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Hopkin Green Frog sadly explained.
posted by vaportrail at 11:56 PM PST - 25 comments

The Book of Kells is one of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts ever made, a fusion of Celtic motifs, Germanic forms and Christian themes. We can view the image gallerys, or even visit in person, but it's a soulfully thin experience compared to actually holding its weight and turning the pages. Enter the world of Facsimile Books, a faithful re-creation of the original to the extent that it is virtually indistinguishable from the original, where price is no concern, editions are limited, and can cost $20,000 or more and often sell-out quickly. Finns Fine Books is a leading distributor. A list of publishers, mostly European fine arts craftsmen.
posted by stbalbach at 9:52 PM PST - 15 comments

Bad girls and Octopi, from some Russian LiveJournal Octopus Blog. (Some odd stuff inside, beware)
posted by growabrain at 9:24 PM PST - 29 comments

Science explores 125 big questions that face scientific inquiry over the next quarter-century. [via]
posted by Gyan at 6:57 PM PST - 23 comments

"The stars are veiled. Something stirs in the East. A sleepless malice. The eye of the enemy is moving. He is HERE."
posted by keswick at 6:12 PM PST - 15 comments

Smart ass blogger employed at law firm this summer. Humorous reflections on the institutions of law school and the summer clerkship.
posted by fatllama at 6:12 PM PST - 15 comments

Apropos Comics. "Hulk's movie not so bad! Had innovative directorial style! And Jennifer Connelly!"
posted by brain_drain at 4:55 PM PST - 22 comments

Governments seize 50 million dollars worth of pirated material on a raid against alleged "net pirates". Hundreds of computers were seized and 4 arrests were made total. The Justice Department “is striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain — a distribution chain that provides the vast majority of illegal digital content now available online,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said. Anyone who knows how it really works knows that statement is far from the truth.
posted by Dean Keaton at 2:55 PM PST - 68 comments

Steffen Jahn photography - A Flash site with a wide variety of photos: commercial work for exotic cars, flowers, planes and landscapes. Personal favorites are 'motorsport' in the 'stills' section and the 'little white things' section.
posted by swordfishtrombones at 1:45 PM PST - 8 comments

This game rated JC for eternal salvation, curing of the sick, and excessive scourging at the pillar. Ok, this is getting ridiculous...a Christian videogame about the rapture and the tribulations? WTF? I guess I know which side I'd be on. Seriously, though, do these people realize that every single new Christian-centric product is nothing more than a honeypot for harvesting names, addresses, and email addresses? Just like the GOP, people realize there's money to be made in marketing to Christians. But, the second you sign up, I'm sure you get added to one of the GOP's spam farms direct mail providers and sold to the appropriate politicrit or ideological demagogue. Just to show you I'm not full of it, look at who's in the databases of the Omega List and Response Unlimited...Advance Ticket Buyers for the Passion of the Christ, Peace Frogs (what?), Y2K Preparedness Buyers, the current (68k) and former (19m) subscribers to the Washington Times (aka Moonie Times), and of course, the Terri Schiavo Donor List. Take a look at who else is in there - Limbaugh, Newsmax, Fortune Magazine, Human Events, Guns and Ammo Magazine, Oliver North, the Heritage Foundation, Linda Tripp donors, G. Gordon Liddy's Toughguy Database, and the buyers of the Left Behind Video Series. No wonder we always lose...every single rightwing entity is in there! Via BoingBoing.
posted by rzklkng at 11:54 AM PST - 53 comments

Time to name names in Plame affair. Time Magazine has announced that they will hand over the full notes and emails of their reporter to federal investigators, revealing the identity of the White House official(s) who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer. Will Joseph Wilson finally get his frog march?
posted by insomnia_lj at 11:42 AM PST - 80 comments

As a follow up to this earlier thread, the BBC has just posted the final installment of their Beethoven Experience, free mp3s of Beethoven's symphonies 6 through 9. Get them while you can, they're only up for a week (Number 6 goes down on Monday).
posted by soplerfo at 11:24 AM PST - 27 comments

Why does the National Council of Churches hate America? The NCC -- a coalition of 36 Christian denominations -- makes a firm statement against the war in Iraq: "This year our nation is at war as we observe the 4th of July, a day that honors those founders who spoke out for independence from tyranny. Today in Iraq a cruel dictator has been deposed, yet the suffering of the Iraqi people continues. Mandated elections have been held, yet the future of Iraq remains as uncertain as ever. Day by day the cost of this war for the United States, for Iraq, for peace grows clearer. No weapons of mass destruction have been found; no link to the attacks on September 11, 2001 has been shown. It has become clear that the rationale for invasion was at best a tragic mistake, at worst a clever deception." Mainstream Christians are starting to take back Christianity from the theocrats.
posted by digaman at 10:59 AM PST - 74 comments

Detached a gorgeous comic based on the author's experiences with having a detached retina and going through eye surgery.
posted by mathowie at 10:40 AM PST - 22 comments

Next Act Won't Be as Easy as the First. Gates once conceded: "Google is still perfect, the bubble is floating and they can do everything. You should buy their stock at any price.” And just this week they affirmed this statement with their release of Google Earth, showing the world that their scope is beyond just websites. But is google growing too ambitious? is this desire to "search all of the world's information" signaling doom?
posted by merc at 10:06 AM PST - 22 comments

Gangsta Gadgets
Yes friends, your life has been woefully incomplete if you aren't surfing the web with a Ba-Donka-Donk Mouse on your Laptop Lowrider grooving to the latest R. Kelly love ballad on your iPod Spinner serving up the bass to your bitchin' Boombox Hightops and working your digi-photos over with the Redman Redeye filter.
Speaking of R. Kelly, after you're done working, go and have a shower under the R. Kelly 24k Gold showerhead with built-in 5 megapixel camera to capture those special moments under the suds.
Also, be sure to check out Not Coming to an Xbox near you and the Smartphone Showdown.
posted by fenriq at 9:55 AM PST - 11 comments

Got Beer? Which came first, the Stella Artois or the Ostrich? Does this makes sense after I drink a few Stellas?
posted by spicynuts at 9:06 AM PST - 30 comments

Michael Jackson is guilty of being totally excellent in this fantastic whirlwind tour of NES games (a la Sega Fantasy VI); MJ herein imposes his 16-bit self on a huge amount of games including but not limited to Megaman, Kung Fu, Ice Climber, Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3, Dragon Warrior, Arkanoid, Track and Field, Spelunker, Final Fantasy and more. If you know the Japanese language + games, clue us in. (Flash and hardcore midi dance music warning)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:55 AM PST - 24 comments

Kinky for governor!
posted by xowie at 7:43 AM PST - 24 comments

Free Latin grammars and Texts are available for budding Latin scholars as well as Law and Med students who want a jump on all the professional lingo. Forum Romanorum provides very readable texts on Roman culture, life and history. Finally this better than average latin quotes page is available for the Mefites who just want to be able to spout Latin quotes (or who want to know what Latin quote gasbags are going on about)
posted by BeerGrin at 6:53 AM PST - 29 comments

To be successful, an occupation such as that contemplated after any hostilities in Iraq requires much detailed interagency planning, many forces, multi-year military commitment, and a national commitment to nation-building... To conduct their share of the essential tasks that must be accomplished to reconstruct an Iraqi state, military forces will be severely taxed in military police, civil affairs, engineer, and transportation units, in addition to possible severe security difficulties. The administration of an Iraqi occupation will be complicated by deep religious, ethnic, and tribal differences which dominate Iraqi society. U.S. forces may have to manage and adjudicate conflicts among Iraqis that they can barely comprehend. An exit strategy will require the establishment of political stability, which will be difficult to achieve given Iraq's fragmented population, weak political institutions, and propensity for rule by violence.

From the US Army War College in February 2003: Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario  (PDF). From June 2005, Anthony Cordesman's analysis of factual misstatements in the President's recent address: Truth and spin on Iraq. Foresight is 20/20. Irresponsibility and mendacity are timeless.
posted by y2karl at 6:29 AM PST - 44 comments

Legitimate Job Test or Something Wacky? H.J. Cummins of the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes about personality tests--never meant to screen job applicants--being used or misused by employers. Test sample items: "I see things or animals or people around me that others do not see." "My soul sometimes leaves my body." "I have a habit of counting things that are not important, such as bulbs on electric signs, and so forth."
posted by etaoin at 5:26 AM PST - 38 comments

The New Yorker has an article about AIPAC ( the American Israel Public Affairs Commision ) and the ongoing spy investigation into Larry Franklin and his passing of classified information to AIPAC who then passed it on to Israel. The article points to the question of whether AIPAC should be forced to register as the agent of a foreign power and whether there is undue influence over American policy by Israel's Likud party.
posted by sien at 4:17 AM PST - 14 comments

Spain legalizes gay marriage. Warm-climate-loving gay people rejoice! You now have warm beaches to share with your spouse. Yesterday it was Canada; which country will be tomorrow? [link to La Vanguardia article]
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:04 AM PST - 45 comments

Republicans are threatening to revoke Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption. Not because of the steroid scandals, or the numerous abuses of the monopoly to shakedown cities for publicly financed stadiums. No, the GOP is attacking baseball because George Soros, a liberal, might buy a team and he would be a "polarizing figure." Oh yeah, Fred Malek, a non-polarizing, competing bidder is a GOP fundraiser and a aide who compiled a list of members of the "Jewish Cabal" at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Nixon. This injection of politics into baseball seems eerily familiar to me...
posted by hipnerd at 1:12 AM PST - 44 comments

Newman Kunti Lin, Ph.D., PE. (where PE stands for 'Professional Engineer', but here has been re-defined as for 'Penile Engineer' who can help you repair your erectile dysfunction or impotence. (NSFW)

Don't miss Dr. Lin's reason we get eye floaters.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 10:50 PM PST - 14 comments

EXCITING LINKS FOR BORING DAYS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER. Love the site design. Found in my referreral logs! Found via ELFBDINPO: The Gyros Project, The Balloon Page.
posted by mwhybark at 8:34 PM PST - 18 comments

Leave My Child Alone! --a new group teaching parents how to stop the very intrusive recruitment tactics of the military, including getting their kids off the Pentagon's list of 30 million potential recruits,: (...a joint effort of the Defense Department and a private contractor, disclosed last week, to build a database of 30 million 16- to 25-year-olds, complete with Social Security numbers, racial and ethnic identification codes, grade point averages and phone numbers. The database is to be scoured for youngsters that the Pentagon believes can be persuaded to join the military...), and getting your kids off the School district records lists (School districts are required under Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act to release student records to military recruiters or risk losing funding, but they are also required to inform families of their Opt Out rights. Notification varies wildly across districts, and it's a bit of a crapshoot whether families know or not.)
More on this from Bob Herbert here: The Army's Hard Sell
posted by amberglow at 7:43 PM PST - 67 comments

"Despite the gravity of the problem, I believe there is an answer. Put simply, it is this: offer greater latitude for religious speech and symbols in public debate, but also impose a stricter ban on state financing of religious institutions and activities."

A proposal byNoah Feldman for redrawing the line between church and state.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 7:22 PM PST - 24 comments

Dershowitz and The Governator. Long time sparring partners Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein are at it again, arguing over the publication of the latter's new book. Only this time, Dershowitz tried to call in the big guns.
posted by greatgefilte at 6:50 PM PST - 6 comments

Matrix Revolutions - google lets you see the whole movie, fullscreen, for free. (google video player download required. More Inside)
posted by sourbrew at 6:27 PM PST - 38 comments

A new design for the "Freedom Tower"-- the skyscraper that will form the heart of the rebuilt World Trade Center in New York-- has been unveiled. The new tower will be slimmer, straighter and more conventional, it will be set farther back from the street, and it will be placed atop a mammoth, 200-foot concrete-and-metal pedestal designed to repel explosions.
posted by keswick at 6:09 PM PST - 63 comments

United States Army 3rd Battalion 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment Charlie Battery Afghan Theatre Sixth Row Fifth Column
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:57 PM PST - 29 comments

Try the potato barrels on Tuesday. Boffins want, and indeed deserve pampering. Boffins, boffins, boffins! I haven't heard that word in a while and now I can't stop saying boffin. boffin.
posted by longsleeves at 5:51 PM PST - 4 comments

David Foster Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon University
Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
The author of Infinite Jest attempts to explain what is wrong with your brain's default settings.
posted by Edible Energy at 5:25 PM PST - 26 comments

Find a Death reports a double whammy, as June sees the deaths of Imogen Claire (a Transylvanian) and Jonathan Adams (Dr. Von Scott), both known for their appearances in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. If miss them that badly, you still have a chance to see them on screen at midnight, once and a while. They've been immortalized on screen, and maybe will be in screams, too.
posted by taursir at 5:02 PM PST - 10 comments

Freegans !
Because so much is trashed in our society, a freegan lifestyle can be one of great abundance -- food, books, magazines, comic books, newspapers, videos, music (CDs, cassettes, records, etc.), carpets, musical instruments, clothing, rollerblades, scooters, furniture, vitamins, electronics, pet care products, games, toys, bicycles, artwork, and just about any other type of consumer good can be found in the discards of retailers, institutions, and individuals simply by rummaging through their trash bins, dumpsters, and trash bags.
Previously mentioned here. (via memepool)
posted by es_de_bah at 4:35 PM PST - 60 comments

"keep your eyes on me and put one hand down your trousers" - Rachel Stevens really wants to help you keep healthy (flash, sound, may be NSFW)
posted by quiet at 3:05 PM PST - 35 comments

"Global Frequency" is out. Many of you have likely heard of Warren Ellis, a prolific blogger and decent sci-fi comic writer. Turns out that WB turned his comic into a TV series, then shelved it before airing. Well, some dedicated souls got the pilot out for all of us. It's available now via Bit Torrent and is well worth watching.
posted by mystyk at 2:53 PM PST - 36 comments

Postage stamps with a side of race baiting. The Mexican postal service released a series of five stamps today featuring a 1940's era cartoon of a fat lipped jug eared negro child, known for his hapless adventures, and his Aunt Jemima (classic edition, not modern sassy Jemima) mother.
posted by jonson at 2:36 PM PST - 25 comments

Cosmos 1 is officially lost! However, fellow solar sailors, it's not too late to buy a t-shirt. I, however, can't help but focus my attention on this educational BBC News article; I believe I'm having some sort of pavlovian response to that last diagram, but thankfully it seems I'm not the first solar sailing pervert out there.
posted by analogue at 2:11 PM PST - 15 comments

Hell hath no fury... British shock jock Tim Shaw came back home to find his belongings on the street and his car gone...maybe he should have been a tiny little bit more considerate with the missus...
posted by Skeptic at 1:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Officer in Charge Responds to Buhriz Allegations Army Ranger 1LT TJ Grider in a letter to Cryptome responds to allegations that his unit may have killed Iraqi children and then planted weapons before taking photos. The photos and allegations were discussed on Metafilter here. When my medic said the wounded were stable we picked them up, threw them over our backs, and moved with them and the detainee over 200 meters to the road where we had coordinated for a field ambulance, at this time we were still taking fire but could not locate the origin. We saved the lives of the very kids that had shot at us and attempted to kill us. And what you all do not realize is that the detainee admitted to an interpreter that he and his friends had attacked us and had been paid to fight by a local insurgency leader. Although I feel it is not warranted, I welcome any investigation into the events that day. I am confident that my actions were right and in accordance with the Geneva Convention and the laws of land warfare. I hope you feel comfortable with your actions, Mr. Kraft. You have managed to skip any investigation and associated an honorable, very accomplished platoon with a crime that did not exist.
posted by mlis at 12:28 PM PST - 92 comments

Front pages from around the world in a flash. The amazing Newseum (previously referred to most recently here) now has a flash interface to show 436 front pages from 45 countries.
posted by jasper411 at 10:57 AM PST - 13 comments

Around the world on 8 litres of fuel? I'd be more excited about this if the automotive industry hadn't been teasing us with cool, feature laden concept cars for years, and then actually producing boring combustion engine sedans.
posted by Fozzie at 10:25 AM PST - 10 comments

Page after page of late 50s/early 60s pop posters, advertisements and more, designed by the studio of Lefor-Openo, which consisted of Marie-Claire Lefort and Marie-Francine Oppeneau. Via Papel Continuo
posted by iconomy at 10:06 AM PST - 5 comments

“Negative eco-tourism from orbit.” Sprol shows the visual macroscopic effects of the decisions and behavior of our society. Since previous generations have not had the advantage of this perspective, it is our obligation to use it wisely.
posted by crunchland at 10:02 AM PST - 20 comments

Is baby formula financing terrorism? Also discussed one year ago. "Just because you have an infant- formula operation doesn't mean it's a terror funding operation," says Sergeant Jezierski. "But to say there's no terrorist funding isn't the case either."
posted by leftcoastbob at 9:29 AM PST - 14 comments

Ringtones are a growing concern and not just when people don't shut them off. Jamster is a weekly ringtone subscription that advertises to kids on channels like Nick and MTV. Kids are attracted to crazy frogs like a magnet and are using the service without parental permission. Now Britain is launching a new inquiry into Jamster's business practices. And lawyers in California filed a class action lawsuit against the company. But Jamster isn't just some fly-by-night operation trying to milk as much money from kids as they can before regulators crack down. Jamster is owned by VeriSign.

It's also a fair question whether it's worth paying 3 bucks for a few seconds of a song that sounds like a player piano, when it costs less than a buck to get the whole thing on the web (especially now that that crazy frog is a single). Why can't you just pay the 99 cents or whatever to get the song on your phone?
posted by kenneth at 8:37 AM PST - 76 comments

A warning to would-be kebab thiefs. A three-part political allegory of sorts. Something more abstract. All links WMV. Music videos.
posted by kenko at 8:22 AM PST - 5 comments

What are you doing for July 4th? I just found out I'll be working. Our spacecraft Swift is going to be observing comet Tempel1 at the time of the Deep Impact encounter. (Previous discussed here on MeFi 2 years ago.) We'll probably have images and movies first, but the first images you'll see after the encounter will likely come from either JPL or Hubble. You can't have Penn State scooping NASA.

Oh well, at least we will have a barbecue at work to celebrate. Our acting Mission Director during this time is a great bloke from MSSL. It is oddly appropriate to be celebrating the Fourth with a person from the UK.
posted by Fat Guy at 8:08 AM PST - 10 comments

Google Earth: Zero Hour +1 If Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was responsible for a productivity loss of $600 million (for people playing hooky), then the release of Google Earth has to be responsible for at least $100m. So the next question is...what's next? When you think about all the Google Maps hacks, from craigslist, to GasBuddy (offline), Chicago Crimestats and Transit Maps, London Traffic Cams, various sight seeing sites, NYC Subway Stops, plus integration with BlogWise, Terraserver, Host-IP (broken?), Yahoo Traffic, and the US Census, you might wonder what else could be integrated into gEarth?

Things I'm hoping for? How about integrating historical markers, daytrip resources, factory tours, social demographics (like Nationmaster), politics (fundraising, election results, registration, polling place location, election irregularities), mapped to do lists, real-time weather and traffic, things that aren't there anymore, custom atlas creation, IMDB movie location shoots, tighter integration with topographical maps, WiFi access Points, a News Attention Index, shipwrecks, Job Searches, and tighter integration with the USGS. As shown in the gEarth interface (left hand side, first one in "Layers"), their online community is already working on using, improving, and customizing gEarth's new features, including some updates (Caution, requires the integration of *.kml file, *.eta, or *.kmz files.)
posted by rzklkng at 8:06 AM PST - 20 comments

Physics, bikinis and bubbles. A weird flash physics experiment. Strangly hypnotic. If the bikini clad woman gets stuck, just click and drag her.
posted by dazed_one at 7:48 AM PST - 27 comments

Godel's theorems have been used to extrapolate a great many "truths" about the world. Torkel Franzen sets the record straight in his new book Godel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse. Read the introduction (PDF). If you want, check out his explanation of the theorems.
posted by Gyan at 2:59 AM PST - 65 comments

Ballistic Defecation is just what it sounds like. Or is it?
posted by weston at 1:10 AM PST - 15 comments

Casino carpet gallery. [via scrubbles.net]
posted by mediareport at 9:47 PM PST - 17 comments

Yahoo gets social. Yahoo's new search is designed around your contact list. Save a few bookmarks with some notes and the next time anyone within two degrees of you searches on that topic, they'll see your bookmarks above random search results. Oh, and it's got tags too. Will this kill search engine gaming? What's Google going to do to compete, buy delicious and incorporate that?
posted by mathowie at 9:43 PM PST - 28 comments

Canada Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage. "We are a nation of minorities. And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights," said Prime Minister Paul Martin. "A right is a right and that is what this vote tonight is all about."
posted by digaman at 6:41 PM PST - 138 comments

Al's Morning Meeting is a smart, well-researched list of story ideas put together by Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute. Tompkins collects or develops and distributes ideas, adding comments and lots of relevant links, to journalists and others on such timely topics as hybrid cars and dangers to rescuers, interest-only home loans, seasonal jobs, runaway brides and missing adults, and the stellar pope package, offered up the day after John Paul II's death. Al's particularly good when a complex news story develops and reporters need assistance in a hurry. This is a site worth checking each day or sign up for daily e-mail delivery.
posted by etaoin at 6:23 PM PST - 3 comments

In the emotive world of child abuse, Professor Sir Roy Meadow became a celebrity in the last 25 years. He described Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy in which parents were said to have confabulated symptoms in their children in order to obtain medical treatment. Among child and health workers, Police and Social Workers, his eponymous law held that multiple childhood deaths in individual families were indicative of abuse and infanticide.
He was of course a popular forensic expert and his testimony resulted in murder convictions and removal of at-risk children from their families. But the Court of Appeal in UK has found that Prof. Meadow's statistical assertions and scientific reasonings were themselves confabulated and there have been a number of convictions overturned. He is now fighting for his professional reputation before the General Medical Council in London. [More Inside]
posted by peacay at 5:33 PM PST - 17 comments

The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.
posted by carter at 1:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Justice Souter may rue his decision on eminent domain... I can't tell how serious the backers of this hotel 'proposal' may actually be, but I know that it brought a smile to my face. Anyone else think of some good "right back at'cha" antics after controversial rulings, mandates, etc. were made?
posted by tgrundke at 1:00 PM PST - 95 comments

ITER goes to France. Amazing stuff happens at 100 million degrees Celsius.
posted by magullo at 11:25 AM PST - 19 comments

Beach Billboards "5,000 of your beach sponsoring ads coupled with "Please Don't Litter" are impressed during early morning cleaning leaving the beach manicured with your message all over it". Support-A-Beach Programs - Do you want to stroll on such clean beaches?
posted by webmeta at 11:20 AM PST - 54 comments

I am wanting, I am thinking To arise and go forth singing The Kalevala is an epic poem written by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century. Definition. Celebration. Suitable musical accompaniment. Previously mentioned here.
posted by arse_hat at 10:11 AM PST - 20 comments

Bourgie (boo-zhee) Entertaining food blog (previous mefi topic) Regularly updated and worth a look for those interested in food ;) Written from Berkeley but not region specific, sometimes recipes.

"what is a bourgie? First let's get the pronunciation down, boo-zhee, sort of rhymes with sue me. Actually, it doesn't rhyme at all. It's the truncated version of bourgeoisie, you remember middle school history, Marie Antoinette, the rising middle class. But to English speaking nations, assuming that is what you belong to, this is the class with which we aspire to belong. And with food, it's almost the intangible. That little bit of effort that brings the dreary to the divine."
posted by wuakeen at 10:01 AM PST - 26 comments

Legitimate MP3 downloads! If you like the big beat duo The Chemical Brothers, I'm sure you'll be impressed by these two excellent remixes: Flip The Switch & Believe EP. Primal Scream's deep house masterpiece is given similarly impressive treatment in Screamixadelica. Maybe you prefer the punkier electronica of The Prodigy; check out Always Outsiders, Never Outdone. BTW don't forget to donate to the nominated charities on each site if you decide to keep the tracks.

On slightly more dodgy ground, copyright-wise, are the remixes and mashups from tone396, lionel vinyl, fakeID & Go Home Productions (these are clearly only a handful of artists, but in my opinion are some of the best) - I wonder how, or even if you can, apply copyright laws to some of these kinds of hybrid productions.
posted by smiffy at 9:54 AM PST - 19 comments

The sun finally set for good on the British empire And nobody said anything.
posted by Mekon at 9:54 AM PST - 42 comments

Google Earth is out. And it's free! It's only for Windows (at least, for now) and it allows you to traverse the Earth using satellite imagery.
posted by bbrown at 9:37 AM PST - 82 comments

The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection . "From Edwin A. Abbott to Emile Zola, the 1,082 titles in the Penguin Classics Complete Library total nearly half a million pages." The weight of the books is approximately 700 pounds. Amazon is offering free shipping! I wonder how big the box would be waiting at my door. (via)
posted by clgregor at 9:32 AM PST - 31 comments

Patrick Henry, a conservative Christian college (New Yorker) with eighty-five percent of incoming freshman being homeschooled, is a vernable breeding ground for future Republicans. Take cloistered kids, teach them one message, and Mr. Rove's clone army nears completion. The article is so quotable the whole thing must be read, as it fufills all our fears, stereotypes and snide comments sounds (Common Dreams). It scares our brother's across the pond, while the homeschooled community gets all wet just thinking about it. This raises several questions, what kind of politicians will sheltered college students be and how do they have fun without binge drinking, cocaine and sex?
posted by geoff. at 9:24 AM PST - 95 comments

what happens when you put too much detergent in the washing machines ... IN HELL!!! A demonstration of ragdoll physics in flash. If she gets stuck, click and drag her over the obstacle. Considering the painful contortions she ends up in, I can't help but feel a little misogynistic. [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 9:18 AM PST - 41 comments

75 Degrees South :: blogging from Antarctica
posted by anastasiav at 6:46 AM PST - 12 comments

Norway's Ministry for Modernisation has declared for Open Source formats. Speaking at eNorge, the Norwegian Minister for Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, has said that "proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government". Although he did not mention Microsoft by name, he did say that this was the last time he would be streaming his speech using the current (WMP-based) technology.

The Ministry for Modernisation may sound quaint, but it was founded in 2004 with a broad remit, and 200 employees, not a small number in a nation of less than 5 million souls. Although Norway's spending on IT may not be great compared to the US or China, as one of the wealthiest and most technologically developed nations on Earth (not to mention the emphasis on long-distance communications robustness created by a large country with terrible weather) it sets a precedent about what a tech-savvy first-world nation might do with Open Source, not because it cannot afford proprietary formats but because it does not want them. Microsoft, meanwhile, might be wondering why it bothered to translate Office into Sami. Will this be the first domino, or can it be written off as the actions of an oil-rich rogue state that will soon be brought back into the global consensus?
posted by tannhauser at 6:05 AM PST - 17 comments

The Unofficial War: U.S., Britain Led Massive Secret Bombing Campaign Before Iraq War Was Declared

A U.S. general who commanded the U.S. allied air forces in Iraq has confirmed that the U.S. and Britain conducted a massive secret bombing campaign before the U.S. actually declared war on Iraq...Starting in late May to June of 2002 a flurry of activity began both in the United States and in the Middle East. In what appears to be an admission of covert activity, chief allied air force commander Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley divulged in a little-noticed quote in the New York Times that US/British aircraft flew 21,736 sorties between June 2002 and March 2003.

[Previously posted in a comment by ericb at 12:56 PM PST on June 27; more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 5:08 AM PST - 33 comments

The Aesthetics of Resistance. The first part of Peter Weiss's 3-volume novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975-81) has, after many delays, finally been published in a Joachim Neugroschel’s English translation: a major, though largely-unheralded literary event. The book ‘stands as the most significant German novel published after The Tin Drum.’ [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 3:54 AM PST - 7 comments

OpenCRS - easy access to US Congressional Research Service Reports
posted by daksya at 12:44 AM PST - 3 comments

“It is important to the future of our Nation to recognize that there is a problem of credibility today.” Government has an obligation to present information to the public promptly and accurately so that the public’s evaluation of Government activities is not distorted. “The administration should clarify its intent … People lack confidence in the credibility of our government. Even our allies are beginning to suspect what we say. It’s a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy”
posted by growabrain at 11:46 PM PST - 19 comments

The Aquaskipper
24 pounds of water-hopping hydrofoil chicanery (wmv file).
posted by fenriq at 9:58 PM PST - 18 comments

Legend of the Red Green Dragon. LOTGD is "a browser based role playing game, based on Seth Able's Legend of the Red Dragon."

Create a character, flirt with Violet the bar wench, flirt with Seth the Bard! Survive through the worst in the forest outside of town! Host your own game!
posted by rachsumat at 9:51 PM PST - 27 comments

Select insiders will apppreciate Volume VII of Esoterica, this one being a Special Political Issue which leads with Religion and Secrecy in the Bush Administration: The Gentleman, the Prince, and the Simulacrum. Previous issues have featured articles like Sun Ra: From Ephrata (F-Ra-Ta) to Arkestra, Magic and Cyberspace and The Western Quest for 'Secret Tibet'--to name but a very few. And check out the Image Library, too. Via Other Voices
posted by y2karl at 9:44 PM PST - 11 comments

These animated cat gifs need some navigation, ok?
posted by If I Had An Anus at 9:16 PM PST - 34 comments

Zombie Dogs U.S. scientists have succeeded in reviving dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.
posted by stevis at 8:04 PM PST - 36 comments

A space ring around earth is envisioned as a means to bring down global warming. I couldn't help but think of "scorching the sky" à la Matrix.
posted by Tlahtolli at 7:04 PM PST - 21 comments

The Bearded Woman

Each time she noticed,
She had meant to pluck
The three black hairs
But the days were short;
Her fingers touched her chin then forgot
Thus fatigue grew curling into wisdom.

- Jane Hirshfield
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 7:04 PM PST - 6 comments

Dumpster World - "Your Dumpster Diving and Curb Crawling Resource." [via Information Nation, which also links to that story of a woman who was recently unloaded into a garbage truck]
posted by mediareport at 6:20 PM PST - 19 comments

Tom Cruise Kills Oprah Quick and silly. [mov file]
posted by zardoz at 6:16 PM PST - 37 comments

[A] small enough group to fit in a moderate size university classroom: just "118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big [US] media giants." [also seen at Independent World Television & RepublicofT
posted by dash_slot- at 5:04 PM PST - 16 comments

Afghan Children Burned Correspondent Jim Rupert and photographer Moises Saman of Newsday have just done a magnificent report explaining how and why Afghan women and children are increasingly getting burned by exploding kerosene lamps. One of the problems is that the black market is sometimes selling aviation fuel--far more combustible at lower temperatures--as regular kerosene; women and children, who usually have lamp lighting duties, are getting maimed when the lamps explode.
posted by etaoin at 4:01 PM PST - 12 comments

When Taste Politics Meet Terror: The Critical Art Ensemble on Trial. Steve Kurtz was previously discussed here. [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus at 2:03 PM PST - 4 comments

Meet the new watchers California's National Guard has formed a new unit: Known as the Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion program, the project is part of an expanding nationwide effort to better integrate military intelligence into global anti-terrorism initiatives. Although Guard officials said the new unit would not collect information on American citizens, top National Guard officials have already been involved in tracking at least one recent Mother's Day anti-war rally organized by families of slain American soldiers, according to e-mails obtained by the Mercury News.
posted by amberglow at 1:37 PM PST - 74 comments

Was agriculture a mistake? Guns, Germs, and Steel author Jared Diamond asks this question. Originally published in 1987, it's still completely relevant today. I personally feel that memes are the real culprit, and they are inevitable in any sizable social group with a common system of communication. Could agriculture be an ancient meme which has profoundly impacted the history of mankind?
posted by mullingitover at 1:04 PM PST - 112 comments

Paul Winchell the voice of Tigger passed away on June 24th at the age of 82. In addition to his famous voice, he also helped develop the artificial heart , held over 30 patents, had a plan to feed the hungry with tilapia, was a ventriloquist and was the voice of Gargamel. One day later the voice actor for Piglet also passed away. With Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger, succumbing to prostate cancer in late May, it may be true that celebrities die in threes. Or does tiger voice actor Jim Cummings have something to worry about?
posted by phirleh at 12:15 PM PST - 16 comments

A followup to this story from June 10th, The state of Tennessee is FINALLY investigating allegations of child abuse at Refuge, part of Love In Action International, Inc. But will this investigation actually do anything? And what has happened to Zach? No one seems to be talking...
posted by OhPuhLeez at 12:11 PM PST - 8 comments

Make some science. Take a survey.
posted by WolfDaddy at 12:04 PM PST - 9 comments

Come into the Channel ... If you are only here for twenty-four hours, all will be over and six centuries of shame and insult will be avenged'. See you at Pompey tomorrow to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar.
posted by TimothyMason at 11:40 AM PST - 7 comments

The Department of Education is introducing into all of its elementary and middle schools “Operation Respect: Don’t Laugh at Me,” an intensive curriculum in character development . Operation Respect home page and the "centerpiece" song page (Autoplay Music Warning!) Related dontlaugh.org.
posted by spock at 10:42 AM PST - 90 comments

Harlan Erskine Photography The catalogue for Walker Evans's exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, prepared by John Szarkowski in 1971, opened with a quotation from Walt Whitman: "I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world ...I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse, than I have supposed..." This passage has been quoted countless times in the context of photography with good reason. It allows us to sum up the difference between photographing flowers and photographing a milk bottle on a tenement fire escape. Erskine says he tends to gravitate to photographing the milk bottle and not the flower.
posted by Francesnash at 9:09 AM PST - 27 comments

Judaism on trial. After thousands of prominent Russians, including a chess champion and 20 members of parliament, demanded that Russia ban Judaism and Jewish organizations, the state prosecutor is investigating the Shulhan Arukh, a 16th century book of Jewish law (and early example of hypertext), for causing incitement and expressing anti-Russian views. Judaism used to be placed on trial regularly during the Middle Ages, and, except for a famous episode in 1264, it always ended badly for the Jews. So what is going on in Russia?
posted by blahblahblah at 8:35 AM PST - 36 comments

Roger Moore's fantabulous eyebrows
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:17 AM PST - 34 comments

The Supreme Court's Big Day

The court chose not to review the controversy surrounding "reporter's privilege" in withholding the names of confidential sources; meaning reporters may continue to be jailed or fined for refusing to name sources in court.
 
In Brand-X, the Court decided 6-3 that cable providers did not have to allow competitors to access their lines (the way DSL companies do). FCC opponents had been hopeful the Court would find the other way, opening new markets for competition and service options.

The Court ruled one of two Ten Commandment displays are unconstitutional. The decalogue display on a courthouse wall in Kentucky was found 5-4 to be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion because it was serving a religious purpose. However, the Ten Commandments display on the grounds of Texas' state capitol were found to be constitutional.

The Court finally decided the MGM v Grokster case. The Court found unanimously that the file sharing service can be held liable for the copyright infringement of their users.
posted by falconred at 7:59 AM PST - 55 comments

Commies with headphones.
posted by crunchland at 7:37 AM PST - 18 comments

The Supreme Court broadly expanded eminent domain in Kelo V. New London last Thursday. The city of Freeport, TX wasted no time. City attorneys are preparing legal documents to seize three pieces of waterfront property from two seafood companies for construction of an $8 million private boat marina.

Coming to a city near you soon?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 6:40 AM PST - 126 comments

Cumulonimbus Mammatus - interesting looking clouds
posted by Gyan at 3:06 AM PST - 16 comments

Richard Whiteley has died aged 61, after failing to recover fully from pneumonia and heart surgery. He will be sadly missed.
posted by mnemosyne at 2:41 AM PST - 27 comments

What Really Happened. The history the government hopes you DON'T learn!
posted by srboisvert at 2:03 AM PST - 39 comments

Stem cell pioneer does a reality check
posted by daksya at 11:04 PM PST - 9 comments

Obese people are the target of awe and mockery, but they're also real. The Washington Post offers another terrifying, saddening, and inspiring portrait of a morbidly obese man trying to get moving. If you must comment about this, try not to fat-bash. It's just tacky and predictable...
posted by chinese_fashion at 7:29 PM PST - 127 comments

"A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun" -- ground zero of Web irony, Blog 1.0, the Picassos of the deflating hyperlink, Suck.com rocked. This is their history, as told by the promisingly named Matt Sharkey at keepgoing.org. (Suck's ex-editrix Cox is Wonkette and Terry Colon's art is everywhere. And God knows we could use a good Suck right about now.)
posted by digaman at 6:35 PM PST - 61 comments

Hapland 2 Good Luck!
posted by davenportmom at 5:58 PM PST - 17 comments

Bill Donaldson, chair of the SEC, is out effective June 30, presumably to go back to the private sector. Taking his place, if approved, is Christopher Cox. Many believe Donaldson restored investor confidence since the equity market implosion. What's the upside of a Chris Cox tenure and for whom?
posted by nj_subgenius at 4:23 PM PST - 6 comments

Cannes Cyber Lions Winners: Come Clean and Super Bonder Instant win the Grand Prix, but that's old news on the blue.
posted by quiet at 4:01 PM PST - 1 comment

Hey! Didn't anybody notice that today is the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, sponsored by those bleeding hearts at the UN? The UNODC is declaring "even occasional use of marijuana is a link in a long and dangerous cycle of crime, degradation and terrorism." In Afghanistan, 30 -or is it 60?- tons of drugs have been burned in large bonfires (If they're not sure how much, blame the contact high). Meanwhile China celebrated the day with a massive demonstraton and a few executions. The United Arab Emarites is issuing a stamp. And the U.S.ofA.? Well, it's on the State Department Calendar, but the Office of National Drug Control Policy has never heard of it. Still, you can send an Anti-Drugs Day Greeting to someone you know (is a user).

BREAKING NEWS: In Kenya, 49 Killed, Hundreds Harmed by Poisoned... er... Alcohol. (nevermind)
posted by wendell at 2:43 PM PST - 35 comments

Daniel Clowes talks to Terry Gross about his new book ICE HAVEN in this NPR interview, from June 23rd.
posted by onkelchrispy at 1:16 PM PST - 8 comments

The Civic Action Network : Firefox meets Le Resistance ! Introduced at this year's DemocracyFest 2005, CAN's idea of "Civic Action Teams" ( not too different from corporate "teams" ) - was made into a 50's era camp movie short. [Watch it:
Quicktime, Windows Media Viewer appr. 10-11 MB]. The real goal : weaning liberals from their fractious ways and convincing them that small group teamwork can be effective, fun, and difficult to infiltrate. "We admired the organizational strength of the right-wing and noted much of it was built on small, church-based structures.". Download their "Small Groups, Big Victories" as a pdf ( 1.8 MB).
posted by troutfishing at 11:53 AM PST - 7 comments

Maria Sharapova has supplanted Kournikova as the new hotness, at least when it comes to Japanese bedroom accessories. (mildly NSFW)
posted by furtive at 11:40 AM PST - 24 comments

Oh! that I were a T---d, a T---d,
Hid in this secret Place,
That I might see my Betsy's A----,
Though she sh--t me in my Face.
(Written under this in a Woman's Hand)
'Tis Pity but you had your Wish, E. W.

Boghouse (public toilet) poetry from 18th century london.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:06 AM PST - 27 comments

As if living in NY wasn't hard enough, this poor guy seems to have gotten himself bitten by something nasty.

Usually, I hate the whole "blog as meta-fiction" thing, but this is saved by good writing and a nice sense of humor. It's a bit annoying that the archives make you start at the bottom, but it's still a fun read. Make sure to check the comments. I still can't decide if the teenagers are part of the fiction, or they thought it was real....
posted by lumpenprole at 8:08 AM PST - 15 comments

The Boob is back at the Department of Justice. The Ashcroft curtain has come down and the "Spirit of Justice" statue, commissioned from sculptor C. Paul Jennewein, can once again supply her breast for ironic photos.
posted by Otis at 6:29 AM PST - 38 comments

Iraq War Fatalities is a chart of US and coalition military fatalities that have occurred in the War in Iraq since the onset, mapped across the dimensions of time and space. It is an ongoing project that is updated regularly, and will continue to go on as long as the war does. The animation runs at ten frames per second--one frame for each day--and a single black dot indicates the geographic location that a US fatality occurred. Each dot starts as a white flash and a larger red dot that fades to black over the span of 30 frames/days, and then slowly fades to grey over the span of the entire war. Accompanying the visual representation is a soft 'tic' sound for each fatality, the volume of which increases relative to the number of fatalities that occurred simultaneously that day. More deaths in a smaller area produces visually deeper reds and audibly more pronounced 'tics.'

Iraq War Fatalities   (via Bop News)
posted by y2karl at 11:36 PM PST - 100 comments

Library Elf is a nifty free service that tracks all of your library books. It sends you emails and/or delivers RSS notifications when your books become due, shows you a list of all books you currently have out, and lets you know when that book you wanted is available. It supports multiple cards per account, so you can track all books for the whole household. Also, do everyone in your community a favor-- see if your library is listed and, if it isn't, request that they add it.
posted by juggernautco at 6:47 PM PST - 34 comments

cli·ché :: 1 : a trite phrase or expression; also : the idea expressed by it; 2 : a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation; 3 : something (as a menu item) that has become overly familiar or commonplace
posted by anastasiav at 12:49 PM PST - 41 comments

Cheney checks into Vail hospital, White House may be lying about what happened...
While the White House insists that Vice President Cheney was rushed to the hospital in Vail, Colorado to see an orthopedist others suggest he "was whisked to the adjacent cardiac unit, suffering from what was described...as 'an angina attack.'"

For more on the long history of the the administration's obfuscation regarding Cheney's heart condition, read this.
posted by ericb at 10:57 AM PST - 128 comments

Jazz Greats Digital Exhibits
Count Basie
Fats Waller
via
posted by peacay at 10:28 AM PST - 5 comments

A conversation with convicted ecoterrorist Jeff Luers A rare interview with one of the few jailed arsonists.
posted by warbaby at 9:25 AM PST - 31 comments

US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo; in Iraq, Afghanistan (Forbes) GENEVA (AFX) - Washington has, for the first time, acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq... So what happens to us now?
posted by thebestsophist at 8:17 AM PST - 71 comments

The Congo Expedition from 1909 to 1915. A decade after Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness first depicted the mysteries and agonies of the area, Herbert Lang and James Chapin set sail for the northeastern Belgian Congo. One of the many visual and auditory treats of this site is the delightful children's book, Where are you going, Manyoni? by Catherine Stock.
posted by nickyskye at 7:31 AM PST - 9 comments

Violent video games are often scapegoats for real world crime and violence. But what if MMORPGs lead to deaths?
Apparently, World of Warcraft did just that.
posted by Colloquial Collision at 6:19 AM PST - 47 comments

iPod competitors talk briefly about the iPod and how they think their products and design philosophies compare to it. The comments of the CEO of Archos lives up to his country's "we are right and you are stupid" stereotype, saying, "I do not share the opinion that Apple's design for the iPod is any good."
posted by centerpunch at 6:14 AM PST - 66 comments

Shell Eco Marathon UK is coming up in England (6-7 july). It is a race not for the swift, but for those who can drive immense distances in super-efficient vehicles. Two years ago, the current world record of 10,706 MPG was set at one of these events. The lessons learned are useful in development in other fuel-efficient cars, such as the 100 MPG Honda Insight. Interesting in these times of high oil prices, then, when considering that despite tactical driving, normal petrol cars rarely get better than 45 MPG. Diesels are slightly better, as illustrated on BBC Top Gear, where Clarkson drives an Audi A8 from London to Edinburgh and back on a single tank of diesel. That's 800 miles.
posted by SharQ at 5:19 AM PST - 13 comments

Poor old Mr. Plod can do no right - Scotlan Yard report into beliefs concerning child-abuse among ethnic minorities backfires, when media build up a moral panic, reminiscent of earlier cases of Satanic ritual abuse. (previously raised here).
posted by TimothyMason at 12:40 AM PST - 4 comments

Contemporary buildings and interiors by Johnston Marklee & Associates, including The Sale House in Venice, CA, and The Hill House in Pacific Palisades
posted by growabrain at 12:23 AM PST - 6 comments

Fight Tuberculosis with Modern Weapons (1.8 megs), and other striking and evocative historic public health posters from asbestos to huffing, and beyond. Featuring intelligent critical commentary, especially in the HIV/AIDS and Anti-smoking sections. (All images available in high resolution). From the US National Library of Medicine, which has presented an impressive series of health-related displays over the years. (Via the estimable Artifact)
posted by Rumple at 12:16 AM PST - 5 comments

I waited to see if anyone else might post this. I saw it on Future Feeder. Photron's model ultima APX-RS is a high speed video camera - 250,000 fps. Here's a quick link to the gallery of video (flash interface). apparently that's not the fastest. That appears to be Shimadzu’s HyperVision HPV-1 at 1,000,000 fps. They also have a gallery - but with only 3 mpg clips each a little more than 2.5 MB (1, 2, 3).
posted by tvjunkie at 10:58 PM PST - 18 comments

Chopstick Eco-Art Choose from wine racks, hanging lamps, candle holders and more. "We genuinely hope that one day we will no longer be able to make our products as a result of heightened preservation efforts." [via The Presurfer]
posted by mediareport at 10:49 PM PST - 3 comments

The World's Healthiest Foods
posted by Gyan at 9:44 PM PST - 21 comments

summer supplement I searched the archives; if this is not new, here at least are the latest titles for beach reading this summer.
posted by longsleeves at 7:17 PM PST - 7 comments

If in London you quickly become a grumpy old man, here it's hard not to be Andy Warhol: "Wow, that's great!" And it really is.
New York through the eyes of a transnational-European-Japanese songwriter/designer with an eyepatch.
posted by Tlogmer at 5:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Minke whales, known as cockroaches of the sea are now available in burgers from Japanese fast-food chain Lucky Pierrot. This is somewhat controversial.
posted by quiet at 5:30 PM PST - 52 comments

BusinessWeek's Industrial Design Excellence Awards 2005
posted by raaka at 4:46 PM PST - 10 comments

“Thank you for your recent E-mail. I appreciate your concern. However, I am, at this time, completely satisfied with the size of my penis.” Says a Gizmodo post: Now I consider myself fairly well versed in penis lengthening—a skill introduced to me, inadvertently, by my 6th grade math teacher—but I did not realize one could become a medical doctor and specialize in the topic. They also point to a similar device mentioned in an earlier post. Ow.
posted by spock at 2:53 PM PST - 11 comments

POLITENESS, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy. On this day Ambrose Bierce was born in 1842 in Ohio. The author famous for The Devil's Dictionary was a Civil War vet who despite being wounded in the head moved to San Francisco where he began a successful career in journalism, writing cynical columns, fighting publisher William Randolph Hearst, and ultimately serving the first blow upon the railroad industry whose political muscle had grown obscene. A decade later, the family man whose wife was from one of the most well-to-do families in the City, dissapeared probably in Mexico never to be seen or heard from again.
posted by tsarfan at 1:37 PM PST - 13 comments

Second US case of Mad Cow confirmed. The initial rapid screening test in November was positive, but a more stringent test was negative, and the USDA told America that the cow was BSE-free. The agency did not mention that it had skipped the Western Blot test, used in 2003 to confirm the first U.S. mad cow.
posted by soyjoy at 1:12 PM PST - 64 comments

I found something cool on the web and want to share it with everyone else.
posted by msacheson at 12:47 PM PST - 74 comments

Fazal Sheikh's photographs have documented the plight of refugees in camps across Central and East Africa and the Middle East. However, his photographs are distinctly different from the images of refugees we commonly see in printed news articles. Sheikh's photographs implicitly assert that the individual refugees share humanity with their oppressive rulers. He does so by depicting the individuals in portraits rather than as victims of a social and political drama. Sheikh, an American citizen, was just awarded the Grand Prix International Henri Cartier-Bresson.
posted by matteo at 12:43 PM PST - 5 comments

Artistic Tanks, Strange Theme Buildings, Unusual Water Towers, Giant Objects, and more!
posted by anastasiav at 12:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Glastonbury this year is a bit wet
posted by Mwongozi at 11:44 AM PST - 16 comments

“White folks need to get over their fear of being called a racist.” Oh the things you hear at the College Republicans' National Convention.
posted by expriest at 11:36 AM PST - 68 comments

Eprida: using biomass to produce hydrogen, reduce the emissions of coal-fired power plants, and suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, all while improving agricultural productivity. A new virtuous cycle (flash)?
posted by alms at 11:18 AM PST - 8 comments

Project C-90 is a photo collection of vintage cassette tapes • Meet Artyom, the Russian DJ who built his own cassette turntables • Last week, BBC News declared "Not long left for cassette tapes" • Mod your old cassette to make a USB flash stick.
posted by highsignal at 11:08 AM PST - 10 comments

The Destruction of Medieval Boston - "Most people think of Boston as a dense city, and it is, especially by American standards. Today’s city is, however, a pale shadow of the medieval maze that was Boston before large-scale modern planning and spatial concepts entered the picture... Here is what Urban Renewal replaced."
posted by mrbula at 11:02 AM PST - 44 comments

Private Warriors: FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith travels throughout Kuwait and Iraq to give viewers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, and its civilian army. Sixty minutes of absolutely fascinating and astonishing video is online.
posted by well_balanced at 10:39 AM PST - 19 comments

Here's an account of conditions and abuse in a Scientology prison camp. Considering Scientology's philosophy, the use of prisons and slave labor (often used for the benefit of celebrities) shouldn't be surprising. (for these links, you may need a good dictionary)
posted by pandaharma at 10:16 AM PST - 55 comments

Do you want to know what the great tennis players wore on their feet? I mean, do you like sneakers? Do you really like sneakers?
posted by Rothko at 10:03 AM PST - 7 comments

Portrait of a Textile Worker makes one person among millions of unseen workers visible. Her image was constructed with thirty thousand clothing labels stitched together over two years.
posted by heatherann at 9:49 AM PST - 7 comments

A Bright, Shiny Service: Sparklines A web service implementation of Edward Tufte’s sparklines idea, in Python.
posted by signal at 9:48 AM PST - 11 comments

Home made F-16 Flight Simulator. It's amazing what a determined guy can accomplish on his own. Lots of pictures. He's been working on it for 10 years.
posted by McBain at 9:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Photos of an Unknown Family Who Probably Owned a Liquor Store. A series of found photographs from Houseplant Picture Studio.
posted by greasy_skillet at 9:35 AM PST - 38 comments

First came the O'Reilly hacks series. There there was Make magazine, which claims to be the first magazine devoted to digital projects, hardware hacks, and DIY inspiration. Now a niche publication for Lego geeks who want to know everything about wee plastic bricks.
posted by Fozzie at 9:28 AM PST - 1 comment

Le Building (quicktime) is a minute-and-a-half film that was used as an opening for the 2005 Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Made by students. Kids today. What can't they do? Making-of movie here. via cartoonbrew
posted by maryh at 9:27 AM PST - 13 comments

Oriana Fallaci back in the soup. She's being sued in Italy for defaming Islam in her last book, The Rage and the Pride, and faces up to two years in prison. The suit was brought by President of the Italian Muslim Union, Sig. Adel Smith, a fellow who's activism even other Muslims sometimes profess to find a bit much.) And now, as if this makes things right, he's gone to jail for defaming Catholicism. Ms Fallaci's most recent book, The Force of Reason, as radioactive as her last, is due out in America later this year. The free speech in Europe thing is interesting, if crazy making, but does it distract us from the issues that dare not speak their names? Is she right, can East and West survive together? Or are we really best advised to go our separate ways?
posted by IndigoJones at 4:18 AM PST - 15 comments

New Sappho poem found. Combining a Cologne University fragment found in the cartonnage of an Egpytian mummy with a fragment from Oxyrhynchus has allowed the reconstruction of Sappho's fourth poem. The Oxyrhynchus papyri have been much in the news lately, what with the discovery of the earliest fragment of Revelations to give the number of the beast as 616 and the publication of several lines from Sophocles' lost tragedy The Progeny (scroll down). Infra-red imaging techniques may not be sexy, but Sappho sure is. After all, Plato said she was worthy of being considered not only as a poet but as a muse. Sappho herself is a palimpsest or a sort of cypher. We know next to nothing about her -- including whether she was lesbian or not. One thing's for sure: she almost certainly wasn't a schoolmistress.
posted by melmoth at 3:28 AM PST - 15 comments

The delusional world of Robert Hendy-Freegard, assasin/spy/carsalesman The tale of a power-mad car salesman. The guy managed to get so many people to do so many crazy things that I suggest you read the link for yourself. Unbelievable.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 2:47 AM PST - 25 comments

"And yet his life's work of nine short films amounts to little more than three hours of celluloid..." Kenneth Anger: author, Crowley associate, and cult film legend.
posted by LeeJay at 11:48 PM PST - 10 comments

Nunc Dimittis. My favorite waiter-blogger's finest piece so far.
posted by growabrain at 11:37 PM PST - 22 comments

Operation Yellow Elephant is an attempt to shame young Republicans into enlisting in order to prove their commitment to their leaders' military objectives.
posted by cbrody at 11:04 PM PST - 88 comments

Team Discovery has announced its roster for the 2005 Tour de France. Sadly, team member, Russian Cyclist of the Century, Olympic Gold and Silver Medalist and “ageless wonder” Viatcheslav Ekimov (b. 1966) was injured recently while training with Lance in Texas (free reg. req.) and will not compete in his 15^th Tour this July. Eki, age 39, domestique to both LeMond and Armstrong, and a three-time stage winner at the Tour, is just two Tour-finishes shy of the record: 16.
posted by RockyChrysler at 9:55 PM PST - 11 comments

The Ghost Nets: A New Kind of Pollution What happens when a fishing boat loses a net on the high seas? No longer made of biodegradeable materials, these nets (which can be up to a mile long) drift freely through the oceans like needles in a haystack, trapping marine life and damaging coral reefs. Now a team of NOAA working on the GhostNet 2005 project has developed a computer model to help identify convergence zones and locate these floating threats so cleanup can ensue. [Link to audio of NPR story about the project here]
posted by Dr. Zira at 8:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Looking for a new RV? This baby's got every feature you could possibly want. Price range? "More than a Hummer and Less than a Boeing 777."
posted by Ironwolf at 4:28 PM PST - 29 comments

Nashville cops target gays: Since the fall of 2004, officers at the Hermitage Police Precinct have been quietly conducting a sting operation exclusively targeting gay men. Nobody there denies that.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:07 PM PST - 40 comments

Fevolution: The art of Eric Feng [flash req.]
posted by srboisvert at 2:17 PM PST - 11 comments

US House passes flag-burning ban If this makes it past the Senate, then I will finally have irrefutable proof that the majority of both houses of Congress are braindead zombies.
posted by Chasuk at 2:01 PM PST - 80 comments

Minor Theft: Somebody at the ad agency for Nike Skateboarding must be a Minor Threat fan -- they recreated one of the band's album covers for the marketing of Nike's Major Threat Tour. Did they ask permission, though? No.
posted by me3dia at 1:37 PM PST - 73 comments

CENSORED! BY U.S. GOVERNMENT!

Changes to our photo policy mandated by the Bush Administration.

Always on the lookout for hot guys and ways to keep people from having fun, the U.S. Dept. of Justice is taking a break from prosecuting terrorists to do something it thinks is more important: restricting your right to view and share photos online.
posted by ericb at 12:03 PM PST - 74 comments

I felt I was pretty much prepared technically but I had this huge hole in my apprenticeship — dealing with actors. I had no experience of that. I had been filming fish for four years.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be presenting Risks and Reinvention: The Cinema of Louis Malle (June 24 - July 19). This extensive retrospective will include all of the great director's feature films and nearly all of his documentaries, including the rare seven-hour Phantom India. After its run at Lincoln Center, the retrospective will go on tour across the U.S. and Canada. Malle’s thriller Elevator to the Gallows will also receive a US theatrical release this summer. (via The Criterion Collection). More inside. — —
posted by matteo at 11:28 AM PST - 5 comments

Southern Baptist Convention targets gays "[ The SBC ] passed a resolution urging parents and churches to investigate whether their community schools promote homosexuality....It encourages Southern Baptists to “investigate diligently the curricula, textbooks and programs in our community schools and to demand discontinuation of offensive material and programs. ....It added a commendation for “godly teachers and students who feel a call from God to take a stand for Christ at secular schools to be a light shining in the darkness.” ” ( via Mainstream Baptist )
posted by troutfishing at 11:14 AM PST - 51 comments

Pirates, Global Warming and Intelligent Design. (oh my)
posted by analogue at 11:09 AM PST - 22 comments

George Russell, jazz's first theoretician, has released a new album to commemorate his 80th birthday. When Miles Davis remarked that he "wanted to learn all the changes," Russell responded by conceiving his Lydian Chromatic Concept. First published in 1953, the Concept resulted in the most influential album in jazz history. Today Russell turns 82.
posted by cribcage at 11:04 AM PST - 10 comments

Who can you trust if you can't trust the Wall Street Journal? RealClimate debunks the latest junk science on climate change from the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 10:20 AM PST - 34 comments

How to pitch a no-hitter while on acid. Lessons from the career of baseball legend Dock Ellis.
posted by thebigpoop at 10:17 AM PST - 25 comments

Father of Global Warming Issues, Dr. Keeling, Dies at 77. He was best known for the Curve that was named after him and which described long-term changes in carbon dioxide and subsequently the carbon cycle. The oscillating, climbing "Keeling curve" of carbon dioxide concentration is arguably the single graph that best displays human impact on the environment.
posted by carmina at 9:46 AM PST - 3 comments

The first issue of the comic book adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere was released yesterday. Mr. Gaiman is credited as a "consultant." So far, the story is fairly intact, but it's the visual element that deviates from the novel--characters look nothing like they were described, and don't even resemble the old BBC miniseries. And for someone accustomed to the phenomenal artwork seen in most of Gaiman's previous graphic novels (which included several adaptations of his short stories), Neverwhere seems downright bland. If a feature film follows in the same vein as this adaptation, will Gaiman pull an Alan Moore and refuse all royalties? (Go easy on me; it's my first post.)
posted by Saellys at 9:25 AM PST - 32 comments

Supreme Court rules in favor of New London and all cities, property can be transferred from one private citizen to another. Sandra Day O'Conner in her outraged dissent, "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms." More on the SCOTUSblog. History repeats itself? Anyone remember Oliver Cromwell "... prominent in defending the people of The Fens from wealthy landowners who wanted to drive them off their land."
posted by geoff. at 8:58 AM PST - 155 comments

Get 1 Minute. "When I wake up in the morning I go out and film a one minute observation of the day."

Every day Johanna Marxer films for one minute and posts it. While you are there check out the chaotic future.
posted by rachsumat at 8:48 AM PST - 8 comments

Cancer be damned, kids wanna tan “I know I might get cancer, but sometimes you want to look good no matter what. I’d rather look good that worry about what could happen to me–looks are more important to me sometimes than my health.” (Maclean’s Magazine) Perhaps cancer is ‘natural selection’ at work trying to weed out all of societies undesirables from the gene pool. I for one think we could do without people this stupid.
posted by haasim at 8:31 AM PST - 71 comments

The Unicorn Orgy ...as I sculpted unicorns, one by one, things went their own way--the ghost orgy turned into a playful group of varied mythical creatures, nothing like the dream. Still, it started with unicorns. Most things do. (NSFW)
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:11 AM PST - 27 comments

Dear Bareback Andy --a response by Signorile to Andrew Sullivan's recent article on HIV--"Still Here, So Sorry"-- how HIV vastly improved his life. (Sullivan also famously and prematurely wrote about the End of Aids in '96)
posted by amberglow at 6:31 AM PST - 49 comments

I recently received a letter from a friend of mine in a developing country. An article from a famous local poet was attached, and in this article the poet offered his explanations for the causes of poverty. The poet found, among other things, the people’s own laziness, their lacking industriousness and the indolence and corruption of the ruling politicians all to be at fault for this poverty.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:29 AM PST - 10 comments

"The West Doesn't Have To Love Us"
Der Spielgel conducts a wide ranging interview with Vladislav Surkov, chief Kremlin strategist and Russia's 2nd most powerful politician behind President Putin. He comments on Chechnya, internal politics and rebellion, Russia's relationship with the west, the disappointment with the failure of progress since the fall of communism in 1991 and his role in establishing the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth organization, who have recently become very vocal and active in a grassroots nationalist campaign.
posted by peacay at 5:34 AM PST - 6 comments

Immortalia: a website ‘dedicated to traditional bawdy songs, erotic toasts and other recitations.’ See, for example, the list of bawdy songbooks, variously in text and PDF formats, beginning with songs from a 1661 book of ‘Merry Drollery.’ Many songs are displayed alongside the appropriate sheet music, for example I Used To Work In Chicago and The Sexual Life of the Camel. There are numerous mp3s too, both samples and entire songs, many of which are field recordings by the site’s proprietor, John Mehlberg. Please note that the songs range from plain stupid to extremely offensive, that many pages have embedded audio, and that the site is confusingly-organised and may crash your browser. The site as a whole is NSFW.
posted by misteraitch at 2:28 AM PST - 12 comments

The JCB Song. An uplifting and jolly song with a killer video from the amazing talent at Monkeeyhub (who bought you the previously depressing Low Moral). Something about it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
posted by lemonfridge at 12:49 AM PST - 19 comments

In this paper, I will first consider the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as the latest examples of the new Western way of war, and analyse their casualties alongside those of previous campaigns in the Gulf and Kosovo. I shall identify the new type as “risk-transfer war,” a central feature of which is a “militarism of small massacres.” I shall argue that this new type thus offers only a partial answer to the problems, for the legitimacy of warfare, caused by the systematic targeting of civilians in earlier “degenerate war.” Despite a closer approximation to “just war” criteria, the application of which the new mode I shall discuss, inequalities of risk between Western military personnel and civilians in the zone of war revive the question of legitimacy in a new form. The paper then suggests that in our concern for relatively small numbers of civilian casualties, we may be applying to war standards from which it has historically been exempt. In this context, I shall conclude by proposing that the contradictions of the new Western way of war reinforce a 'historical pacifist' position towards the general legitimacy of warfare.

Risk-transfer Militarism and the Legitimacy of War after Iraq
From JustWarTheory.com, which has its own blog.
posted by y2karl at 8:45 PM PST - 18 comments

prognosticate :: use your powers of deduction to predict what happens next in today's news stories
posted by anastasiav at 8:24 PM PST - 7 comments

Ever have trouble visualizing how the solar system is put together, how the orbits work, how everything is positioned relative to everything else? This site helps you see how we think it all fits together.
posted by Fozzie at 5:49 PM PST - 16 comments

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth’s population will reside in urban centers. An estimated 10⁹ hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. A Potential Solution: farm vertically.
posted by signal at 4:51 PM PST - 35 comments

Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), also known as acetone peroxide, is the explosive of choice for Palestinian suicide bombers since it's easily made using commonly available materials. It was also part of the mixture in Richard Reid's shoe bomb. It contains no nitrogen and is thus undetectable by commonly used methods such as NQR, though an effort to cheaply detect it shows promise. What I find most interesting is the way it detonates; unlike most high explosives, it doesn't combust, but instead decomposes rapidly to form acetone and ozone.
posted by vira at 4:19 PM PST - 59 comments

Eric Grohe Murals. From kinda cheesy to monumental, and with the ubiquitous floating Jesus and teary-eyed Liberty. Whatever the subject, his work is technically exceptional.
posted by fire&wings at 3:49 PM PST - 7 comments

This person folded a piece of paper in half 12 times.
posted by 31d1 at 3:46 PM PST - 73 comments

Elvis Post-It Note Mosaic "My boss decided that we needed to do something fun and creative in one of our conference rooms - the one we use for brainstorming and internal meetings - and together we came up with the idea of filling the wall with post-it notes in a multicolored mosaic of (and i’m not sure whose idea this was) Elvis."
posted by ColdChef at 3:43 PM PST - 15 comments

Have you ever been under anesthesia? Doctors are being warned about a bizarre but threatening phenomenon - that patients under anesthesia can experience vivid sexual dreams they believe are real.
posted by robbyrobs at 2:25 PM PST - 69 comments

It turns out the Osborne Effect has nothing to do with Osborne, after all. Conventional wisdom has it that Apple's announcement of long-term plans to move to Intel will dramatically hurt the company in what is termed the "Osborne Effect", after the 1980s British computer company that seemingly went bankrupt due to announcing new products so soon that no one would buy anything.
posted by Rothko at 1:22 PM PST - 19 comments

Bob Parson's may have (somewhat) changed his tune when it comes to inhumane treatment of prisoners, but there are still plenty of ways to show your support for the little terrorist resort that could (toture people)
posted by delmoi at 1:08 PM PST - 22 comments

The sky is falling! From Romulus to Ronald Reagan: a comprehensive timeline of apocalyptic predictions. If you decide to put some stock in one or more of these prophecies, you may need to do some preparatory research.
posted by brundlefly at 12:50 PM PST - 11 comments

Snapple attempts, and fails, to make record-breaking popsicle. Here's more. Publicity stunts gone wrong!
posted by clgregor at 12:42 PM PST - 34 comments

Gel.TV A bunch of crazy japanese guys keep howling and screaming and throwing jelly around and then there are sneakers and then... I really have no idea what this is all about, but it's really funny. Warning: This site seems to load pretty slow sometimes. And: Try the knobs of the tv-set and these little Icons below. *Really* weird.
posted by heimkonsole at 12:12 PM PST - 23 comments

Foundcity is a social mapping tool for creating a personalized map of your life on-the-fly. Using your mobile phone, you "tag" or capture photos throughout the day, label them with any words you want, and send them to your map. At home, you access and customize your map, which you can share with friends, keep private, or publish openly. As a visitor to the Foundcity site, you view a map of all tags and connect with the people and places that share your interests. By plugging in to the network of Foundcity users, you learn what others value in the city as you surf their hotspots. By publishing your own tags, you share what you know about your city.
posted by srboisvert at 11:22 AM PST - 14 comments

Buildings that never were: Unrealized Moscow - grand scale architectural projects from the mid 1930s to the early 1950s.
posted by iconomy at 11:07 AM PST - 21 comments

A Long Look Ahead: NGO’s, Networks, and Future Social Evolution

The information revolution favors the rise of network forms of organization, so much so that a coming age of networks will transform how societies are structured and interact. ...In the years ahead, the [environmental] movement's strength (and sometimes its weakness) will continue to be asserted through social network-based wars against unresponsive, misbehaving, or misguided corporate and governmental actors. …Ageing contentions that “the government” or “the market” is the solution to environmental or other particular public policy issues will give way to new ideas that “the network” is the optimal solution. The rise of network form of organization and strategy will drive long-range social evolution in radical new directions.

David Ronfelt’s explorations of information and society are based on a framework of societal evolution involving tribes, institutions, markets and networks. Modes of conflict with participants networked (as opposed to hierarchically structured) are called netwars. Many of the recent domestic and international terrorism conflicts are being fought as netwars. The civil society approach to politics and diplomacy in the network age may hinge on noopolitik, a strategy of information.
posted by warbaby at 10:55 AM PST - 8 comments

Wi-Fi Thank You is a place where you can send a thank you message to anyone who provides a free Wi-Fi hotspot.
posted by sciurus at 10:32 AM PST - 8 comments

Learn to Play Guitar like a SuperDork . Can't. . . not. . . look. Don't miss the links in the comments.
posted by spock at 9:14 AM PST - 29 comments

Reason #48713 for teaching the Bible in schools: "The classics of British and American literature are filled with biblical allusions that would be lost on a reader without basic knowledge of the Bible"
posted by afx114 at 9:10 AM PST - 198 comments

"In those days, there wasn't a lot of talk about gay priests. People didn't want to believe it." On Dec. 4, 1982, a deeply suntanned man, about 40 years old, walked into the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise, Idaho, and readied himself for confession. As he waited, the man swallowed a cyanide capsule. A few minutes later, he was dead. He had no identification, and a note in his pocket said only that the $1,900 he carried should be used for his burial, with any remainder donated to the church. The note was signed with what turned out to be a false name. To this day, no one has been able to identify the man, nor to determine why he had come to the church to absolve himself of his sins. On the answers to that mystery may hang the fate of a small, quiet, meticulous man who now lives in South Austin, and who spent 20 years in a Texas prison for a murder he says he did not commit, but which investigators believe may be connected to the dead man at the Boise Sacred Heart Catholic Church. More inside.
posted by matteo at 8:59 AM PST - 25 comments

They hate Flickr for it's Freedom. An ISP (and government controlled monopoly) in the United Arab Emirates has decided to ban access to Flickr for it's citizens, apparently due to the complaints of a couple of UAE expats in the UK and Canada. Of course, said blockage won't apply to them. Most interestingly, they blame the rest of the world's non-flesh-fearing photographers as opposed to their ISP (and by proxy their own oppressive government.) Now Flickr joins Skype, AtomFilms, Friendster, AOL, and anything from Israels top-level domain, as outlawed content and services in the UAE (related study here). Well, if they don't care, why should we? Via linkfilter.
posted by rzklkng at 7:33 AM PST - 28 comments

Built at Lockheed's secret Skunk Works facility for use by the Central Intelligence Agency, and in service since 1950s, the U2 spy plane has seen service all over the world (or, at the very least, 70,000 feet above it). It has shown us what both our friends and enemies were doing, helping us avert wars, and in at least one occasion, almost causing one itself. Today, just over 45 years since Francis Gary Powers fell from the sky into the Soviet Union, the United States Air Force has announced from Baghdad that yet another Dragon Lady has fallen from the sky in an undisclosed location in Southwestern Asia.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:55 AM PST - 37 comments

Jack Kilby , inventor of the monolithic integrated circuit (microchip) at Texas Instruments in 1958, died Monday. His vision lives on through the Kilby International Awards and Kilby Laureates "who symbolize the power of the individual creative mind to change the world, forever."
posted by tpl1212 at 5:56 AM PST - 5 comments

Who Pagan Bullies Are and What Makes Them Tick "Bullying is a compulsive need to displace aggression and is achieved by the expression of inadequacy (social, personal, interpersonal, behavioural, professional) by projection of that inadequacy onto others through control and subjugation (criticism, exclusion, isolation etc)."
posted by nickyskye at 5:20 AM PST - 28 comments

The End of Internet P8rn? The updated 2257 regulations, which go into effect June 23, will expand the proof of age record-keeping requirements that producers of sexually explicit content must follow. Industry insiders are scrambling to prepare for the new regulations and claim they are too burdensome to 'net p9rn providers and are illogical. (The AVN links are NSFW) The Free Speech Coalition is seeking a temporary restraining order (Doc file) to enjoin the enforcement of the new regulations hoping to prevent what some predict to be an industry wide shutdown. Is this a matter of the law keeping up with technology, or an assault on .xxx?
posted by greasy_skillet at 10:59 PM PST - 62 comments

There are actually three different kinds of zombies. All of them are like humans in some ways, and all of them are lacking something crucial (something different in each case).

Hollywood zombies. These are found in zombie B-movies...
Haitian zombies. These are found in the voodoo (or vodou) tradition in Haiti...
Philosophical zombies. These are found in philosophical articles on consciousness...

Zombies on the web
posted by y2karl at 8:20 PM PST - 127 comments

Buy the 7am News ticker service! It appears that the long running 7am News Ticker is up for sale. It was supposed to cease its service yesterday (June 20) but it's still up today. I've used it for many years. I like that it hits the Guardian and the BBC newsfeeds, plus you can add one of your own for free. It's a cool little service. I hope someone rescues it.
posted by misangela at 6:45 PM PST - 7 comments

tune smithy ! Create beautiful snowflake like fractal music.
posted by svidrigailov23 at 5:40 PM PST - 4 comments

Fernando Botero on Abu Ghraib Fernando Botero, the Colombian artist best-known for his odd and cute depictions of fleshy men and women, has just opened an exhibition in Rome featuring his own interpretations of the Abu Ghraib abuses. Expect to be shocked all over again - which is apparently exactly what he wants. (Link in Spanish).
posted by Holly at 5:39 PM PST - 45 comments

How to make friends with your IT department
posted by cbrody at 5:30 PM PST - 20 comments

The greatest story ever told or The Tale of the Mad Feces King: Two slightly different edits of the same ultimate bad room-mate story, originally posted on the Something Awful forums.
posted by boymilo at 3:35 PM PST - 53 comments

Final Installment of Frogger Poised to Sweep Oscars All the regular cast of characters return remain in this 2056 A.D. edition of Americorp.biz's Finest News Source. If you haven't visited lately, you can easily catch up on the last 51 years.
posted by hal9k at 2:56 PM PST - 43 comments

Some MeFites have expressed an interest in learning more about the Catholic Church's positions on abortion, the death penalty, and other issues. I hope you will all find these links interesting and enlightening. The people and the Church. But, what about how other Christians see Catholics? Can Catholics respond to these claims? Of course, some claims have to be taken with a very large chunk of salt. Some Christians are even changing their minds. Though there is no single kind of Catholicism. Finally, here is a source for further research.
posted by oddman at 2:16 PM PST - 58 comments

Resonata - A Wave Machine [Java]
posted by Gyan at 1:49 PM PST - 13 comments

Write down your password. Bruce Schneier, Author of Applied Cryptography and founder of Counterpane security is urging people to write down their passwords.
posted by delmoi at 12:47 PM PST - 65 comments

In just over two hours, Cosmos 1, the world's first experimental "solar sail" spacecraft will launch, and reportedly will be visible "from nearly everywhere on its surface at one time or another".
posted by theonetruebix at 10:36 AM PST - 18 comments

"I am so lonely." Search Google using that phrase and you may end up here. Some of the posts in this thread really resonate, "I feel so much better that I am not the only one that typed in "I am lonely" on google. How pathetic that I have nothing better to do. It is amazing that I can be so extremely successful at work and so lonely at home."
posted by VelvetHellvis at 9:27 AM PST - 50 comments

Watch the bike disintegrate. The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published the story of a bicycle that they abandoned on a bridge in Stockholm. The author then took pictures of the bike during its lifecycle that spanned from September 27, 2004 to June 13, 2005. Shockwave flash move, set to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Brought a tear to my eye. Via Bike Log.
posted by fixedgear at 9:22 AM PST - 37 comments

Play with the big boys of astronomy by accessing a high powered telescope online.
posted by Fozzie at 8:58 AM PST - 2 comments

Stations Of The Cross, a piece on "faith-based" news outlets from the May/June Columbia Journalism Review: "In recent months, evangelical broadcasters have dedicated program after program to bemoaning 'judicial tyranny,' and urging audiences to agitate for the 'nuclear option' — changing Senate rules so Democrats can no longer filibuster and thereby block nominees they oppose....All the while, the dizzying blend of God, news, and politics that he [Pat Robertson] has crafted and honed was bouncing off satellites, winding through thousands of cable systems, rippling over the airwaves, and glowing on television screens across America." [Via HighSignal]
posted by jenleigh at 6:05 AM PST - 26 comments

What with the new movie and the whole Tom and Katie thing, it's no surprise that the world's gone War of the Worlds mad recently. Still, for my money, this Darkhorse comic, adapted from H.G. Well's original text is gonna be ace - there are twelves frames up at the moment and they're adding all the time, with the aim of completely some 120 pages of superbly drawn comic-novel in the not-too-distant... Enjoy.
posted by benzo8 at 5:50 AM PST - 32 comments

When I was Garbage by Allison Crews at age 17, teen mother advocate and activist. "I had become garbage, worthy only to sit in my isolated desk and cry to myself and throw up in a dirty bathroom stall. I was a pregnant teenage girl."
Allison died recently aged 22. She was active in girl-mom.com, an online and in life support and education network for young mothers.
"To radically accept and defend a woman's right to choose, we must acknowledge the multiple ways that women come to make reproductive choices. By marginalizing teenage mothers, even within the feminist community, we are failing to recognize the realities of countless women and their children."
There's a report of her funeral and a website has been set up to collect memories for Allison's 7 year old son. {Allison's LJ} All of this comes via BitchPhD - her entry is also worth reading. (previous semi-related MeFi)
posted by peacay at 5:40 AM PST - 50 comments

The London Underground is home to some of the most interesting, weird and fun adverts, which have been tailored to the fact that they have huge posters that passengers are often looking at for minutes at a time while waiting. In Copywriting goes Underground, they challenged ad agencies to write an ad which had at least 50 words in it. Some are crap, but some are pretty innovative - check them out.
posted by adrianhon at 5:17 AM PST - 15 comments

Nun crucified at Romanian exorcism. A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said. "I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this. Exorcism is a common practice in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests," Father Daniel added.

UPDATE: She was buried yesterday and the Principal monk has been charged with false imprisonment leading to death.
posted by cbjg at 3:57 AM PST - 48 comments

Sartre at 100. Today would have been philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's 100th birthday. Despite renewed interest in him in France, there is some question as to what the legacy of this man is - whether as author, philosopher, playwright, or communist. He was noted for radical views on freedom both in the philosophical and political senses, less so for his recipes. What does he mean today?
posted by graymouser at 3:48 AM PST - 25 comments

RIP Hamilton Naki, the black surgeon working unrecognised behind the scenes at Christiaan Barnard's pioneering South African heart transplant.
posted by iffley at 2:15 AM PST - 7 comments

Russian lessons from "Giant Heads"
posted by growabrain at 12:26 AM PST - 8 comments

From squid vendors to the odd graffito and manhole cover, this expatriate snaps oddities and noise of life in Taiwan with the help of his little toy Holga.
posted by Rothko at 10:54 PM PST - 6 comments

How Powerful Is Productivity? TCS interviews Former Carter Staffer (and Democrat) William Lewis, who makes some interesting remarks about worker productivity: There were many disparaging comments made in the US and maybe even stronger abroad, (and especially in Japan) about how the US labor force was getting what it deserved because it was lazy, uneducated and maybe even dumb. And of course, the Japanese then showed -- the really capable, competent Japanese manufacturing companies -- showed that was wrong by coming here, building their own factories, managing American labor and taking a lot of other local inputs and coming within five percent of reproducing their home country productivity.
posted by Kwantsar at 10:18 PM PST - 11 comments

My name is Simon 'Skunky' Morrison, and I very love animals. Gracious.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 9:47 PM PST - 24 comments

Knowmore.org is a Wiki repository of corporate information. Still in its infancy, it aims to applaud eco-friendly companies and document the failings of others. Funded almost entirely by hip-hopper Sage Francis of Non-Prophets and Anticon fame, it is no surprise Clear Channel is currently featured on the front page. Hopefully the Wiki format will keep it somewhat balanced as it grows.
posted by sophist at 8:08 PM PST - 12 comments

Monday Flash Fun
posted by If I Had An Anus at 7:41 PM PST - 26 comments

No "beeper violations" or loosened ties in this White House, mister.
posted by digaman at 7:38 PM PST - 30 comments

Breast brooches and butt bracelets: Barbie bits as jewelry. More here.
posted by Orb at 6:50 PM PST - 21 comments

Should a rapist be given a harsher sentence if his victim dies as a result of the rape? A Campobello, South Carolina teen has been accused of a rape in his neighborhood. Now the victim has died, possibly because of injuries to her internal organs. And the charges are being upgraded, but prosecutors aren't looking for the death penalty.

Cruelty isn't just an American phenomenon-- a Danish caretaker has eaten some of his charges and the law can't touch him.
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:40 PM PST - 56 comments

The Logic of Diversity "A new book, The Wisdom of Crowds [..:] by The New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki, has recently popularized the idea that groups can, in some ways, be smarter than their members, which is superficially similar to Page's results. While Surowiecki gives many examples of what one might call collective cognition, where groups out-perform isolated individuals, he really has only one explanation for this phenomenon, based on one of his examples: jelly beans [...] averaging together many independent, unbiased guesses gives a result that is probably closer to the truth than any one guess. While true — it's the central limit theorem of statistics — it's far from being the only way in which diversity can be beneficial in problem solving." (Three-Toed Sloth)
posted by kliuless at 6:03 PM PST - 6 comments

Are dictionaries the realm of the elite and the educated? For a change of pace, there is an extensive dictionary of Russian swears with hundreds of words translated into French and German .. Oh and it's also two way - French swears and German swears are both translated into Russian. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 5:06 PM PST - 12 comments

"A shocking discovery has been made deep within the text of Moby Dick. The great codes researcher Michael Drosnin, who pioneered the art of predicting assassinations using Equidistant Letter Sequences, is himself encoded in a famous book. And directly across his name appears the text 'Him to have been killed'! Yes, folks, using the method that Drosnin himself uses, and the text that he himself chose as a challenge to his critics, we find that Drosnin himself will be murdered in a grotesque manner."
posted by brundlefly at 4:46 PM PST - 23 comments

A throw down? [Warning link to extremely graphic images of dead bodies, some nudity] Did US troops plant weapons on young boys after killing the boys? Currently, being discussed here, but it might be missed without coming here to the front page. Via insomnia_lj
posted by caddis at 4:34 PM PST - 184 comments

Lemon-Red's Mix Series - "Each month, I ask one of my favorite DJs to contribute a 30-40 minute mix of whatever they're feeling at the time... Get yourself over to lemon-red.org/mix and download the exclusive DJ/rupture mix, Low Income Tomorrowland, in beautiful high-quality stereo mp3 format." Chris Lemon-Red starts of his new free music mix series with this 31:46 (29 mb) track.
posted by dobbs at 2:49 PM PST - 15 comments

Guantanamo Defended. DoD explaining the value of the intelligence coming out of Guantanamo using the specific case of Mohamed al Kahtani as an example. (via cryptome)
posted by forforf at 1:26 PM PST - 68 comments

Wal-Mart Institutes "availability requirement" Imagine your boss (a guy named 'Knuckles') comes to you and tells you you need to be available to work anytime between 7:00am and 11:00pm, 7 days a week. Oh, and if you can't be available, you'll be fired. This should be expected in a slave labour camp, but couldn't exist in the pride of Corporate America, could it? Updated during preview: Whoops, perhaps the bad press caused a flip-flop.
posted by gwenzel at 1:06 PM PST - 78 comments

How long stuff lasts. So I guess I can have that mayo, honey and anti-freeze sandwich now? Or any time for that matter.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 1:00 PM PST - 42 comments

Learn the ketchup lesson CEOs... A London secretary turned the tables on a tightarse boss by humiliating him in front of his peers. Everyone has a laugh but is this guy just a scrooge or a workplace psychopath. It may seem like a big jump but a lack of empathy, narcissism, no grip on reality sounds like he's a little out of it to me. Why else would you send a demand like that to your secretary?
posted by ClanvidHorse at 12:33 PM PST - 49 comments

Warnings of Avian Flu pandemic.
posted by semmi at 12:28 PM PST - 30 comments

What kind of people are these torturers? Are they the bad apples of the American military, as the Bush administration has alleged, or is it the whole barrel that is bad, as Philip Zimbardo, former president of the American Psychological Association, declared? Back in 1975, one year after the fall of the military dictatorship in Greece, I received special permission to attend the trials of the Greek military police's torturers... These torturers were made, not born, to torture... These transformations from “ordinary” young men to fierce perpetrators are paralleled in other studies that I and my colleagues have carried out on Brazilian military and civil policemen and on elite special forces training in the US and elsewhere.
Psychological and Sociopolitical Factors Contributing to the Creation of the Iraqi Torturers: A Human Rights Issue
beliefnet: Michael Wolfe on relationship between Christian evangelism in the U.S. government and abuse of Muslims and the Qur'an
U.S. Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide
We Are All Complicit - But What Can We Do About It?
posted by y2karl at 11:16 AM PST - 33 comments

WAITRESS
(challenging him)
You want me to hold the chicken.
BOBBY
Yeah. I want you to hold it between
your knees.

Lorna Thayer, who died June 4 at 85 after 40 years before the camera, was remembered for one brief appearance: the waitress on "Five Easy Pieces." In that memorable moment in the 1970 film, as the voice of authority opposite Jack Nicholson`s rebellious Bobby Dupea, a classical pianist turned oil rigger, the middle-aged Thayer proved to be a formidable foil in what has come to be known as the "chicken salad scene."
posted by matteo at 11:02 AM PST - 21 comments

How to perform strong man stunts - learn how to how to how to lift and swing a man with your teeth, how to support 1000 lbs. of living weight with ease, and other manly feats that will get you looking Charles Atlas buff for the summer. See also.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:15 AM PST - 26 comments

GoDaddy.com condones torture. One of the most important assets we are using to protect Americans both at home and abroad is our military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- “Gitmo.” (Blog posting from founder Bob Parson's highlighted on the front page of GoDaddy.com) [update: recanted]
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 9:08 AM PST - 152 comments

What Does That Mean explains what it means to be having a blue or to be loaded for bear. This is a newish wiki site, so could use some more content. Me? I'm off to get something from the chilly bin and then I may add some regional idioms of my own...
posted by Fozzie at 7:41 AM PST - 31 comments

Book-readin' bad guys This makes me safer already, knowing the feds are spending their time checking on who's reading about Osama bin Laden. Just &*##$@! brilliant work.

Law enforcement officials have made at least 200 formal and informal inquiries to libraries for information on reading material and other internal matters since October 2001, according to a new study that adds grist to the growing debate in Congress over the government's counterterrorism powers. In some cases, agents used subpoenas or other formal demands to obtain information like lists of users checking out a book on Osama bin Laden. (snip)
posted by etaoin at 7:06 AM PST - 68 comments

GotPsi online testing. Many people have had precognitive dreams and successful intuitive hunches and would like to know if they have psychic abilities.
posted by nickyskye at 5:18 AM PST - 32 comments

This might be the only time in your life you get to hear this because the finance industry survives soley on large-scale ignorance, so listen very closely. There is NO housing bubble in the US. NEVER invest in actively managed funds. Financial lamers do better than financial jocks (and almost everyone else). .

Sadly however most of you won't have the mathematical knowledge to differentiate the advice backed by several Nobel laureates and world-renowned academics from the "advice" of any of the thousands of horny little evangelists spruking their financial "theories" for profit or fame.
posted by DirtyCreature at 2:59 AM PST - 76 comments

Never use a debit card to pay at the pump: "Each day millions of Americans use their debit card at gas stations to "pay at the pump." What you probably do not know is gas stations have the right to overcharge you a certain amount to ensure they get their money. Each gas station decides how much to overcharge and hold on your account. Some put a $75 or $100 hold on the account while others only hold $5 or $10. But, these stations also decide how long to hold that money. Some hold the money for up to three days. . ." How is this even legal? Am I the last schmuck in the U.S. to find out about this? I just found out that Sam's Club (for example) charges $50 and deposits your change three days later.
posted by spock at 10:19 PM PST - 92 comments

Google Wallet to compete against Paypal. So, Google has my email, my search history and soon, my bank information. I'm ok with this, I guess, because I gave it to them.
posted by raaka at 7:45 PM PST - 32 comments

For the sake of your sanity, for five minutes this week forget the memos, the autopsies, the celebrity verdicts, and the rest. Go outside and look at the full moon, which will hang in the sky at its lowest point in 18 years over the next three nights, says NASA, creating the "summer moon illusion." If you're a US resident, calculate your local moonrise time here.
posted by digaman at 7:32 PM PST - 26 comments

U.S. GP starts and ends in farce
In what could very well be the last Formula One race in the USA, the United States Grand Prix turned to farce yesterday when the vast majority of the grid (14 cars), shod with Michelin tyres, aborted their race after the formation lap and pulled into their garages, leaving the six cars shod with Bridgestone tyres to start and finish the race.
posted by tomcosgrave at 5:14 PM PST - 105 comments

The 'Captain' and his buddies have been stuck with the 'Downing Street Memos' that have to be dealt with on the merits of what they say because no one has questioned their validity. Not anymore. What do you do when you need a miracle? Go back to what has worked in the past and scrutinize the paper and typeface .
posted by UseyurBrain at 4:26 PM PST - 106 comments

EDSAC - home of the first videogame, OXO.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 2:46 PM PST - 5 comments

Sacco & Vanzetti. Two anarchists executed in Massachusetts in 1927. Their guilt was and is widely disputed.
'Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927, a date that became a watershed in twentieth-century American history. It became the last of a long train of events that had driven any sense of utopian vision out of American life. The workings of American democracy now seemed to many Americans as flawed and unjust as many of the older societies of the world, no longer embodying any bright ideal, but once again serving the interests of the rich and the powerful. '
posted by plep at 11:22 AM PST - 67 comments

What Dads Don't Need for Father's Day: "A team of psychologists headed by Dr. Toni Zimmerman from Colorado State University analyzed the top-selling parenting books. Using a feminist perspective, they trawled the books for hidden gender messages. In findings published earlier this year, they concluded that the two mega-best sellers, John Gray's Children Are from Heaven and Laura Schlessinger's Parenthood by Proxy: Don't Have Them If You Won't Raise Them are filled with stereotypes, formulaic advice and information that does not conform to research findings." Both books scored low in a feminist analysis of best-selling parental advice books. Kathleen Trigiani also wrote a series of essays on John Gray entitled "Out of the Cave: Exploring Gray's Anatomy".
posted by jenleigh at 11:15 AM PST - 49 comments

Do we need management consultancies? A new book written by "David Craig" - a nom-de-plume for an insider with 20 years of consultancy experience.
"What distressed me and many other consultants was how the greed of directors and partners put me into situations where we cheated,lied to and defrauded clients while our bosses became enormously rich through various tax avoidance schemes."
Of course John Birt (BBC) and other consultants tend to disagree. The UK goverment spend on consultants is now £1.9 Billion per annum (about $10 Million/day.)
posted by Lanark at 10:06 AM PST - 17 comments

The Doctor of Music. "A General History of Music From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, Volume IV", written by the English musician and historian Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814) was published in 1789. Its first volume, completed in 1776, was the first History of music ever published. The fourth volume is of particular interest as it discusses the state of music in Burney's own lifetime. He observed the music, and musicians that he wrote about first hand. In fact, Burney was close friends with composers such as Haydn and Handel, he even played violin in Handel's orchestra, and lived with Dr. Thomas Arne for two years in London, as his apprentice. The fourth volume, to Dr. Charles Burney, was the most interesting as he preferred the music of the current time, finding no interest in "antiquarianism." In the main link, the entire volume -- in facsimile -- is available to readers. Burney also translated Pietro Metastasio's Memoirs. Also: The Burney Collection of Newspapers at the British Library. More inside.
posted by matteo at 9:37 AM PST - 6 comments

Pinky:st is VANCE PROJECT and BABYsue's series of cute girl figurines with interchangeable parts. This series has quite a large following, both in Japan (where they originate from) and overseas. In addition to the regular line-- and various limited editions-- there's Pinky:cos (cosplay Pinkies) and P:Chara (characters from video games and anime). Of course, if the look you want (or your favorite character) is unavailable, many hobbyists mod and repaint their Pinkies. And then there's the cool photoblogs...
posted by May Kasahara at 8:47 AM PST - 3 comments

Taglines from seasons 1-4 of Futurama on Flickr. Also worth checking out, Chuck Lorre's Vanity Cards. They used to appear on Dharma and Greg and are now on Two and a Half Men. via
posted by geekyguy at 8:33 AM PST - 20 comments

The "Other" Washington Memo. But, but..its haaard doing sweet f#@# all about the environment, besides I'm just too damn busy making things great in Iraq.
posted by Mr Bluesky at 8:21 AM PST - 32 comments

The Cloud Harp. The transposition of a natural phenomenon into music. The melodies and sounds are determined by factors such as cloud height, density, structure, luminosity, and meteorological conditions.
posted by nickyskye at 4:37 AM PST - 15 comments

Dr. Doom Is Gangsta.
posted by Guy Smiley at 1:02 AM PST - 40 comments

40% of the automotive sold fuel in brazil is ethanol, and brazil should be totally energy independent in five years. If they can do it, why not the US?
posted by delmoi at 11:54 PM PST - 44 comments

Burn Centers A Hot Potato The San Antonio burn center is possibly the busiest in the nation. It's not because of poor building design in the local area. Are troop fatalities in Iraq more substantial than we are told?
posted by mk1gti at 10:51 PM PST - 22 comments

"Gypsy" Travellers have a long history in England, but continue to face a great deal of prejudice. Many people are angry when they camp on public land, but when they try to buy land for sites, they are often refused local planning permission. [more inside]
posted by jb at 9:37 PM PST - 77 comments

Tokyo Times is an insightful, well-written blog dedicated to Japanese culture, books, current affairs, news, sex, random images and observations of life, as seen through the eyes of an English expat living in Tokyo.
posted by darkstar at 8:12 PM PST - 13 comments

Glasgow School of Arts Degree Show 2005, Gets into the ring with the Edinburgh Art College Degree Show 2005. Is this Tyson versus Bruno all over again ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 8:09 PM PST - 15 comments

Get your game on with Kaneva. Billing itself as "The world’s first digital entertainment marketplace!" Kaneva is a beta launch of a concept that maybe interesting to gamers, media creators, and consumers as well. An Atlanta based company, Kaneva.com aims to be an exchange/market portal for game and media creators, who can directly create Massively Multi-player Online (MMO) games using the Kaneva Framework, and for digital media creators seeking distribution. The business model is innovative, and has been described as "a kind of multi-media flickr (pre-fame) meets eBay on steroids, or an online marketplace for folks hyped on digital entertainment. An Intertainment Hub. A platform and host." The company recently presented its concept at the June meeting of the International Game Developers Association, and back in April Computer Gaming Magazine had an article. During the beta test phase, the site's tools are free to all comers, and there is already a limited amount of content available for those who just want to play something new.
posted by paulsc at 7:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Georg Guðni is a promising contemporary Icelandic artist. He has recently published a book, Strange Familiar with one of his biggest fans, actor Viggo Mortensen. (A few more images here and here)
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:52 PM PST - 15 comments

100 Milestone Documents. High-quality viewable and downloadable documents of American History, from 1776 to 1965. Of course the usual suspects are available, but you can also see items like the Patent for the Cotton Gin (1794) and the Check for the Purchase of Alaska (1868). Also downloadable PDFs, transcripts, and background information on each document. (Warning: flash)
posted by marxchivist at 3:16 PM PST - 12 comments

There are approximately 81,000 Robert Smiths residing in the United States. Bob Smith USA appeared at the AFI SilverDOCS film festival yesterday to a sold out crowd.

Bob Smith (New York City) dons his Satan costume to preach the virtues of atheism; Bob Smith (Pennsylvania) puts on his red nose and teaches as part of a Christian clown ministry; Bob Smith (Syracuse) spends his retirement transforming his yard into an oasis of junk; and Bob Smith (Texas) runs for county sheriff.

posted by clgregor at 2:18 PM PST - 19 comments

One Bright Idea After Another ... Well, not always. But some interesting viewing here.
posted by Fozzie at 1:02 PM PST - 2 comments

Some Photographs:
New York club scene in the 70's
Mingle's America in the 80's
NSFW (first link is a biggish load on dialup)
posted by peacay at 12:25 PM PST - 38 comments

The ongoing battle on shutter control continues between military, commercial and non-profit NGO entities, just as Google Maps finishes adding the rest of the world to its site (even if the detail is lacking). And when Israel restricts the rest of the satellite imagery companies to 2-metre resolution, for whatever reason, should the rest of us expect the same level of privacy as commercial and military satellites continue on an exponential path to greater resolutions?
posted by Rothko at 12:18 PM PST - 19 comments

Using hands to communicate is not a new phenomon. American Sign Language (ASL) was formally introduced in 1817 by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet as a way for deaf people to communicate. Here's a wonderful browser that allows you to see how letters and words are signed (quicktime use). (Here's a way to tell your favorite Mefi trolll that you appreciate his/her kind words.) Oh, and let's not forget Koko, America's Gorilla Sign Language (GSL) sweetheart.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 12:13 PM PST - 13 comments

Unleash the Resistance. Karen Kwiatowski worked in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans prior to the Iraqi invasion. She is now calling on us to resist its government, in the name of liberty and in the spirit of the Iraqi insurgents. Posted on From the Wilderness, which offers insight on Kwiatowski's essay from other radicals.
posted by Candide at 11:32 AM PST - 53 comments

"Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist." Les Paul interview and his recent 90th birthday celebration. via Kill Ugly Radio. (more...)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:00 AM PST - 12 comments

"Fascinating is the word I use for the unexpected." One Man Safari is a daily updated treasure chest of interesting and infinitely pretty pictures, from the days that were.
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 9:43 AM PST - 10 comments

Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits. No one knows why Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn began painting half-length portraits of religious figures late in his life. The subject was uncommon in Protestant Amsterdam, where he lived. Paintings and sculptures, deemed idolatrous by Luther's followers, were not permitted in churches; existing images were removed and often destroyed. In 1681, a local authority described Rembrandt as the "foremost heretic in the art of painting." In Los Angeles, the Getty Center brings together, for the first time, 16 of these mysterious paintings. More inside.
posted by matteo at 8:31 AM PST - 11 comments

If anyone wants to help Ron Gerber keep his fantastic radio archive up, go to his site. More info inside.
posted by wheelieman at 7:49 AM PST - 8 comments

A New Alpine Melt Theory: "The Alpine glaciers are shrinking, that much we know. But new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today. And 7,000 years ago they probably weren't around at all." Fascinating report from Der Spiegal about the "Green Alps" theory. This page has a small graphic showing the Alps today and how they might have looked in a warmer period. Another article here. Maybe Otzi forgot to pack his sunscreen?
posted by LarryC at 7:49 AM PST - 9 comments

The Obscure Cities :Imagine another world (french site), a heartbeat, a breath away, and yet at the same time more distant than the farthest star. You can walk to it without even noticing, just by going through a door in some crooked building, or by day dreaming after having seen a curious painting or read an unusual book. It is a world of quaint vehicles (french site, flash), wondrous architecture and strange customs. {main link via vacapinta}
posted by dhruva at 3:17 AM PST - 10 comments

Build your own walltop computer. Take the guts out of an old laptop, stuff them into a picture frame and have a slide show hanging on your wall. This is uber-geeky but cool.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:54 PM PST - 23 comments

Tessellations are mathematically created images. Trompe L'oeil geometry that is a visual cousin to surrealism , visual games and mosaics.
posted by nickyskye at 9:45 PM PST - 12 comments

ESPN.com's Scoop Jackson on the Detroit Pistons' Ben Wallace: "Although no one will admit it, Ben Wallace is the image the NBA doesn't want... He's that unspoken stereotype that white America has of the black athlete. He's what they fear." I found this to be an unusually frank examination of race in American professional sports.
posted by dammitjim at 8:29 PM PST - 34 comments

The aim of Fada'íat No Border Temporary Media Lab is to remain as a permanent public media interface, part of the counter hegemonic cyborg that we imagine at the gate of Mediterranean sea. A bunch of media-activists, members of social organizations, artists, video/film-makers, programmers and architects from Europe and North Africa, establish a WiFi connection across the Straits of Gibraltar and do stuff. And there's a java interface of some sort.
posted by signal at 7:37 PM PST - 1 comment

Neal Stephenson wrote an excellent editorial today in the NY Times on Star Wars. Quite good.
posted by about_time at 6:32 PM PST - 54 comments

Back to the FutureDrawing Board
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:31 PM PST - 41 comments

The CEO of BMO calls for non-Jews to speak out against antisemitism. Tony Comper cites an all-time record of 857 reported incidents in Canada last year. Meanwhile, 86 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in east London are desecrated. There were 532 antisemitic incidents in Britain last year, the highest since records started 20 years ago. Also in the news, yesterday an attack on a Jewish cemetery in Budapest left some 130 gravestones damaged. "I know I speak for the whole group when I say that we deplore intolerance in any and all of its manifestations, but also realize that the more well-defined and focused the target, the better the chances of having an impact."
posted by ori at 6:26 PM PST - 7 comments

The 80's Toon Archive with opening themes for your favorite cartoon shows.
posted by chime at 6:10 PM PST - 35 comments

Slow 'em down. "Traffic calming is the combination of mainly physical measures that reduce the negative effects of motor vehicle use, alter driver behavior and improve conditions for non-motorized street users." If you are a frequent pedestrian user of a residential street with high traffic volumes, or speeds, you may be interested in strategies and data from various community projects to alter traffic flow.
posted by paulsc at 6:09 PM PST - 40 comments

"Tempe decided to leave Tibet inorder to continue his religious training. He had been in Dharamsala about a month and was actually planning to begin a life-long solitary retreat the day after this photo was taken. He said his retreat was not to escape from the world but to transform his mind so he could serve more effectively in future lifetimes." Check out Phil Borges' Tibetan photos.
posted by JohnR at 5:26 PM PST - 7 comments

After decades of advocacy for Canadian women's right to choose (including opening several abortion clinics decades before they were legal, and spending 10 months in jail for having performed an abortion, and his case was the groundbreaking 1988 Supreme Court decsion that threw out all the criminal law related to abortion in Canada) prominent Canadian abortion activist Dr. Henry Morgentaler recieved an honourary degree this week from the University of Western Ontario. In his own words.
posted by raedyn at 4:17 PM PST - 16 comments

When did John C. Dvorak start blogging? It was only a small time ago that he spoke out against them and brought about quite a response. But timed passed and now he too has a blog. So was he ever really against blogs or was it no more truthful than his infamous april fools? Does he just write whatever gets people talking? If so, what is he going to attack next?
posted by TwelveTwo at 2:56 PM PST - 19 comments

The Backstroke of the West! Screen shots from a street-purchased dvd of Revenge of the Sith. Apparently translated into Chinese and back again for subtitles.

He big in nothing important in good elephant... Palpatine talking about Obi Wan.
posted by jasper411 at 2:56 PM PST - 17 comments

They look slick to cover up the garbage. With the increasing popularity of scooters in North America, many people are trying their hand at vintage Vespas and Lambrettas. However, there's an increasing number of quick and dirty restoration jobs showing up on Craigslist and eBay. Now, there are those that are trying to warn the noobz.
posted by Extopalopaketle at 2:16 PM PST - 22 comments

Where are the areas in the United States with highest marijuana use? Where are the areas with the lowest? A different kind of red versus blue. But wait, there's more, especially if you would prefer to be binge drinking to wash away those lonesome blues. And a list of information broken down by drug, if your fix is more obscure.
posted by nervousfritz at 2:11 PM PST - 48 comments

Saab's new 9-5 2.0T Biopower sedan runs on regular boring old gas and pumps out a respectable 148 horses. But, because its an FFV (Flex-Fuel Vehicle), fill it up with E85 ethanol (or grain alcohol to you, rummy) and, with the turbo (especially suited for use in ethanol powered vehicles because of ethanol's higher octane), the power is boosted to 184 horses while reducing the bulk of emissions and using a renewable energy source. Only problem is that there are only a little over 300 ethanol fueling stations in the US, it should be noted that the car is not aimed at the US market so our loss is Europe's gain (though not for long). [More Inside]
Read about it last night in the latest issue of Popular Science. Previous MeFi ethanol post.
posted by fenriq at 1:47 PM PST - 20 comments

Spots Before His Eyes? At last, the Paper of Record publishes a story about something I've known and experienced for years. This retired math professor believes that New York is "...a parking paradise." Want a free parking spot, just believe you'll find one, and you will. When I lived in the SF area and had to go to The City for business, I would visualize parking and something always turned up. How about you? How do you conjure the parking Goddess?
posted by dbmcd at 11:17 AM PST - 38 comments

I'd call it Zaphod. A kitten has been born with one brain, one skull, but two faces. Picture here.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:05 AM PST - 48 comments

What the hell is up with the Church of the Subgenious? (VERY NSFW!!!) I have found some really odd, frightening, and disturbing images. Also, what is their connection with Slackware Linux?
posted by Livewire Confusion at 9:49 AM PST - 148 comments

Willworkforawife.org He's been getting some play in the MSM, and he's easily as entertaining as Tom & Katie. He owns a bitchin' Corvette.
posted by fixedgear at 9:21 AM PST - 20 comments

Censorship is bad, but this is F*****ing hysterical. And by "F*****ing", I of course mean "Friday posting" (Quicktime movie. Extremely sfw yet, oddly, not)
posted by haricotvert at 8:51 AM PST - 27 comments

American's censored Nagasaki A-bomb report unearthed after 60 years: The first reporter to reach Nagasaki following the August 1945 “Fat Man” atomic attack had his newspaper stories censored and banned by US General Douglas MacArthur’s office. The reporter, George Weller, who worked for the (defunct) Chicago Daily News, was prevented from reporting on a mysterious “Disease X” out of fear that the stories of radiation poisoning would horrify the world and shift public attitudes regarding the bomb.

Weller died two years ago. Carbons of the articles were discovered by his son, Anthony.

Four of them were published today for the first time by the Tokyo daily Mainichi Shimbun, which purchased them from Anthony Weller.
posted by zarq at 8:34 AM PST - 83 comments

Source of stem cells idea sent me straight into my uncanny valley. (via aldaily)
posted by rainbaby at 7:38 AM PST - 20 comments

The Bumpy Yet Finger-tingling Road to God Arriving in 17 volumes, and taking up 76 inches of shelf space, who needs the mp3? These nice folk print and distribute Bibles in braille. (Please use this link for good and not evil. Abuse this service and go directly to Hell. Do not pass Purgatory. Go directly to Hell.)
posted by Sully at 7:21 AM PST - 21 comments

FlickrDogs
posted by srboisvert at 7:05 AM PST - 19 comments

Cruise proposed to Katie Holmes this morning while on the Eiffel Tower. They've been in the news a lot since they first got together. and more than one person has suggested that this is all too staged and too much of a marketing thing. After all, who really holds a press conference 2 hours after you propose to announce it?
posted by Like the Reef at 6:42 AM PST - 133 comments

Assia Djebar the Algerian novelist and filmmaker was elected to fill the only vacancy at the Académie Française, the august French institution that watches over the French language. Ms. Djebar, 68, is the first North African to join the 40-member academy. Most interesting in light of recent discussions here on Dutch/Muslim relations. Comments from those who've read her books or know her from her work at LSU or elsewhere would no doubt be appreciated
posted by IndigoJones at 5:51 AM PST - 12 comments

Helper monkeys! Severely disabled people can get trained monkeys to help them out in their daily chores, though sometime this causes problems. Haven't you always wanted a monkey? The Mesa SWAT Team certainly want one.
posted by Kattullus at 5:50 AM PST - 23 comments

Raped, Kidnapped and Silenced. "Indeed, on Friday, just as all this was happening, President Bush received Pakistan's foreign minister in the White House and praised President Musharraf's "bold leadership."" [an update to a previous MeFi thread]
posted by gsb at 5:37 AM PST - 24 comments

Michael Jackson's 'innocence' = Nelson Mandela, the fall of the Berlin Wall and more. What, no Moon landing? (warning! Flash, bad loud music, delusions of grandeur and possibly the scariest Michael Jackson link ever: His own website.)
posted by loquacious at 10:06 PM PST - 40 comments

A hilarious video clip advertising a pride event in Oslo. Possibly NSFW.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:21 PM PST - 20 comments

Outcasts in Their Own Villages "More than one million young women with the condition are scattered throughout the so-called fistula belt that stretches across the southern hem of the Sahara from Eritrea to Mali. Because of their severe incontinence and smell, many have been ostracized by their families and villages and live by themselves or with fellow fistula sufferers. They are the lepers of the desert." [also see]
posted by kliuless at 9:12 PM PST - 15 comments

Pharmaceutical company seeks approval for controversial heart drug BiDil for blacks only, even though the connection of a nitric oxide deficiency to the genetic makeup of the African-American population is an unsubstantiated hunch, in the words of the drug's own developer — and the drug had already once been denied approval. Is the FDA doing good science or ignoring science under the pressure of big business wanting to sell BiDil to a US$1Bln demographic?
posted by Rothko at 7:36 PM PST - 27 comments

InstantSOUP is good for the android's soul An open electronics hobbiest kit geared towards design students in non-engineering disciplines. It's built around a simple I/O board that can interface with your computer (MacOS, Windows or Linux) and, wiring a programming language. Wiring is in turn based around the nifty Processing programming language.
posted by substrate at 7:05 PM PST - 9 comments

Waxy's contest to design an interface for animating wikipedia histories has already borne fruit.
posted by Tlogmer at 6:45 PM PST - 4 comments

Kerry Skarbakka falls
posted by mexican at 6:08 PM PST - 27 comments

UnReal Realm Three New Yorkers go to Tibet.
posted by nickyskye at 6:00 PM PST - 9 comments

The Global Housing Price Bubble is bursting. Prices are already declining in Australia and Britain. The Economist has another story that outlines how a global bursting of this bubble could be deleterious to the world's economy. The bubble is bigger than the stock market bubble of the late 90s. Will there be a smooth landing or will spending collapse when it cannot be funded on housing price gains?
posted by sien at 5:42 PM PST - 52 comments

10 Questions for Brian McLaren, pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church, contributor to the Emergent Village:

"[T]his power of consumerism, the power of money, and the power of the desire for more, and the idea that we live for the economy — I think this has an enormously subversive and subtle power. A quick example: Right now, I'm involved with a group of people who are very concerned about the situation in Darfur in the Western Sudan. I knew there was a genocide going on there twelve months ago, and four hundred thousand more people have died since then. I think I just assumed somebody would do something about it. And it’s just stunning to me about how little can get done. Meanwhile, Christians are arguing about what seems to me to be incredibly pathetic, trivial things compared to 400 thousand people dying, when, if they can get so much stuff out there about their national agenda, if they were to push this to the front, four hundred thousand lives could have been saved."

Where to look for other postmodern Christians: Sojourners, RELEVANT.
posted by heatherann at 4:08 PM PST - 23 comments

Incredible feat of engineering or environmental disaster in the making? Despite continued protests, the Karahnjukar project rumbles onwards. Some people are desperate to see it stopped, although the Icelandic public aren’t so sure. In fact, Alcoa - the US company driving the project – is proud of its environmental achievements. Whatever the truth, there’s no denying that the area under threat contains some stunning scenery. Take a look while you still can.
posted by MrMustard at 3:48 PM PST - 14 comments

Clever web advertisment for a glue. Cheap also.
posted by tyamada at 3:30 PM PST - 21 comments

Why one man steals music. Either a wonderfully scathing indictment of a music industry that doesn't care about its customers, or a pathetic attempt at justifying illegal activities, depending on your perspective. (Looks like Glenn Mcdonald didn't close up shop after all.) [Via.]
posted by dersins at 2:25 PM PST - 49 comments

NextGen Macromedia Flash Tool "Zorn" to Run on Eclipse • "Macromedia's announcement that their next generation enterprise Flash development tool, code-named Zorn, will be built on top of Eclipse, is a watershed moment both for Macromedia and for the open source movement. Macromedia's choice of Eclipse speaks volumes about the impact of open source on commercial software development -- and about Macromedia's commitment to making Flash into an essential platform for next-generation internet applications." </glavin>
posted by dhoyt at 2:15 PM PST - 16 comments

Video: 4-dimensional quaternions (group of fractals) are visualized by projecting them into three-dimensional space. (x[n+1]=x[n]^p, baby.
posted by signal at 1:21 PM PST - 21 comments

I wonder if Odetta will sing backup on "Debaser". The Pixies will do their first acoustic set ever this summer, and what more appropriate place than where Dylan plugged in and changed the rules? That's right, Newport, baby!
posted by barjo at 1:13 PM PST - 13 comments

San Carlo of the Symphony. Il Maestro Carlo Maria Giulini, orchestra conductor who passed away Tuesday at 91 "had an almost uncanny ability to transform the sound of an orchestra, any orchestra, into a dark and intense glow, which became his trademark over the years". "We have lost one of the greatest musicians of our time," says Esa-Pekka Salonen (.pdf), music director of the LA Philharmonic. Giulini has been called "the last humanist", a gentle man beloved by his orchestras, so humble in his approach to music that, always feeling the necessity to "fathom" each new work, it wasn't until the 1960s that he finally felt ready to conduct Bach, or the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven. This from a man who, at the beginning of his career (as a viola player) had played under Richard Strauss. "I had the great privilege to be a member of an orchestra," Giulini said in 1982. "I still belong to the body of the orchestra. When I hear the phrase, 'The orchestra is an instrument,' I get mad. It's a group of human beings who play instruments." More inside.
posted by matteo at 12:35 PM PST - 11 comments

(Query: Is dear Robin perhaps future Heath Robinson or Arthur Watts?) -- The provincial lady's motherly effusion led a curious reader to the lovely works of two master British illustrators. --more--
posted by of strange foe at 12:05 PM PST - 8 comments

Uncommon Places brings to mind A Short History of America.
It must be all those wires.
Via Archphoto and The Crumb Museum
posted by y2karl at 11:59 AM PST - 4 comments

You remember Hunter, right? Sure you do. So does Robert Love, who had the distinct if difficult privilege of editing him.

What Hunter is justly celebrated for, among his other virtues, is his authorial voice, his truest creation, as powerful and unique a voice as exists in American letters. But this instrument, as his editors knew, existed only on paper. Those poor souls who booked him for public speaking gigs found that out soon enough. But Hunter’s authorial voice was perhaps at its purest and most potent in the memos and marked-up manuscript pages that came through the wires late at night and were waiting for us in neat little piles in the fax machine[...] Asked for a touch more detail in this sentence from the Elko piece “For many hours I tossed and turned . . . ,” he came back with “like a crack baby in a cold hallway.”

Enjoy. (Via Incoming Signals.)
posted by languagehat at 11:24 AM PST - 14 comments

Brain study reveals gender differences.
posted by semmi at 11:24 AM PST - 21 comments

It's Pac-Man's 25th birthday and it's quite clear that some obsessed fans out there are much happier about it than other extremely obsessed pac-players. Maybe that guy needs to unwind for a bit?
posted by kingmissile at 11:19 AM PST - 12 comments

Astronomy Picture of the Day is ten years old today, and over its long life has featured great photos of Earth, the Milky Way, the Sun, Stars - and even Water on Mars.
Happy Birthday APOD.
posted by Mwongozi at 10:38 AM PST - 5 comments

Stuck to their prom dates. Since 2001, Duck brand duct tape has sponsored a scholarship contest, open to any high school students willing to go to prom in outfits made of duct tape. This year's fashions range from the classic silver to wilder colors and patterns, and occasionally veer into the just plain strange. Dip into the archives for more.
posted by me3dia at 10:28 AM PST - 35 comments

We all knew it was gonna happen eventually... a new, super hot parody of the Carl's Jr. I Love Paris campaign is out.
Actually, "hot" probably isn't the right word. Y'know... sometimes full body waxing for men seems really underrated.
posted by miss lynnster at 9:47 AM PST - 27 comments

Charlie Stross releases his new book Accelerando as a Creative Commons e-book, thereby buying in to the open source idea that offering up one's intellectual property (under certain circumstances) will result in greater sales of the physical object, not fewer (see: Cory Doctorow). In a time where promotional opportunities for new and "mid-list" authors seem to be continually shrinking, is offering up a complete work the current equivalent of the author interview or newspaper puff piece? Or is it simply a recognition that here in the 21st century anything can be pirated -- better to offer up your work in good will (and in a form where you have some control), and hope some of the kids will realize that behind the free content is a guy who needs to eat? And what happens if/when all books become digital books?
posted by jscalzi at 9:38 AM PST - 24 comments

Brain Biodiversity Bank Atlases “A world resource for illustrations of whole brains and stained sections from a great variety of mammals” featuring Navigable Atlas of the Dolphin Brain | Burchell’s Zebra | Weasel | Tasmanian Devil | Axolotl and more. From Axolotl to Zebra, eh. This has been around for years, and maybe I’m the last to find it.
posted by KS at 8:17 AM PST - 6 comments

A "stunning" link between an ingredient in childhood vaccines and autism leads to a cover-up conspiracy. "But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line." An earlier post (concerned only with fish) asked, "Got mercury?" Why, yes you do - and fish is the least of your problems. Interestingly, hints of this story surfaced in the media in the Spring/Summer of 2005. There may also be a link between thimerosal and Alzheimer's, A.D.D., and Asperger's Syndrome. A thimerosal resource guide. Maybe we'll take notice this time around?
posted by spock at 7:45 AM PST - 136 comments

Turbulence. When it’s time to change your seat - a reflection from David Sedaris.
posted by a thousand writers drunk at the keyboard at 7:34 AM PST - 34 comments

"He was young and handsome, his mother's hope". Yes, the scourge of Onanism has long plagued our young people, causing them no end of misery, woe, and high ISP fees.

One champion of choice, our good friend Mark Twain, delivered a stirring lecture to the Stomach Club in Paris, 1879, to defend our right to love ourselves. Bless his crusty old heart.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 6:57 AM PST - 36 comments

"It's a moral argument. How morally right is it for our Democratic nominee for president to tell 60 million people, 'You don't matter to me'?" An interview with Dave "Mudcat" Saunders on how Democrats can get the Bubba vote. (via the revealer)
posted by pandaharma at 6:50 AM PST - 144 comments

Elmo Strikes Back? Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining payments to two Republican lobbyists that were not disclosed to the corporation's board, and whether Mr. Tomlinson had the authority to approve the payments. PreviousFilter.
posted by R. Mutt at 6:25 AM PST - 4 comments

The Supreme Court Nomination blog (SCtN) A new blog from the same law firm that brings us SCOTUSblog. Designed to serve as a clearinghouse for information on the process of nominating and confirming a Supreme Court Justice.
posted by mlis at 3:25 AM PST - 8 comments

Gallery 41 A jazz photography collection covering the past quarter-century and over 150 artists. Hear musical excerpts and highlights of recorded conversations as you explore.
posted by LinusMines at 9:26 PM PST - 7 comments

Small Town Papers. Searchable, digitized archives of small town newspapers.
posted by Jimbob at 9:17 PM PST - 7 comments

On June 16, 1963, at the height of the US-Soviet Space Race, Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Her flight aboard the Vostok 6 lasted 48 orbits and 71 hours, and during her flight she spent more time in space than all the U.S. astronauts combined to that date. Although NASA trained women astronauts in the 60's, it would take 20 years for an American woman to follow in Tereshkova's footsteps.
posted by anastasiav at 9:06 PM PST - 18 comments

What's China Smoking?
posted by daksya at 8:50 PM PST - 36 comments

Yubnub - a social command line for the web
posted by Staggering Jack at 7:50 PM PST - 22 comments

Competitive rabbits. They are even cuter when they win prizes!
posted by Viomeda at 5:02 PM PST - 22 comments

Ulysses speaks! Background: The Conservative Nation of Ulysses (conservative refers to a reserved manner of dressing and acting) is a violent and rejectionist group operating out of the Washington, D.C. area who seek to "wreak their vision on the world" through the medium of music. Despite fiery condemnation by both liberals and the right, and a virulent campaign waged by the media and by parents' groups, their aggressive campaign seems undaunted, and schoolyards now more than ever chime with the chant: "Ulysses, Ulysses, little flower, beloved by all the youth."
posted by underer at 2:53 PM PST - 24 comments

Par 5 site on the science of golf balls. Service on the newly sized tennis ball. Return on the flight of tennis balls: Part 1; Rally with Part 2. Back and forth again with Ball/Court Interaction 1 and 2, and the aerodynamics of tennis ball coverings puts it away for the point. (And apparently, the weight inside a bowling ball isn't spherical and so modeling the movement of bowling balls takes university papers and presentations.[PDF])
posted by OmieWise at 12:25 PM PST - 7 comments

Australia Looks to US to help Hunt Dr. Death
Maybe its because he was living in Portland, Oregon in a million dollar mansion while an Australian inquiry charged Jayant Patel, dubbed Dr. Death by the Australian public, with murder, negligence and fraud. One Aboriginal patient developed gangrene after he left an amputation untreated for several weeks after the operation. [More inside]
posted by fenriq at 12:07 PM PST - 8 comments

The end of Concorde was one of the few times in modern history that technology has been forced to regress. But it won't take long to fix.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 11:24 AM PST - 48 comments

Touch-Sensitive Cyborg
posted by cmicali at 11:05 AM PST - 21 comments

UpdateFilter: Schiavo autopsy results --contrary to those who used this poor shell of a woman as a political football and fundraiser, Schiavo was not abused, was blind so could not possibly have seen a balloon or her loved ones, and had a brain half the normal weight that was massively and irreversibly damaged. previous posts here--and just one example of the many many lies printed about her and her husband here. Some people should really be ashamed of themselves.
posted by amberglow at 10:37 AM PST - 169 comments

"She's been a republican for a couple of days," and appears to be pretty happy with the new title. Wonder how the right-wing folks who put dubya in office [again] feel about the new addition to their political family?
posted by tatochip at 9:16 AM PST - 111 comments

"By the time I got to the industrial age, I was a full blown junkie." (Quicktime MOV) Sid Meier's Civilization IV is coming. Civ addicts everywhere now have a place to turn for help. Your recovery is only 12 steps away...
posted by afx114 at 9:05 AM PST - 60 comments

A distinction between “old” and “new” wars is vital. “Old wars” are wars between states where the aim is the military capture of territory and the decisive encounter is battle between armed forces. “New wars”, in contrast, take place in the context of failing states. They are wars fought by networks of state and non-state actors, where battles are rare and violence is directed mainly against civilians, and which are characterised by a new type of political economy that combines extremist politics and criminality... I argue in this article that the United States viewed its invasion of Iraq as an updated version of “old war” that made use of new technology. The US failure to understand the reality on the ground in Iraq and the tendency to impose its own view of what war should be like is immensely dangerous and carries the risk of being self-perpetuating. It does not have to be this way.
Iraq: the wrong war - Mary Kaldor writes of what was happening in pre-invasion Iraq, what happened thereafter and what the alternatives were. Well, there is always Exit strategy: Civil war. And on that, note this: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk--a city from which, I am afraid, we will hear more and more as time goes by.
posted by y2karl at 8:17 AM PST - 20 comments

How do you attack the monster that is hype/commersialism/advertising, a monster that turns every rebellion into a profitable fashion? The preferred answer seems to be: with a practical joke. Practical jokes as media criticism is a current trend in art and documentary movies. An early example is Michael Moore's TV Nation. But there's always the bigger prank. Two Czech filmmakers made a huge advertising campaign for the opening of a new supermarket which didn't exist. 3,000 people showed up on an empty field. This is their story. Thanks, dabitch!
posted by Termite at 7:47 AM PST - 32 comments

Keep your ice cream safe or at least make it clear that you don't appreciate the tampering.
posted by plinth at 7:19 AM PST - 23 comments

Roll your own air-conditioning. I'm a student, with limited funds and a cheap house without air conditioning. To avoid dying this summer, I've built a primitive air conditioner. It's a basic heat pump, using water as the medium. You'll probably need to fiddle a bit with the dimensions of the supplies based on your resources and preferences. Not sure I'd do this but hey, when you're sweltering hot, anything is worth a try.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:14 AM PST - 45 comments

In Congo, 1,000 die per day: Why isn't it a media story? "A media story is currently developing around the Congo - focusing, paradoxically, on how the conflict is not a media story." A journalist's-eye view of a story approaching the tipping-point towards widespread media coverage.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:08 AM PST - 42 comments

The Dutch-Muslim Culture War
The backlash against Hirsi Ali has astonished and disappointed many Dutch feminists, who continue to count themselves among her biggest fans. Margreet Fogteloo, editor of the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, said flatly that [historian Geert] Mak is crazy. "People like him feel guilty because they were closing their eyes for such a long time to what was going on," she said. In what appears to be a Europe-wide pattern, some feminists are aligning themselves with the anti-immigrant right against their former multiculturalist allies on the left. Joining them in this exodus to the right are gay activists, who blame Muslim immigrants for the rising number of attacks on gay couples. (Via PoliticalTheory.info)
posted by jenleigh at 5:43 AM PST - 52 comments

Imagine rocking down to the shops on this thing. The Wheelsurf is a motorised monocycle powered by a chainsaw engine. Designed by Brazilian engineer Tito Lucas Ott, the rider sits inside the turning wheel, and steers by leaning the whole machine into corners – hence 'surfing'. The wheelsurfer takes practice to master and you need to be relatively well coordinated. Weight distribution, body balancing and throttle all play a part in a successful ride. See images. Via Beyond Tomorrow.
posted by sjvilla79 at 4:49 AM PST - 36 comments

Liberals, Womens' Studies, Beer Ads, and Kos.
posted by Tlogmer at 4:19 AM PST - 91 comments

How one woman went from humping Joe Strummer to loving Jesus. Remember Palmolive? Well, she's back! In zealot form.

Paloma played in The Slits, The Raincoats and a rehearsal band with fellow shitty musician Sid Vicious. Now she plays for Jesus and, naturally, she has a message for you. warning: lots of flash and an intro in tiny script that you might not be able to read. I stopped trying
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:03 AM PST - 42 comments

Legend has it that Charles Dellschau (1830-1923) was the draftsman for the secret Sonora Aero Club, a collective of 60 or so mostly German immigrants who reportedly constructed dirigible like aircraft in California in the 1850's. One club member was said to have discovered suppe -- the magic antigravity fuel alleged to have lifted the craft. There were sightings of these 'airships', tenuously linked back to the club, up to the end of the 20th century.
Dellschau, described variously as butcher, inventor, civil war spy, scientist and America's first visionary artist, retired at age 70 in Texas and spent the last 2 decades of his life as a recluse, producing mixed media art works that record the craft and workings of the fabled Sonora Aero Club. They are accompanied by cryptic symbols, newsprint about aircraft and detailed notebooks and were salvaged from the garbage in 1967. His artworks were selling for $15,000 each 5 years ago. A would-be author and long-time sleuth believes he has unlocked the mysteries of Dellschau's cryptic accoutrements and may be publishing a book on the legends this year. via
posted by peacay at 2:16 AM PST - 11 comments

Today, Bush met with Kang Chol Hwan, a survivor of the North Korean prison camps and author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a book Bush has read and given to his staffers.
posted by pandaharma at 11:42 PM PST - 17 comments

Former Bush Team Member Says WTC Collapse Likely A Controlled Demolition And 'Inside Job' Was it real or was it Memorex? Will we ever know? Tin-Foil hat theories or good, hard science?
posted by mk1gti at 10:57 PM PST - 130 comments

Tsunami warning - 7.4 earthquake in the pacific
posted by gunthersghost at 9:04 PM PST - 49 comments

That's Mathematics! Warning, contains bad camera work, worse editing, a rather complicated homework problem, a few mathematical in-jokes, illegible chalkboard writing, and a 13 minute performance by Tom Lehrer.
posted by eriko at 7:37 PM PST - 29 comments

A bill to repeal the 22nd Amendment was introduced in the House a few months ago, though it seemed that no one else in the world noticed. Interestingly enough, the bill was sponsored by Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic Whip.

But it gets better: the bill was cosponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, who's made the news recently for storming out of committee hearings, interfering with Rep. John Conyers's investigation of the Downing Street Memo, and, of course, loudly proclaiming his hatred of the number 42023.

Oh, and in case you've forgotten, the 22nd Amendment is the one that limits the president to two terms.
posted by greatgefilte at 7:31 PM PST - 82 comments

Polar Inertia is an online photojournal devoted to exploring and documenting contemporary nomadism, urban architectural typology, and the oft-hid-in-plain-sight infrastructure of contemporary existence.
posted by Chrischris at 7:23 PM PST - 6 comments

Micros[censored] Helps China [censored] Bl[censored]s. "This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them."
posted by digaman at 7:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Where Christians Meet. (Minimum $25,000 salary required.)
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:55 PM PST - 16 comments

Jamie Zawinskie forsakes Linux. For an Imac.
posted by craniac at 5:40 PM PST - 71 comments

What would you say, given one free minute of anonymous, uncensored speech? via Wired
posted by pmbuko at 4:09 PM PST - 49 comments

Nude Ballet sparks national anger The Russian National Ballet will perform Romeo and Juliet - with nude scenes - for the first time in its World's Greatest Ballets program set to debut in Australia next month.
posted by Yer-Ol-Pal at 2:04 PM PST - 24 comments

Has anyone else noticed actor Tom Cruise going more and more wacky in public? Is his love affair with the hot-young-actress really a sham? Is this a PR stunt run dangerously wild, or Scientology in action? Oprah's scared, are you? The folks at FreeKatie.net think you should be.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 1:53 PM PST - 108 comments

"We're going to hit houses, dude," (NYT Reg. ), Alone in their 50-seat commercial jet, the two young pilots decided to see what it could do...A few minutes later, though, both engines were dead, and the pilots were struggling to glide to an emergency landing at an airport in Jefferson City, Mo. (or the non-registration Jefferson City NewsTribune version, or the NTSB site)
posted by R. Mutt at 1:45 PM PST - 47 comments

"This planet answers an ancient question," said team leader Geoffrey Marcy, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. "Over 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus argued about whether there were other Earth-like planets. Now, for the first time, we have evidence for a rocky planet around a normal star."
The star, Gliese 876, visible in the night sky, lies only 15 light-years away.
posted by vacapinta at 1:44 PM PST - 18 comments

Coming in dead last , the U.S., in all sorts of categories like software piracy, scabies, and intentional self harm by blunt object. First in other statistics though, for things like adults prosecuted, starving to death, morbid obesity, and death by non-drug delerium!
posted by Kickstart70 at 12:45 PM PST - 45 comments

The Consciometer - What if scientists could precisely measure when life begins and ends?
Common sense, law, medicine, and philosophy have long considered consciousness a central aspect of our moral existence as human beings. Sometime in the next decade or so, neuroscientists will likely identify the specific neural networks and activity that generate the vague but vital thing we call consciousness. An interesting read from Slate
posted by cbjg at 12:43 PM PST - 39 comments

Little visual miracles. For more than forty years that most American of photographers, Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters Lee Friedlander, has recorded modern American urban life -- with its jumble of people, signs, buildings, and cars, and television sets. He likes to turn a common blunder of amateurs -- photographing something nearby with one's back to the sun -- into a leitmotif. His shadow plays the role of alter ego, sticking to the back of a woman's fur collar, clinging to a lamppost as a parade of drum majorettes passes by, reclining like a stuffed doll on a chair. Clever jigsaw puzzles, his pictures frequently reveal themselves to be laconic, austere poems to what Friedlander has termed "the American social landscape',' meaning mostly ordinary places and affairs. "Friedlander," an exhibition of more than 480 photographs and 25 books covering decades of work, runs at MoMA through Aug. 29, before traveling to Europe until 2007. More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:41 AM PST - 8 comments

Ooh ,cool rotating furniture!
posted by 31d1 at 10:52 AM PST - 16 comments

Triumph at the Michael Jackson trial sideshow. As if Star Wars nerds weren't an easy enough target... (embedded video)
posted by Gamblor at 10:41 AM PST - 31 comments

A new flag for a bold new us - The Christian Flag, "The time is right for this dynamic concept. It will be effective when Christians for God and country boldly identify with Christ and each other by flying the U.S. National Christian Flag right under Old Glory to represent Christ as our foundation and Christian heritage."
posted by sourbrew at 10:33 AM PST - 78 comments

Spray-on Mud - So you own a big 4x4, and you feel a bit stupid that you only use it to take the children to school. You want people to think you're a bit country - that you need 6 tonnes of car to get you from A to B because you like to take it off-road every so often. You need Spray-on Mud apparently.
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 9:15 AM PST - 98 comments

The rareified land of op-ed is the latest section of the big-city daily to see upheaval. A few weeks back, outgoing NYT ombudsman Dan Okrent and professorial columnist Paul Krugman waged an all-out snarkfest over the accuracy of Krugman's statistical references. As Okrent intimates, should op-ed columnists be subject to the same fact-checking standards as reporters? And how much should the views of one columnist be taken to represent the views of the paper? The Los Angeles Times is shaking up its model by allowing editorial board members to openly dissent from op-ed columns, effectively turning philosophical pronouncements into policy debates. But the most interesting thing to come out of the redesign, to be launched next week, is wikitorials, the op-ed that Anyone Can Edit. Disaster in the making, or the new face of journalistic opinion?
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:19 AM PST - 40 comments

The Art of Loving.
What is the problem with modern man? In 1956, psychologist Erich Fromm questioned Western society's ability to foster love: "If we speak about love in contemporary Western culture, we mean to ask whether the social structure of Western civilization and the spirit resulting from it are conductive to the development of love. To raise the question is to answer it in the negative."
Almost 50 years later, what can we say about our culture now? Valentine's Day spending totaled $13 billion this year, but it seems modern man has not yet found love. Instead he fills it with "entertainment" and forms of pseudo-love which ultimately alienate him from others. Media from dawn to dusk: Media consumption averages ten hours per person per day in America. What's more, Americans are “media multi-tasking”: using different media at the same time. Ritalin Sales have soared. Americans carry an average $8,562 in debt on their credit cards. Hummers. Bling bling. Crunk juice. Hooking up. Baby mamas. Tweens. Obesity. Binge Drinking. Depression.
posted by MarkO at 7:44 AM PST - 61 comments

Comic Alert is a free, elegantly designed service that provides RSS feeds for just about every comic with a web presence, allowing you to track updates from the newsreader of your choice. And since it links directly to artists' webpages without copying their images, it neatly sidesteps any pesky copyright issues. Those who prefer a dedicated comic viewing application might want to check out Comictastic or iComic, although some comic creators would prefer you didn't. (Via)
posted by yankeefog at 7:32 AM PST - 7 comments

Not Ready for Their Close-Up. Quote: "On the brighter side, TV will lose a certain amount of its power over us - I can promise you that. HD won't do advertisements quite the same way. Ask any Catholic priest, or Jung, or Scott McLoud about the power of icons, and they'll explain it the same way. Too much detail, and they lose their ability to induce our identification."
posted by gsb at 4:33 AM PST - 40 comments

beacon of bliss Quality images of a deity to help calm outrage or anxious mutterings
posted by longsleeves at 9:57 PM PST - 18 comments

The Dark Side Is The Best Sauce I'm not sure if the cartoonist has their own personal LiveJournal, but the one for the comic is rather adorable and funny. It's just a handful of strips thus far, and they're terribly spoilery for Star Wars: Episode III. But still worth a quick look.
posted by FunkyHelix at 8:33 PM PST - 21 comments

Nemester "an online community that connects paranoids, egotists, villains, and monomaniacs through networks of competing agendas and incompatable ideologies", (and the ideal social web for MetaFilter members).
From the entertainingly paranoid Lyle Zapato, who previously brought us Metric Time (MeFi'd), the Republic of Cascadia homepage (MeFi'd), the Pacific Tree Octopus (MeFi'd) and the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie (Re-pea-ted-ly MeFi'd). Via my closest enemy, PreSurfer.
posted by wendell at 7:46 PM PST - 15 comments

About Lynching
The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950
Lynching in America: Carnival of Death
The Press and Lynchings of African Americans
U.S. Senate apologizes for shame of lynchings
On a voice vote and without opposition, the Senate passed a resolution expressing its regrets to the nearly 5,000 Americans -- mostly black males -- ...documented as having been lynched from 1880 to 1960. No lawmaker opposed the measure, but 20 of the 100 senators had not signed a statement of support of it shortly before a vote was taken on a nearly empty Senate floor.
posted by y2karl at 6:43 PM PST - 135 comments

Exploring enron -- A breathtaking web of conspiratorial email messages. How often did Jeff Skilling email Ken Lay? How often were those emails about company business? Internal alliances? The company's allegiance? The California energy crisis? Who else was talking about it? Who wasn't? Temptingly complete with software download and MySQL tables for your own tinfoil hat explorations.
posted by boo_radley at 4:32 PM PST - 9 comments

Now that over 2,000,000 people have texted in for tickets to July's Live 8 concert, some of the lucky 150,000 people who've won tickets have already posted them on eBay... with massive success. Why? Are the bidders trying to scupper sellers attempts to profit from a charity gig? Or is because eBay have promised to make a donation "at least equivalent to the fees [they] collect from the sale of Live 8 tickets", which includes a percentage of every item sold? If so... wow.
posted by armoured-ant at 4:01 PM PST - 29 comments

For the first time since the 1980s, the CDC estimates that there are more than 1 million people living with HIV in the United States. [MSNBC link, but the article is actually good.] This is good news and bad, it means more people are living with the disease with the help of Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART), of which there are just over 20 drugs in 4 different classes. The CDC has recently launched a new prevention initiative targeted at people with the disease, rather than at convincing HIV- people to avoid contracting it. Central to the new effort are increased HIV surveillance methods, which basically boil down to increased testing (in the case of pregnant mothers, testing they would have to opt out of) and reporting of HIV positive testees. This despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence that HIV discrimination is alive and well.
The other discouraging news is that despite the success of HAART for controlling HIV, the adverse effects are significant, including much higher rates of heart attack and cardiac disease, increased incidence of diabetes and insulin resistance, lipodystrophy and very noticeable changes to how people look, lactic acidosis, as well as the more standard (and less toxic) problems of nausea and diarrhea. Up to 50% of people on HAART will experience these problems.
posted by OmieWise at 3:22 PM PST - 80 comments

Jesus: deep vein thrombosis's most famous victim. "This fits well with Jesus's condition and actually was in all likelihood the major cause of death by crucifixion," says Professor Benjamin Brenner, a researcher at Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa. Sadly, those special stockings that reduce your chances of developing DVT were developed almost 2000 years too late to help the King of Kings.
posted by goatdog at 1:57 PM PST - 27 comments

The Pioneer Anomaly. Something's up in deep space: the Pioneer spacecraft, now out of contact, have shown an unexplained Doppler drift, indicating sunward acceleration, effectively decelerating the probes cumulatively. The effect may be be nongravitational, and could be explained by any number of factors: an undiscovered twist in Newtonian physics, localized cosmological contraction issues, or just venting gas. Other deep space probes may have experienced the anomaly as well, and a new mission could explore the puzzle; but for now, all we have is past Pioneer data, and that's stored on old 9 track tape which can only be read by antique readers. What's to be done? (Also see Pioneer Odyssey for a nostalgic romp through those early days of deep space exploration. And NASA, bring back the original Pioneer home page plz, kthx.)
posted by brownpau at 12:00 PM PST - 20 comments

Porridge. Lots of Porridge. Not the (allegedly) classic BBC TV comedy, but the stuff you make from oats and that's fed generations of Scots. And now you too can attempt to win the Golden Spurtle and be crowned the World Porridge Making Champion. Some light relief for a Monday..
posted by Nugget at 11:14 AM PST - 10 comments

Building a Left Wing CNN Toronto documentary film maker Paul Jay has a vision -- to build the first global independent news network. If successful, Independent World Television would be fully funded by its viewers, independent of corporate or government funding and commercial advertising. Here's the pitch: "If half a million people in the entire world contribute just $50, IWTnews will secure the $25 million it needs to fund its first year of broadcasting, in 2007."

Will this model work?
posted by btwillig at 10:23 AM PST - 67 comments

It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, Jane Elliott, a elementary school teacher in Riceville, Iowa, conducted her Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise with her students, dividing them by eye color to ilustrate prejudice and racism. Since retiring from teaching in the early 1980s she's repeated the exercise for adults in corporations, at colleges, and on Oprah.

PBS's 1985 documentary A Class Divided is viewable online [Real and Windows Media], as are parts of the 2002 documentary Australian Eye [QuickTime and Windows Media]; both feature participants' reactions. (Related: different reflections by a participants in similar exercises; and a program evaluation and transcript of the exercise.)

Ms. Elliott recently said, "What is distressing is that I get the same results today with adults that I got using the exercise with children in 1968."
posted by kirkaracha at 10:00 AM PST - 63 comments

"One lawyer said that his client... has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm." The age of this "client" when he was detained? 14 years old. The reply of the camp's public affairs officer: "They don't come with birth certificates."
posted by digaman at 9:55 AM PST - 36 comments

Debt relief cannot come too soon for Swaziland's King Mswati III who took an 18-year-old former Miss Teen Swaziland finalist as his 12th wife during the weekend, barely two weeks after marrying his 11th. Swaziland the smallest country in Africa ranked 137 on the UN's Human Development Report also has one of the world's highest AIDS rates with 40% of the adult population infected with HIV. Perhaps Bono, who recently complained that the corruption is just an excuse for inaction, will send some condoms as a wedding gift.
posted by three blind mice at 9:08 AM PST - 31 comments

Google Will Eat Itself. . . .deconstructing the new global advertisment mechanisms or something.
posted by a thousand writers drunk at the keyboard at 7:04 AM PST - 27 comments

Pledge Bank is an interesting project. Promise to do something provided others will do the same. This could help to get small enterprises started, but might work for national politics as well. For example, the No 2 ID campaign is making use of it.
posted by mleonard at 4:39 AM PST - 6 comments

The Naked Rambler returns! The Naked Rambler is about to do it again, this time accompanied by a Naked Librarian. How eccentric do you have to be to generate a jail sentence rather than a smile?
posted by Duug at 12:35 AM PST - 32 comments

A little early for Halloween, Ray O'Bannon creates charming and spooky paper toys--some with moving parts--that you can print out and build at home.
posted by frykitty at 11:40 PM PST - 12 comments

How the US tortured the 20th hijacker (and others). According to the logbook, which covers al-Qahtani's interrogations from November 2002 to January 2003, the Time article reports that daily interviews began at 4 a.m. and sometimes continued until midnight. Was the torture effective? A senior Pentagon official told Time the Defense Department wasn't sure how effective such treatment was. At times, the logbook notes that al-Qahtani was more cooperative when interrogators eased up on him, according to the Time report.
posted by caddis at 11:34 PM PST - 125 comments

Billboards by Ron English.
posted by jikel_morten at 9:33 PM PST - 17 comments

The [Official] Family Guy Blog. Want to know what the people behind Family Guy are thinking? Well here you go. Be sure to read the post about why cartoonists are notorious for killing themselves.
posted by handshake at 7:52 PM PST - 53 comments

Beware the Kancho! The ongoing adventures and cultural insights of an American English teacher in Japan.
posted by John of Michigan at 3:12 PM PST - 47 comments

Some counterarguments to those who argue against spelling reform in English put forth by Justin B. Rye. Here are some interesting sites on spelling reform: John J. Reilly's page on Spelling Reform. English Spelling Reform. American Literacy Council's Spelling Matters and Spelling Chaos and finally Spelling Reform @ Everything2.com. Many well-regarded anglophones have tried to bring about spelling reform, such as Noah Webster, Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt.
posted by Kattullus at 2:11 PM PST - 59 comments

more iraqgate: "Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’" "MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal."
posted by specialk420 at 1:33 PM PST - 78 comments

"When they emerged after 50 yards, the landscape no longer looked anything like the southern edge of the Amazon forest. It looked like Iowa." In Mato Grosso, Brazil the rainforest is vanishing. And all because of soybeans and beef. "If we were an aggressive tribe, we would have killed the land owners already," said Tupxi, one of the canoeists, who estimated his age at 77. " good Washpost story...
posted by punkbitch at 1:29 PM PST - 27 comments

Silly TV commercial campaign for junk food featuring a performer who clearly deserves better, OR another inroad by the dreaded Homo Agenda? You decide... It's Colin Mochrie as The Snack Fairy! inspired by this thread and this comment.
posted by wendell at 10:39 AM PST - 21 comments

The world's 100 largest newspapers by circulation Japan and China take 9 of the top 10 spots; Greece enters at #17, the United States at #19. Newspaperindex now also has the list broken down by continent. [An updated top 100 list has been posted here] [via Cynical-C]
posted by mediareport at 9:16 AM PST - 40 comments

Pink Floyd to reunite! The rumours have been proven correct. In a last minute decision, Roger, Dave, Richard, and Nick have put their differences aside and will re-form in support of Sir Bob's Live8 concerts. They have made this Floyd fan's year!
posted by lazywhinerkid at 8:43 AM PST - 124 comments

The Physics Evolution - a flash based history from the Institute of Physics in London. Clickable maps with timelines and short biographies of the main figures. It's a bit superficial, but a lot of fun.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:43 PM PST - 4 comments

We Media: "This report details the important considerations when exploring a collaborative effort between audience and traditional media organizations." A look at participatory journalism from the Media Center at the American Press Institute.
posted by OmieWise at 9:18 PM PST - 2 comments

Europe's oldest known civilization discovered. Archaeologists have discovered an ancient civilization of temple builders that existed in central Europe between 4800BC and 4600BC -- over 2000 years before Egypt. They constructed over 150 geometrically, astronomically, and spiritually aligned temples (translated) out of earth and wood, that had diameters of up to a half a mile. They were built by a people who lived in villages centered around communal longhouses of up to 150 feet in length. Their civilization raised large herds of animals, gathered grain with primitive sickles, made tools out of of stone, bone, and wood, manufactured pottery decorated with geometric designs (.pdf), and created small clay figurines of humans and animals. Only one male figurine has been found so far (.pdf) -- the rest have been of women with large breasts -- fertility symbols -- which suggests a fertility-based spirituality, and possibly a matriarchal society.
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:41 PM PST - 77 comments

Shuffle up and deal--Phil Gordon's Podcasts from WSOP 2005 Featuring between level commentary on hands played and interviews with World Series of Poker players--well-known and not--Phil Gordon's podcasts are entertaining and informative. It's way better than waiting till ESPN broadcasts portions in September.
posted by gsh at 8:18 PM PST - 10 comments

A fire supreme. An all-too brief series of photographs demonstrates the disastrous after-effects of a coal train with an overheated wheel bearing stopping on a wooden bridge to investigate the cause of the smoke...
posted by jonson at 7:55 PM PST - 37 comments

Go to the "Wok-Star" sauce homepage, click "Watch the TV Spot" and you see what at first glance is one of those whacky Asian TV Ads, with whooshing graphics, over-acting, and the yelling of slogans.

The thing is, it's a fake. The ad was made in Australia, for an English-speaking market, as a parody of whacky asian ads. The performers are Vietnamese-Australians* speaking Vietnamese in an exaggerated way.

Some people think it's insulting, some people think it's hilarious, I'm just puzzled. Are the makers assuming we'll think it's a real ad, imported from china, untranslated? Or do they think we're all so culturally literate that we're in on the gag?.

* the main guy is award-winning actor, writer and Extreme Violinist, Hung Le.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 7:12 PM PST - 52 comments

Coffee Starbucks and the Revolution PDF
The Tatler. First post: April 12, 1709.
...wherein I shall from time to time report and consider all matters of what kind soever that shall occur to me, and publish such my advices and reflections every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in the week for the convenience of the post. I have also resolved to have something which may be of entertainment to the fair sex...
posted by Tlogmer at 6:11 PM PST - 9 comments

Monster Magazine Covers! Quote: "Vintage pulp magazines will be offensive to many people today. They were issued before the current climate of political correctness overtook the country. Themes of many magazines (or at least the covers) are racially insensitive, show violence to women, unsafe and/or promiscuous sex, and negative stereotyping of gays, lesbians, Asians, and almost any group you can imagine."
posted by mischief at 4:49 PM PST - 13 comments

What's my bail for a WMD offense in California? If against a person, or water or food: $1 million. But for just $100k, you can use WMDs against animals, crops, or natural resources and be out free by dinnertime.
posted by Kickstart70 at 2:47 PM PST - 8 comments

Evolution resources from the National Academy of Sciences.
posted by daksya at 12:55 PM PST - 12 comments

The Faroe Islands is a weatherbeaten North Atlantic archipelago, which is small and sparsely populated, but rich in fish, sheep and birdlife. Not to mention dramatic scenes of natural beauty. (More inside)
posted by the_unutterable at 11:03 AM PST - 26 comments

San Joaquin Valley & Sierra Foothills Photo Heritage

Includes (among other things): portraits, workers, railways, disasters, group shots, parades , native Americans and some curios.
(nearly 3000 images accessible)
posted by peacay at 9:59 AM PST - 6 comments

Ted Jesus Christ GOD.
posted by tpoh.org at 9:22 AM PST - 87 comments

The Secret Paul Lynde Agenda
The American Family Association warns us about a TV special that blows the lid off the Homosexual Agenda: "TV Land's 'Happy Face' On Homosexuality Masks Tragic Lifestyle."

"Ed Vitagliano, a media researcher for the American Family Association, says although 'Tickled Pink' does not promote the latest political issues of the pro-homosexual movement, the one-hour special does appear to have some disturbing objectives. One thing the show seems to do, he observes, is to hint that Hollywood has somehow 'outsmarted' mainstream culture for decades by 'sneaking" homosexual characters and motifs into television programs.' "
posted by ericb at 6:24 AM PST - 65 comments

Mitch Albom is a Terrible Writer "Morrie" has a keen dislike for the sports columnist (Detroit Free Press)/author ("Tuesdays with Morrie"/radio talk show host. And he expresses it -- sometimes quite angrily, sometimes wittily, always hilariously........
posted by ringie78 at 6:19 AM PST - 18 comments

Legends of the Superheroes! Starring Batman, Hawkman, Ghetto Man, and Ed McMahon.
posted by painquale at 12:40 AM PST - 16 comments

The legislature is trying to impose its conception of "family values" on the state by banning spanking. Another case of religious fundamentalists imposing their values on everyone and meddling with individual liberties? Meet the sponsor. (Also see recent non-binding resolution nearby.)
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 12:23 AM PST - 110 comments

Urban Dog Mushing!
posted by naomi at 5:29 PM PST - 18 comments

Going to the moon? Be careful. A new kind of solar storm can take you by surprise. Biggest proton storm since 1956 - before there were satellites monitoring the sun.
posted by Cranberry at 4:44 PM PST - 10 comments

The announcement that Apple was moving to Intel hardware was the first move in Intel's take-over of Apple, according to Robert Cringely, giving Intel a platform to compete head-to-head with Microsoft. "This scenario works well for everyone except Microsoft. If Intel was able to own the Mac OS and make it available to all the OEMs, it could break the back of Microsoft. And Apple/Intel could easily extend this to the consumer electronics world. How much would it cost Intel to buy Apple? Not much." More.
posted by bobbyelliott at 3:51 PM PST - 55 comments

Scratchpad. (via)
posted by Specklet at 1:45 PM PST - 54 comments

Strawberry Pancakes, mmmmmmmmmm.
posted by fixedgear at 12:51 PM PST - 24 comments

U.F.O., R.I.P. The two lead actors in the cult 1970 TV series "UFO ", Ed Bishop and Michael Billington, have both died this week within days of each other.
posted by matteo at 12:44 PM PST - 22 comments

"If I do come out straight I'll be so mentally unstable and depressed it wont matter.. I'll be back in therapy again. This is not good--" Teenage boy comes out to parents, sent to straight camp. Refuge, located in Memphis, TN, is a division of Love in Action, Intl, a program created to treat "addictions" like homosexuality. Run by John Smid, parents can ship their kids there in hopes that particular brand of Jesus will cure The Gay. The program's rules are . . . interesting. Kids may be placed in virtual isolation at any time (not allowed to communicate with others except in writing, and only when "absolutely necessary"), must be accompanied by a parent at all times when off-campus (even to the restroom), and undergo a "False Image" search every morning to ensure they are not carrying any articles that may interfere with their "affirmed gender identity". Not that we're supposed to know any of this--the rules are sent to the parents with the note to keep them from the child.

The boy is inside the program now. A protest is being held outside the facility--Cherry Blossom Special covers it here.
posted by Anonymous at 12:25 PM PST - 194 comments

"Losing My Edge" (mp3 sample) annotated.
posted by Quartermass at 11:34 AM PST - 11 comments

Pictures of stuff on cats because well, some people like to put stuff on their cats.
posted by mathowie at 10:09 AM PST - 71 comments

House Appropriations panel eliminates ALL public funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS Ready To Learn. From this morning's Cynopsis:Kids e-newsletter: "In our nation's capital yesterday, a House Appropriations subcommittee voted to approve a new bill that will see budgets sliced for both public TV and radio. Specifically in the line of fire in the kid TV universe is the elimination of the full $23m in funding for Public TV's Ready to Learn initiative. Ready to Learn provides some funds for PBS series including, Sesame Street, Between the Lions, Arthur, Reading Rainbow, Clifford the Big Red Dog and could have Buster sending smoke signals instead of postcards. [...] Though the President proposed a small budget reduction for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting this past winter, yesterday's subcommittee vote would also eliminate all government monetary funds intended for the CPB over the course of the next two years, beginning with a $100m decrease in funding to $300m for next year." Perhaps this will free up some money for No Child Left Behind?
posted by eatyourlunch at 8:49 AM PST - 84 comments

Karagiozis Friday Flash. WTF is Karagiozis? [via]
posted by a_day_late at 8:48 AM PST - 10 comments

Bunnock - a game of skill, accuracy... and horse bones. Register your team for the world championship!
posted by Wolfdog at 8:38 AM PST - 6 comments

Xanadu Home of the Future sits rotting in Kissimmee, Florida. It was built in the early 80s by Roy Mason and combined a unique architectural approach with an environment controlled by Commodore computers. Squatters were probably not part of this future plan. You can buy this visionary piece of futures past today or you could buy one in Sedona. However, be aware that the Gatlinburg and Wisconsin Xanadus were not preserved.
posted by PHINC at 8:27 AM PST - 24 comments

Wall Street's Complicity in Financial Scandals. While the blame is parsed amongst the CEOs of companies like Worldcom, Tyco, Healthsouth, Enron, that swindled their investors for billions of dollars, prosecutors are also heading after the banks that funded their rise. Citicorp was just forced to pay $2 billion to investors for their association with Enron (NYT), for encouraging people to invest against good judgment in companies that Citicorp would profit from.
posted by destro at 7:33 AM PST - 3 comments

"Creatures are out there that can control brains." [pdf]

The women "spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive", but were "less trustworthy and had more relationships with men". The men become "less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight". All "are at greater risk of being involved in car accidents". Why? Something has its tentacles in their brains. They probably got it from that cuddly old species, the domestic cat, which the parasite infects by making infected rats "almost taunt" the cats into eating them.

Parasites in the brain alter their host's behavior. It's not just video game fiction. Various multi-host parasites make their living by making their hosts less ambulatory and less willing to explore, by castrating them and making them less cautious of predators, or by forcing their hosts to stay out all night so as to be eaten in the morning. These parasites offer yet another example of how stupidly clever evolution can be, and raise questions about how free "free will" really is.
posted by orthogonality at 7:18 AM PST - 80 comments

Wired for Books HUNDREDS of uncut, behind-the-scenes AUDIO (!) interviews (scroll down) by Don Swain. Douglas Adams, William Burroughs, Joyce Carol Oates, Henny Youngman... to name just a few.
posted by R. Mutt at 4:58 AM PST - 13 comments

Biojewellery. Thought titanium was 'a bit different' for your wedding rings? Have you considered a ring made from your own bioengineered bone tissue?* Apparently the instigators are "...interested in how technological innovation is used by human needs and desire rather than the pure functionality of the innovation." A short report here. *May require extraction of wisdom teeth
posted by biffa at 4:16 AM PST - 8 comments

"The conservatives have somehow broken free of the 30 percent mark, where they have been mired for some time, and flipped into a terrifying death spiral from which there is no escape." O Canada. via
posted by Tlogmer at 12:47 AM PST - 27 comments

Algorithmic composition is a method of composing music using basic alogrithm models to compose. Musicalgorithms is a program designed to allow composers a tool to explore algorithmic composition and lay people the opportunity to create music based on non-musical models.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 12:17 AM PST - 4 comments

George Bush sings (MP3 contains swearing) and shows how he imagines the world should be. Now that John Ashcroft has left the administration it was clearly time for someone else to step up and lead the vocals. There's more info at Wax Audio.
posted by sien at 9:30 PM PST - 25 comments

The Monster Engine. Commercial artist Dave Devries has done some nifty work in comics and such, but his Monster Engine projects are just damned cool. Just too bad there aren't more samples. (via memepool.com)
posted by es_de_bah at 8:10 PM PST - 11 comments

A dental miracle?! The Japanese have invented a synthetic crystaline polymer which not only safely repairs small cavities, but can also be used to strengthen the enamel of healthy teeth. The before and after pictures are impressive. The catch?! Having it applied to your teeth whitens them at the same time.
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:57 PM PST - 46 comments

MoneyChimp - a "coherent, logical, useful and accessible financial education resource".
posted by daksya at 3:28 PM PST - 4 comments

An archive of 2412 TV adverts for videogames from around the world. Via Edge magazine.
posted by nthdegx at 3:14 PM PST - 11 comments

The BBC showed a programme last night about a secretary who stole from her employer. Nothing much unusual about that. But the number of deceptions and the amount of money were unusual. Joyti De-Laurey was a PA at Goldman Sachs. Over a couple of years, she forged thousands of checks worth millions of pounds. The really interesting part of the programme was the insight into the lives of Goldman Sach's executives. They thought nothing of running up a $30,000 wine bill. Joyti was the person responsible for paying the bills so she had a unique insight into the incredible life-style of these people. She claimed that she was treated like a slave. She was on-call 24/7 (in spite of having a husband and child) and was responsible for organising the business and personal lives of her bosses - including covering for her boss when he sneaked away in the middle of the day for sexual liaisons. De-Laurey started small, signing cheques for small amounts of money to pay for her debts. But she grew in confidence when she got away with signing hundreds of cheques - for increasing amounts of money. Eventually her audacity and greed got the better of her and she was caught cashing a cheque for $3½M. De_Laurey was given a seven year prison sentence. It's hard to believe that you could fail to spot millions of dollars going missing but as a former director of Golden Sachs said: "When you're making £60m a year, a few million missing is like a regular person not remembering the last penny on their account."
posted by bobbyelliott at 2:09 PM PST - 51 comments

BrainMeta "is a community site that was established for the purpose of accelerating the development of neuroscience through web-based initiatives, which include the development, implementation and support of a wide range of neuroinformatics tools, services, and databases. BrainMeta also functions as an internet hub for fostering communication between individuals involved with the neurosciences." [Via Mind Hacks.]
posted by homunculus at 1:28 PM PST - 5 comments

Recently discovered: works by Bach and Munch.
posted by Specklet at 1:14 PM PST - 11 comments

A cuddly new species! Severe neuro-trauma wound is plainly visible, as is the foreign tentacle, which was found to be grasping the mid-brain area.
posted by kenko at 12:27 PM PST - 68 comments

Republican Congressman Pete Sessions from Texas introduced a bill that would make all free, public, municipal WiFi illegal. Sessions, as it turns out, is a big fat recipient of SBC funds. Why stop there? Should we privatize highways as well? How about subways? Glad the liberal media is all over this one. Here are a couple of links: Original post on DailyKos, An informative editorial from the Fort Wayne paper
posted by mountainmambo at 11:22 AM PST - 48 comments

"Oh shit! It's Baby Man," says one cashier, a Hispanic kid who's heard the legend but has never been a witness to the spectacle. "It's like Sasquatch!" he says. "You don't believe it exists until you see it." And even then, you're likely to think Baby Man is the star of a hidden-camera TV show, a singing telegram, or maybe on his way to a costume party. But Windsor (AGE 54) is for real. This is no spoof.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:22 AM PST - 58 comments

Any girls wanna go cycling around the world?
posted by iron chef morimoto at 10:18 AM PST - 62 comments

Marvel Masterworks compile old Spider-Man and Fantastic Four comic books into handsome, economical volumes. Only on the web can one find a cross-referenced chronological list of the comics they reprint. In fact, there are scores of obsessive sites detailing comic book minutae: Marvel Comics Group 1939-1980, The Timely-Atlas-Marvel Chronology, Marvel Silver Age timeline, complete Marvel Bronze Age timeline (or with just the core titles), The Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index, and The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators. Some might be more interested in a checklist of appearances by DC Golden Age characters. Whichever comic company you prefer, the trade paperback list is a godsend. Indulge your inner geek!
posted by jdroth at 9:34 AM PST - 12 comments

After the theft of a Dalek from a UK tourist attraction, its "kidnappers" have delivered a ransom note - and its severed plunger.
posted by Mwongozi at 9:15 AM PST - 22 comments

"So I just went buck wild Jesus style on them!" What really goes on behind the scenes at TBN. (Some flash, some NSFW language.)
posted by pxe2000 at 9:10 AM PST - 10 comments

The Illuminated Middle Ages database presents several hundred recently digitized illuminated texts from French national library collections.This web site gives access to the entire database. Only a portion of the full collection has been translated into English for the web site, but visitors may also view the French-language galleries in the site, where a dozen texts from each of the ten themes are presented daily. You are sure to enjoy this collection of breathtaking texts dating from the year 500 through the 1400s.
posted by hortense at 8:35 AM PST - 19 comments

As others see us: A Chinese review of 'Revenge of the Sith'.

For those of you who don't know, George Lucas' latest oeuvre has bombed in mainland China's box-offices - $38.5M there, vs. the $312 it has earned domestically. A cultural difference, an error in Jos. Campbell's theory, or just something else, altogether? In any case, the film and it's apparent failure over there have made for some interesting reviews (last one via).
posted by vhsiv at 8:14 AM PST - 63 comments

Watch Wikipedia be edited in real time.
posted by a thousand writers drunk at the keyboard at 8:01 AM PST - 16 comments

Just a reminder: Living as we do in a highly politicized world, I think its worth reminding ourselves of what a past master at manipulating such a world had to say for himself
posted by donfactor at 4:22 AM PST - 68 comments

Did any one ask the elephants what they think about creationism? I guess this addition will just complete a diorama that already includes Ganesh and the symbol of the Republican party.
posted by pkingdesign at 12:30 AM PST - 44 comments

Fast Time at Blogger High. The pilot will stink, and it will end up on TV
posted by growabrain at 10:11 PM PST - 20 comments

Face Analyzer Just upload a picture of your face and get feedback on what ethnicity you most resemble and a physiognomatic breakdown of your personality.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:36 PM PST - 72 comments

Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Biointeractive - a nifty biology instruction site.
posted by Gyan at 8:55 PM PST - 7 comments

Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704 (Flash) In the pre-dawn hours of February 29, 1704, a force of about 300 French and Native allies launched a daring raid on the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, situated in the Pocumtuck homeland. . .Was this dramatic pre-dawn assault in contested lands an unprovoked, brutal attack on an innocent village of English settlers? Was it a justified military action against a stockaded settlement in a Native homeland? Or was it something else?
posted by mlis at 8:34 PM PST - 7 comments

Indigenous communities taking over oil fields.... Is any one paying attention to what is happening in Bolivia? On the brink of civil war over the second largest reserve of natural gas in South America.
posted by tarantula at 6:30 PM PST - 46 comments

Men, you don't control your own pecker, at least in Virginia. A nice young man in a happy, heterosexual marriage discovers that Virginia state law REQUIRES a 30 day waiting period before he can get a vasectomy. All your gonads belong to us?
posted by twsf at 5:23 PM PST - 81 comments

Young man gets life sentence for helping his girlfriend end pregnancy. The girlfriend was not charged. Under the Texas Fetal Protection Law, a woman cannot be charged for causing the deaths of her own fetuses for any reason. The defense contended that Basoria punched herself while Flores was stepping on her, making it impossible to tell who caused the miscarriage.
posted by Espoo2 at 4:46 PM PST - 83 comments

All should see him before the Cholera arrives ! Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light, Thou seemest most charming to my sight; As I gaze upon thee in the sky so high, A tear of joy does moisten mine eye. William Topaz McGonagall , the worlds greatest poet (again).
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:27 PM PST - 7 comments

MNMLST POETRY is an essay by Bob Grumman about a strand of poetry that he claims is "unacclaimed but flourishing". Here are poems in this vein by Aram Saroyan (2), jwcurry, LeRoy Gorman, bpNichol, Michael Basinski, John M. Bennett, Karl Young, John Martone, Ian Hamilton Finlay and finally some mathemaku by Bob Grumman, the essay's author.
posted by Kattullus at 3:00 PM PST - 12 comments

Death sentence for online gamer SHANGHAI: A Shanghai online gamer who murdered another player because of a dispute over a "cyber-weapon" was given the death sentence with a two-year reprieve yesterday at Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court. Qiu Chengwei's death penalty will be commuted to life in prison if he behaves well in jail, and no other crimes relating to him are uncovered.

Not to condone the murder, but is cyber theft or isn't it? Acording to the DMCA if I download a song or movie from cyberspace I am commiting a crime. Yet if someone steals your item in a cyberworld and sells it for real world cash your left without recourse. I feel China had a chance to establish new law and balked. (more inside)
posted by Trik at 2:34 PM PST - 121 comments

Celebrity Ping Pong
posted by srboisvert at 2:02 PM PST - 17 comments

So that's what "Organ Donor" means on my driver's license - Gay tourists are hereby warned to butch it up at Italian car rental offices. [via mofi]
posted by AlexReynolds at 1:19 PM PST - 26 comments

We play songs about books! Excited about the new Harry Potter book coming out? How about some quirky pop songs about our favorite wizard-in-training? Get some background on the band and then go check out one of their free shows.
posted by handshake at 12:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Ragtime West: Nickelodeons, Calliopes & Player Pianos, including a beauty owned by Peter Jackson: "the first Ragtime Automated Band in New Zealand".
posted by jenleigh at 12:05 PM PST - 3 comments

Inside a tornado. It's a technological first. A well-placed probe fitted with 7 video cameras—6 with a 60-degree field-of-view designed to achieve a full 360-degree field-of-view and one pointing upward—captures footage inside a tornado, providing visual data on ground wind speeds where the storm does the greatest damage. And Tim Samaras with his team of storm chasers are there to make it happen.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:28 AM PST - 25 comments

"Bob Woodward's gonna get all the glory for this, but we could make at least enough money to pay some bills." Or not.
posted by delmoi at 11:22 AM PST - 11 comments

"The black boy was somewhere he shouldn't have been, although they brought him out there."
posted by eriko at 10:41 AM PST - 48 comments

O'Reilly's Cruise Cancelled Due to Lack of Interest
Fox News star Bill O'Reilly's week-long Caribbean cruise with a theme of "The Battle for American Values" has been cancelled because reservations fell "well short" of the anticipated 800 passengers. The cruise would have included a symposion on "How to Combat the ACLU."
It seems that Al Franken was one of the few who'd booked a reservation. That would have been fun to watch.
posted by fenriq at 10:40 AM PST - 38 comments

Thomas White may collect 100,000,000's in loans under the new energy bill. Any bets on whether those loans will get paid back or not?
posted by Mr_Zero at 10:19 AM PST - 4 comments

"It's clear the government hasn't thought through what it's doing." The war? No, he's talking about the DOJ tobacco trial, which is wrapping up with government lawyers suddenly and inexplicably dropping the penalty against Big Tobacco companies from $130bn to just $8bn. A far cry from the $280bn originally sought. More inside.
posted by brownpau at 9:25 AM PST - 19 comments

The web is California, writ large. This is about to change.
posted by Tlogmer at 9:20 AM PST - 52 comments

This is June, the month of grass and leaves. The deciduous trees are investing the evergreens and revealing how dark they are. Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts, as if I might be too late. -- Thoreau
posted by Ogre Lawless at 9:01 AM PST - 2 comments

"Disposable" digital video cameras. Now available at CVS drugstores in the US, from the same company that last year introduced disposable digital cameras. The video is processed onto DVD at the store in an hour. But at $43 ($30 purchase plus $12.99 for processing) for 20 minutes of footage, is it really worth it? Walt Mossberg says, "Meh."
posted by me3dia at 8:57 AM PST - 21 comments

LossofPrivacyFilter: 1) Patriot Act Expansion Bill Approved in Secret , which now provides a new ‘administrative subpoena’ authority (that) would let the FBI write and approve its own search orders for intelligence investigations, without prior judicial approval. ...Flying in the face of the Fourth Amendment, this power would let agents seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks and any other businesses without any specific facts connecting those records to any criminal activity or a foreign agent. ..., and from the Justice Department: 2) Most health care employees can't be prosecuted for stealing personal data, and finally, 3) Citibank admits losing 4 million customer files.
These 3 examples all within the past few days--any others i missed?
posted by amberglow at 8:36 AM PST - 31 comments

Andy Warhol Time Capsule 21 - Warhol got in the habit of keeping a cardboard box by his desk and stuffing it with daily correspondence, gifts, clippings, notes, photos, and ephemera. He would seal and date each box, filling more than 600 over time and leaving art historians and fans a rich legacy. This multimedia exhibit highlights contents from 15 of these boxes. (flash) via La Petite Claudine
posted by madamjujujive at 8:27 AM PST - 12 comments

Got mercury?
posted by mrgrimm at 8:19 AM PST - 24 comments

Woman wins Orange Prize for novel "many people will hate" Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin is one of the few novels I've read in which the protagonist admits that she dislikes her child and is ambivalent (to put it mildly) about motherhood in general. In this case, she has good reason--the boy has a few problems, which culminate in a school gym massacre (preceded by something really grisly). (I'm not giving anything away by saying this, it's not a mystery novel.) Many people do indeed hate it; I personally thought it was fascinating. See also The Independent, The Guardian, ID Theory, Salon, and many more.
posted by scratch at 8:04 AM PST - 58 comments

I have a fish in my pants skirt Who says fish only go in pants?
posted by caddis at 6:45 AM PST - 20 comments

The Political Terror Scale (link opens an Excel sheet). There have been several posts about human rights recently and the Political Terror Scale ties them all together. The PTS is an ongoing project which assigns a number from 1-5 (5 is bad) to a country based on its level of political terror (usually human rights abuses committed by the government) based on the yearly Amnesty and U.S. State Department reports according to these criteria (link opens a Word document). Because the PTS was started in 1980, one of its most useful aspects is that it allows changes in political terror to be tracked over time. For example, a nearly worldwide spike in human rights abuses in the years following the 9/11 attacks can be clearly visualized using the information provided by the PTS.
posted by Crushinator at 6:38 AM PST - 7 comments

A White House aide with no scientific training edited government reports to weaken the language linking greenhouse gases with climate change. Example of editing here. This comes on the heels of news that ExxonMobil was instrumental in the Bush administration's decision to reject the Kyoto Treaty.
posted by trey at 4:15 AM PST - 40 comments

The Maze. From the annals of the Internet: Before there was The Riddle, there was this "virtual space in the shape of a book" based on the quaintly illustrated Maze by Christopher Manson. Find the shortest path in and out of the maze, from Room 1 to Room 45 (the center) and back. At Room 45 is another riddle, whose answer is concealed somewhere in that shortest path, which, if you are clever, you can make in only 16 steps. "Anything in this space might be a clue. Not all clues are necessarily trustworthy."
posted by Lush at 12:10 AM PST - 25 comments

I first saw Chel White's Photocopy Cha Cha (mpg excerpt - can't find whole thing online) in 1996 and I thought it was fantastic. In 2002 I saw Virgil Widrich's Copy Shop, which impressed me even more. Yesterday, thanks to Kottke, I saw Wildrich's phenomenal Fast Film. Wow. From Channel 4's page on the film: "Director Virgil Widrich captured stills from ... 300 movies, and made over 65,000 photocopies of these, then folded them into a variety of shapes and animated them." {the two VW films are unfortunately in Real format but definitely worth putting up with the format for}
posted by dobbs at 11:34 PM PST - 7 comments

Urban Golf. I normally get bored quickly with golf games, but the urban twist makes this shockwave game pretty entertaining. (Just ignore the Jaguar logo and the occasional product placement.)
posted by brain_drain at 10:54 PM PST - 15 comments

The Girl Who Tried to Save the World. A good article from Rolling Stone on the life and final days of CIVIC Worldwide founder Marla Ruzicka (previously discussed here.)
posted by homunculus at 9:03 PM PST - 6 comments

The John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection from the University of Arkansas. "John Quincy Wolf began collecting Ozark ballads while an undergraduate at Arkansas (now Lyon) college. His first serious professional interest in Ozark folksongs dates from his attendance at the Old Settler's folk music festival at Blanchard Springs in 1941. He and his wife Bess began to seek out folksingers in the White River and surrounding areas, often placing advertisements in local newspapers for people who knew 'old songs'. Wolf recorded hundreds of Ozark folksingers between 1952 and 1963, including Almeda Riddle, Neal Morris, Oscar and Ollie Gilbert, and Jimmy Driftwood. [...] The Wolf Folksong Collection at Lyon College contains hundreds of recordings." Site contains the field recordings of Ozark Folksongs, as well as sections for Memphis Blues, Sacred Harp Singing, and more. The folk song recordings are indexed by song title and singer. Music files play in Windows Media or Real.
posted by jokeefe at 8:42 PM PST - 10 comments

International Onomatopoeic Sounds
[Note: You must have sound for this to be cool]
posted by anastasiav at 8:24 PM PST - 12 comments

Los Alamos whistleblower "Tommy Hook is still hospitalized today after being brutally assaulted over the weekend," the Project on Government Oversight is saying. "A group of three to four assailants threatened Hook to keep silent, in apparent reference to his upcoming Congressional testimony on fraud at Los Alamos."
posted by Coherence Panda at 8:20 PM PST - 31 comments

And just when you thought it was safe to go back near Canada's House of Commons... When last we checked, a rookie Conservative MP (a former contender for her party's leadership and, some gossipped, the attentions of a certain ex-President) crossed the floor on the eve of a vote on the survival of the Liberal government...
posted by docgonzo at 7:28 PM PST - 27 comments

Not quite ready to settle down? I know how you feel. But then that's only temporary, right? StatsCan releases the results of a study showing that Canadians who delay marriage are less likely to marry at all. Attitude appears to be key, with Francophones being the most likely to say "Ça ne fait rien".
posted by dreamsign at 6:52 PM PST - 19 comments

Ipod class action settlement $25 cash, or $50 (itunes forbidden) macdollars, also the official Apple settlement page.
posted by R. Mutt at 6:36 PM PST - 49 comments

Ansel Adams's Landscapes
posted by Gyan at 6:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Beyond the science fair. Behind a veneer of shoddy web-design lies a brilliant idea: getting grade- and high-school students to do actual scientific work. For example, "10 students from New York, Texas and Virginia joined three World War II veterans and a retired railroader from Virginia" and discovered a way to make walls self-sterilize. The guy behind it is Carl Vermeulen.
posted by greatgefilte at 3:37 PM PST - 6 comments

And here's to you, Mrs Robinson! RIP
posted by Duug at 3:30 PM PST - 68 comments

On the way to work today, I heard an advertisement for "the nation's first ever sex-offender-free subdivision" (link to mov). Milwaukee Ridge, the brainchild of I&S Investments, will be located on the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, and offer "the best features of a family-friendly lifestyle," including "background checks on adults buying homes and juveniles expected to live in the homes." I can't help but think of Stephenson's burbclaves. When, if ever, does the definition of a private community become a public concern?
posted by rush at 2:44 PM PST - 58 comments

Tall, Dork, and Handsome The online dating website where guys who love Star Trek can meet women who will reformat their hard drives. Do these profiles speak your language? This guy "prefers to make love under black lights." This nerdette has "realized that the book 'the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' has all of the qualities I'm really looking for [in a guy]." Only thing verboten on the site: No pictures. via
posted by onlyconnect at 2:26 PM PST - 40 comments

"Jack FM" is taking over at radio stations across the country (and Canadia, too). They say they're just "playing what they want," but isn't it just another case of corporate appropriation of the ideas of independence and rebellion?
posted by dersins at 2:24 PM PST - 46 comments

The heat is on. Great web site for climate change junkies, weather pessimists, and severe weather trackers.
posted by tarantula at 1:37 PM PST - 4 comments

Homegrown terrorists or animal rights activists? Our anti-terrorism laws are getting a bit out of hand.
posted by leftcoastbob at 12:00 PM PST - 35 comments

How "USA" became a dirty word "Small c" conservative Ferdinand Mount, for the UK Telegraph, describes the rise of anti-american sentiment among British soccer fans: "And what 30,000 Arsenal supporters were chanting for two hours....was 'USA! USA!' This was apparently the most offensive chant they could think of....How deeply peculiar it is that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave should now be the rudest word in the vast lexicon of football insults."
posted by troutfishing at 11:46 AM PST - 57 comments

Newt Gingrich's Amazon book reviews. "Speaker Gingrich is an avid reader. He does not review all of the books he reads. You will not find any bad reviews here, just the books he thinks you might enjoy."
posted by Prospero at 10:55 AM PST - 13 comments

Wing Girls: The Girlfriend Getters
posted by haasim at 10:05 AM PST - 49 comments

Donald Rumsfeld recently aimed critisicm at China's military spending. “Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?” A question he may well ask of himself. According to a report recently released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (in our fair city) Global Military Spending topped $1Trillion in 2004. The United States accounted for 47 percent of all military expenditures, while Britain and France each made up 5 percent of the total. In all, 15 countries accounted for 82 percent of the world's total military spending. The BBC reported last month that Chinese military spending increased by 12% in 2004 to $25Bn - or one twentieth of what the US spends.
posted by three blind mice at 10:00 AM PST - 44 comments

The 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report by the US State Department has been released. It reviews 150 countries.The introduction provides a broad overview of the report with anecdotal stories, legislation imperatives, methodology, definitions, specific country reviews and suggested remedies. It is a commendable document and well worth perusing. UN page. via
posted by peacay at 9:45 AM PST - 2 comments

How Marvel convinced us to cut up our comics “The program destroyed the value of countless Marvel comics of this era, and missing value stamps are the bane of serious Bronze Age collectors.”
¶ I was ten years old and I collected all 100 Series A Marvel Value Stamps, so I totally grooved on this remarkably comprehensive site. Ironically, the coolest artifacts are the empty collector’s books, which show off the artwork best, in glorius black & white & red, without the crappy colour printing of the era.
posted by KS at 5:33 AM PST - 5 comments

The "ransom" model. "It works like this: They described the basic gist of the game on their web site, and set a ransom of $600 for it. If they received $600 in donations by September 2005, they would finish creating the game -- and then release it on their site, for anyone to download for free. (If they didn't get the full $600 in time, they would donate whatever money they'd received to a homeless shelter.)" And it worked! Here's some additional links described in the comments: The Street Performer Protocol and Fundable.org.
posted by gsb at 4:27 AM PST - 15 comments

You've probably heard of Frankie Wilde, the DJ from Ibiza. He shot to fame at a young age, and lived a life of cocaine, models, cocaine, all night raves, more cocaine and music so loud you could feel it in your bones. And then some more cocaine. Admittedly, he had a face only a mother could love, but the music he made is legendary. He hung out with the likes of Pete Tong and was a frequent guest on his BBC Radio One show. But all too fast, the lifestyle caught up to him. He completely lost his hearing, the drugs took control of his life, and he was quickly dropped by his label, Motor City Records. But more than a year later, during one single legendary night in Ibiza, Frankie Wilde, "The Deaf DJ," proved that he could still amaze a crowd, even if he couldn't hear their reaction. And then, the DJ who had gone from the high point of his career to the low point of his career to the new high point of his career again, simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Perhaps you've bought some of his CDs, or read some of the books written about his life, or maybe you've just read his Wikipedia entry and nothing else. But, if you know nothing else about him at all, at the very least, see the movie about his life. It will tell you everything you need to know.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:05 AM PST - 35 comments

Sex + Death + Freedom = Pervert! A new (s)exploitation film with a touch of Russ Meyer. (Obvioysly NSFW.)
posted by hoskala at 2:01 AM PST - 8 comments

Photographs by Parkeharrison 'demonstrates an ability to distill and redress complex environmental problems and failed technological systems with resourcefulness and dark humor.'
posted by dhruva at 12:47 AM PST - 5 comments

At a time when several Arab regimes are at least feinting toward political reform, Jordan is goose-stepping backward. Freedom of assembly has been restricted, and the threshold for dissent has been ratcheted down as political prisoners accumulate and oppositionists are rattled out of bed for interrogation. Journalists have been intimidated or bribed into spying on colleagues and sources. Street demonstrations have been all but eliminated by laws that require protesters to carry permits that are prohibitively difficult to obtain... Corruption, defiantly uninhibited compared with the low-key looting that percolated under the late King Hussein, has soared. And although diplomats tend to absolve Abdullah of wrongdoing--he is deceived, they imply, by courtiers scheming behind his back--a growing number of Jordanians believe that the 43-year-old monarch is not only aware of the plundering but may be very much a part of it.

Letter From Jordan
posted by y2karl at 11:11 PM PST - 5 comments

"With these shoulder pads I have the strength to destroy villages, homes, and crops." - An .mov about gem sweaters. They're coming back you know. From Leslie Hall, who's been discussed before. {via}
posted by dobbs at 10:58 PM PST - 20 comments

Play with me [interactive QuickTime]. From Vanessa Sowerwine who recently got a Special Mention at Cannes for Clara.
posted by tellurian at 9:46 PM PST - 14 comments

Aliens and Children. "This website features a series of drawings made by children who were abducted by aliens for the alien purpose of creating a new race of alien/human hybrids." More goodness from our old friend, Michael Menken.
posted by cedar at 9:10 PM PST - 21 comments

NEWSWEEK's Baghdad bureau chief, departing after two years of war and American occupation, has a few final thoughts. A short, yet refreshingly honest, look at Iraq from a respected journalist on the way home.

What went wrong? A lot, but the biggest turning point was the Abu Ghraib scandal. Since April 2004 the liberation of Iraq has become a desperate exercise in damage control. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib alienated a broad swath of the Iraqi public. On top of that, it didn't work. . . . The four-square-mile Green Zone, the one place in Baghdad where foreigners are reasonably safe, could be a showcase of American values and abilities. Instead the American enclave is a trash-strewn wasteland of Mad Max-style fortifications. The traffic lights don't work because no one has bothered to fix them. The garbage rarely gets collected. Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone's checkpoints. They've repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers—to Americans and Iraqis alike.
posted by caddis at 8:50 PM PST - 51 comments

Shouldn't you cook salmon in your dishwasher? Poaching fish in the dishwasher is a virtually foolproof way to shock your friends, prepare a succulent meal, and do the dishes—all at the same time. Not all of the The Surreal Gourmet's offerings are quite so weird, but they might, as he claims, make you into a culinary hero.
posted by QuietDesperation at 7:55 PM PST - 20 comments

Feral Robotic Dogs OUT THERE, in happy family homes, in the offices of corporate executives, in toy stores through out the globe, is an army of robotic dogs. These semi-autonomous robotic creatures, though currently programmed to perform inane or entertaining tasks: begging for plastic bones; barking to the tune of national anthems; walking in circles; are actually fully motile and AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.
posted by warbaby at 7:03 PM PST - 4 comments

The American Taliban. Christian fundamentalists in their own words.
posted by zardoz at 7:01 PM PST - 96 comments

Years ago, Jane and Michael Stern authored Amazing America, a fabulous book about roadside America, which was one of my favorite references for something novel to see while traveling in the US. The New Jersey section is far too brief. Thank you Weird NJ for filling in the gap.
posted by plinth at 5:58 PM PST - 9 comments

Ikaruga putting you to sleep? Battletoads as challenging as Animal Crossing? If so, consider saving up for an XBox and/or Ninja Gaiden Black, expansion-of-sorts to the infamous Ninja Gaiden (the game so hard it kills your friends). Due out in September, the game's creator claims in an interview that roughly 1% of American players will complete the game's new "Master Ninja" difficulty. You can read the rest of the interview here or grab the outlandishly large trailer. Is there a legitimate demand for games this challenging, or is this just a case of misguided "difficult==better" thinking?
posted by Monster_Zero at 5:19 PM PST - 31 comments

Rapid Afterimage Optical Illusion
posted by srboisvert at 1:50 PM PST - 38 comments

Rap is becoming the pulse of the Iraq War. We've talked about the Mess O' Potamia already today, but the idea of troops making uncensored music about their day to day in an overseas warzone I think creates a unique situation. For the first time, music will be made there and come back to the people back home, rather than the other way around. The downside is that if you just plain don't like rap music, you're not going to be exposed to it. Sadly, those may be the people who need to hear it most. (via Newsweek).
posted by indiebass at 10:24 AM PST - 37 comments

The New York City Draft Riots: "As a hot and muggy Monday morning dawned on July 13, 1863, a large crowd of New York working people moved uptown, gathering workers from workshops and factories along the way... They banded together to express their collective outrage at the new draft law. Once they reached the Provost Marshall's office on 46th Street and Third Avenue, the scene of Saturday's first draft lottery, the crowd attacked the building, setting it on fire."
Maps, commentary, history. The main site is pretty cool too: Virtual New York City. Previously in the blue: a primary account from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle archives.
posted by OmieWise at 10:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Move over, Wil Wheaton and Belle de Jour. Book deals are a thing of the past, and publish-on-demand is where it's at. Some bloggers like Tony Pierce and Anti have published their best blog excerpts ("blooks"), while others like Jamie Boud are more creative, using it publish new content (I guess this is when the micropatronage pays off). But Cafepress isn't the only option, and there are definitely many helpful sites out there. Previously discussed here.
posted by Menomena at 9:56 AM PST - 10 comments

Supreme Court outlaws medical marijuana.
posted by Mr_Zero at 9:48 AM PST - 92 comments

That "liberal bastion" PBS and that "wacky" Christian Right AGREEING on something? Does the "Sith Lord of unbridaled capitalism" really deserve to be hated? Does it bear watching? A new movie will take a look: (Registration -free link). Why are growing numbers "ready to join the ranks of all right-thinking people the world over in declaring Wal-Mart an outpost of hell on earth"??? The full 60 minute Frontline program video is available online.
posted by spock at 9:31 AM PST - 28 comments

Nebraska's small towns. Some of the smaller ones actually have a lot going on. Some of the (slightly) larger ones, maybe not so much. But no matter how small they are, they do all have bars. Even the two smallest.
posted by dersins at 8:55 AM PST - 26 comments

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans says soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are beginning to request help from service providers. Stars & Stripes: "Advocates for the homeless already are seeing veterans from the war on terror living on the street, and say the government must do more to ease their transition from military to civilian life. Boone said the reasons behind the veterans' housing problems are varied: Some have emotional and mental issues from their combat experience, some have trouble finding work after leaving the military, some have health care bills which result in financial distress." Philly.com has more (Reg Req, or view here) on a recently homeless vet from Philadelphia.
posted by jenleigh at 7:24 AM PST - 110 comments

"He was delirious; he was talking to the ball return" Others have tried, but failed. This guy did it for charity. Sounds grueling - very un-Dude.
posted by tizzie at 5:38 AM PST - 12 comments

Oxymoronic much?
posted by mnemosyne at 4:32 AM PST - 38 comments

'Roid rage in blue: Cops on steroids deal with the dregs of humanity:

[Police officer] Tweedy kicked and stomped on Koonce's head repeatedly, walking away and then returning to continue the blows as Koonce lay motionless, gurgling his own blood. Koonce, now 28, suffered life-threatening injuries, including skull fractures and brain contusions. He spent two months in a coma.... [Officer Tweedy] He was described as depressed and having trouble sleeping and had been accused twice earlier of overly aggressive police tactics. [emphasis added]

It just goes to show that a certain segment of society thinks they can defy any and all authority, and they seek to blame those people who (for the most part) try to serve and PROTECT.
posted by orthogonality at 4:14 AM PST - 38 comments

Greenzap opened for business last week, with every intent of taking on PayPal for the title of online payment portal du jour. But even before the service officially launched, there was already a growing number of people hotly debating the validity of the enterprise. Will this be the next big thing, or just another lollipop party waiting for the suckers to show up?
posted by deusdiabolus at 2:28 AM PST - 16 comments

Scotlands diet was healthier in 1405 (within a lifetime of the Black Death) than today, according to archaeologists. Might we see the "Medieval diet" replace the "Mediterranean diet"? Some traditional food practitioners think so.
posted by stbalbach at 10:28 PM PST - 40 comments

Surfrider is a nonprofit environmental organization that produces a annual "State of the Beach" (explanation here) report with information about US beach access (public access and private ownership issues), water quality, beach erosion, surfing, links and more. Reports are available for Hawaii, West Coast, Gulf States, Southeast, Mid Atlantic, Puerto Rico, Northeast and Great Lakes. In-depth Water Quality reports for beaches in CA, HI, TX, AL, and parts of FL, as well as results of beach water testing conducted by (or sanctioned by) Surfrider Chapters are also available. There are also Surfrider chapters in: Australia, Brazil, Canada (no website), Europe and Japan. EPA: Beaches is also an excellent resource for information about the condition of US beaches. [via LII New This Week]
posted by mlis at 8:05 PM PST - 7 comments

Well, it's an old rumor, but many sources (including the NYT, WSJ, Wired, and many rumor sites) are reporting that Steve Jobs will be announcing a switch to Intel at the WWDC tomorrow. The WSJ claims Apple will be switching to x86 processors, while others speculate Intel will simply be manufacturing PPC chips, or only processors for a tablet PC. If the rumors are true, and it seems like they are, what of the Intel DRM recently announced? Are we destined to have DRM hardwired into our computers no matter where we turn? Curiously, the major rumor site has remained mum on the matter. Your best bet to follow the drama will probably be MacRumors, who will be providing live updates from Steve-o's keynote tomorrow.
posted by keswick at 8:01 PM PST - 111 comments

Monkey Business Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys' true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)
posted by raaka at 5:07 PM PST - 32 comments

For superstitious Zanzibaris, a visit from the sodomizing gremlin is no joke.
posted by Simon! at 4:43 PM PST - 15 comments

rand()% is an automated net radio station streaming real-time generative music. All audio is generated by algorithmic software applications and programs written by sound artists and programmers.
posted by signal at 4:24 PM PST - 16 comments

Chines government loves Flickr interface! So, Chinese government copies Flickr interface? So similar that Flickr users have no problem joining and creating accounts. Quickly, they have the most popular photo: The kitchen sink. As one Chinese user writes "evrything is free in china , you know ,4 example the software that microsoft made"
posted by vacapinta at 1:25 PM PST - 27 comments

"A number of people I talked to there felt like the Red Rocks show was a religious experience. Nobody was prepared for what the band did. It stunned everybody." 22 years ago today, U2 filmed their "Under a Blood Red Sky" concert at Red Rocks amphitheatre outside Denver, Colorado.
posted by scody at 1:17 PM PST - 46 comments

The Beast Blender. The Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists invites you to create a being that has never existed.
posted by greasy_skillet at 12:34 PM PST - 7 comments

The International Criminal Court will soon formally investigate war crimes in Darfur, Sudan. In two years the ethnic Arab militia janjaweed—many who received military training from Gaddafi hoping to set up an "Islamic Legion" of mercenaries—have slaughtered up to 180,000 non-Arabs and raped untold thousands. Nicholas Kristof's piece in the NYT reports on the rape crisis, and features a Flash piece with interviews. Zogby/ICG studies show 80% of Americans support a tougher international response to the situation in Darfur, yet it also revealed a strange datapoint: "African-Americans are among the U.S. sub-groups least aware of the situation in Darfur and least likely to feel that the international community has a responsibility to intervene." A few weeks ago, writer Jeremy Levitt (Chicago Sun-Times) addressed this.
posted by dhoyt at 11:12 AM PST - 11 comments

Switzerland Votes for Closer EU Integration What with all the play that the narrow French rejection of the proposed EU Constitution enjoyed, I doubt that Switzerland's successful referendum accepting endorsement of closer EU integration (specifically, enacting the Dublin Convention on shared security and policing) and gay marriage recognition will get much coverage. It just doesn't easily fit into the narrative of an unravelling Europe, one which Swiss voters seem to have rejected despite strong internal debate.
posted by meehawl at 10:46 AM PST - 13 comments

Bird Watchers Guide on Flickr. "Linked list of species submitted; find all photos of a species here".
posted by nthdegx at 10:14 AM PST - 11 comments

A recent study of 60 people with anorexia suggests that a biological mechanism may be a causative factor. It was found that there was a reduction in blood flow to a specific area in one of the temporal lobes in those with the eating disorder. The author of the study believes that sociocultural factors have been over emphasized. Not all agree. By way of contrast, another research group has just published findings which purport to show that "even small amounts of exposure to thin bodies can have a short-term negative effect on body image." And adult anorexia rates are said to be rising.
There's associated debate too, regarding the contributing role played by therapy that seeks to personify eating disorders. Flourishing underground online communities derive some thinspiration by referring to their 'lifestyle choices' as 'Ana' (for anorexia) and 'Mia' (for bulimia). Argentina is responding to the body image controversy by enacting a size law. previous mefi threads [via + via ]
posted by peacay at 9:52 AM PST - 44 comments

Art of Science Competition 2005 - A gallery of images celebrating the aesthetics of research at Princeton University. (via Amygdala)
posted by madamjujujive at 6:40 AM PST - 11 comments

Maxthon website Internet Explorer has not been updated for some time and competing browsers have improved on its ageing feature-set. But there's no need to ditch IE. Maxthon provides tabbed functionality and a lots more besides to give you a taste of what is likely to be included in IE7.
posted by bobbyelliott at 4:43 AM PST - 54 comments

Over the past month, people in Qinghai province, China have been reporting that migratory birds in the mostly-rural region were dropping dead of an unknown disease, later diagnosed as a few hundred cases of "an isolated case" [sic] of influenza strain H5N1, a.k.a. bird flu. Three weeks later, the Chinese government admitted that actually about a thousand birds had died of bird flu in the province. Now there are reports saying that at least 8,000 animals--not just birds--have died from the flu, including not only breeds of fowl not previously known to be affected by the virus, but non-avian species, too.

Every national park and bird sanctuary in China has been closed for weeks, since the first reports surfaced of an outbreak. But today, disturbing photos started appearing on Chinese language news websites, supposedly taken at the closed Qinghai Lake Nature Reserve. They appear to show thousands of dead birds (warning, disturbing images - Engrish version via Babelfish here) on the island in the middle of Qinghai Lake, China's largest saltwater lake and a rest-stop for migratory birds from all across southeast Asia. Nervous pandemic-watchers are debating whether the photos are real or doctored, but compared to previous photos of the once-lively birding spot, something definitely seems to be wrong.
[ much more inside >> ]
posted by Asparagirl at 2:19 AM PST - 41 comments

Sick of all those fad diets? The No S Diet consists of fourteen words: No snacks, no sweets, no seconds except (sometimes) on days that start with 's'. It's sound advice and fairly easy to stick to. And what would a diet be without some exercise?
posted by bbrown at 12:02 AM PST - 37 comments

Free at last, free at last, thank Mars almighty Opportunity is free at last. After a several week long struggle, the Mars Opportunity Rover is free from the sand trap many across the world had predicted would bring it to an end.
posted by mk1gti at 11:11 PM PST - 22 comments

"There is a desire among women to look authentic in their fake hair color." The demand for brown hair is rising. Is it because the most beautiful women in the world are brunettes? Whatever the reason, this may be just in time to save blondes from extinction. Of course, when the masses flock, the glitterati flee. If you want to be on the cutting edge, orange is the color. So is Ann Althouse positioned to displace Michelle Malkin as a Higher Being?
posted by Gordon Smith at 9:47 PM PST - 22 comments

Former Nixon speechwriter (and Ferris Bueller's economics teacher) Ben Stein loses his mind over Mark Felt: "There is a lot of debate about whether or not Mark Felt was a hero. Obviously, I don't think so. I think the hero was Richard Nixon, fighting for peace even as he was being horribly mistreated and crucified just for his fight for peace." And that's not nearly the worst of it.
posted by Ty Webb at 8:37 PM PST - 106 comments

PBwiki is a super simple, extremely clean route to having, what you always wanted (admit it), your very own wiki. Just enter your username and email address, and wait for the password to be sent to you, and you're off and running. No need for your own web space, no messing around with CGI, PHP or Python, and if you're worried that the site will vanish and take your stuff with it, you can even download your entire wiki in a ZIP file. It's not the first free wiki farm out there, but it's just about as simple and clean as one can get.

But what do you do with it once you have one? I've been using a personal wiki for keeping track of ideas, places and characters for a (rather sprawling) novel project; the simplified page markup of a wiki combined with easy hyperlinking make them great for brainstorming. You could also start up a game of Lexicon, which is well-suited for play on a wiki, and as previously seen in these parts. Or, you know, you could just start your own Everything. (Originally found on bOINGbOING.)
posted by JHarris at 7:09 PM PST - 17 comments

"Our demands most moderate are , we only want the earth". Today is the birthday of James Connolly.
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:25 PM PST - 39 comments

Edinburgh's Scotsman newspaper has launched a digital archive covering all editions from 1817-1950. There are several stories with an American slant which may be something that interests you. There is coverage on such things as the hanging of the notorious bodysnatchers Burke and Hare. Unfortunately, after viewing the free archives it is a paysite, but I still think it's worth a look as there is easily a couple of hours of interesting reading on the free articles that are included. The set-up and look of this site is brilliant as well.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 1:20 PM PST - 9 comments

The Guinness Diet Challenge.
posted by srboisvert at 1:15 PM PST - 18 comments

Like mutation, but rinses out in four generations! A new study finds that exposure to high levels of environmental toxins produces epigenetic changes in rats' sperm. "Epigenetics does not involve DNA sequence changes but chemical modification of the DNA." Ultimately, this may help to explain why certain human diseases, such as breast and prostate cancer, are becoming more common. The increase in the incidence of these diseases cannot be accounted for by a normal rate of genetic mutation, but epigenetic damage could be the culprit.
posted by bricoleur at 11:58 AM PST - 6 comments

The Hidden History of the United Nations: "The history told about the defeat of Nazism and the founding of the United Nations in the 1940s has become distorted. A false view of the past is being used today to shape how we think about our future. The military power of the victorious wartime allies is offered as a model for running the world, while the UN’s supposed utopianism is seen as ineffective and irrelevant. This is a travesty of the facts."
posted by jenleigh at 11:16 AM PST - 15 comments

Julians Beever draws on sidewalks with chalk. His drawings range from insects to commercial objects to self portraits. I don't know if he designs them on a his laptop, but as with LCD screens, viewing angle is critically important.
posted by alms at 10:16 AM PST - 28 comments

Separated at Birth? Bret Schundler and Howard Dean
posted by warbaby at 9:51 AM PST - 14 comments

Atlas reveals global devastation....... a new atlas just released by the UN showing before and after satellite imagery of the last 30 years (more or less) of human impact. NEATO!
posted by tarantula at 9:37 AM PST - 22 comments

The making of a D-Day tradition... I immediately get goosebumps when I hear the score of Band of Brothers...I'm not sure why, maybe it was my local connections (Dick Winters, Bill Guanere, Albert Blithe, Babe Heffron, Thomas Meehan, Ralph Spina, Harry Welsh, and Robert Strayer are all from Philadelphia), the surrounding suburbs, or Pennsylvania), or maybe it was because the original airings took place in the shadow of 9/11 (the premiere was September 9th, 2001, with the D-Day drop occuring in the second episode, Day of Days, on 9/16/2001), but this series will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart. Everything is done so beautifully, from the special effects, to the sound, the music, to the dutiful translation from Stephen Ambrose book to the screen. It's certainly worthy of the 9.5 out of 10 that IMDB readers had given it. Every year now since, either HBO (On Demand - you have to subscribe to HBO plus have digital cable) or the History Channel has played Tom Hanks' and Steven Spielberg's masterful WW2 epic. You can think of it as Saving Private Ryan, but 3 times as long. Even if war movies are not your thing, I can almost guarantee that they will see the human side of the soldier and becomely deeply invested in the characters. Follow the men of Easy Company from training and the running of Currahee, to the parachute jump on D-Day, through the liberation of Europe, the horror of a German concentration camp, and eventually to the end of the war, to Hitler's mountaintop retreat. I'm not the only one - check out the numerous fan sites to BoB (forum shorthand for Band of Brothers) here, here, and here, as well as entries on TVTome, Wikipedia, and Television without Pity. If you want to try before you commit to watching the whole thing, I'd recommend the episodes Day of Days, Crossroads, and the Breaking Point.
posted by rzklkng at 8:52 AM PST - 24 comments

Other Africas. Critical observers have long noted that museum collections from Africa are composed largely of the spoils of colonial pillage. Thus the Africa we normally encounter in museums—the Africa of masks and ritual objects displayed on walls and in glass cases—is a fetishized Africa of colonial nostalgia. The objective of this exhibit is to offer images of Other Africas, perspectives that lead us away from the desolate and romanticized Africa of the Western imagination toward those places where African modernities are emerging.
posted by tpoh.org at 7:20 AM PST - 27 comments

How the Right Rationalizes Racial Inequality in America (Part One - The Labor Market) & (Part Two - Criminal Justice) by Tim Wise
posted by y2karl at 7:10 AM PST - 32 comments

african dress traditions as shown in a collection of old photographs ... (some photos show bare breasted women)
posted by pyramid termite at 5:34 AM PST - 9 comments

Great Cthulhu emerges from his slumber. Disaffected, reactionary, pro-sex tourism and anti-Islam, Europe's most controversial living writer Michel Houllebecq lovingly profiles H.P. Lovecraft. [via rw]
posted by Bletch at 5:07 AM PST - 16 comments

“Could you cut four inches off to make it work?” .... how to talk to an Artist.
posted by R. Mutt at 4:47 AM PST - 45 comments

Paperback books used to be a lot more entertaining(NSFW links). Vying for a market both literary and prurient (embedded tunes, NSFW), publishers found that judging the book by the cover was in many cases the best way to move their product off the shelf. James Bond and Mickey Spillane benefited. So did detectives, hillbillies, romantic fools, druggies, lesbians (NSFW) and Billy Graham. The genre has changed over the years, in no small thanks to our good friend Fabio.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 11:13 PM PST - 9 comments

He Shoots He Scores! It won't be considered a classic, but this little game is the perfect one to be playing while you're on that conference call. Happy weekend!
posted by TheFarSeid at 10:57 PM PST - 16 comments

Gestapo traffic stop. In the world's most powerful country, even the faintest shadow is a dangerous precipice. Enter South Florida's finest.
posted by a thousand writers drunk at the keyboard at 10:07 PM PST - 357 comments

Disney goatse? I dare you to see this if you know what goatse is and not have the image of Mickey's colon telling time...[Completely SFW] via boingboing
posted by birdsquared at 10:04 PM PST - 32 comments

Urban exploration in the Russian style.
posted by arse_hat at 9:33 PM PST - 14 comments

50 years with Lew Archer A detailed tribute to classic hard-boiled mystery writer Ross Macdonald, including a fascinating interview with Macdonald's biographer. Considered one of "the big three of the American hard-boiled detective novel" (with Hammet and Chandler), Macdonald has unfortunately "slipped to the back shelves." He had a lifelong lover's quarrel with Hollywood and - oh yeah - probably saved Warren Zevon's life back in 1979.
posted by mediareport at 9:05 PM PST - 9 comments

Why We Should Build Apartments at Ground Zero by Paul Goldberger:
In an ideal plan, most of Ground Zero would be devoted to housing, hotels, and retail space. Lower Manhattan currently has a range of housing options: the converted lofts of Tribeca, the converted office buildings of Wall Street, and the retro-style apartment complexes at Battery Park City. The one thing missing is experimental architecture. Ground Zero would be the perfect place for an inventive alternative to the prim, packaged urbanism of Battery Park City. [...] With several blocks to build on, Ground Zero provides an opportunity to think not in terms of single buildings that are stand-alone works of sculpture but of ensembles that fit together to make coherent streetscapes and complete neighborhoods – something modern architecture has rarely succeeded in doing, in New York or anywhere else.

Martin Filler in the NY Review of Books on books about the proposals for Ground Zero, including Goldberger's 2004 addition, Up from Zero:
Goldberger's establishment-friendly attitude toward architecture has always lacked a discernible moral center. Although here he displays less of the maddening equivocation that has been his most defining characteristic as a critic, the targets he picks are most often easy ones, and unlikely to bar him from the corridors of power.
posted by gramschmidt at 8:38 PM PST - 11 comments

Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby So you’ve got to know that synergy doesn’t actually mean synergy in this book. I can’t do normal synergy. No, in this book, synergy means cartoon foxes. What I’m saying is: this book will be starting off with an exorbitant amount of cartoon foxes. And I will be counting on you to turn them into synergy. Possibly the funniest computer programming book ever written.
posted by carmen at 7:17 PM PST - 16 comments

The 100 Greatest Americans ? This Sunday night at 8:00, the Discovery Channel will begin a seven hour series that starts with the top 100 Americans nominated by an on-line poll and culminates in real-time election- style voting, as America selects one person to be named the "Greatest American." Dr. Phil vs. Oprah, Barbara Bush vs. Laura Bush, and Jacko vs. Madonna. Can you feel the excitement?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:53 PM PST - 44 comments

The Pimping of the President --Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist Billing Clients for Face Time with G.W. Bush: ...He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. ... Jack Abramoff, in the news due to his shady dealings with DeLay, and Grover Norquist, and the White House. Norquist has not responded to inquiries about using the White House as a fundraiser.
posted by amberglow at 6:18 PM PST - 11 comments

Discover meesimo! Fun comics, illustrations, sketches, storyboards and more. Awesome artist originally from the St. Louis, Missouri area and now living and working in Miami, Florida. In St. Louis, his works adorn the walls of Bailey's Chocolate Bar. In Florida, go to the Dorsch Gallery.
posted by horseblind at 1:49 PM PST - 3 comments

On Orogenesis by Joan Fontcuberta Using computer programmes that generate virtual landscapes and using as a scource landscapes painted by Dali.
posted by adamvasco at 1:10 PM PST - 8 comments

Judge orders Abu Ghraib videos, pictures released. ... and all hell's gonna break loose.

To quote Sy Hersh:
"The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:07 PM PST - 202 comments

The Climate of Man. The New Yorker has made Elizabeth Kolbert's three-part series on climate change (previously mentioned here) available online. Part I: How the earth is changing, Part II: The curse of Akkad, and Part III: What can be done? Say goodbye to the Holocene, and hello to the Anthropocene. [Via WorldChanging.]
posted by homunculus at 1:07 PM PST - 7 comments

"The latest 'must-have' in the world of plastic surgery is the 'designer vagina'. As if we didn't have enough to worry about (bikini-line waxes, highlights, Botox injections), it seems we're now meant to be worrying about our vaginas not being pretty enough. Labia-envy is apparently rife, if you believe the ads in many women’s magazines. And like those who head for the hairdresser clutching pictures of Jennifer Aniston, many women are now taking copies of Playboy to their plastic surgeons, saying: 'I want one like that'." Price list here. Sort of previously discussed here. [First link SFW; others questionable.]
posted by mudpuppie at 12:56 PM PST - 99 comments

Everybody's workin' for the weekend. A little non-Flash Friday fun. (Link goes to a page with an embedded QuickTime movie.)
posted by Reggie452 at 12:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Action Item Man Commissioner: We need you to put a stop to Dr. Diabolical's nefarious plan! Action Item Man: To fully own this challenge, I'll need to be goal-oriented and results driven!
posted by carter at 12:21 PM PST - 12 comments

Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant - Richard Dawkins talks about how the Fundamentalists distort science.
posted by bshort at 12:09 PM PST - 58 comments

One fifth of all bird species are in danger of extinction. And right when we're finally understanding where they came from, too.
posted by jefgodesky at 12:08 PM PST - 3 comments

The Golden Era Missile Command Challenge! The Epic Battle of Billy Mitchell vs. Mr. Awesome (Roy Shildt), in which, Pac-Man Champion and renowned creator of Rickey's Chicken Wing Hot Sauce, Billy Mitchell, has his status as "Player of the Century" challenged by Missile Command record holder and arch-nemesis, Roy Shildt. Funspot Classic Games Message Board For World Record Holders CLOSED Because of too much airing out of dirty laundry. Below: Conversations With [Roy Shildt,] Guinness Book Missile Command Champion, who is always in hot water with Twin Galaxies due to his accusations and fight to stay on the scoreboard. He has apologized, even though Mitchell has moved on, insisting that "his passion for winning has abated somewhat, or at least shifted." ... "Now," he says, "I bring my passion to the sauce." Billy Mitchell never gives up." (Warning: Crazy site design and information overload! Be sure to scrooooooll down)
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 11:55 AM PST - 11 comments

D O O O O O O O O O O D L E S
posted by grumblebee at 11:51 AM PST - 23 comments

The New Yorker's ongoing Caption Contest is seven weeks old. Think the the cartoons are dumb? Well here's your chance to show your skills.
posted by brheavy at 11:34 AM PST - 26 comments

"The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated."(Wilde)
A dandy eschews fashion but embraces style.(.pdf)
He is an aficionado of personal elegance and refinement. From the archetype in George 'Beau' Brummell there is a lineage tracking through to Tom Wolfe in which the personal artistry of the dandy knows no bounds save for those of exquisite taste.
posted by peacay at 10:54 AM PST - 9 comments

Rep. John Conyers has a petition on his congressional website urging constituents to sign on to a letter to President Bush requesting he answer the questions about the "Downing Street Memo" posed to him by 89 Members of Congress. Going even further, Ralph Nader, and former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark among others, are calling for impeachment. Recently, Reps. Kucinich & Abercrombie wrote a USA Today Op-Ed calling For US withdrawal from Iraq. Meanwhile, approval ratings for President Bush and the war in Iraq continue to plummet. Does this represent a sea change in public opinion and a coming shift in the political landscape?
posted by stenseng at 10:09 AM PST - 123 comments

The Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence (PDF). A fascinating new theory from physicist turned renegade evolutionary theorist, Gregory Cochran (see this Atlantic Monthly cover story on Cochran's already path-breaking germ theory of disease), and genetic anthropologist Henry Harpending, proposes that a unique evolutionary history, and a number of improbably clustered neurologically related genetic diseases among Ashkenazi Jews could help explain their incredible intelligence test scores and extraordinary intellectual achievements (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews are 3% of the American population but win 27% of the Nobel Prizes). The paper is set for publication in the Journal of Biosocial Science, and is already getting major press in the New York Times and The Economist. Does the recent Harvard fracas over Larry Summers herald a new "arms race" in academic debate about genetics, man and society for the 21st century? [compelling post by Jason]
posted by mathowie at 10:08 AM PST - 67 comments

Online poker company's flotation sends owners into billionaires list. Party Poker.com has announced plans to float on the London Stock exchange. This will see the biggest online gambling site on the planet get even bigger. Will the stock market be happy with the current returns or are the voracious demands of shareholders mean we are going to see more people needing help?
posted by ClanvidHorse at 10:00 AM PST - 29 comments

Gode Cookery. A compilation of medieval recipes adapted for the 21st century kitchen. [via Monkeyfilter]
posted by jb at 9:27 AM PST - 15 comments