Get your learn on. 180+ ways of investigating the human brain = hours of fun for the whole family. Thanks to an innocuous question by a 5 year old, my entire evening is now being spent investigating and discussing the structure and workings of the human brain. This flash site lets you explore the workings of the brain according to 12 subject areas (each with subtopics which are not included in the "180" count), within each of which are 5 levels of organization from social to molecular, within each of which are three levels of explanation (beginner, intermediate, and advanced.) discovered via Wikipedia.
posted by ThusSpakeZarathustra at 3:27 PM Aug 19 2008 - 9 comments [28 favorites]

Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert's got a blog where he serves up demos of recipes he makes in his toaster oven.
posted by contessa at 7:57 AM Aug 20 2008 - 17 comments [19 favorites]

It started with sequencing 8-bit chipsets on Nintendo Game Boys, but the Chiptune scene has now expanded well beyond game systems. Reformat the Planet is the essential introduction to this awesome new genre, and proves it's more than just a blip. This week only you can watch the feature length documentary in its entirety on Pitchfork.tv.
posted by sveskemus at 7:15 AM Aug 19 2008 - 70 comments [21 favorites]

Emily is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' (watch the video) - from the team who, in part, brought you GTA4.
posted by nitsuj at 3:13 PM Aug 19 2008 - 98 comments [11 favorites]

A group of 100 college presidents has come together to state that the 21 year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses. They want to encourage a dialogue about lowering the drinking age. They face opposition from Mothers Against Drunk Driving and from other college presidents, who accuse them of 'not wanting to deal with the problem'.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:45 AM Aug 19 2008 - 168 comments [15 favorites]

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile | And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife | And you may ask yourself... Well...How did I get here?
posted by unSane at 7:02 PM Aug 19 2008 - 63 comments [11 favorites]

Geographer Trevor Paglen, who researches the so-called "black world" of the military (previously: secret military patches, setec astronomy, tracing unmarked military planes, Torture Taxi), is curating a collection of his photos of classified satellite activity, The Other Night Sky, now at the Berkeley Art Museum. He's identified 189 such satellites.
posted by liketitanic at 6:19 PM Aug 19 2008 - 3 comments [10 favorites]

Hawaii 70s-80s Punk Museum Back in the late '70s and early '80s, Honolulu had a small but close-knit punk scene. Poi Dog Pondering started out in Hawaii before relocating to Austin, then to Chicago. Two members of Boston's Dambuilders started out as the eXactones. Many other bands -- such as The Wrong and Cringer -- would relocate to the Mainland, hoping to seek an audience they couldn't quite find back home (embedded autoplay audio). Dave Carr was involved with a lot of these bands, and the Hawaii 70s-80s Punk Museum was curated from much of his own collection.
posted by NemesisVex at 12:28 PM Aug 19 2008 - 9 comments [10 favorites]

Tim Kreider (previously) tells the tale of telling the tale of getting stabbed in the throat.
posted by griphus at 12:32 PM Aug 19 2008 - 21 comments [8 favorites]

After Terry Pratchett's Alzheimer's diagnosis made the news, a group of knitters banded together to make him a gift. The result was The Pratchgan, which -- after several months of organization and knitting -- made it into Pratchett's hands this past weekend. There's a Flickr pool of individual squares and the construction of the afghan. [Via Cleolinda]
posted by pxe2000 at 4:45 AM Aug 19 2008 - 22 comments [15 favorites]

Selections from H.P. Lovecraft's brief tenure as a Whitman's Sampler copywriter.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:22 AM Aug 20 2008 - 32 comments [6 favorites]

One Pill Makes You Autistic -- And One Pill Changes You Back. It might also lead to recreational autism, where people who want to take a break from having messy emotions about other people decide to unplug and enter a state where human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects.
posted by nickyskye at 9:43 PM Aug 18 2008 - 67 comments [11 favorites]

Ret. Col. Andrew Bacevich speaks to Bill Moyers (transcript) about the American empire and his new book "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism."
posted by geos at 7:00 AM Aug 18 2008 - 75 comments [41 favorites]

Cockatoos are much better dancers than macaws. Well that was my clear conclusion after watching the first two vid clips linked to why animals dance in this Guardian feature. And since this is from a serious researcher I don't think they are faked. For those with much more time, this site has an interesting podcast on the topic of music and the brain.
posted by binturong at 7:18 PM Aug 19 2008 - 16 comments [5 favorites]

Picturing our thoughts. "We're looking for too much in brain scans." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 12:20 PM Aug 19 2008 - 15 comments [5 favorites]

Two commercial pilots find themselves on the no-fly list. One pilot sues after having his flight privileges revoked, while the second pilot (and a five-year old sharing his name) note they can bypass the watchlist by checking in using their initials instead of their full names. TSA has also found themselves in the news this week for disrupting 40 flights and damaging 9 planes during an overzealous security check.
posted by grippycat at 12:03 AM Aug 20 2008 - 49 comments [5 favorites]

RADIOMARU is (award-winning Canadian cartoonist) Bryan Lee O'Malley's website. Several free comics are in the offering, ranging from the quirky to strange to inexplicably bizarre.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 5:15 PM Aug 19 2008 - 8 comments [4 favorites]

China's Olympic beaches, choked by a plague of green algae. Sez David Suzuki: This is not an unusual occurrence, but it is a symptom of an underlying problem with potential repercussions far more serious than hampering Olympic events.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:31 PM Aug 19 2008 - 11 comments [4 favorites]

McDonald's UK goes Web 2.0 with a site answering user's questions. Apparently, all of them.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:31 AM Jun 15 2007 - 141 comments [122 favorites]

Then I imagined what my friends would say if I got killed: I kept hearing them retell the story of how I went out to O'Hare to get a cat and instead met my doom wandering down the middle of a highway in a blizzard. I could just hear them saying, It's how he would have wanted to go ...
posted by enn at 11:18 AM Aug 18 2008 - 91 comments [36 favorites]