshow] [NYT]. A selection of original Rene Lalique car mascots, hood ornaments and radiator caps will be auctioned this weekend at the Amelia Concours d'Elegance in Florida, but can simply be viewed as photos for those of us on a budget.
posted by obscurator at 8:31 AM PST - 13 comments

Homeless on purpose, how a U1 philosophy student braves the elements, sleeps outside, and keeps an eye on his GPA Shane is a U1 Philosophy student at McGill, and has been homeless since July. He lives on campus, using its facilities like most of us use different rooms in a house. He eats his meals in student lounges and does push-ups in the library. He showers at the gym and stashes extra socks in convenient hiding spots. He won’t say where – he guards his possessions closely.
posted by Strass at 7:22 AM PST - 97 comments

The NYPD Tapes Confirmed The report police hid for nearly two years that corroborates a Voice investigation — and vindicates a whistle-blower the NYPD tried to destroy.

Covered in 2010 by This American Life as Is That a Tape Recorder in Your Pocket, or Are You Just Unhappy to See Me? For 17 months, New York police officer Adrian Schoolcraft recorded himself and his fellow officers on the job, including their supervisors ordering them to do all sorts of things that police aren't supposed to do.
posted by The Deej at 6:42 AM PST - 83 comments

"My experience reinforced my sense of dedication to use my art form of photography as an inspiration for others to work together to save nature's places of spiritual sanctuary for future generations." Clyde Butcher uses large format cameras to document the beauty of Florida. His work is simply breathtaking. [more inside]
posted by quin at 6:08 AM PST - 12 comments

A Treasury of the World's Worst Online Dating Stories
posted by rodmandirect at 3:39 AM PST - 252 comments

The Holga D, a digital camera concept based on the popular Holga medium-format camera. It's a minimalist digital camera that maintains the mystery of film. There's no display, just a little e-ink shot counter on top. The controls are equally spare: shutter speed, ISO, and a completely manual lens. [more inside]
posted by duien at 7:18 PM PST - 155 comments

The web site of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has more than 30,000 images searchable by who, what, where, and when.
posted by Trurl at 7:13 PM PST - 11 comments

Take the Ultimate Sesame Street Quiz (and watch a bunch of Sesame Street clips)
posted by IvoShandor at 6:50 PM PST - 36 comments

Any Sufficiently Advanced Civilization is Indistinguishable from Nature.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:31 PM PST - 46 comments

FP Passport Blog: In an attempt to highlight the role of women in Beijing's annual National People's Congress, China's party newspaper the People's Daily published "Beautiful female journalists at two sessions," consisting of women asking questions and "beautifying" China's legislative session. It's hard to think of a more awkward way for a media outlet to celebrate International Women's Day, except maybe last year's offering from China's state news wire Xinhua: "Attractive females at NPC, CPCC sessions."
posted by vidur at 6:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Hi, my name is Ryan, and that sound you're hearing is my neighbors back there doin' it. Welcome to The Thin Wall Challenge. (MLYT) (mildly nsfw)
posted by Evernix at 5:11 PM PST - 121 comments

Over a year after after decrying mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana possession (Previously on the blue), 700 Club founder and evangelist Pat Robertson has come out in support of outright decriminalization, saying marijuana should be regulated like alcohol.
posted by codswallop at 5:06 PM PST - 75 comments

"15 Wonderful Redesigns of the 'Lolita' Cover."
posted by anothermug at 5:06 PM PST - 27 comments

Neil deGrasse Tyson gives testimony on March 7, 2012 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (Majority member page) (Minority member page) Eight minutes of speech followed by questioning and response. [more inside]
posted by lazaruslong at 3:33 PM PST - 77 comments

The Emperor Uncrowned: An in-depth look at the controversial man who may be India's next Prime Minister (previously). Also related.
posted by peacheater at 3:28 PM PST - 5 comments

Lionel Messi is the first player to score 5 goals in a Champions League match as Barcelona demolished Bayer Leverkusen 7-1. Comparsions with Mardaonna and Pele abound. Like Mozart, Messi at 5 years [YouTube, Spanish] old was better than most.
posted by vac2003 at 3:13 PM PST - 64 comments