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Lunatic religious cartoonist Jack Chick is targeting a new demographic; converting his greatest hits to provide more "urban" appeal.
posted by jonson at 11:29 PM PST - 101 comments

Happy Birthday Jim. Today, Sunday the 24th 2006 would have been Jim Henson's 70th Birthday. (and is the 46th birthday of current Kermit Muppitter Steve Whitmire) Rarely has one person had such a impact with their vision for the world. From Sam and Friends, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, The Dark Crystal, and on and on and on. Lots of Muppets on Youtube, lots of muppets on Metafilter. Henson died on May 16th 1990 of pneumonia. A Boy and his Frog (mp3) Happy Birthday, and thanks.
posted by edgeways at 10:47 PM PST - 42 comments

Worried about your expensive camera gear (or other stuff I suppose...) getting lost by the airline? Be sure to pack a pistol.
posted by blaneyphoto at 9:16 PM PST - 28 comments

Project Nova: on the 9th of September three Cambridge engineering students launched a balloon equipped with a camera and tracking devices. It reached a height of 32km and took 857 photographs during its three hour flight, some showing the curvature of the earth. You can also download a KML file to follow the balloon's flight path in Google Earth.
posted by jack_mo at 5:50 PM PST - 24 comments

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat. A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks. The assessment is part of the latest "National Intelligence Estimate".
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 5:50 PM PST - 102 comments

Every episode of the Simpsons.
posted by reklaw at 5:24 PM PST - 104 comments

Geiko of Kyoto is a stunning photo gallery of Kyotos's Geisha - both the mature Geiko and the apprentice Maiko. Melissa Chasse annotates many photos with fascinating details and offers an account of her tea party with Mamechika, a lovely Maiko. For more, this lovely Geisha site offers a brief history from the era of the floating world, more photos, Ukiyo-e art, and links. Also see y2karls' prior definitive post on ukiyo-e.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:33 PM PST - 17 comments

A Rough Guide to I Love Music's Rough Guides Never have to AskMe again for mix suggestions.
posted by klangklangston at 3:07 PM PST - 21 comments

(NSFW) “If you are denying yourself pleasure then you have to take responsibility for where you are right now. When you get to a place where you are happy then love comes into your life. When you begin to love yourself then people recognize that and you can start receiving it. Self-pity will get you nowhere. Our society is sexist, racist, ageist, but I am a biological creature with all these amazing gifts of orgasm and I cannot wait for the world out there to change for me to be happy. I have all the happiness I need inside myself and I’m keeping it. I have denied it and avoided it for myself for too long. I have waited around for other things to be arranged before I gave myself happiness and I’m not going to do that anymore. It wasn’t until I stopped wallowing in all that self-pity and took matters into my own hands that things started to change for me. . . . Don’t wait around for another person to give that to you, give it to yourself. . . . We have been taught to not like ourselves and it takes a lot to unteach that to ourselves. There is a lot of conditioning and everyone has their own kind of conditioning that they have to unlearn. . . . All I can tell people about myself is that I give it to myself just as I can. My area just happens to be sex, while others have art, painting or public health or whatever. I’m just as true to myself as I can be.” --Nina Hartley
posted by jason's_planet at 2:05 PM PST - 79 comments

Inspired by comments Brian Eno made in his book A Year with Swollen Appendices, Duncan Sheik released White Limousine with two discs: One, a CD labeled Mine and the other a DVD labeled Yours. The former contains his stereo mixes, while the latter contains WAV files of the individual elements of the mixes for each song. Sheik is requesting that people remix his CD to their liking, and has even provided a place for people to upload their efforts. The best remixes will be streamed on the remix site, and some will even be released as downloads.
posted by terrapin at 11:27 AM PST - 16 comments

Foreign Aid: Can it work? The conundrum facing the rich countries is that everywhere in the developing world, and particularly in Africa, you see children dying for want of pennies, while it's equally obvious that aid often doesn't work very well....But the pitfalls of aid tend not to be discussed among humanitarians, at least in loud voices, for fear of scaring donors. And now along comes William Easterly, in his tremendously important and provocative new book, The White Man's Burden, which asserts with great force that the aid industry is deeply flawed.
posted by storybored at 10:37 AM PST - 63 comments

WWII STUG Not sure how many people saw the post about the T34 pulled out of a peat bog a couple of weekends ago, but here is another story about German tank this time. Pulled out of the mud in the Czeck Republic. Decent amount of pictures with this one too.
posted by a3matrix at 6:52 AM PST - 23 comments

Osama bin Dead for a month? PARIS (Reuters) - A French regional newspaper quoted a French secret service report on Saturday as saying that Saudi Arabia is convinced that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.
posted by gregschoen at 1:13 AM PST - 105 comments