MetaFilter

"This is the day that the Lord has made! We shall rejoice and be glad in the new Wal-Mart that the Lord has made."
posted by thisisdrew at 10:03 PM PST - 44 comments

Kiss of death?
posted by skjønn at 9:18 PM PST - 38 comments

MoAD is San Francisco's newest museum. The Museum of the African Diaspora is the latest addition to the SOMA neighborhood's expanding cultural riches, and promises to be fascinating (and, as far as I can tell, unique in the world). [more inside]
posted by trip and a half at 9:08 PM PST - 14 comments

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world, using uploaded GPS traces. So far: London and several other cities have been mapped. (via dataisnature)
posted by vacapinta at 8:49 PM PST - 11 comments

How Many Fish are in the Sea? During the heady days of the late 19th century, in response to a perceived decline in coastal finfish stocks, Spencer Baird and his clutch of young naturalists at the Smithsonian set out to find the answer. In 1871, Baird founded the U.S. Fish Commission. The Comission set up operations in Woods Hole, MA, where it continues its work today as the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (a branch of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service). The Fish Census of 1880 established the fist benchmark on fish populations in coastal waters; crews of Gloucester schooners competed to see who could bring the most bizarre fish finds up from the platueaus of the Grand Banks, and America’s first research vessel, the Albatross, was purpose-built for the project. Baird's protege (and later successor) George Brown Goode compiled the data into the first comprehensive reference work on American fisheries. Known to students of salt water as “Goode’s Fisheries”, the report (beautifully illustrated) remains invaluable to researchers today, as today's fish populations dip into an even more drastic decline.
posted by Miko at 7:54 PM PST - 13 comments

In 1244, Montsegur saw the slaughter of the Cathars and their protectors, ending the Albigensian Crusade that Pope Innocent III had declared in 1208.
posted by dilettante at 7:04 PM PST - 22 comments

One dry scotch pine tree, plus one string of old christmas lights, has the potential to add up to a really bad day. [qt] This can happen after a tree has been drying for three weeks or so. [pdf] So please - keep them watered!
posted by icosahedral at 6:55 PM PST - 30 comments

Have you ever wanted to fly through the clouds? Even if it was in a hospital gown? Cloud is a beautiful, simple, and free 3D game developed by students at the USC Interactive Media Center and funded by a grant from Electronic Arts.
posted by splatta at 6:06 PM PST - 40 comments

De Villepin: The French riots didn't happen. Riots? What riots? There were no riots. (Jean Baudrillard: "That's right, Dominique, you're getting the idea.)
posted by jfuller at 5:21 PM PST - 49 comments

The CrimethInc Reading Library offers essential dissident reading material including Your politics are as boring as fuck and Days of War, Nights of Love. Also available as free downloads are printable anarchist pamphlets, magazines, and posters. (Any remaining supporters of the Bush regime will be sure to appreciate this and this). There's also a collaborative blog. (An earlier incarnation of the CrimethInc publishing organization was previously discussed here.)
posted by cleardawn at 5:10 PM PST - 28 comments

Google pays $1 for every IE user converted to Firefox - but why? Google don't own Firefox, so is this only to piss off Microsoft?
posted by Orange Goblin at 4:40 PM PST - 56 comments

New Orleans becomes the first US city with free citywide wifi.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 3:50 PM PST - 35 comments

The latest music video from legendary metal band Karkis totally rocks my holiday spirit.
posted by jonson at 3:45 PM PST - 18 comments

Calm down. A new, humorous, attempt at "traffic calming". I know, I know, a lot of it was previously discussed. Some think it's a good idea (hey, we've even got some in my neighborhood!). But there are others who disagree. I never thought it would be such a heated topic! (or noteworthy by Wired, even.) Aaaah... the hell with it. Maybe the way to go is NO RULES.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 3:16 PM PST - 16 comments

Gould's Book of Fish (full contents of Chapter One) by Tasmanian author/historian/Rhodes Scholar Richard Flanagan is a critically lauded 2002 novel that is the most interesting and accomplished work of fiction I've read in years. Set in the 19th century on a penal colony off the coast of Tasmania, the book is narrated by William Buelow Gould, a convict, charlatan, and possible madman. Here is an audio interview with Flanagan; here's an audio clip of the author reading from his book. (.ra files) Yes, the book is a few years old, but it somehow passed under my radar; and, anyway, a good book is timeless. (Picking up the piscine gauntlet thrown down by Plutor.)
posted by Dr. Wu at 2:47 PM PST - 15 comments

NYU President John Sexton warns striking grad students that they must resume teaching or lose their benefits. After weeks of marching outside Bobst library and refusing to teach classes, NYU grad students have been sent a letter from President John Sexton, warning them that any TA who does not return to work next week will lose their stipends and eligibility to teach next semester. Until recently, NYU was the only private school that allowed graduate teaching assistants to unionize, following a 2000 NLRB decision, which was subsequently reversed. NYU claims that it has negotiated in good faith and that the union's demands would limit decision making that should remain in the hands of academics, while the grad students argue that they cannot trust NYU's admistration to take care of them without unionization (and representation by the UAW). Meanwhile, many undergrads paying tuition upwards of 50K/year will have to retake classes or opt for pass/fail. Do you sympathize with highly educated American grad students who receive free tuition, health insurance, and stipends in exchange for modest teaching duties (when many other students depend on student loans), especially compared the with 19th century coal miners, third-world factory workers, and modern-day wage slaves we normally associate with unions and strikes?
posted by banishedimmortal at 2:37 PM PST - 98 comments

Brand New Flashmob Opera from Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield.
posted by srboisvert at 2:14 PM PST - 8 comments

"I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again." "I'm an attorney, I will sue you." "I'm going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you." FlickrNation's Thomas Hawk gets service from the manager of a New York City camera store. (via Digg)
posted by LinusMines at 1:35 PM PST - 67 comments

Standup comedy cultural hot button Wikipedia hack. Standup comics! Need a cultural hot button topic for a joke? Check out Wikipedia articles with the most revisions. Comedy gold. Just pick a topic and start riffing.
posted by basilwhite at 1:34 PM PST - 53 comments

Super Monk [.mov, 35mb, animated]
posted by crunchland at 1:29 PM PST - 13 comments

Signaling Vulnerabilities in Wiretapping Systems. The technology used for decades by law enforcement agents to wiretap telephones has a security flaw that allows the person being wiretapped to stop the recorder remotely [bugmenot]. It is also possible to falsify the numbers dialed [pdf].
posted by event at 12:59 PM PST - 5 comments

Atlantic currents show signs of weakening, according to a new study from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. I just hope these findings don't provoke the nightmare scenario of a sequel.
posted by homunculus at 12:50 PM PST - 32 comments

The ongoing patent dispute between the patent firm NTP and BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) reached a new low today when a U.S. appellate court judge named James Spencer ruled that an earlier settlement of $450M payable to NTP was not valid as it was not finalized properly. Even though the USPO has re-opened the NTP patents and has subsequently rejected most of the patents used in the patent infringement case, RIM was seeking to uphold the earlier settlement in order to avert the possibility of all sales and services from being halted in the United States.
posted by purephase at 12:37 PM PST - 13 comments

Portraits of Home: A set of 55 wonderful pictures relating to housing issues in greater Minnesota. This comes from a "Photography Exhibit Documents the Housing Challenges Facing Minnesota's Working Families".
posted by edgeways at 12:11 PM PST - 10 comments

39¢ Heroes. On January 8, the price of a First Class US Postage Stamp will creep up another two cents. But fear not, True Believers, because 20 of those new stamps will feature costumed crusaders from DC Comics "including Superman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, Batman, Green Arrow and many more." (Newsarama has more on the story, including the featured cover images for each hero.)
posted by grabbingsand at 12:10 PM PST - 33 comments

Ho! Ho! Ho! Friend or Foe! Falwell fighting for Holy Holiday! Bill O'Reilly joins the fray! But wait, where does the White House stand on this vital issue?
posted by Otis at 10:53 AM PST - 203 comments

Free Speech TV! Veoh allows anyone to create and broadcast their own TV show or a Channel full of shows. Not small streaming videos, but FULL-Screen, TV-Quality video. Veoh does not transcode the content, but rather offers it in it’s native encoding, and does not limit the file sizes/length of video. Veoh’s goal is to become the platform for producers of all sizes (from individuals to studios and everyone in between) to have a democratized TV broadcasting system. Take the tour. (audio/flash)
posted by HyperBlue at 10:42 AM PST - 13 comments

Beyond Einstein - "A 12-hour webcast on Einstein's Theory of Relativity... and beyond."
posted by Gyan at 10:36 AM PST - 7 comments

Geek! Entertainment Television: buzzwords and luminaries, with subtitles. [via SRL]
posted by If I Had An Anus at 10:34 AM PST - 4 comments

Outrage in Deadheadland: fans are furious since the Grateful Dead pulled thousands of freely available concert recordings from Live Music Archive. Some threaten boycotts. Are the Dead really looking out for "Grateful Dead Values" or simply protecting their commercial interests? Have Deadheads been spoiled by free access to the music? Bassist Phil Lesh says he had no say in the matter, Barlow thinks it's "like finding out that your brother is a child molester," and heady bloggers are torn. Or is it all moot anyway? "The idea that they could stop people from trading these files is absurd... It's no longer under anyone's control. People have gigabytes of this stuff." (Previously on Mefi.)
posted by muckster at 10:27 AM PST - 93 comments

Carl Icahn's Time Warner efforts find a powerful ally in "white-shoe" investment bank Lazard. Wall Street M&A advisors have been hesitant to support efforts by Icahn and his hedge fund brethren in their share-holder activist efforts for fear of alienating fee-paying corporate clients (investment banking, legal and registration fees on the Time Warner/AOL deal were approximately $300 million). By hiring Lazard, which is led by banking legend Bruce Wasserstein (1,2,3), Icahn is surely raising the intensity of his campaign against Time Warner management. Icahn has been successful in previous shareholder activist campaigns, most notably against Blockbuster (1,2), and talks a pretty mean game. Wall Street will be watching this closely - hedge fund activism is becoming a very real fear for company management/directors: Circuit City/Highfields Capital, Wendy's/Pershing, Bally's Fitness/Pardus Capital & Liberation Investment Group, Axciom/ValueAct Capital, MSC Software/ValueAct Capital (reg. required), Beazer Homes/Tontine Capital (second story on page) and more.
posted by mullacc at 10:17 AM PST - 9 comments

The orchid scrapbooks of John Day. Over the course of 40 years, John Day participated in the popular Victorian pursuit of orchid collection. He collected his stunning paintings of the plants into 53 scrapbooks, a selection of which is available online at the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens. [via the remarkable BibliOdyssey]
posted by frykitty at 9:44 AM PST - 7 comments

US-Made Suicide Bombs - These are by US military, law enforcement agencies or commercial security firms - whether for training or marketing or spooking the public
posted by growabrain at 9:08 AM PST - 20 comments

Every year, the NME posts it's chart of the albums of the year poll - this year however they've decided to rig the results purely for commercial purposes. (List inside)
posted by gi_wrighty at 8:43 AM PST - 72 comments

U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press --As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories ... The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor ... Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. ... The Lincoln Group is involved, and the military's "Information Operations Task Force". Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.
posted by amberglow at 8:14 AM PST - 45 comments

National Strategery for Victory in Iraq. Some might recommend having a strategy for victory before the war starts, but President Bush unveiled our National Stategy for Victory in Iraq (deconstructed here) today at another recitation of his "major speech" on Iraq at a captive audience at a military installation. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 8:05 AM PST - 80 comments

Could Alzheimer's be a form of diabetes?
Well, I'm not looking forward to taking those insulin shots....via Medgadget
posted by lilboo at 7:58 AM PST - 11 comments

Arcade Classics from the '80s. A few hundred games, all playable online. Watch out for popups. [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:40 AM PST - 19 comments

Tom Wolfe is screaming. "Aaaaaaaahh! Wait, no, that wasn't good, let me start over." "How did you scream last time a boulder was hurtling toward you?" asks Carolyn Omine, executive producer of The Simpsons. Slowly, Wolfe transforms. Even now, this episode's director, Mark Kirkland, is circling Wolfe, snapping pictures. Soon, a team of animators will render Wolfe bug-eyed and yellow-skinned. A year from now Wolfe -- with fellow guest stars Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen -- will appear on television alongside Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and the bartender Moe in an episode of "The Simpsons" parodying highfalutin literary culture.
posted by PenguinBukkake at 7:18 AM PST - 31 comments

The Catholic Church reaffirmed its opposition to gay priests yesterday when it published long-awaited guidelines. But has it really faced up to the issue? The church considers homosexuality a "serious personality disorder", and the Pope's views are well documented. But according to the guidelines, it is a "tendency" that can be overcome in as little as three years. (The Guardian's Emily Wilson brilliant compares it to smoking: "a few years off the fags and you're nice and pure again".) The guidelines only applies to future priests, not the many existing closeted priests. And what exactly has it got to do with the endemic child abuse, which the report was originally conceived to address?
posted by londonmark at 7:06 AM PST - 27 comments

Does the First Amendment matter on campus? A column in the Winthrop University (SC) student newspaper comparing today's racial climate for whites to the oppression blacks faced before the Civil Rights movement has caused quite a stir south of the Mason -Dixon line. The column by Christine Byington, who is biracial, criticized blacks who complain about the University. She eventually had to withdraw from school due to overwhelming pressure. Should she have known better than to write about a very touchy situation?
posted by Macboy at 6:33 AM PST - 48 comments

Serious vegetarians know to keep on the lookout for isinglass and other animal products in their beer. Isinglass is a fish-derived additive that's primarily used to help speed up the clarification of cask-conditioned ales, although some beer-makers will use it to reclaim batches that didn't filter properly. You can help keep your diet swimbladder-free with this awesome list.
posted by Plutor at 5:01 AM PST - 85 comments

Fritz Richmond, former washtub bass player for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, has died. Richmond pioneered the use of the homemade washtub bass, and taught himself to use the jug as a musical instrument. He was one of the favorites of the Cambridge folk scene of the 1960s. More here.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:29 AM PST - 8 comments

On December 16th the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk goes on trial charged with insulting the Turkish nation, after stating that the killing of 30,000 Armenians and Kurds by the Ottoman Empire was genocide (as discussed before). The trial is being seen by some as a key test for Turkey as it starts on the road to EU accession. Listen to him talk about his work and read extracts.
posted by johnny novak at 2:09 AM PST - 17 comments

...lights, sounds, rhythms, pulsating your bones, moving your body, we all know this language, we can all sing and dance...
posted by loquacious at 11:42 PM PST - 5 comments

John "Paia" Simonton died late last week. His company, PAiA is one of the grandfathers of the DIY synth scene. I have one of his modular synths half-constructed in my garage. He helped create an American buzz for electronic music and DIY music gear in the 70s, and was highly influential till his passing away.
posted by blackvectrex at 9:16 PM PST - 10 comments

Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood. At its core, the case is about the constitutionality of New Hampshire's abortion notification law. In reality, the two questions before the Court are a bit more complex. This may be one of the most significant abortion-related cases in years, and a ruling in favor of New Hampshire may put a serious dent in in the pro-choice movement. As a result, the Court has taken the rare step of allowing C-Span to air audio of the arguments soon after they conclude. (more inside)
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:58 PM PST - 25 comments

Niger Val Dub King of Scotland. One of 100 Great Black Britons. There were some surprises here for me. I didn't expect to find St. George the patron saint of England or Queen Victoria's grandmother here.
posted by tellurian at 7:50 PM PST - 39 comments

Yesterday, Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, wrote a compelling article on the dire situation in Darfur and ways Americans can respond to this tragedy. Yeah, that's thoughtful and all but we already talked about that here, and here, and here, and oh yeah, here and even more here! So, what do the last two years teach me about 400,000 dead? That I still couldn't tell you exactly where it is in Africa..but I know that Paris dated a guy named Paris. Happy sleeping America, and now where's my Soma.
posted by Mr Bluesky at 6:44 PM PST - 30 comments

Electro-funk is a often overlooked genre of dance music that is very influential for many genres of dance music that came around it and after it, including Hip-Hop, Dance, Disco, Electric Boogie, Freestyle, Techno and Drum and Bass.
One of the most prominent Electro-Funk DJs was Greg Wilson, who has set up electrofunkroots.co.uk to document the history and influence of Electro-Funk. Wilson interviews Quentin Leo Cook, (a.k.a. Norman Cook, a.k.a. Fatboy Slim) on Cook's impressions of Electro-Funk and how it has influenced him as a music producer and DJ.
Wilson has also provided a personal history and retrospective mix of top Electro-Funk songs to A Guy Called Gerald for Samurai.fm.
posted by gen at 6:41 PM PST - 27 comments

A Russian lawyer wants “The Simpsons” banned from his country for promoting "drugs, violence and homosexuality."
posted by super_not at 6:37 PM PST - 18 comments

For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.

Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War
Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of "Transformation of War" (Free Press, 1991). He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.
An interview with Martin Van Creveld. See also Nowhere To Run
posted by y2karl at 5:44 PM PST - 72 comments

"Furutani Shun-ichi and his family have some cats. This wiki site is provided their cat's photos."

More here.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:40 PM PST - 25 comments

Slow Mosaic is a mosaic generator powered by the Web. Feed it a word and watch it create related mosaics in front of your very eyes. Requires Flash. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79 at 4:45 PM PST - 20 comments

At dawn on Friday Singapore time, young Australian Nguyen Tuong Van will be hanged by the State executioner, Darshan Singh. His sentencing has raised an extensive debate in Australia on the death penalty, on our regional relationships and the compassion of our fearless Rodent. Like virtually all advanced nations, Australia has generally held a principled stance against the death penalty, though filtered by realpolitik. Yet again, New Zealand is a bit more principled than us, of course. We would of course never protest to the US about its extensive use of the ultimate State sanction.
posted by wilful at 4:28 PM PST - 100 comments

Picture Palaces in Peril! and a few hardy survivors from the golden age of Scottish film going. One of the most beautiful of all, The Cameo, apparently a favourite of Quentin Tarantino, is under threat from its new overlords - who've grabbed the majority stake in Britain's main independent cinema company. Can our heroine be rescued from the railroad tracks of venture capitalism at the 11th hour? Save The Cameo are trying.
posted by Flitcraft at 4:10 PM PST - 5 comments

The wait is over : Firefox 1.5 is out, to be found on the brand spanking new mozilla.com.
posted by XiBe at 3:51 PM PST - 88 comments

That'll teach 'em. Two 10-year old girls arrested in Florida and suspended from school for possession of... well uhm, parsely, actually.
posted by digaman at 3:43 PM PST - 54 comments

Concert of the century: 50 Cent, Tom Petty, Aerosmith and others rock a bat mitzvah.
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 3:20 PM PST - 35 comments

Exercise your music muscle Someone marked a Day in Green ink. Then I eyed a Queen holding Sex Pistols. There are 71 other bands hidden in this street scene: you can download a higher-res version at Virgin's Web site. (Via Bifurcated Rivets). By the way, this is a contest (you can win a new computer and a year's worth of free music), but the site's interface is obnoxious and ad-strewn, so I moved the contest linkage down here.
posted by Lord Kinbote at 3:01 PM PST - 61 comments

Breaking Up The Band [via mefi projects]
posted by Captaintripps at 2:51 PM PST - 11 comments

What kind of an idiot would call for an attack on our ally Qatar? Frank Gaffney Jr. did. He served as Reagan's former Undersecretary for Defense, is the President of the influential neocon Center for Security Policy, was a fellow member of the Project for the New American Century (along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, etc.), and apparently serves an advisor to the Pentagon. He called for al-Jazeera to "be taken off the air, one way or another" six months before Bush's meeting with Blair, and clearly had the connections needed to put policy into action within the Bush administration.
posted by insomnia_lj at 2:23 PM PST - 47 comments

Saddam Hussein's clothes: $5000
posted by spinoza at 2:13 PM PST - 10 comments

Please do not alarm the llama, people. via mimi smartipants
posted by onlyconnect at 1:19 PM PST - 40 comments

Gaming Indian Wars. The Left Coaster has a good roundup of the conclusions drawn from the recent war games between the American and Indian air forces. The Indian fighter jocks were more than competitive, even responding to instructions from AWACS planes faster than their American counter parts. Are the Mirage 2000 and the SU-30 better planes than the F-15 or was the real reason that the Americans “lost” the war games because they were handicapped, and is this now being used as an excuse to get more money for the F-22 program?
posted by afu at 1:05 PM PST - 13 comments

(NSFW-but not porn) Never GIS "little mermaid," large size images, and click the second image from the left out of curiosity. If you do, don't look at the other galleries at the site, hypnotized and horrified. Furthermore, follow any of the links at your own peril. If you manage to make it to the Renderosity pages, you are expressly forbidden from looking at every single page of art by these three artists. Under no circumstances look at these unabashed masterpieces: "Damnedly Wanted," "Nooo, you ARE hansome," "9/11 Remembrance," "Cure for cancer," and god knows how many more. If you follow these instructions carefully, you will have successfully avoided the fairy(faerie, fae), poser, chibi, furry, and koshini scenes for the day.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:21 PM PST - 54 comments

Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance! Just in time for the holidays! Three EPs of Christmas Songs as performed by one Sufjan Stevens. They are Bad Rad, I promise.
posted by hughbot at 12:16 PM PST - 12 comments

Is discrimination OK when it's against males in general? Apparently Qantas and Air New Zealand think it is OK to treat all males as potential pedophile. The NZ Children's Commission thinks it is a great move to not seat unaccompanied minors next to males, while the Human Rights Commission tends to disagree. Joe Public can't seem to decide either way.
posted by pivotal at 12:00 PM PST - 155 comments

The longlisted passages for the Bad Sex in Fiction award are available from the BBC. Founded by the Literary Review of London in 1993, the award "honors" the worst (published) sex writing (by popular authors). Will it be John Updike? Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Salman Rushdie?
posted by mrgrimm at 10:49 AM PST - 30 comments

“Time is on the side of open disclosure that there are ethical Extraterrestrial civilizations visiting Earth. Our Canadian government needs to openly address these important issues of the possible deployment of weapons in outer war plans against ethical ET societies.”
via
posted by airguitar at 10:27 AM PST - 15 comments

Chomsky v. Dershowitz - It's on. via counterpunch
posted by minkll at 10:15 AM PST - 48 comments

50 lashes per week for 15 weeks seems a bit harsh to me. even for witchcraft.
posted by atticus at 9:53 AM PST - 23 comments

The Banana Cell Phone Cover - Just in time for Christmas! Hey, it looks like he's talking into a banana.
posted by nitsuj at 9:22 AM PST - 32 comments

I've labored long and hard for bread,
For honor and for riches
But on my corns too long you've tread,
You fine-haired sons-of-bitches.
Black Bart, the P o 8.
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:18 AM PST - 11 comments

$110 gets you last 100 calls made by any cellphone. Apparently it is legal.
posted by riffola at 8:48 AM PST - 25 comments

Bouguereau who? In 1900, his contemporaries Degas and Monet reportedly named him as most likely to be remembered as the greatest 19th century French painter by the year 2000. After about 1920 though, Bouguereau and the academic tradition fell into disrepute. His name was not mentioned in encyclopedias for decades. (You probably haven't heard of him unless you read this here.) Conspiracy? Or systematic suppression by the 20th century art establishment? (warning - some art NSFW - the 'him' and 'his' links)
posted by Smedleyman at 8:45 AM PST - 26 comments

The Problem With Emily Dickenson "On August 25, six students, along with their school, Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, California and the Association of Christian Schools International filed a federal lawsuit against the University of California where, according to the LA Times (August 27), admissions officials have been accused of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints." One of the textbooks used to teach literature has this to say about Mark Twain: "Twain's outlook was both self-centered and ultimately hopeless. Denying that he was created in the image of God, Twain was able to rid himself of feeling any responsibility to his Creator. "
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:43 AM PST - 89 comments

Rabbit's animated journey through the history of (mostly American) cinema is a wonderful cartoon and, unfortunately, an ad for Motorola. Link goes to embedded quicktime, very slow loading.
posted by jonson at 8:25 AM PST - 7 comments

Teenager Repellant. Teenager Repellant. Kids loitering outside of your store? A Welsh inventor has created a device that emits a noise particularly irritating to those under 20 years of age (and no, it's not classical music.)
posted by fet at 8:00 AM PST - 63 comments

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers...is the foundation of totalitarianism" Perhaps Tony Blair and George W. Bush regard Winston Churchill as a bleeding heart lefty. But what Churchill's view represents is an old, very basic principle of Anglo-American warfare and justice: fight war with ferocity, but never lose your democratic soul.
posted by tommyc at 7:49 AM PST - 83 comments

Froghat Studios The illustration, animation, and design of Chris Appelhans. Don't miss his comic, Frank and Frank, or the Superman animated short.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:47 AM PST - 10 comments

Looks like a raccoon, acts like a raccoon, tastes like a dog? Technically a member of the canid family and considered to be a species of dog, the raccoon dog, or tanuki, is hunted in Japan to the tune of 70,000 animals killed annually for use in the production of calligraphic brushes, stuffed animals, and, apparently, ramen flavoring. The really interesting thing about the tanuki is its place in Japanese myth. The mythical tanuki are full of mischief, masters of shapeshifting, and possessors of unusually large testicles. Comic depictions of tanuki often show them with their testicles thrown over their backs or using them as drums. Does the existence of the tanuki shed any light on an often posted (and otherwise inexplicable) photo?
posted by gokart4xmas at 7:25 AM PST - 30 comments

New York City rage.
posted by Tlogmer at 7:17 AM PST - 26 comments

Ever wondered what to do if you end up in a spot of bother far from home? Fair trials abroad is an organisation campaigning for the fair treatment of Europeans arrested abroad. They deal with campaigns like the Free Craig Alden campaign. Unlike the famous bloke there's no history of child abuse and no real evidence of an offense, but there is a history of standing up to authority and evidence of legal incompentence. If you're from the US, you have to rely upon these people instead.
posted by handee at 6:28 AM PST - 13 comments

Ever spent your precious morning minutes in bed turning your pillow over repeatedly, seeking in vain for the coveted cool spot? Search no more.
posted by allkindsoftime at 6:21 AM PST - 27 comments

Ritual Adornment of a communal habitat. Light and sound combine to impress other nearby members of the species. The counterpoint to a summer of tending carefully controlled foliage.
posted by somnambulist at 9:52 PM PST - 11 comments

Bike Kill 2004 - a 5 min QT clip documenting the Black Label Bike Club’s annual Bike Kill in Brooklyn, recently shown at Bicycle Film Festival 2005. These guys party hard. via in case of mishaps
posted by madamjujujive at 9:47 PM PST - 15 comments

Parkour is nothing new. It has been posted about before. However, what is new is this stunning example of the gymnastics in action. Watch, enjoy.
posted by TwelveTwo at 8:50 PM PST - 53 comments

Yet another part of childhood gone. Stan Berenstain passed away today. [MI]
posted by bluedaniel at 7:06 PM PST - 65 comments

"'We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don't want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears'.... [Police] officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats." While there have been no specific threats of terrorism against Miami, "'[t]his is an in-your-face type of strategy. It's letting the terrorists know we are out there,' [Deputy Police Chief Frank] Fernandez said."
posted by orthogonality at 5:25 PM PST - 71 comments

Computer Modeling of the large-scale tectonics associated with the Genesis flood...
posted by notsnot at 5:12 PM PST - 29 comments

Ignatieff for Canada. The Liberals just lost a non-confidence vote and elections are set for January. In Etobicoke, Ontario, Michael Ignatieff, Harvard Professor of Human Rights and Author is set to run. Will this be the opening moves of a new intellectual Prime Minister? How will his views on humanitarian intervention and the idea of a lesser evil play out?
posted by phyrewerx at 4:32 PM PST - 37 comments

GoogleFilter: Introducing Google Click-to-Call. "Here's how it works: When you click the phone icon [on a Google ad], you can enter your phone number. Once you click 'Connect For Free,' Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the other party. Then, chat away on our dime" (emphasis added). Here are a few screenshots (scroll down), but I can't actually find live examples. The reason being that Google, some say, is "only testing this service in designated areas of the United States." In addition, the Slashdoters have beat us to an insightful convo. Then again, don't most snarky MeFites see Google posts as completely passe. Nonetheless however, I think it is ripe for discussion (especially considering the privacy policy (both big and little) state that a third party will have access to your phone number).
posted by JPowers at 4:17 PM PST - 36 comments

Vandals in suits and bow-ties burned down an Oakland liquor store last night, apparently the same vandals who smashed cases and displays last Wednesday. The police and store owners have suggested they have ties to a local community of Black Muslims. Both stores attacked belonged to the Yemini American Grocery Association and were targeted because they were selling alcohol. Said one store owner: "They asked us if we were Muslim. When we said 'yes,' one of them said that good Muslims shouldn't be poisoning the community with alcohol, or something like that."
posted by ScottMorris at 4:03 PM PST - 54 comments

“They weren’t ever intended to be sexual creatures. It’s simple, Daleks do not do porn.” (NSFW)
posted by Rothko at 3:39 PM PST - 27 comments

David Brin -- hoping to rescue modernity Quote: -- "... I have spoken before of the blatant -- and yet never-reported -- pattern shown by more than a hundred members of the United States Congress, appointing young cadets to the US Military Academies according to one criterion above all others -- their depth of religious zealotry. This infusion of young officers who believe in a coming apocalypse is discreetly worrisome at West Point and Annapolis, but it has already had newsworthy effects at the Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs. A town that is also now known as a main locus and training center for fanatics bent on dominating American civilization. (see) This coincidence... one of many that simply cannot be coincidence... should be tallied and noted. See also this in recent -- 11/26 -- news "... Among the steps already taken by the Pentagon that enhanced its domestic capabilities was the establishment after 9/11 of Northern Command, or Northcom, in Colorado Springs, to provide military forces to help in reacting to terrorist threats in the continental United States. Today, Northcom's intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas fuse reports from CIFA, the FBI and other U.S. agencies, and are staffed by 290 intelligence analysts. That is more than the roughly 200 analysts working for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and far more than those at the Department of Homeland Security...."
posted by hank at 3:37 PM PST - 29 comments

The Proto-Men present a Mega-Man Rock Opera. There is nothing more to say. Ever. About anything.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:54 PM PST - 16 comments

Bush Approval Rating Map Plus various other Bush-related state by state analyses. Kos via Plastic, but it's just so pretty and blue...
posted by leapingsheep at 12:58 PM PST - 40 comments

I, Tongmaster. [embedded quicktime]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:32 AM PST - 19 comments

How to Draw a Straight Line - Until 1873, virtually all mathemeticians and engineers agreed that it was impossible to build a linkage that could convert circular motion to perfectly straight motion. In that year, Lipmann Lipkin rediscovered the Peaucellier cell which had been quietly created a decade earlier. Although much simpler to build, it was predated by Pierre-Frederic Sarrus' non-planar solution. Nowadays, though, linkages can do some extremely complex things. (via)
posted by Plutor at 10:49 AM PST - 25 comments

Government is a Brand, Whether You Like it or Not: Officials in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, likely with the knowledge of the central government, lied to the public about the toxic spill that forced Harbin to shut off its water. A chillingly illustrated real time account reveals how the coverup was exposed amid a panic in Harbin. A PR man in Beijing discusses how this could result is a serious loss of public trust in the government of China, and how behavior like it compromises China's transition to a market economy. This story lends credence to the theory that China is not being honest about H5N1, previously discussed here. Has China learned nothing from SARS?
posted by [expletive deleted] at 10:39 AM PST - 18 comments

Seymour Hersh's fact piece in the current New Yorker lays out current behind-the-scenes thinking about getting out of Iraq. One piece of the article talks about the problems created by the President's sense that he has a divine mandate to pursue his policies...

...the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said.

Most worrisome to some in the military are questions about reducing American troops and substituting air power for boots on the ground. Apparently the air war has been growing without much comment from the congress or media. Hersh cites a press release that the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone has dropped over 500,000 tons of ordinance. But if American troops are gone, who will provide targeting for the air strikes? The scenario of handing targeting over to the Iraqis apparently makes many military planners uncomfortable.
posted by jasper411 at 10:10 AM PST - 45 comments

How do you split up $11 billion? That's enough to evenly split $500,000 per Goldman Sachs employee. It's bonus season on Wall Street. Extensive interviews with current and former Goldman Sachs employees and a best guess of how all of the money gets disbursed.
posted by suprfli at 9:55 AM PST - 44 comments

"It doesn't even need a conductor, and there is not even any need for rehearsals together. Each instrumentalist receives sheet music and a disc with the sound track to which he will be linked during the concert, and that way he can practice at home, by himself; and then they come straight to the concert and play freely, whatever they want. A sound that is random as opposed to planned, a precise pitch for a note, as opposed to a false note, that's what leads the work. And here, toward the end, order gradually prevails".
Arik Shapira talks about his new concerto for piano and orchestra.
posted by matteo at 9:17 AM PST - 16 comments

Our desire for the freakshow is on the wane, or at least it seems that way based on some recent closings. Is it the difference in admission costs? If the EH's relative value calculator is to be believed, that 1841 dime museum should only cost about $2.10 to get into in 2003, not five bucks. Even for free on MetaFilter only about twenty people care to discuss freaks. Perhaps we've just gotten used to seeing this kind of thing on sponsored television and don't want to travel to see it. It's certainly not because our tastes have gotten so much more evolved. Perhaps our threshold for how whack something has to be before we consider it freakish has been raised somehow...
posted by phearlez at 8:57 AM PST - 12 comments

Talk To Action and Mother Jones mag team up for e-conference tomorrow: ...a day of thoughtful reflections on, and vigorous discussion of the role of religion and government -- as intended by the framers of the constitution, and the situation we face today. (MoJo's December issue is all about the role of religion and government, including this on Reconstructionists: A Nation Under God.) New and old media officially collaborating to highlight specific issues and futher debate--a first?
posted by amberglow at 8:03 AM PST - 15 comments

hypnotizing photo essay from Hungary about a couple's water birth @ home, with narration in English from the wife.
posted by jonson at 7:41 AM PST - 41 comments

The Butcher of Andijan. Uzbekistan Interior Minister Zakirjon Almatov is currently on an extended visit to Germany. Nothing strange or particularly newsworthy about that, you might think - until you realise that Almatov has been declared persona non grata by the EU as one of 12 Uzbek officials "directly responsible for the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force" in the massacre of hundreds of unarmed protesters in the east Uzbekistan city of Andijan.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:10 AM PST - 8 comments

It turns out that last weeks' story about the Mercedes S class crashing during a safety demonstration on tv was a set-up, arranged by the television station in question. Whoops. via digg
posted by SharQ at 5:24 AM PST - 25 comments

A new book, Signs of Life (which I can't find on Amazon yet), features photographs of spoof signs.
See also
posted by Mwongozi at 4:49 AM PST - 15 comments

Mansions fit for a commoner "... moving into a bigger house was not something to be questioned, but something to be accepted, an axiom of American life."
posted by knave at 2:01 AM PST - 85 comments

A trophy film of what appears to be civilian defense contractors shooting innocent Iraqi civilians has appeared on the internet. Investigations are ongoing. (via Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)
posted by darkstar at 1:00 AM PST - 95 comments

Olaf Stapledon was a man ahead of his time. His epic 'novel' Star Maker (1937) considered the emergence of genetic engineering, the outcome of the many worlds interpretation and delved deeper than any book before or since into the consequences of evolution on the cosmos. His fans have included the likes of Arthur C Clarke, Jorge Luis Borges and Virginia Woolf. Even his greatest detractor, C.S.Lewis, wrote an entire Cosmic Trilogy in response to his imaginings. Yet despite Stapledon's magnetic prose and extraordinary influence on speculative fiction his name remains largely forgotten by the world. Yet his words still resonate with insight: "Did not our life issue daily as more or less firm threads of active living, and mesh itself into the growing web, the intricate, ever-proliferating pattern of mankind?"
posted by 0bvious at 11:51 PM PST - 24 comments

This just in! First photo of Flying Spaghetti Monster taken using bacteria!
posted by brundlefly at 6:50 PM PST - 50 comments

Abuse in Iraq Now Worse Then Under Saddam 'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' [Iraq Prime Minister] Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.' Let's see ... no WMDs, no al-Queda ties, and now this. I'm so glad that we are making Iraq a better place.
posted by robhuddles at 5:41 PM PST - 69 comments

A Roller Derby revival has been building for quite some time. The All-American, All-kickass sport has had a long history (previously discussed here) and gone through multiple waves. Although it has been associate with a fair amount of cheese in the past, a new generation of skaters are taking it on and taking it seriously. Since it's the off season, why not bone up on RD's history and rules? Or just find a league near you.
posted by piratebowling at 4:26 PM PST - 34 comments

The Day the Sea Came. The stories of six people caught up in last December's tsunami.

Maisara did not look back. She could hear an odd, ever-louder roar. But she never actually saw what she was running from. Only Anis, looking over her mother's left shoulder, beheld the oncoming water. "Mama, what is that?" the little girl kept yelling.

I know, it's the Times, it's long, it's old news, but it's absolutely riveting. Great reporting by Barry Bearak, and for this you need a reporter, not a novelist, because you can't make this stuff up. Part 1 (printer-friendly), Part 2 (printer), Part 3 (printer), Part 4 (printer).
posted by languagehat at 3:25 PM PST - 25 comments

"And this is where things got REALLY ugly. First off, Smith was taken aback when Peters asked him, in all sincerity, 'Kal-El’? Who’s this ‘Kal-El’ guy you keep mentioning in the script?'" The whole sordid tale of the making of Superman V. From the Kevin Smith script that was ultimately thrashed to the Tim Burton "vision" (which involved Tim Allen as Brainiac and Superman driving a Super-mobile instead of flying) to Nicholas Cage fighting to try and keep the character's depiction true to the comics. With the movie finished and due to hit theaters next year, will the last son of Krypton still be able to impress audiences and the fans?
posted by kosher_jenny at 2:28 PM PST - 115 comments

What have you told your children about Muhammad Ali? "I was frequently left with tingling all over because I had been in the presence of such a great man and still humbled by his compassion, tolerance and understanding." Inspired by this weekend's airing by ESPN Classic of most of Tyson's fights, I started thinking about the difference between these two men. Ali obviously transcended his sport and has become more than just a boxer while Tyson is clearly a lost and troubled soul. And yet Tyson's story still inspires reflection. Nietzche's statement that "What someone is, begins to be revealed when his talent abates, when he stops showing us what he can do" is perfectly illustrated by the twilight years of these two legendary boxers.
posted by spicynuts at 2:08 PM PST - 47 comments

Military Ethic's "War is the hardest place to make moral judgments." Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions (L.A. Times) When the military's own moral compass gives up, should we continue?
posted by Elim at 1:16 PM PST - 32 comments

And here is 'You Either Get It or You Don't:' Conversion Experiences and The Dr. Phil Show. Also on hand, are They Refused Jesus Too: A Biblical Paradigm in the Writing of Bob Dylan and Popular Music on Christianity in the United States: Christianity's Failure to Love. Taste, perhaps, A Potion too Strong?: Challenges in Translating the Religious Significance of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to Film. Or consider Curses and Catharsis in Red Sox Nation: Baseball and Ritual Violence in American Culture.
All are selections from The Journal Of Religion And Popular Culture.
posted by y2karl at 11:02 AM PST - 34 comments

Cafard in french means "cockroach." [wmv, 17.5mb animation. alternate server]
posted by crunchland at 10:01 AM PST - 18 comments

Big Man is the final sculpture in a current exhibit on Melancholy - Genius and Insanity in the Western World at the Grand Palais in Paris. Hyper-realist Ron Mueck creates imposing figures by playing with large and small scale. (warning: art nudity)
posted by madamjujujive at 8:23 AM PST - 18 comments

Thou Shalt Not Not Rock! If you didn't get a chance to get out to Church to rid yourself of your sins, why not let the Brooklyn-based Sin Destroyers rock the Evil out of you. "When you think about it, it's simple. If God created everything, including trees and Japan, he could certainly wail harder than anyone. A rock band in his name would rock harder than everyone else combined! Furthermore, Jesus kicks ass with his unstoppable stream of goodness. The Virgin Mary was smoking hot and still kept her shirt on. Only a heathen can deny the cosmic allure of the Holy Spirit. For all of their indefatigable awesomeness, they ask for only one thing in return: to spread their word. Furthermore, Jesus kicks ass with his unstoppable stream of goodness. The Virgin Mary was smoking hot and still kept her shirt on. Only a heathen can deny the cosmic allure of the Holy Spirit. For all of their indefatigable awesomeness, they ask for only one thing in return: to spread their word." (via.)
posted by pelican at 6:36 AM PST - 21 comments

Illusions for sale : The Audience Dis*Member. The Ultimate Levitation. The Wakeling Sawing. The Classic Zig-Zag. And many, many more . If you can't conjure up that kind of scratch, you don't feel lucky or industrious, and your celebrity friends can't help, you could always try the Magic Auctions. Just watch out for that beautiful assistant!
posted by milquetoast at 5:28 AM PST - 5 comments

All dogs emit the same type of bark when they sense trouble. This device translates that bark into an alarm.
posted by Tlogmer at 12:05 AM PST - 11 comments

"I can absolutely understand why Brazil is devoted to my favorite body part - the ass." Alternately cringe inducing & hilarious clip of California's national shame Arnold Schwarzenegger down in Rio in the late 70s, groping the dancers and making obscene (and obscenely awkward) passes at his co-hosts. link goes to embedded quicktime video
posted by jonson at 12:03 AM PST - 56 comments

Gary Glitter charged with "engaging in perverse activities with children in Vietnam" Gary says "I was teaching, not screwing". He has had some problems in the past...
posted by super_not at 8:04 PM PST - 34 comments

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.
By Mr. Gelett Burgess
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 6:54 PM PST - 20 comments

Chances are, of all the things you've heard about masturbation, most of them were absolutely false. For some reason, misinformation surrounds masturbation like virtually no other topic. Since JackinWorld's goal is to debunk misinformation, here are some of the myths commonly believed about masturbation — and the truth about each. All you ever really wanted to know about something we all already know plenty about. NSFW.
posted by ColdChef at 3:02 PM PST - 115 comments

23. It's like Flickr, a lot like Flickr--and maybe better. Better at some things. Stories. Upload limits. The layout. Ordering prints. They are doing things from the beginning that Flickr worked a couple years to figure out in the first place. Flickr of course is way ahead of 23 in numbers (people and money). Does it make sense to challenge that lead? (And to do so with an overt knock-off?) If 23 provides a better service, should they lose out for being second to the party? How can they pay their debt of gratitude to Flickr for being the obvious inspiration and an open-book instruction manual, and should they? When does the flattery of imitation become legitimate--or illegitimate--competition? Notice in the terms they claim ownership of the concept and the design. Can 23 apply for any of the street cred Flickr may have given up in favor of being Yahoo!ed? Is it reasonable to expect better work from a scrappy upstart than a happy sell-out? Can two successful photo sharing sites co-exist, or join forces? Is there enough community to support more than one good one?
posted by airguitar at 12:32 PM PST - 32 comments

NewsFilter: Anyone can be an enemy combatant
posted by lalochezia at 11:08 AM PST - 45 comments

This Blog Will Change Your Life -- My year-long adventure following the daily instructions presented in This Book Will Change Your Life by Benrik Limited as closely as possible without getting arrested or dying... : >
posted by amberglow at 10:39 AM PST - 23 comments

Don't Bomb Us. In response to credible reports that Bush wanted to bomb al-Jazeera's HQ in allied Qatar (discussed here and here on MeFi), Al Jazeera staffers start their own English-language blog. Their site contains remembrances of their fallen colleagues, firsthand accounts of US attacks on their offices, links to relevant reports on the controversy, Flickr photosets of protests calling for an official investigation, and al Jazeera's code of ethics. Also, a quick note to Tony Blair: " P.S. Thanks for talking Mr. Bush out of bombing our offices!" Not surprisingly, their blog is generating some comments.
posted by edverb at 9:59 AM PST - 116 comments

CO2 'highest for 650,000 years' Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years. (Found via Treehugger) Sounds like it's time to buy that lovely oceanfront property in Kansas.
posted by Mr Bluesky at 9:08 AM PST - 38 comments

"Little Gitmo". Council of Europe envoy Alvaro Gil-Robles reveals that US forces built a "Little Guantánamo" in, of all places, Kosovo. Gil-Robles also has interesting things to say about the strength of democracy, vastly underestimated in his opinion. (And before anyone starts a "liberal Euroweenies" tirade, let's note that the Gil-Robles family has rock-solid conservative credentials)
posted by Skeptic at 3:04 AM PST - 22 comments

Isles of Shoals. Six miles off the coast and straddling the border of Maine and New Hampshire, the nine small islands known as the Isles of Shoals comprise one of New England's most remarkable maritime treasures. Star Island, second in size at 46 acres (roughly 1 mile x 1½ miles), is where I call home 5 months out of the year. On it exists the Oceanic Hotel, the 150-year-old chapel, and several buildings dating back to the 1800's, which serves as a conference center during the summer. From April to October this is where I live and work. One of the most unusual aspects of a Star Island Week is the traditional Softball game between the weekly Conferees and the Pelicans. The softball field is infamous, considering it is the most obstacle-ridden field in the world. It was even documented in Yankee Magazine. Last year, during renovations of the Gosport House, we got a small taste of finding treasures. True, it was nothing like finding Blackbeard's treasure which is still buried on Lunging Island. Apparently you can find New England's Ugliest Monument here, a honor bestowed upon Captain John Smith (who tried to name the islands after himself); but other than that it's a picturesque place to work; That is, if you don't mind the ghosts.
posted by pelican at 2:09 AM PST - 39 comments

Asterix gets political. After over four decades of defending his lone holdout village from Roman attack, French children's book icon Asterix is taking on America in the latest novel. The village is besieged by an alien army whose leader is named Hubs, (a thinly veiled anagram of the U.S. President). The aliens invade seeking non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
posted by jonson at 11:53 PM PST - 33 comments

À la carte explores French cookery in just about every angle one can imagine. Featuring an extensive list of recipes, suggested menus, and in-depth articles ranging from how to plan a meal, to what tools to use, including everything one needs to know about knives. Like Strawberries, & crêpes? Want to know more about ice creams & sorbets? Obsessive is an understatement.
posted by riffola at 11:23 PM PST - 14 comments

Deep Time. “Once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution is wrong.”
It’s not the latest salvo from the proponents of intelligent design... [more inside]
posted by nanojath at 10:29 PM PST - 65 comments

The Modern Compendium of Miniature Automata - Discover, identify and create your own Steam Age nanobot. Requires Flash. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79 at 10:28 PM PST - 2 comments

Pike 2 Bike! You've done rails to trails, how about a bike ride on an abandoned section of the PA Turnpike?
posted by Fat Guy at 9:08 PM PST - 20 comments

'Gay' horse jibe lands student in court
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 7:37 PM PST - 86 comments

Faith based prisons... Can Gov. Jeb Bush's new drive to introduce God to the inmates make a difference, or was Jesus 'dying for our sins' not enough already? Is Jesus a solution or an excuse?

"Night has fallen. He has died now. A fly crawls over the still flesh. Of what use is it to me that this man suffered, If I am suffering now?" - Jorge Luis Borges
posted by 0bvious at 7:34 PM PST - 36 comments

Transit in Detroit details an urban planner's initiative to cut the costs of the city's traffic congestion-relieving highway expansion by proposing a transit system combining light rail and bus-rapid-transit. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 7:13 PM PST - 15 comments

The Canadian government has come up with a novel approach to stemming the tide of disease in prisons. They're paying for clean needles. For those who wonder what it all means. Great photos of this subculture and the tattoo as a mark of rebellion.
posted by IronLizard at 6:35 PM PST - 20 comments

Fed up with navigating badly set up voice mail systems, Paul English has posted a voice mail cheat sheet to help you cut through to a real human. Which is just as well because most companies seem to set up their voice mail systems like this.
posted by Zinger at 6:25 PM PST - 18 comments

Enter the Dark Complex (A very late flash friday) The triple-sized sequel to the devious, but fair Dark Room, this puzzle should kill a lot of time this holiday weekend. via
posted by empath at 4:03 PM PST - 6 comments

Finally, The Bush vs. Blair debate that we've all waited to see. Silly Friday-Flash. [Warning, contains profanity]
posted by metaxa at 3:37 PM PST - 22 comments

Possible "contamination" of some baby milk-based products 30 million liters of big-brand name milk were recalled in Italy and other EU countries because of contamination by traces of ITX (ISOPROPYLTHIOXANTHONE) which is a product used in packaging printing.Tetrapack issued a press release (Italian language) in which they declare they are not going to use ITX for printing anymore as a precautionary measure. According to a memo sent to an italian consumer-oriented tv show(italian), Tetrapack acknowledges that 1200 more products use packaging with the same printing technology. What about their recall and is it happening worldwide ? [Google News query]
posted by elpapacito at 3:25 PM PST - 13 comments

I, for one, welcome our... Oh, the hell with it. Canadians want to start diplomatic relations with aliens.
posted by mullingitover at 3:22 PM PST - 26 comments

First they take Ugarte and then she walks in. On the 9th of December 2005, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in a case that will determine whether people must show "papers" whenever police demand them. Unlike Dudley Hiibel (discussed on mefi last year) who had (arguably) caused a disturbance meriting police attention, Deb was just riding the bus when she was "welcomed" to the Denver Federal Center.
posted by Smedleyman at 2:04 PM PST - 34 comments

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities There are a lot of great freeware products out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives. This list features my personal pick of the "best of the best."
posted by Postroad at 1:18 PM PST - 44 comments

Baltimore Officials Puzzled By Stolen Light Poles. Thieves, apparently sometimes disguising themselves as utility workers, have stolen 130+ aluminum light poles in Baltimore. How is it that no one has seen the thieves making off with a 30' pole? On the other hand, maybe this will help the city find its new slogan (I like "Baltimore: Leading the Fight Against Light Pollution").
posted by 445supermag at 12:56 PM PST - 30 comments

Vintage postcards are pretty neat. They show us the history of local areas, the growth of nations and they provide the briefest of glimpses into the lives of the past. Oh, they even brought porn to the masses.
posted by cmonkey at 12:49 PM PST - 9 comments

We all know the story: little Elli, a girl living in the steppes of Kanzas with her dog Totoshka, is blown by a hurricane (stirred up by the wicked witch Gingema) all the way to Magic Land, where she meets the Cowardly Lion, the Iron Woodman, and the scarecrow Strashila and has to make her way to the Emerald City to find the magician Gudvin so she can get back home... What, you don't remember it that way? Didn't you read The Wizard of the Emerald City and its much-loved sequels Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers, The Seven Underground Kings, The Fiery God of the Marrans, The Yellow Fog, and The Mystery of the Deserted Castle? Ah, you're not Russian! Listen [RealAudio] to a five-minute description (on Studio 360) of Alexander Volkov's Russified versions of Baum (with illustrations by Leonid Vladimirsky) and how they captivated children and adults in the Soviet Union (you even get a bit of the famous song Мы в город Изумрудный/ Идем дорогой трудной ["We're going to the Emerald City by a difficult road..."]); visit the Emerald City website (Russian version, where all the links work); and see the wonderful illustrations at this site, which links to the texts of all six novels (click on Читать...)—in Russian, but the images need no explanation. (Fun fact: the word "Oz" doesn't occur anywhere in the Russian versions.) And if you're interested in other alternate versions, go to Oz Outside the Famous Forty. (Via P. Kerim Friedman.)
posted by languagehat at 12:17 PM PST - 21 comments

What can video games teach us about learning and literacy? A lot, says James Paul Gee whose recent book approaches the question armed with three different discourses (situated cognition, new literacy studies, and connectionism). [mi]
posted by panoptican at 12:04 PM PST - 23 comments

Chemtrails "are" the linear clouds formed by condensation behind high-altitude airliners. Sylphs "are" fourth-dimensional beings that are here to save us from the chemtrails. Check Sylphs Over Brea for photos, and Sylphs Battle Chemtrail Spew Planes Over Orange County for a quick view of this lunacy.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:15 AM PST - 49 comments

Borat Strikes back after being threatened by the Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry. I like his website? Do you like his website? Previously mentioned in this post.
posted by reverenddrjice at 11:02 AM PST - 14 comments

Friday flash fun. I have no clue how to finish this one...
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 10:29 AM PST - 23 comments

Michael Brown starts Disaster Planning Firm After doing a "heck of a job", the former Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association teaches others how to avoid stepping in shit.
posted by null terminated at 9:49 AM PST - 27 comments

FOIA'd again Mike Petrelis from 2000 through 2005 and found that major media have used the law on the DoD less than 50 times each in five years. E&P asks if reporters are using the law enough and some think that points to the media's laziness, others think they're missing the point.
posted by nospecialfx at 9:07 AM PST - 6 comments

Lenticulars - fun 3-d art from Howard Hallis, the guy who did the the picture of everything. For the graphic designer, here's more info on the art of lenticulars.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:03 AM PST - 6 comments

The "Hip Nip" is no more. Noriyuki "Pat" Morita has died at 73.
posted by Vidiot at 6:54 AM PST - 69 comments

Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever then & now (1963 - 1991). Pretty Stewardess -> Flight Attendant, etc.
posted by marlowe at 5:50 AM PST - 39 comments

George Best dies at 59. Footballer George Best has died today from an infection after a protracted iillness due to ill health following his battles with alcoholism. A great talent he was famous for his good looks, ability and love of the ladies.

"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars - the rest I just squandered."

Rest in peace Besty.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 5:28 AM PST - 70 comments

Best of the web: spitting net-casting diving writing smiling wrestling (mpg) painting myth blood-craving gravity-defying
posted by dhruva at 11:04 PM PST - 29 comments

Happy Thanksgiving. Here is a gallery of photos of monkeys dressed as jockeys, riding other non-monkey animals.
posted by jonson at 7:52 PM PST - 39 comments

The Box [low-fi mid-nineties MPEG-1; music here]
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 7:33 PM PST - 40 comments

turkey tryptophan wont make you sleepy
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 2:38 PM PST - 32 comments

UK Gags Media on Bush-Blair row over bombing al-Jazeera. In 2004 Bush and Blair got into a shouting match over bombing Al-Jazeera in Qatar, as Bush, in his pointy-headed non-wisdom, ached to do. The bombing didn't happen, and now the Blair gov't is threatening jounalists with prison if they print the story. One British journalist replies.
posted by telstar at 2:09 PM PST - 94 comments

Latin Podcasting is now available featuring recordings of neo-Latin colloquia saved as mp3 files. From Willard McCarty on the Humanist Discussion List: "So far there's only the Prima Salutatio of 3 minutes 21 seconds, but more is promised." They've already registered the project with the iTunes Podcast Directory and Bloglines. Future plans include adding captions.
posted by leo at 12:30 PM PST - 3 comments

"The artist would perch himself on a bench in the town square, sketchbook and pencil in hand. In between doodles of his beloved wife and 'Miss Kitty', the pet cat, he'd fill page after page with the other subjects that consumed him: The panhandlers who sat under elm trees hungering for pocket change as lovers strolled to dinner and children played on the grass ... Sometimes, the vagrants he studied would notice the pencil and book and hesitantly approach. He'd share his drawing. They'd talk. Sooner or later, the artist would brave the question: Would you happen to know my son?"
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:15 AM PST - 15 comments

Thanksgiving sucks. The English went on setting fire to wigwams of the village. They burned village after village to the ground. As one of the leading theologians of his day, Dr. Cotton Mather put it: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day." And Cotton Mather, clutching his bible, spurred the English to slaughter more Indians in the name of Christianity.
posted by j-urb at 10:49 AM PST - 55 comments

Thanksgiving Dinner Buzzword Bingo helps make tonight's dinner with family a little more palatable. Print out cards for you and your other cool relative (spouse, sibling) and check off a box every time one of these situations happens. First to get 5 in a row wins. Remember to shout "Bingo!" at the table.
posted by FeldBum at 10:19 AM PST - 12 comments

"I have been framed in a capital murder case." Ruben Cantu was executed in Texas in 1993 after being convicted of a 1984 San Antonio murder. A Houston Chronicle investigation suggests he was innocent. His co-defendant and the only eyewitness now say he was innocent and the judge, prosecutor, head juror and defense attorney acknowlege the case was built on omissions and lies. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 9:43 AM PST - 30 comments

The Web's First Shaggy Dog Story Archive Fuckwit says: skip lengthy intro and go direct to archives at margin and click away for mucho chortles on this grand holiday weekend.
posted by Postroad at 9:28 AM PST - 10 comments

Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe. Recently psychologists doing research on the minds of infants have discovered two related facts that may account for this phenomenon. One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Which leads to the question ...

Is God an Accident ?
This is a fascinating essary from the current Atlantic reprinted apparently in full for non-subscribers
posted by y2karl at 9:13 AM PST - 232 comments

A Thanksgiving Prayer. (QuickTime, 7.6 mb) From Reality Studio's excellent collection of Wm. Burroughs multimedia.
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:07 AM PST - 10 comments

Happy Thanksgiving! [Drunk Driving Filter]
posted by phaedon at 8:27 AM PST - 19 comments

Tools for Coping.
posted by sgt.serenity at 2:18 AM PST - 23 comments

Henri Giraud was the first to land a plane on Mont Aiguille [41.4 MB mpg], on August 27th 1957 and on Mont Blanc [32.2 MB mpg] on June 23rd 1960. [more inside]
posted by tellurian at 11:05 PM PST - 6 comments

Forget the Career. My Parents Need Me at Home.
posted by homunculus at 9:23 PM PST - 45 comments

ArtFilter: Treat yourself to the photomontages of Winston Smith. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79 at 9:14 PM PST - 10 comments

A good film to watch BEFORE you bust out that turkey deep fryer for Thanksgiving tomorrow [12.7MB mpg file]. I've never eaten this delicacy nor seen one of these things used but after a moment's thought, it's not surprising just how dangerous they are. Be safe tomorrow, ye deep-fry eaters. [via Bifurcated Rivets]
posted by scarabic at 8:49 PM PST - 84 comments

Short film of climber Dan Osman scaling Lover's Leap in California without ropes, racing over 400 vertical feet in just under four & a half minutes. Link goes to direct wmv download. Having never heard of Osman before, I was shocked to find out that his daredevil ways led to an early death when a rope snapped while Osman was performing a modfied form of bungie jumping in Yosemite back in 1999.
posted by jonson at 7:16 PM PST - 78 comments

Typophile speculates. We have several symbols in english that stand for words commonly used enough that simplifying their written forms (@, &, %) became common. What would have happened if chat-speak had become common before computers, people started writing them in shorthand, and type foundries realized that we needed a Helvitica Medium Bold version of the WTF ligature?
posted by eriko at 6:26 PM PST - 40 comments

China isn't known for being open about most things, including the spread of deadly diseases. (Many will remember China's original attempt to cover up SARS. As the International Society for Infectious Diseases reports, a prominent WHO virologist has made a claim that China has now experienced at least 300 human avian flu deaths and is actively attempting to cover this information up. "We are systematically deceived," he is reported to have said. "At least 5 medical co-workers who should be reporting on the situation in the provinces were arrested, and [other] publication-willing researchers were threatened with punishments."
posted by chakalakasp at 5:56 PM PST - 27 comments

The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara is a digital collection of over 5000 digitized cylinder recordings from the turn of the 20th century. Cylinders were the first commercially-produced sound recordings. The UCSB collection is quite large and can be streamed or downloaded. The tracks range from instrumental and vocal music to "old-timey music" to vaudeville routine (including some which are quite offensive by modern standards- see this disclaimer at the bottom of this page). For the casual listener, try Cylinder radio, which is a stream of some highlights of the collection.
posted by JMOZ at 4:35 PM PST - 18 comments

"Tell me more of Elemenstoring, Dogus." From the tiny seed of a news post, a new world has taken form. Too bad it never existed.
posted by Loser at 4:07 PM PST - 12 comments

Some of you might remember Bill Harris, who credited his "miracle kitty" named, well, Miss Kitty, for saving his life during Hurricane Katrina. He died today at age 63. Video of their reunion here. (imbedded .asf)
posted by Cyrano at 3:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Woven interiors. More about the artist here [flash].
posted by Armitage Shanks at 1:09 PM PST - 8 comments

32 Hours 7 Minutes is all it took to drive from New York to LA. via Gizmodo
posted by blue_beetle at 1:01 PM PST - 43 comments

Canada boots out its government: the Non-confidence Vote. A binding, non-confidence vote is being tabled and the minority parties -- which collectively hold a majority of seats -- agree to support it. It's also a bit historical: it has been more than a century since a general, binding non-confidence vote has been tabled all by itself, unattached to a big-issue item like the budget.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:42 PM PST - 124 comments

EastSouthWestNorth is a breath of fresh air. Looking for Chinese news in English is pretty frustrating. There is Xinhua, the CPC mouthpiece, and it's outlets like the China Daily. The fluffy Beijing Today isn't much better, geared more towards vapid expats. For an interesting take on China from a Chinese perspective, EastSouthNorthWest translates news from independent Chinese sources to give a picture of China inaccessible to the foreign ear. Everything from religious and press freedom to magical man tubers is covered. EastSouthWestNorth previously discussed here, as a much different site.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 12:41 PM PST - 6 comments

SHMUPS! aka 2D Scrolling Shoot-em-ups. Shmups.com is dedicated to this classic genre, from ancient history (Space Invaders, Tempest) to grandfather games (R-Type II, 1941) to golden age shmups (Tyrian, Blazing Star) to modern classics (Radiant Silvergun, Mars Matrix, Ikaruga). Most aren't for the PC, unfortunately, but that's what Mame and other emulators (mac too) are for. As for roms, can't help you there. For PC enthusiasts, Shoot the Core's PC Shmup listing is the most complete I've ever seen, with many links to download as well. This Thanksgiving weekend, what better to do in your food coma than sit back and blast through a few games in the most enduring video game genre of all time? *CAUTION! These sites took up five hours of my time last night and I downloaded 42 games.*
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:08 PM PST - 33 comments

GiftBox is a new web application that allows you to keep track of gifts you've given to others, plan to give to others, or that people have given to you. It lets you create wishlists and send thank-you e-cards. All info is password-protected, and their privacy policy seems better than most. Free for up to three holidays, or $19/year for unlimited holidays. (I am not affiliated with the site in any way; I just admire it and thought that, with the holiday season upon us, others might like it, too.)
posted by cerebus19 at 11:44 AM PST - 14 comments

The treadmill bike. "Take your favorite gym workout outside! Be sure to watch the video.
posted by fixedgear at 11:29 AM PST - 31 comments

Glossophobia aka Lalophobia or, more commonly, stage fright is allegedly the biggest fear for Americans. If you experience it, you are hardly alone. Many well known performers, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Barbara Streisand, Donnie Osmond, Dusty Springfield and Andy Partridge of XTC, share your fear. Indeed, all kinds of performers suffer from it, including musicians, jugglers, and public speakers. Many people have (sometimes contradictory) advice about overcoming your fear of speaking in public. However, in a pinch, one can always use a Beta Blocker. Drinking booze, however, is not frequently recomended.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:13 AM PST - 17 comments

Does your Web 2.0 service check out? First Create Your Own Web 2.0 company, making sure to leverage all key items on the Web 2.0 Checklist. Then add a Goopy Logo. After you've gone to Perpetual Betacast, Validate, Validate, Validate, lest other blogospherizens play Bingo on you.
posted by brownpau at 9:29 AM PST - 16 comments

Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2005. In a speech given on November 10th, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales introduced proposed legislation [pdf] that would go one step further in criminalizing copyright infringement. The RIAA thinks its a good idea.
posted by ND¢ at 8:47 AM PST - 35 comments

We love you best when you're snarky, Roger. Perhaps the best reviews from the venerable Roger Ebert are when he gives 1 or fewer stars to a movie (a good example being his review of Just Friends, which comes out this weekend). He has more to say about the industry, the process of film making, and the way people think when they pay to see these things. Now, we've discussed Ebert before, but it's worth a read of his reviews by searching for movies rated from Zero to One star.
posted by thanotopsis at 7:50 AM PST - 81 comments

Happy Thanksgiving 2005 -scientifically speaking, also the last Day of the Oil Age ...according to Kenneth Deffeyes, geologist and Emeritus Professor at Princeton University. .."I wind up saying that world oil is going to peak in production on Thanksgiving Day, 2005." Drink a toast to some of the other of Earth's horn O' plenty resources as we herald in the Green Age. ...sure, this is sensational, but perhaps blog worthy...
posted by celerystick at 7:41 AM PST - 39 comments

Mating Leopard Slugs entwine - one of the untold wonders of the animal kingdom captured on video.... The BBC gets up close and personal with Life in the Undergrowth in their new wildlife documentary. A must see for any animal, insect or David Attenborough fan... (If the main vid link doesn't work for you try it from here - realplayer needed)
posted by 0bvious at 7:22 AM PST - 32 comments

What is it? A collection of mystery photos where you try to figure out what these strange objects are. via Grow-a-Brain
posted by caddis at 7:07 AM PST - 13 comments

NewsCloud. A new way to read the Washington Post.
posted by srboisvert at 6:36 AM PST - 17 comments

Dreamlines
posted by Tlogmer at 5:28 AM PST - 26 comments

The world's first strike at a Starbucks reportedly occurred today in Auckland, New Zealand. Sure, it was only an hour-long wildcat strike; but like the multinationals keep telling us, it's a start.
posted by newscouch at 10:38 PM PST - 51 comments

Own an iPod/Nano? These uber-kool mittens rock!!! Cozy and stylish! I want a pair... and I don't even own an iPod! heh! Comes with knitting instructions [PDF]! Su-weeet!
posted by mrhappysad at 10:09 PM PST - 33 comments

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel
posted by y2karl at 9:51 PM PST - 133 comments

Congotronics! Mawangu Mingiedi, 72, a musician and truck driver from Kinshasa, was simply trying to allow the music of his street band, Konono No. 1, be heard over the traffic and street noise, but when he fashioned home-made amplifiers out of junkyard parts he created something raw and distorted with a sound all its own (quicktime). (via MonkeySARS, where an MP3 awaits you)
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:55 PM PST - 39 comments

Cheap oil for the masses. "Officials from Venezuela and Massachusetts have signed a deal providing cheap heating oil to low-income homes in the US state. The fuel will be sold at some 40% below market prices to thousands of homes over the winter months. Local congressman William Delahunt described the deal as "an expression of humanitarianism at its very best". [Newsfilter] Why do you hate America, Hugo?
posted by wilful at 7:09 PM PST - 135 comments

Bran-Man is not really like the well-known and oft-linked StorTroopers, or the equally-ubiquitous Lego Mini-Mizer, or any number of "make-a-likeness-of-yourself" DollMakers that are out there. No handy-dandy online Java interface with the Bran-Man -- you must needs download a template and make the art yourself (within some minimal guidelines). Some of the results are delightful. (Some are mildly NSFW.) Via Drawn!
posted by Gator at 6:52 PM PST - 2 comments

Breath Capture is a patent pending method and apparatus for collecting human breath as a keepsake display. Bonus: if your loved one can't be near you because you are surrounded by Vampires, the BreathCapture pendant can be worn as a crucifix. Before you mock this product, take this simple test.
posted by jonson at 6:11 PM PST - 35 comments

Huge "Do it with friends" Greenhouse, Medium DIY PVC Greenhouse[pdf], Small DIY PVC Greenhouse. Now make some money with that greenhouse.
posted by bigmusic at 5:50 PM PST - 11 comments

Alive in Joburg. Large Quicktime via Protein
posted by atom128 at 5:35 PM PST - 20 comments

Remember the JCB Song? [Warning: Flash and Heart Warming Cuteness] Well they're going for a much coveted Christmas Number 1! Their single is released December 12th in the UK.
Non-UK residents may be unfamiliar with the Christmas Number 1 phenomenon - Being #1 in the music charts on Christmas Day - guaranteeing near-constant air-play and exposure. Disclaimer: Not affiliated with the band. Just sick of rubbish xmas #1s.
posted by lemonfridge at 5:34 PM PST - 22 comments

RIP, Sam. Sam, previously discussed here, has gone to meet his maker. (Yes, the site could also win World's Ugliest Website, but have some sympathy, would you please?) And yes, he's real. The blog is a little more informative, and better looking...a little.
posted by OhPuhLeez at 5:05 PM PST - 32 comments

Anarchist rocker and conservative assembly member unite to fight drugs? Well, one drug anyway. He hates it so much he wants it legalized. It shouldn't come as a suprise that Lemmy Kilminster - frontman for Motorhead (legendary Guinness-certified loudest band on earth), former editor of his high school paper, former roadie for Jimi Hendrix, and tinnitus awareness spokesman, would speak out against heroin. "The only drug that I ever saw kill people was heroin. Killed my girlfriend and a lot of my generation. It's the only drug I hate." - Lemmy. But some folks think the nearly 60 year old rocker is not someone "the kids" will listen to.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:57 PM PST - 38 comments

Abu Ali guilty of terror plot. A Virginia jury has found Ahmed Omar Abu Ali guilty of terrorism related crimes. The prosecution charged he provided material support to Al Qaeda (pdf). His defenders claim his confession while in Saudi custody was obtained through torture. Does the goal of preventing terrorism justify relying on the Saudi's questionable interrogation methods?
posted by justkevin at 3:40 PM PST - 11 comments

Tejas to Sony BMG: "Reach for th' sky, varmint. Now turn around reeeeal slow. And keep them hands where ah can see 'em." The rest of the necktie party is forming up over here. Popcorn?
posted by jfuller at 3:16 PM PST - 30 comments

Free land. Northwest North Dakota has an opportunity for 5,000 people. Not the first 5,000... the right 5,000. odds are, you are not a candidate for nw north dakota. you have succumbed to the cities. all of your pleasure must be provided and you gladly stand in long lines to receive them. but if you are of those who is wondering what they are doing in that line, continue this may be the journey you have been waiting for, but had no idea where the line was to get tickets. it's ok; there are no lines in nw north dakota./small> They're doing it in Kansas, too.
posted by Kwantsar at 2:25 PM PST - 49 comments

Pro-Ad Blog is a website for bloggers who choose to put advertising on their blogs. Aparently an answer to Ad-Free Blogs, this bunny seems to be very happy for the monthly check from Google Adsense.
posted by neo at 2:18 PM PST - 24 comments

California holds a "No Hearing Hearing" on Diebold certification. "In June, over 200 people traveled to Sacramento to voice their concerns at a public hearing before a panel of advisors to the Secretary of State on voting systems. Since then, every scheduled meeting of the Voting Systems Panel has been cancelled, and now the Secretary has simply disbanded the VSP without notice, without hearings, without any type of due process." This isn't the only jurisdiction in which Diebold is attempting to circumvent legal requirements - in North Carolina they filed for and received a broad exemption from new disclosure rules recently passed into law. The EFF are now suing to force Diebold to comply with the law. As if that wasn't enough, an official Certification Test (PDF) for Diebold's Optical Scan voting machines confirms an earlier threat analysis test (PDF) that the memory cards on these machines run uncertified and arbitrary executable code, a charge that Diebold has vigorously denied.
posted by dinsdale at 1:58 PM PST - 29 comments

What's so extreme about Extreme Sports? According to the ads, Extreme Sports are the antidote to our safety-first, shrink-wrapped world. In reality, sports like skateboarding and mountain biking are more about the appearance of risk and marketing-driven terms like 'carving out your own path' rather than any particular danger. The reality of these Extreme Sports? Many are actually safer than traditional sports.
posted by fet at 12:40 PM PST - 59 comments

Does "A desert place. Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches." just not satisfy your literary mind? You might enjoy a prose version of "Macbeth" instead (or some other adaptations of William's plays). The concept is not new; indeed, Charles and Mary Lamb publsihed in 1807 twenty adaptations of Shakespeare's plays designed for children and those of us who aren't fans of the iamb.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 12:04 PM PST - 35 comments

If you're going to run a Ferrari repairshop, you want to make sure your softcore is classy enough. Italian tire manufacture, Pirelli "offers you the unique opportunity to view many photos shot for the calendars but never published in the definitive editions, as well as know about the artistic directors, backstage, models, photographers and the story of the most awaited calendar in the world." So it's not just about gorgeous women in various states on undress, it's art damnit. (NSFW, Flash)
posted by Keith Talent at 11:42 AM PST - 29 comments

Audio link to the Inaugural Address delivered January 20, 1961.
posted by squalor at 11:27 AM PST - 18 comments

A stunning victory for bearded, radical software programmers and snarky liberals everywhere The conservative blogging company Open Source Media has changed their name back to "pajamas media". [Official Press release about this - ed.]
posted by delmoi at 10:58 AM PST - 23 comments

Multiplicative Magic Squares
posted by vacapinta at 9:33 AM PST - 10 comments

Thank you, Mr. Sinclair is a three part tribute to Lister Sinclair starting tonight, part of celebrating 40 years of Ideas on CBC Radio. Only a small selection of Ideas programs are available for download, which is a travesty, but the current program can be heard bia streaming audio from many time zones. [more inside]
posted by Chuckles at 9:13 AM PST - 6 comments

The Right Brothers have a brand new single out, "Bush Was Right". I was doing my morning web surfing when I was confronted with this bad boy via Moistworks. Oh my tender little ears. "Democracy is on the way, hitting like a tidal wave." Can it possibly be real? At least one person loves 'em.
posted by dougny at 8:46 AM PST - 88 comments

In 2001 America destroyed the Kabul offices of al-Jazeera with two smartbombs; officials said it was an accident. In 2003 America destroyed the Baghdad offices of al-Jazeera with missiles; officials said it was an accident. Now, two British civil servants are on trial for leaking a memo revealing that Bush intended to bomb al-Jazeera... at their headquarters in allied Qatar.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:28 AM PST - 154 comments

17 Minutes is a performance and video blog project by new media artist Chris Barr. It's about suicide. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79 at 7:24 AM PST - 7 comments

General Motors is cutting 9% of their workforce. Some fear it is too little, too late. Chicago Tribune fear this is only the beginning. Detroit News has an FAQ for those affected. A sad day for the US automotive industry indeed.
posted by SharQ at 7:09 AM PST - 79 comments

READY TO ROLL? " . .Carnival produces $900 million in annual spending and more than $50 million in direct tax benefits to government. " New Orleans depends on tourism , now more than ever before. but are they really ready to host Mardi Gras in 06? What are locals saying? This will make the 150th Carnival the city has seen, but should it take place?
posted by nola at 7:08 AM PST - 10 comments

Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth Detailed argument from the Global Policy Foundation, et al, that the use of Production Sharing Agreements - "quite common in countries with small oil reserves and/or high extraction costs" - is inappropriate for Iraq and effectively robs the Iraqi people by ignoring other, more equitable options.
posted by mediareport at 6:57 AM PST - 22 comments

If the universe is a hologram and the healthy human brain a valve of consciousness then where'd this mental infinity come from? Are we simply living the simulacrum? Or does Pi protect us all, forever, infinitely?
posted by 0bvious at 1:38 AM PST - 39 comments

NES Synth covers of classic songs by those goons at Something Awful. Previous NES music stuff: 8bitpeoples' "Axel F" and "The 8 Bits of Christmas", The Video Game Pianist and his famous videos, A Capella NES Themes, SMW Soundtrack, etc. On the Marimba, too, just a few minutes ago. (via BB...via waxy)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:24 PM PST - 35 comments

Friday fun (HST)... Pure sweet insanity...somebody has been playing too many video games...Semi-pro probably totally illegal hi jinks on Swedens highways and byways...andrenaline rush just watching this...and oh yeah its official... Google owns the world...(warning embedded 14 minute video....) and ..umm...you can buy tires here... tires.com ...you can catch glimpses of the bikes speedo that I assume are in KPH...
posted by Muirwylde at 11:17 PM PST - 55 comments

There's been alot of discussion, both in the mainstream media and in a plethora of links here on MeFi, about the Christian Right's view on the issues of gay marriage and abortion. But what of The Church of Scientology? Well, as it turns out, they're not big fans. But much like Christianity, there is apparently a 'moderate' Scientology as well, and at least one ex-member argues that Scientology has no strong edicts in regards to gay marriage. An interesting insight into how a big ticket issue is considered and debated within one of the world's major cults.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:48 PM PST - 34 comments

American Edit A reinterpretation of Green Day's "American Idiot"
posted by ColdChef at 9:41 PM PST - 25 comments

Dulce et Decorum Est Kurt Vonnegut was interviewed by an Australian newspaper, which took the quote out of context and completely missed the poetic reference Vonnegut was making with the comment , thereby generating what will likely be a firestorm of negative publicity for Vonnegut. (A blogger's negative reaction was Farked.) I am sure that Metafilter readers would spot the reference, but having been Farked and misquoted on ABC (Australian TV), Vonnegut is probably in as much trouble as Terrell Owens.
posted by notmtwain at 8:28 PM PST - 80 comments

The Cult of Zaoui. Algerian Ahmed Zaoui arrived in New Zealand in December 2002, having been convicted in Belgium and France (in absentia) for terrorism-related offences, on a false passport requesting refugee status. He was imprisoned for two years (spending ten months in solitary confinement) as a result of the Security Intelligence Service issuing a security risk certificate, before the NZ Supreme Court granted him bail. He now lives in a Dominican Priory in Auckland under curfew, but manages (accompanied by his crusading young lawyer) to give public lectures, offer eulogies, publish a book of poetry, appear in a music video (wmv), sing onstage at the NZ Music Awards, inspire a fund-raising cookbook "Conversations over Couscous", and has become (depending on your viewpoint) a reluctant or carefully cultivated celebrity.
posted by szechuan at 5:39 PM PST - 13 comments

There's a new Bitey of Brackenwood cartoon. (flash, music) Ex Disney cartoonist Adam Phillips has taken flash animation to a new level in works like The Hitchhiker and the two previous Bitey of Brackenwood shorts, available here, both of which have won numerous awards, including TGSNT and Flashforward.
posted by mygothlaundry at 3:55 PM PST - 17 comments

Donavan Freberg (son of Stan) appeared in Encyclopædia Britannica's 1980s commercials and became something of a pop culture icon (and target). But before pitching reference books, he had a surprisingly eccentric childhood, not even getting a name until he was five. In the meantime, he has done other things and, of course, started blogging. Also, he likes the ladies (NSFW).
posted by tregoweth at 3:06 PM PST - 21 comments

Folder Share is an online service that synchronizes multiple pcs, or just specific folders in multiple pcs, by creating a localized p2p network. You could use it, for example, to keep your work & home mp3 collections identical. Until recently, the service cost $50/year, thanks to corporate largesse (and doubtless, evil intentions on the part of the new owner, Microsoft), it's now free. Unless you place some value on not letting Microsoft catalog what's on your PC.
posted by jonson at 2:50 PM PST - 27 comments

Women are prohibited from being assigned to combat roles, but some still find themselves on the front lines. "Before this war, people only imagined how women would react in combat roles and thought that they couldn't handle it ... Now we see that women are bonding with the men and not going to pieces." Also, an interview with Kayla Williams, author of 'Love My Rifle More Than You'.
posted by Alison at 2:20 PM PST - 40 comments

Suicide by exterminator. "Not since Cock Robin has the death of a tiny bird caused such emotion". An endangered bird killed for "knocking over a few dominoes for a game". Granted, 23,000 dominoes in a world record attempt taking over a month to set up, but still, less than 1% of the final goal. Geenstijl.nl offered a bounty of 5000 euri for anyone who "willen saboteren" but it is now too late. klik heir for a tv clip of the record.
posted by dness2 at 2:02 PM PST - 44 comments

Some pictures you are sure to like.
posted by hortense at 12:40 PM PST - 86 comments

The Big Cover-Up: "Where once the sight of a fully hidden woman was restricted to a few traditionalist communities, nowadays it is not unusual to see the niqab on high streets throughout the major cities of England and in a number of smaller towns. Just a decade ago, this form of enshrouding was seen as an unambiguous sign of female oppression and feudal custom, but now it is frequently referred to as an expression of religious identity, individual rights and even, in some cases, female emancipation."
Veil: The view from the inside: "I was in the same Metro carriage as a nun and I smiled at our similarity of dress. Hers was the symbol of her devotion to God, as is that of a Muslimah. I often wonder why people say nothing about the veil of the Catholic nun but criticize vehemently the veil of a Muslimah, regarding it as a symbol of` 'terrorism' and 'oppression.'"
Politics of the veil: "Before I wore a headscarf I always slumped with my head looking down; now I walk straight and I look up at people. It's not that they accept me more than they did before, it's just that I don't care anymore how they regard me."
(Europe's Burqa Wars, Niqabs in the Classroom?)
posted by heatherann at 12:31 PM PST - 213 comments

5 of the top men in their field (Quicktime Movie embedded) A non-stop thrill ride! A spectacle of sound, and now sight. Their voices are very familiar, and yet it's odd to see their faces.
posted by jefeweiss at 12:02 PM PST - 28 comments

Rare photographs of 60's Greenwich Village by Robert Otter. A genuine labor of love project, New York Tenor saxophonist/composer Ned Otter has compiled the work of his father Robert, a gifted photographer who passed away in 1986. Spanning 1962 through 1972, Otter's photographs capture moments from a Greenwich Village of the 60's that seem both inexplicably foreign and timelessly familiar. via alex
posted by rodney stewart at 11:55 AM PST - 23 comments

Horrible acts of human behavior. Via: First Rule.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 11:26 AM PST - 159 comments

Glenn Mitchell passes away. If you don't live in the Dallas area or listen to KERA "on the sly," as Glenn used to say, you have no idea who Glenn Mitchell was. If he had lived a few months longer, you would have heard him on XM Radio starting in early 2006. Possibly the best interviewer of our age. He left us far to early. Check out the forum to see what he meant to his listeners. Rest in peace, Glenn.
posted by Doohickie at 11:07 AM PST - 18 comments

Quitting France: French Jews are leaving the country in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism. They are moving to Israel, the United States, and increasingly, Montreal -- where the mostly English-speaking Jewish community is preparing for its greatest demographic change in decades. An interesting if slightly anecdotal look at the situation for Jewish people in France from Canada's National Post.

Part 1 - Barricaded in Paris, Part 2 - Taking leave of 'the fear', Part 3 tomorrow deals with the impact of the influx of French Jews in Montreal.
posted by loquax at 10:32 AM PST - 67 comments

Ka-BOOM! :: A Dictionary of Comicbook Words on Historical Principles, Based on the Latest Conclusions of the Most Dubious Wordologists & Comprising Many Hundreds of New Words which Modern Literature, Science & Philosophy have Neglected to Acknowledge as True, Proper & Useful Terms & Which Have Never Before Been Published in Any Lexicon
posted by anastasiav at 9:37 AM PST - 17 comments

Last Survivor of 1914 Christmas Truce Dies in Scotland
posted by IndigoJones at 9:00 AM PST - 17 comments

So You Wannabe A Shaman, Huh? Or got a Spiritual/Shamanic Crisis? Trouble with Mystical and Psychotic Perceptions of Reality? Some tips on How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later may help. Maybe just go watch Predator, with a Shaman's view. Or skip the lot and Transcend Duality.
posted by MetaMonkey at 8:45 AM PST - 32 comments

A Dutch television producer, who previously brought you Big Brother, now produces a show for British commercial television were you witness the training of three lucky guys to become astronauts and their subsequent launch into earth's orbit for 4 days. They are trained in a Russian facility and are launched with a Russian rocket. There is only one catch: it's all fake. When they leave their orbiter to make a space walk they will be welcomed by their family and friends, and find out they never left England.
If I were one of the contestants I'd go postal after this. But of course these contestants were specially selected to be prone to suggestion, so they will probably just forever hide in corner so they won't hear the constant mockery..
posted by kika at 8:30 AM PST - 69 comments

SwarmSketch - Collective sketching of the collective consciousness. Requires Flash. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79 at 7:11 AM PST - 10 comments

this i believe: there is no god. the inimitable, outspoken penn jillette (of penn and teller fame) takes a hell of a brave stand in today's climate of blind faith.
posted by ab3 at 6:58 AM PST - 247 comments

Who needs bunnies when you have kids to test on? "Protections for Subjects in Human Research," a newly proposed EPA rule allows for: for government and industry scientists to treat children as human guinea pigs in chemical experiments in the following situations: 1. Children who "cannot be reasonably consulted," such as those that are mentally handicapped or orphaned newborns may be tested on. With permission from the institution or guardian in charge of the individual, the child may be exposed to chemicals for the sake of research. 2. Parental consent forms are not necessary for testing on children who have been neglected or abused. 3. Chemical studies on any children outside of the U.S. are acceptable. And don't miss the Q&A section below. Sec. 26.408 of the EPA document is where you'll find the provisions and waivers mentioned (it refers to other sections absent from the document, weirdly).
posted by amberglow at 6:49 AM PST - 43 comments

Diggdot.us Digg, slashdot, and del.icio.us/popular - this is a constant browsing cycle for us. So why not combine them into a unified format without all the extra chrome? We can eliminate dupes and add some extra niceities.
posted by srboisvert at 6:37 AM PST - 22 comments

Got that snow, man? Hottest holiday shirt is a snowman. But activists alarmed by hidden message of t-shirt. Meanwhile schools expel evil frosty.
posted by dingobully at 6:23 AM PST - 34 comments

Students shape Ferrari's future - The 4 winners of the Ferrari design competition have been announced. If these designs are anything to go by, there are exciting times ahead. Now if I could only win the lottery so I could afford one of these...
posted by SharQ at 6:06 AM PST - 15 comments

From 24 hours of movies to 3 hour naps between 36 hour shifts on an ocean trawler, sleep deprivation can be just another narcotic.
posted by holloway at 3:44 AM PST - 20 comments

Galapagos tortoises look like friendly dinosaurs. One of them just turned 175.
posted by leapingsheep at 3:29 AM PST - 20 comments

Zarqawi denounced by his own family, tribe.
posted by toma at 3:00 AM PST - 19 comments

The Lucifer Project. "This is a documentation and study of the feasibility of creating a sustainable fusion reaction from an initial fission reaction on Saturn caused by a significant quantity of Plutonium-238 being inserted deep into the atmosphere." [via: del.icio.us/blackbeltjones]
posted by gsb at 2:33 AM PST - 33 comments

Need to know what a toad sounds like? How about an agogo or siskin? Findsounds is here to help.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 11:11 PM PST - 7 comments

Leftist Propaganda video (embedded wmv) and quite well done!
posted by blue_beetle at 10:00 PM PST - 31 comments

Sharon to quit, form own party Sharon threatens to quit own party, Israelis, jews, human beings rejoice.
posted by mk1gti at 9:13 PM PST - 56 comments

All hail the King of Fuh Since 1965, Stephen "Brute Force" Friedland has been a professional blower of minds. He began his musical career penning the first existential/psychedelic girl group record, graduated to tapeworms and sat-upon sandwiches, then was personally signed by George Harrison as an Apple artist with the sly and ultimately unreleasable "King of Fuh." (Turn it inside out. There, you see. MP3.) But oddball songs of love and linguistic quirkiness are just the tip of Brutie's iceberg. In 1969, he swam half way across the Bering Strait in a symbolic plea to warm up the cold war. He does deliciously absurd stand-up prop comedy interspersed with song. And his eyebrows are a work of art in their own right. So all hail the Fuh King, who has never compromised his deliriously batty vision, and at this point assuredly never will.
posted by Scram at 9:03 PM PST - 8 comments

75-year-old jewel thief looks back. "When Doris Payne went to work, she stepped into her fancy dress, high heels and donned a wide-brimmed hat. Her creamy, mocha skin was made up just so, her handbag always designer."
posted by 445supermag at 8:32 PM PST - 18 comments

I want some m#%$fu#%in chocolate milk! [google video - course language] If he played with his mother, he'd never talk to her like that. Maybe the kid is addicted, maybe he's just a spoil sport.
posted by bigmusic at 6:45 PM PST - 101 comments

Sunday Java Fun. Doodle with your mouse, fun for 10 seconds, guaranteed.
posted by delmoi at 6:38 PM PST - 22 comments

The Misadventures of the Wholesome Twins. A Musical Parody. Song titles here. My favourite moment from the website is in the cast list -- Courtney Love (et al): Robyn K. Pilarski.
posted by feelinglistless at 4:32 PM PST - 3 comments

New Orleans Today : It's Worse Than You Think. Neighborhoods are still dark, garbage piles up on the street, and bodies are still being found.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 4:25 PM PST - 68 comments

Discovering Sherlock Holmes. From January through April 2006, Stanford University will be republishing a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, "just as they were originally printed and illustrated in The Strand Magazine." (These pages have images of some of the original covers.) You can subscribe to receive paper facsimiles of the original magazine by mail or be notified when the PDFs are published online. The project is a followup to their Discovering Dickens project, which republished Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and Hard Times. [via MonkeyFilter]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:17 PM PST - 19 comments

Curveball's motive, CIA officials said, was not to start a war. He simply was seeking a German visa.
You would think that there would be some serious repercussions for "mishandling" intelligence used to start a war.
Then again it's not like this is really news (dated 4/2004)
A different angle previously discussed here on Metafilter
posted by threehundredandsixty at 3:47 PM PST - 12 comments

B - Lite He is white. He is blind. He is a rapper with an old school sound. And he may worship Satan. Sea Cruise is my fave but MeFiers will probably dig Wall - Mart. Mp3s on right.
posted by vronsky at 3:40 PM PST - 22 comments

If you're looking for one of those famous, big-eyed alien abductors, try looking on the sides of milk cartons. The UFO cultural moment in America is long since over, having gone out with the Clintons and grunge rock in the 90s. An interesting take on how the internet effected UFO culture.
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:41 PM PST - 37 comments

A blog invitational - Jazz group The Bad Plus came up with a list of conceptually similar authors and bands. They now invite readers to add their own submissions. The type of similarity between the band and the author is up to you: examples from the band's original list include Tom Waits/Charles Bukowski, Jewel/Danielle Steele, and Rush/J.R.R. Tolkien. Here is the first set of fan submissions, and here is another blog that is participating.
posted by ism at 1:06 PM PST - 61 comments

Locked doors thwart escape. Irked by a reporter who told [Bush] he seemed to be "off his game" at a Beijing public appearance, President George W. Bush sought to make a hasty exit from a news conference but was thwarted by locked doors. The look on his face is priceless.
posted by SirOmega at 12:53 PM PST - 91 comments

Pioneering instrumental-rock guitarist Link Wray - one of the original rockabilly artists, credited with having invented the "power chord", which has become the basis for modern rock and alternative music - died this week at the age of 76. You'd probably know him from his song 'Rumble', used on the 'Pulp Fiction' soundtrack. The English-speaking media hasn't picked up on the story yet, but various blogs, the Spanish and Danish press - translation here - and various music messageboards were all over the story 24 hours ago.
posted by tapeguy at 11:08 AM PST - 45 comments

Chokeback Mountain The newest gay love story is also the oldest straight one.
posted by halekon at 10:33 AM PST - 58 comments

DriveTime. Live in Boston? Need a ride to (or from) work? You could be a guest on Ravi Jain's weekly video blog/talk show/commute. Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, (QT .mov)
posted by steef at 10:29 AM PST - 5 comments

Animals in Japanese Paintings and Prints Organized into three online essays - traditional - realist - and imaginative art. Among the menagerie: monkey - tiger - eagle - camels - praying mantis - fox and puppy.
posted by carter at 10:23 AM PST - 5 comments

Hungry? You will be.
posted by brautigan at 9:39 AM PST - 40 comments

Alaska Museum of Fancy Knots
posted by anastasiav at 8:16 AM PST - 17 comments

Herring break wind to communicate, study suggests. (audio)
posted by 31d1 at 8:08 AM PST - 30 comments

All your semantic web are belong to google? The implications of Google Base on the fabled semantic web.
posted by MetaMonkey at 6:20 AM PST - 25 comments

Precious Pet or Tax-Payers' Property? Severely wounded in Iraq, sergeant wants to take $18,000 of Air Force equipment home on leash.
posted by orthogonality at 5:28 AM PST - 53 comments

Russian Insider. Somehow we'll try to become your guiding light on history and the future of the Russian animation. [via The Cartoonist]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:04 AM PST - 4 comments

The Dictionary of the Khazars "For all its delights, for all the structural novelty and the comic inventiveness of the imagery, it must be said there is something rather light and airy about this book. It is fun to chase down all the linkages between entries; but as they are conjoined more by the bubbling repetition of motifs and the requirements of the formal devices than by real narrative event or development, it is, as Mr. Pavic himself suggests, a bit like working a crossword puzzle."
posted by dhruva at 1:53 AM PST - 9 comments

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, but the fight over his legacy lives on, 30 years later. Protestors from both sides demonstrated in advance of a commemoration service at Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, the grandiose monument built by political prisoners that now holds Franco's tomb. (For those who read Spanish, El Pais has more; the paper itself was created to promote the transition to democracy after Franco's death.)
posted by holgate at 11:44 PM PST - 12 comments

What/who is silktide and how do they get these results? I submitted Metafilter to Silktide on a whim and now I'm wondering what tools/rubric(s) are these folks using and how do they arrive at their results?
posted by Lynsey at 11:06 PM PST - 47 comments

Readymechs are free flatpack toys for you to print and build. {teefed from ArtDorks}
posted by dobbs at 10:36 PM PST - 16 comments

Yongfook: The Japanese food blog (monjayaki, umeboshi, Carrot au Lait)
posted by moonbird at 8:35 PM PST - 13 comments

Sign a Donor Card! Organ transplantation has taken great leaps and bounds. What used to take twelve to fourteen hours for, say, a liver transplant, has now been reduced (in some cases) to a three-hour operation. Holding times (the length of time for which an organ can be between donor and recipient) have increased. What hasn’t increased are the number of donors. (mi)
posted by MiHail at 8:25 PM PST - 47 comments

During the middle of the 19th Century, a series of factors combined to create a new Irish patriotic movement. This organization was a revolutionary group dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland. It had its roots in both the United States and Ireland and was popularly known as The Fenian Movement, in honour of the Fianna, the ancient Irish warriors.
posted by Shanachie at 7:35 PM PST - 8 comments

The Rendon Group -- covert perception managers using our taxpayer money to start wars. ... the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. ... it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. ... Rolling Stone thoroughly documents the way we pay to be lied into war and one of the people who do it. From Noriega and Panama through to Chalabi, Miller, al-Haideri, Bush, and you.
posted by amberglow at 10:58 AM PST - 38 comments

The glass trick. (Note: includes embedded video. Soundtrack is mostly in Japanese but can be ignored.) I've been a magician for almost 40 years now and am up on the latest tech but I have very little idea of how the performer accomplishes what you see in this video.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:22 AM PST - 67 comments

Breakfast as art: Unbelievably intricate and ornate carved eggshells.
posted by Gator at 9:13 AM PST - 13 comments

The Image Culture - a discussion of the history, manipulation, desensitization and supplanting of language skills by the ubiquity of images. And no, there are no pretty pictures.
posted by peacay at 7:39 AM PST - 38 comments

Parrot outrage! Though their existance is a bit of a curiousity, the fact that a population of parrots exists in the wild in southern New England isn't really news to anyone who visits this site frequently. But the way a local power company is choosing to deal with them is making news in southern Connecticut. The monk parakeet builds huge nests out of sticks and twigs, mostly in trees but sometimes on power poles. The large nests present a growing safety problem, often leading to transformer fires and explosions. It was recently reported in both major southern CT newspapers that United Illuminating has begun a secret program of dismantling nests found on power poles and sending the birds to the government for eradication. Previous programs in other states have ended the way this one appears headed: eventually, the utility gives way to public pressure and either leaves the nests intact or destroys the nests but not the birds themselves.
posted by wakko at 5:45 AM PST - 23 comments

Norman Koren - photographs and tutorials
posted by Gyan at 11:43 PM PST - 9 comments

On one side: Jim Green, the Alabama-born, opera-loving Vietnam draft-dodger, a hard-nosed community activist and the choice of the local tabloid and the outgoing mayor (himself the inspiration for not one but two Canadian television series) who together fought to bring harm-reduction (i.e. sanity) to Vancouver's drug-plagued downtown eastside; on the other: Sam Sullivan, the surprising underdog, a paraplegic -- and former lead singer in the "Spinal Chords" -- who, he's proud to say, was flat on his back and on welfare 20 years ago, then taught himself Cantonese and is the longest-serving member of city council. Who will be the next mayor of Vancouver? (It'll be close.)
posted by docgonzo at 8:49 PM PST - 41 comments

Tropical Storm Gamma. For the first time in history.
posted by theperfectcrime at 8:31 PM PST - 43 comments

Tis the season and we all know at least one of these guys. (Windows Media Player req'd)
posted by blackturtleneck at 5:59 PM PST - 41 comments

Newest Doctor Who David Tennant received his first showcase tonight on the BBC's Children in Need Appeal in an excellent special episode written by Russell T Davies and also starring Billie Piper. In case anyone missed it, it's available online at their website, in streaming Real format. Fantastic!
posted by feelinglistless at 4:11 PM PST - 26 comments

How Ebert Gave Oprah Her Start. "Yes, it is true, I persuaded Oprah to become the most successful and famous woman in the world. I was also the person who suggested that Jerry Springer not go into syndication, for which I have received too little credit."
posted by adrober at 3:43 PM PST - 32 comments

Badgers and Bananas. A Flashy Friday contribution mon amis. So we got the Badgers, here's the Cussing CeleBriteez (Yes re-post and NSFW) and finally Fingertips! Do I really need to explain the connection..come on!
posted by Mr Bluesky at 3:28 PM PST - 15 comments

Newsfilter: Congress to vote tonight on immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Apperantly this is some political theater based on John Murtha's call to withdrawal troops, in order to force democrats into a potentially embarrassing anti-war vote. While republicans are calling this a "democratic resolution" the actual text was written by republicans, and is very different from Murtha's original resolution.
posted by delmoi at 3:16 PM PST - 265 comments

Penthouse Interview with L. Ron Hubbard Jr Chilling interview with the son of Scientology's founder.
posted by konolia at 1:41 PM PST - 107 comments

The Boys in the Bank. On August 22, 1972, John Wojtowicz (27) and Salvatore Naturale (18), supposedly inspired by The Godfather, held up a Brooklyn branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank and held eight bank employees hostage for 14 hours. The incident inspired a Life magazine article (linked previously; scroll down; alternate link) that inspired the 1973 movie Dog Day Afternoon (script/(IMDB). "'I'm supposed to hate you guys, but I've had more laughs tonight than I've had in weeks,' bank manager Barret tells John Wojtowicz." [more inside, including spoilers]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:12 PM PST - 16 comments

An iTunes For The Rest Of Us? Just for laughs I often flip through my (free subscription!) Stereophile magazine. You know, the one with the ads for the $12000 speaker wire and $5000 CD players. Imagine my surprise when I saw a preview of a new music service, MusicGiants, that is offering lossless music downloads for $1.29 each. Targeted to "audiophiles", MusicGiants is also selling its "SoundVault", which seems like some kind of Windows Media Center PC, albeit with a $10,000 price tag, and an ability to download the lossless tracks to some portable media players, with the notable exception of the iPod. Oh, and there's a $50 annual fee (!). Ho hum so far, but then I noticed that the service has significant buy in from most of the major labels, indicating that they seem to have developed some faith in the ability of Microsoft's DRM to shield their "top quality" downloads from pirates. My thinking on this is that if successful, it should prompt Apple to offer lossless downloads from the iTMS Service, if only because Apple likes to present a "high end" image, and having a competitor actively dissing iTMS by lumping it in, quality-wise, with "pirated music from p2p networks" has got to hurt.
posted by meehawl at 12:39 PM PST - 63 comments

The Leidenfrost Effect. It's the reason that water droplets don't instantly evaporate off of a hot plate between 200 and 300 deg C. Another obscure physical phenomenon? Perhaps - except for Jearl Walker, the physicist who uses it for some awesome demonstrations: sticking your hand into molten lead, walking on hot coals and gargling with liquid nitrogen.
posted by GuyZero at 12:09 PM PST - 30 comments

New milestone in digital photography: The ability to refocus a picture after it has been taken. Gallery and technical data.
posted by iamck at 11:36 AM PST - 78 comments

The paper analogue of the blog is not the diary, but rather the commonplace book. With the availability of relatively cheap paper beginning as early as the 14th century, people began to collect knowledge in commonplace books. Bits of quotes, reference materials, summaries of arguments, all contained in a handy bound volume. This merchant's commonplace, for example, dates from 1312 and contains hand-drawn diagrams of Venetian ships and descriptions of Venice's merchant culture. An English commonplace dating to the 15th century, the Book of Brome, contains poems, notations on memorial law, lists of expenses, and diary entries. John Locke devised a method for keeping a commonplace. Thomas Jefferson kept both legal and literary commonplaces, and owned a copy of Sir John Randolph's legal commonplace, published in 1680.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:00 AM PST - 23 comments

Finds. The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a voluntary effort to record archeological objects found by the U.K. public. Searchable database of finds from the Paleolithic, through Roman times, up to the 18th-century. With images, and an accompanying website for kids.
posted by steef at 10:55 AM PST - 2 comments

Panamacam! (warning: embedded mpg) Using available web-cam footage and a little DIY hackery, Stephan van der Palen created this nifty little time-lapse movie of shipping traffic in the Panama Canal zone (1 week=11 min.). Not to be outdone, the US Army Corps of Engineers has their own Lock-cams, and releases their own time-lapse movies of Soo Lock Traffic--from multiple cams--every day of the shipping season.
posted by Chrischris at 10:53 AM PST - 16 comments

Parallel Wales. They came from Wales, and settled in places called Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. They brought new contributions to the American fabric, but also old names that took on new meanings. Now, more than a hundred years later, what echoes remain? (via Projects)
posted by selfnoise at 10:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Do Gravity Waves Exist? This is one of the big unanswered questions in physics. Gravity telescopes such as the LIGO and the Geo 600 may soon tell us. These massive detectors are sensitive to a displacement of 1 part in 1000000000000000000000-- that's like "measuring a change of one hydrogen atom diameter in the distance from the Earth to the Sun." Such a discovery would mean a tremendous boom to science. And big cash payouts to those who put their money where there mouth was.
posted by justkevin at 9:38 AM PST - 32 comments

Dutch West Internet based comedy troupe from NYC. Updated Thursdays with sketch comedy and musical (and sometimes political) "white box sessions". They also do a live show downtown the first and third Saturday of the month. Their Myspace has showtimes listed. Got tipped off to these guys after catching their live show by chance and I've been following them ever since.
posted by xmod2 at 9:35 AM PST - 3 comments

We are a LAME FITTER, FALTER ITEM and A FELT TIMER. We need some MATT RELIEF. Fun with anagrams.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 9:05 AM PST - 55 comments

CNN reports that the House passed HR 4241 this morning by a narrow vote almost entirely along party lines. This is part of the Republican Party's Operation Offset (previously discussed here) designed to cut spending to counter the deficit, growing by leaps and bounds because of Iraq & Katrina (among other things). Now they'll have to work to reconcile it with the Senate version, SR 1932 (voting record here). You may want to Write your representative to let them know how you feel. You might also want to express your displeasure to the two Dems who didn't vote, considering the bill passed by a margin of 2. [Budget Filter]
posted by papakwanz at 8:56 AM PST - 48 comments

"I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world." Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart won the World Fantasy Award in 1985. Set in a China that never was, it tells the tale of Master Li Kao, who has a slight flaw in his character, and Number Ten Ox as they uncover the mysteries of a cursed town, a terrible duke, and a beautiful woman. Originally intended to be the first in a series of seven, Bridge of Birds spawned only two sequels. The reclusive author explains some of his influences and poor luck here. Also, for those of you familiar with the story, the original draft of Bridge of Birds (PDF version) is available online!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:36 AM PST - 18 comments

"... we are sweeping everything under the carpet, but the oddness is cropping up all over the place. And then, the carpet starts to move…".
Michael Haneke, "le manipulateur" who introduced his latest film, Caché, at Cannes with a half-amused “I wish you a disturbing evening”, is the proponent of a "cinema of disturbance". A cinema of loving self-mutilation, where time is non-linear and everything happens in long take shots; in Haneke's world, guilt destroys lives decades after the original sin. All his male characters are "Georges" and his female characters are either "Evas" or "Annas", "because I lack fantasy". Unsurprisingly, he is a Bresson and Tarkovsky fan. He'll direct "Don Giovanni" at the Paris Opera in early 2006: "In 20 years of working in the theater, I only staged one comedy, and that was my single failure".
posted by matteo at 8:30 AM PST - 19 comments

Heidi Fleiss plans to open a brothel . . . . . . which will cater to women in Nevada. Money quote: " . . . you've got the situation with the old husband leaving his wife for the younger girl, and the lady sitting at home crying. Well, now she has a place to go and say, 'Right back at you, buddy, and on your credit card'.
posted by chai-rista at 7:49 AM PST - 128 comments

Instructables for showing what you make and how to make it. Not just any DIY site, the creator Saul Griffith has an impressive pedigree. The site comes with all the things you'd expect from a new collaborative widget including Creative Commons licensing options and of course tags. From the about page: "We like to think about the physical world as something that is programmable. We like to think of objects or stuff you make as 'code'. In other words, we are approaching the physical world as something that is describable and replicable." Dive in and learn how to make a pimped out megaphone helmet, Hungarian bookshelves or canned applesauce. (via)
posted by jessamyn at 7:34 AM PST - 14 comments

Star Wars Episode 3, the abridged script (MP3). Funny and well-done audio goodness for your Friday. From the folks at GeeksOn.
posted by mkultra at 7:13 AM PST - 15 comments

God's Debris by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) is now available for free in PDF form. It's a controversial book that presents a philosophically strange view of the universe. According to Adams, it splits readers between "the best book they've ever read" and "an insult to literature and a disservice to humanity".
posted by Plutor at 6:57 AM PST - 44 comments

Intelligent Design. Traces of this epic masterpiece of creation can be found in all religious writings and traditions. It is to them that Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed referred. It is now time to welcome them. To your child's classroom.
posted by Otis at 6:24 AM PST - 12 comments

Dr Who - The Second Key. Original Dr Who strips made with photographed dolls and speech balloons.
posted by nthdegx at 4:58 AM PST - 20 comments

Bloggingheads TV. Video blogging dialogue between Mickey Kaus and Robert Wright.
posted by srboisvert at 3:54 AM PST - 8 comments

"A flawed policy wrapped in an illusion." Thus Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) attacked the Bush administration's handing of the war in Iraq. Described by the AP as an "influential House Democrat who voted for the Iraq war," Murtha did indeed support H. J. RES. 114 of October 10, 2002. Today Murtha, a combat veteran of the Vietnam war and retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel, concludes the war resolution was the result of "a U.S. intelligence failure and the way that intelligence was misused." Murtha's comments come the day after Vice President Dick Cheney fought back at his critics: "The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone – but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history." Murtha appears ready to stand by his claim that he, and Congress, were misled.
posted by three blind mice at 2:05 AM PST - 108 comments

"May you be like a lamp: hang by day, burn by night and be snuffed out in the morning." Welcome to the long tradition of Yiddish curses. According to one scholar of insults: Curses in other languages differ from Yiddish in both content and style...Anglo-Saxon cultures prefer insults dealing with excrement and body parts, Catholic countries are partial to blasphemy, and cultures of the Middle and Far East go for ancestor insults, while Yiddish curses have a baroque splendor. A bunch more examples are here (keep scrolling).
posted by blahblahblah at 12:01 AM PST - 33 comments

How concerned should Americans be about the right-wing slant and use of the news for political purposes by a large broadcaster? No, not Fox, but Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company many had never heard of until the Nightline controversy discussed here. Setting aside bias, if they've subverted the rules as alleged, are they any better than this corporation, which was found unfit to be a broadcaster and stripped of its licenses?
posted by evilcolonel at 8:49 PM PST - 53 comments

The top 30 facts about Chuck Norris
posted by docgonzo at 8:26 PM PST - 86 comments

Scientists find fear gene; can an army of [literally] fearless soldiers be far away? (Plus some good things, too.)
posted by ryanhealy at 7:31 PM PST - 40 comments

This year “some people wanted the word ‘brainstorming’ replaced by ‘thought shower’ so as not to offend people with brain disorders, and they also wanted ‘deferred success’ to replace ‘failure’ so as not to embarrass those who don’t succeed.” These words and phrases are just a couple cited by Global Language Monitor as the year’s most politically correct words and phrases.

The phrase that topped this year’s list was ‘misguided criminals,’ one of several terms the British Broadcasting Corp. used so as not to use the word ‘terrorist’ in describing those who carried out train and bus bombings in London this summer.

Ninth on the top 10 list were words and phrases that de-Christianize the Christian holidays – such as “Seasons Greetings” replacing “Merry Christmas” – a practice that has upset some American Catholics, demanding that customers of Wal-Mart boycott the retail chain until they drop the phrase “Happy Holidays” and return to using “Merry Christmas.”
posted by ericb at 7:31 PM PST - 61 comments

dont pirate software cos if you do the cd will keep coming out of the drive and then you will look silly and injure your employer by making him trip over ADOBE RECOMMENDS GENUINE SOFTWARE THXBI [flash]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:31 PM PST - 34 comments

Anti-Defamation League speaks up against the Christianizing of America-- They're calling for a communal strategy for confronting the political and cultural initiatives of religious conservative groups, and naming the Arlington Group, Focus on the Family, The American Family Association and the Family Research Council as some of those responsible for the infrastructures throughout the country designed not just to promote traditional “Christian values,” but to actively pursue that restoration of a Christian nation. Opinions differ, of course. Foxman anticipates them in his speech, Religion in America’s Public Square: Are We Crossing the Line?: ... On one hand, there is an extreme element in the community that believes it is unsafe to confront Christianity. ... There are also those who say that because evangelicals are friends of Israel, “don’t fight them;” “don’t make them angry;” “don’t upset them.” . ...
posted by amberglow at 5:57 PM PST - 43 comments

Borat likes you. Do you like Borat? Not everyone does. Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry is threatening to sue to prevent the country from being presented in a "derogatory way" by the caricature, a brainchild of UK comedian Sacha Boren Cohen, aka Ali G. [more inside, dziękuję]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 4:56 PM PST - 37 comments

Net Pirate Number Station What's it all about? [via]
posted by tellurian at 4:34 PM PST - 37 comments

Edison's Conquest of Mars! Garrett P. Serviss' unofficial, 1898 sequel to War of the Worlds, featuring Thomas Edison and Lord Kelvin as the heroes. It seems this book originated the space battle and the ray-gun, not to mention the aliens-built-the-pyramids plot. Sounds like a blast.
posted by brundlefly at 3:45 PM PST - 20 comments

No Condition is Permanent. World music, and African music in particular, often falls into two categories: pleasant and inoccuous, or the fetishized other. Even speaking of "African" music is misleading. Senegalese mbalax doesn't sound that much like Camaroonian makossa. And I don't say this as some great authority; I'm still just at the beginning of the learning curve. So come along with me. There's the broad Benne Loxo du Taccu, the sidebar of Mudd Up!, the great (and self-explanitory) African Hiphop, Stern's Music (this link going to a more accessible Thione Seck), Aduna (for Francophones— my middle-school French gets me by, but I'm really there for the music), Du Bruit (more Francophones, with an emphasis on vinyl sharities), and Worldly Disorientation (which covers all sorts of world music, but has some excellent African stuff). Have I missed anything great? Recommend it in the thread. I tend to prefer the psychedelic and dubby stuff more than straight folk styles, but that's me.
posted by klangklangston at 3:17 PM PST - 40 comments

Baja 1000 starts Forget sports in 2011 . Today is the start of this years Baja 1000 . How can you not want to see a race with warnings like; "4) The roads used for this race course are open to the public. You must expect at all times to encounter oncoming traffic, as well as cattle roaming freely on and around the race course." See the movie about the 2003 event.
posted by stuartmm at 3:07 PM PST - 12 comments

"Imagine finding friendship and love on your iPod ... with ... the world's first dating/social networking site that brings together the growing popularity of the online dating space and the enormous success of the iPod."
via
posted by airguitar at 2:31 PM PST - 11 comments

Chomsky gets his apology. The world's most famous public intellectual would appear to have been vindicated back after the hatchet job done on him in the Guardian by Emma Brockes two weeks ago. The Guardian has had to withdraw the offending article from its site and Ms Brockes has made no comment after her employer's Correction & Clarifications tore strips off of her article. The original article was previously discussed here.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 1:32 PM PST - 42 comments

The Rugby World Cup probably doesn't matter a lot to most, but today's announcement that New Zealand will be hosting the 2011 event is enough to send the local media into ecstasy. Not wanting to be outdone on Olympic-scale scandal, you can bet that neighbours of the biggest Rugby Stadium in New Zealand will not be happy.
posted by pivotal at 12:11 PM PST - 40 comments

How I Ended Up In Big Pitches - article in London Times about last weekend's Screenwriting Expo in Los Angeles. Features Warren Hsu Leonard, William Goldman, Brian Watanabe, David Freeman, Michael Hauge.
posted by nromanek at 11:38 AM PST - 10 comments

These boots are made for... immigrating!
posted by shoepal at 11:30 AM PST - 26 comments

In a landmark decision that is believed to have wide-ranging implications for trademark law, the Supreme Court of Canada today dismissed Lego's claim against Montreal-based rival Mega Bloks.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:31 AM PST - 42 comments

Vote, damn you! Residents of Ascension Island have been taking part in their second ever general election, but they have been so apathetic that the returning officer gave up trying to enrol voters and just signed up all 697 of them herself.

Meanwhile, further South, it’s also election day in the Falkland Islands, complete with flying ballot boxes and a campaign in which, (rightly or wrongly), even 23 years after the conflict, many of the candidates manifestos juggle the usual municipal chit-chat that occupies a population of under 3,000 with matters of international diplomacy, such as councillors’ visits to the UN,and whether Argentina should be ignored, resisted or befriended.
posted by penguin pie at 9:28 AM PST - 20 comments

Design Online - a team from the London College of Communication have scanned and indexed all the issues of Design from 1965 - 1974 (via the Design Weblog, which says: "I believe you really need to see and understand the past in order to blaze a new trail").
posted by tpl1212 at 9:16 AM PST - 13 comments

Sacred Harp singing uses a system of four shaped notes first introduced by Little and Smith in The Easy Instructor in 1801. The four shapes denote the four syllables (fa, so, la, mi) of the scale used in American Singing Schools. Of course, solfege has been codified since at least the 11th century, but the adoption of shape-notes dovetailed with the tradition of Sacred Harp singing in the United states. With it's emphasis on participation and instruction in the moment, Sacred Harp singing is in the midst (NPR story) of a renaissance. MP3s here and here. Here is an excellent set of resources, and here is set of essays on everything from history to how to organize a Sacred Harp sing. Here is an interactive index to the 1991 edition of the traditional hymn book called, you guessed it, The Sacred Harp. Here's a special link to Manhattan Sacred Harp resources for jonmc who mentioned Sacred Harp before in the blue.
posted by OmieWise at 9:16 AM PST - 16 comments

Asphalt mosaics: Forget spraypaint, a DIY to a more permanent form of public art.
posted by edgeways at 8:59 AM PST - 15 comments

Spectacular gallery of paperworks (sculptures crafted from intricately cut sheets of paper). shamelessly pilfered via.
posted by jonson at 8:03 AM PST - 21 comments

What products were made with vermiculite from the mine in Libby? Much of the Libby vermiculite was used to produce attic insulation products, often sold under the brand name Zonolite. Vermiculite was commonly sold in gardening and hardware stores. It was used as a soil amendment (conditioner to improve soil quality), fertilizer carrier, and it was an ingredient in many potting soil mixes. Vermiculite was also used in fireproofing materials, gypsum wallboard, and as a lightweight aggregate in construction materials. It's asbestos. Nightline is on it. And it's in millions of homes. Bush falters, concern grows, story explodes.
posted by toma at 6:11 AM PST - 69 comments

Soft Cinema is a software+video project by media-theorist Lev Manovich, which 'mines the creative possibilities at the intersection of software culture, cinema, and architecture.' While perhaps more intriguing in prospect than in practice, it seems at least a noteworthy attempt at making something new. A DVD version of the project was released earlier this year.
posted by misteraitch at 2:53 AM PST - 8 comments

Is the 'next big thing' lurking somewhere on the internet?
After the phenomenal, internet-based success of the Artic Monkeys, record companies are scouring the internets for new talent. But who will make it big? Will it be Goblin Cock, Unicorn Love or my current favourite, Jeremy Walmsley?
posted by johnny novak at 2:25 AM PST - 63 comments

The Infinity Project "I began to hide planets - first near my house, and then later I brought them with me to leave behind whenever I traveled. Once I learned to fly, I was able to drop planets in truly remote locations from a tiny window on the pilot's side of the plane." (via)
posted by dhruva at 1:58 AM PST - 38 comments

American Castles. There are a few famous American castles: Bishop Castle (discussed previously here), Coral Castle, and Boldt Castle come to mind. However, this site lists them all; from the impressive to the mundane. If you're interested, you may be able to buy your own.
posted by ND¢ at 1:46 AM PST - 44 comments

"Do you want to see niggers in the state capital with their feet on the desk?"
"This newspaper believes in white supremacy, and it believes that the poll tax is one of the essentials for the preservation of white supremacy." From "Suffrage in the South" Part I, published January 1st, 1940 [mi]
posted by orthogonality at 12:15 AM PST - 48 comments

Felix the Cat set the standard for animated character design with his rubber-limbs and blackface, predating Mickey by nearly a decade. Since he doesn't get nearly the exposure of Mickey, we're lucky there's sites that make at least a sampling of his cartoons freely available.
posted by ScottMorris at 11:33 PM PST - 21 comments

The world's most expensive restaurants, though even these eateries pale in comparison to the $37,000 lunch and the $10,000 Martini on the Rock, poured over a diamond. As a New York Times food critic defends pricey meals, it is clear that times have changed since another famous Times critic drew letters of condemnation from the Vatican for his expensive dinner in 1975, which itself was a pale shadow of the most legendary costly meal ever, that of Antony and Cleopatra.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:33 PM PST - 36 comments

Wonderful toys for geeky girls and boys. A collection of unusual and intensely desirable science-based gewgaws and gadgets. Don't miss the lucidly written articles that explain the underlying principles. (via)
posted by ottereroticist at 11:27 PM PST - 29 comments

Deep Space and The Good Earth: pretty picture shows. (flash)
posted by fungible at 9:12 PM PST - 7 comments

Auger-Loizeau: Recognizing that for each placated consumer of technology there is an unsatisfied, complicated or strange one.
posted by signal at 8:57 PM PST - 5 comments

He's young, telegenic, bilingual, a Harvard grad... and now André Boisclair, the youngest person ever elected to a seat in Quebec's National Assembly, is the new leader of the Parti Quebecois, the nationalist -- as in Quebec nationalist -- left-leaning party founded to take Canada's mostly french-speaking province out of the federation. Oh, and he's gay. And an admitted (former) cocaine user (although that might be a good thing.) Oh, and, according to the polls, the next Premier Ministre of Quebec.
posted by docgonzo at 8:22 PM PST - 116 comments

Attention history geeks. The US Army Military History Institute has tons of documents online [almost all following links are .pdf]. There are lots of "staff rides" from the 1980's and 1990's, but some digging will unearth some primary documents, such as Pershing's Report on the Mexican Punitive Expedition (Oct. 1916), Sheridan's Engagements with Hostile Indians, 1868 - 1892. [mi]
posted by marxchivist at 8:01 PM PST - 5 comments

NPR: 'My Lobotomy'
In 1960, Howar Dully was a badly behaved 12-year-old. He was lobotomized with an icepick (as were hundreds of others) and talks about it on this radio show. See also.
posted by Tlogmer at 7:21 PM PST - 47 comments

Anime Conventions have been the site of some very fun oddness and geekery. Much of this stems from the rampant Cosplay that occurs at these events. In terms of true cosplay-style anime-con weirdness there is only one true legend: Sailor Bubba . Finally the living icon of the Midwest's Anime Central Convention has been been given an honor that truly suits his stature.
posted by aburd at 6:59 PM PST - 15 comments

"Old Tom is the most famous of the Eden killer whales". The story of a pod of killer whales who enlisted the help of fishermen in NSW, Australia to hunt baleen whales. The pod would corral the whales, while Old Tom would tow the fishing boats out to sea by pulling the anchor ropes in his teeth. The reward? The fishermen left the whale overnight and the orcas got to eat the tongue. Alas, it seems Old Tom may have met his end when the covenant was broken and a fisherman named Logan tried to take the whale to shore before the feast. Tom tried to hold the boat back with the rope, but it broke a tooth which infected and led to his death. Tom's skeleton is now on display at the Eden Killer Whale Museum. His story inspired a young girl to become a biologist and investigate the story for herself.
posted by qwip at 6:49 PM PST - 8 comments

Open Source Media^TM: Gathering shedloads of [mostly right-wing] bloggers together under one umbrella, that is supposed to encourage advertisers to buy space, and us to click through, right? I, for one, welcome our new citizen journalists. Just like the old ones...? Wonder if they've heard of Open Source Media Project?
posted by dash_slot- at 5:56 PM PST - 44 comments

Bodies still being found in NOLA You know, it's hard to imagine anything worse than coming back to your home in New Orleans and finding it completely destroyed. But, tonight, as you're about to hear, there is something worse, much worse. Dozens of families have returned to what is left of their homes and found, lying amidst the mold and the wreckage, a body, forgotten, abandoned. Maybe it's their mother or their grandmother, sometimes even their missing child. More Here
posted by srboisvert at 4:01 PM PST - 31 comments

The hunting of American Bison got a renewal today. The first hunt of the buffalo, in 15 years, began with a Belgrade, MT, boy killing a bull with 4 shots, shortly after the hunt began. The 15 year hiatus on hunting Bison in Montana was contentious, if not downright nasty, but that's over now. Montana has allowed Bison hunting outside Yellowstone park, and it's been a media show. Of course, this really pisses some folks off, to which hunters claim, "It's like the hunter's become the hunted". The mountain west of the US has become a battle ground of flowing ideas, with man against nature, and man against man. The Endangered Species Act, the very thing that has lead us to this event, is under siege. People begin to notice when critters die. Welcome to Bison Hunt, 101.
posted by Wulfgar! at 3:30 PM PST - 64 comments

comic pinbacks : a free reference and research guide for vintage comic pinbacks from the 1890s to the 1950s.
posted by crunchland at 3:22 PM PST - 9 comments

A whole other newt with an ekename. I was looking up the origin of "nother" and learned about the phenomenon known as word misdivisions. Color me educated.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 2:50 PM PST - 23 comments

This is what happens when you put some of the best writers in UK comedy around a table to discuss videogames. Needless to say even the above average videogame writing gets a deserved hard time. Via the Spaced Out forums.
posted by nthdegx at 2:31 PM PST - 49 comments

Marguerite Perrin gained infamy as the self-proclaimed "God Warrior" on Fox's Trading Spouses. If you hurry, you can claim your own personal "God Warrior" to help you defend yourself against all the tainted, ungodly elements in the world.
posted by Lola_G at 2:28 PM PST - 46 comments

Pssst! Wanna Do Something Sneaky? Whether you want to commit adultery, surprise your husband, or just get out of something, the Alibi Network is there.
posted by dame at 2:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Google Base launches. Is it me or does this look a lot like craigslist?
posted by walljm at 1:38 PM PST - 35 comments

Mainstream Media to American Democracy: Drop Dead! Brad Friedman ask alarming questions about the complete lack of attention which has been paid to the GAO report on electronic voting technology (PDF link) released more than a month ago, which confirms what security experts have been saying for years: these systems are vulnerable to multiple independent attacks targeting system and network vulnerabilities, access controls, hardware controls, and overall management practices. If you're short of time, at least read Rep. Waxman's fact sheet summary.

Ultimately, there is no real security on these machines; the report shows that overturning election results would not be at all difficult for even a single moderately skilled attacker. And now Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are wondering if American Democracy has died an electronic death in the wake of massive discrepancies between final pre-election opinion polls and the results of several citizen initiatives designed to reform Ohio's electoral processes.
posted by dinsdale at 1:18 PM PST - 68 comments

New Yorkers Are Prepared for the Apocalypse. Or are we? A fascinating article from New York Magazine that looks at what New York City's government, hospitals and other assistance centers have done to prepare for disasters, what we've spent too much attention and money on (terrorism) and too little (possible epidemics).
Sidebars: When Bad Things Happen: "A short guide to nine big things to worry about—and what you can do about them.", How are New Yorkers coping with the fear du jour: Avian Flu? and The Geography of Disaster: A map of hurricane and earthquake evacuation centers, as well as major trauma centers (hospitals) and fault lines. Shows evacuation routes and zones in case of a variety of disasters, including at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant.
posted by zarq at 1:01 PM PST - 8 comments

Obesity: Epidemic or Myth?
posted by Gyan at 12:43 PM PST - 52 comments

The traditions The traditions and history of puppetry are quite rich, often amusing. there are, quite unsurprisingly, those who truly hate the adorable little things. From fact to fiction and evendeeper investigations. Obligatory pinocchio link.
posted by IronLizard at 11:42 AM PST - 19 comments

RawSugar - tastier than del.icio.us? Their hierarchical tagging scheme and the way they handle suggested items between users seem slick. But the social bookmarking phenomenon keeps growing, including specialty sites for academics and scientists. With Yahoo!'s My Web 2.0, it went mainstream. Google's tagging too. Heck, even Amazon's doing it. The usefulness of a social bookmarking site depends on its popularity, so is the concept getting hurt by all this balkanization? Have things gotten out of hand if there's a swiss army bookmarklet tool generator to speed things up? When will the tagging craze die down?
posted by TunnelArmr at 11:23 AM PST - 33 comments

Newsfilter: Mountain View plans WiFi city. The Mountain View, CA City Council has approved an offer from Google to rent the city's street lamps for $12,600/year to install city-wide wireless internet. Some residents are concerned about privacy and health issues, but the city council says that's beyond their scope, and chooses to take the free lunch. (Disclaimer: I live here.)
posted by sarahnade at 11:01 AM PST - 28 comments

Shame Cam - 2 Columbus Circle.
posted by xowie at 9:48 AM PST - 46 comments

We all know that otters are terminally cute (warning: streaming WMV), but the Federal Government is only just now figuring out that they're also smarter than humans give 'em credit for. And they have no respect for the poor widdle shellfish industry. No respect at all. Awww.
posted by Gator at 8:39 AM PST - 27 comments

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them." - Mark Twain
posted by mischief at 7:54 AM PST - 33 comments

Problems with the $100 laptop. With the upcoming press conference about the MIT media lab's $100 laptop, this article talks about its origin and some of the problems in trying to overcoming a digital divide. [via: del.icio.us/malaclyps/oblink]
posted by gsb at 4:52 AM PST - 50 comments

NSFW "Here at Fantasy Feeder we either want to be fat or we want to fatten. We're feeders and feedees obsessed with over endulging our huge bellies and fat bottoms, and we're here to share stories, play online games and encourage each other to gain weight."
posted by holloway at 11:26 PM PST - 106 comments

While groups like the Serious Games Initiative are working on making games effective teaching tools, and Social Impact Games are categorizing hundreds of socially useful games, there are some simulations and "serious games" available now which can also be a lot of fun (at least for a little while). Online, you can try your hand at the basics of sailing, setting wildfires, learning photography, or experience a heavy-handed simulation of the war on terror. Less seriously, there is the stapler simulator and the zombie attack simulator. For a bit more involved experience, download a college administration simulator, the UN's Food Force, and, soon, a simulation on the Rwandan genocide. Is learning this way actually useful, or do we have further to go, first? [Flash, Shockwave, and Java used in some links. Some prev. here and here]
posted by blahblahblah at 11:04 PM PST - 11 comments

Colored Soap Bubbles
Look, pretty! via
posted by fenriq at 10:31 PM PST - 23 comments

Mainstream former federal judge speaks out
Former CNN talking head and Texas federal judge Catherin Crier speaks out in defense of the courts, and mainstream america... if Ms. Crier is now the left - how far to the right have we drifted?
posted by specialk420 at 10:13 PM PST - 17 comments

Where are they now? Stories and pictures from the Sunset Strip in the 60s. [some NSFW]
posted by tellurian at 8:58 PM PST - 8 comments

Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago "Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed." Woodward's statement. [PDF] The unnamed official isn't Libby or Rove. [via]
posted by kirkaracha at 8:52 PM PST - 103 comments

Celebrity Maps is a google maps/stargazing mashup that makes stalking your favorite star so much easier. And it doesn't even cost you $5 on Sunset.
posted by mathowie at 8:32 PM PST - 32 comments

NOISE is a global youth arts initiative (under 25s) that develops and profiles artists and their work across television, radio, in print and online. Requires Flash. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79 at 7:58 PM PST - 3 comments

Save King's Quest IX. Ever since personal computers became powerful enough to run graphics-intensive action games, adventure games like the ones once produced by Sierra On-Line (King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and countless other titles) and LucasArts (Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit The Road) have been in decline--most of the series have been abandoned, King's Quest was awkwardly morphed into an unsuccessful first-person fighting game, and Sam & Max 2 was famously cancelled (and, less famously, uncancelled). In the last couple of years, the genre's gotten a shot in the arm from an active emulation community, the ready availability of "abandonware," but mostly from unauthorized sequels and remakes created by fans and distributed for free. The flagship of these new games was to have been King's Quest IX, a three-part finale to the series that wrapped up all outstanding loose ends and properly said goodbye to the characters. The project team included forty people, some of whom worked on the game for more than four years. And, at the end of October, Vivendi Universal (which bought, then disbanded Sierra On-Line) pulled the plug.
posted by Epenthesis at 7:27 PM PST - 40 comments

Untitled States is Lore Sjöberg's latest creation. You may remember Lore from such hits as The Brunching Shuttlecocks and Name Decoder. His new instance of Sensation Heightening Interactive Technology is yet another effort by Lore to capture the interest of today's hip young Webloggy crowd.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:51 PM PST - 85 comments

Some are stark. Some are funny. Some are blunt. All are beautiful; all are raising money for the Red Cross's relief efforts in New Orleans; all are part of the Hurricane Poster Project, "a collaborative effort of the design community."
posted by docgonzo at 4:37 PM PST - 11 comments

Gorillaz perform "Feel Good Inc" live at the MTV Europe Music Awards, using smoke and mirrors to neat effect. I wish the the band members weren't all smacked out in suitable rock fashion, though.
posted by elphTeq at 4:27 PM PST - 64 comments

The Radiant Vista is a new photography site on the web that offers photoshop tutorials (in Quicktime and PDF) and daily photo critiques (Quicktime). Not much here for non-photographers, but I know a number of members have some interest in taking pictures and might find something good here.
posted by TedW at 3:36 PM PST - 14 comments

The US Fed wants the Yellowstone Grizzly Bears taken off the list of threatened species. (No, not those Grizzlies, heh.) Through very serious recovery efforts the Grizzly bear population in the area around Yellowstone National Park is being considered "recovered", such that they can be removed from the protection of the endangered species act. Some fear that this move doesn't address the issue of where the bears actually live, though it needs to be pointed out that hunting and killing bears in the Park is prohibited. Some are celebrating this as a great move by the DoI. Some of America's friends overseas don't appear to be any too happy about this. The proposal only covers those bears in and around Yellowstone, but the Grizzly recovery in other areas remains slowed by illegal killing, and stupidity. Can we call this a success for the Endangered Species Act? Or is the ESA itself endangered? Of course, this post wouldn't be complete without the headcase who blames environmentalists for keeping him from baiting the bears.
posted by Wulfgar! at 3:07 PM PST - 27 comments

Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price, the latest film by Robert Greenwald, director/producer of last year's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (mentioned here and here), is being screened across the country this week in a private activist-driven model used by Outfoxed. The campaign is driven by Wake Up Wal-Mart, a UFCW-driven campaign to change the retail giant's reputation and unionize its employees. The film's trailer has gotten a reaction from Wal-Mart's PR division. Is the political documentary a new form of journalism, or a form of disinformation?
posted by graymouser at 2:16 PM PST - 70 comments

Bush in the bunker. [this link takes you directly to the article, but will call up the print dialog] In a story seemingly out of Capital Hill Blue, sources say that "Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions."
posted by caddis at 12:50 PM PST - 196 comments

Who is 10641?
via via
posted by airguitar at 12:16 PM PST - 76 comments

Via AmericaBlog: Target responds to recent coverage of their policies on dispensing emergency contraception with a fluffy PR email that invokes, of all things, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (No news yet on whether Jewish cashiers can refuse to sell pork or vegan cashiers can refuse to ring up all meat...) Unfortunately, Target isn't the only company doing this. But their popularity has made them a ripe target (!) for criticism. Whose civil rights are more important? Pharmacists' or customers'?
posted by bitter-girl.com at 10:16 AM PST - 106 comments

Did You Pet Your Phone Today? An examination of the effects of ubiquitous communication.
posted by yerfatma at 8:46 AM PST - 19 comments

Dinner with Chalabi
posted by delmoi at 8:39 AM PST - 45 comments

The Ames Fan Club documents the life of each of the deceased department stores following the dissolution of their corporate souls. From Gallipolis to West Hartford, the shells of Ames have been photographed and critiqued. Some have lain dormant, logos still peeking out from between overturned racks and offline registers. Some have found new lives, though while the buildings remain, the smell of "bargains by the bagful" will never return. If only we could all age as gracefully as the Agawam Ames.
posted by setanor at 8:25 AM PST - 26 comments

Games games games! Board games have under gone a renaissance, spurred by games like Settlers of Catan. Because users are rewarded for contributing content, the site has some real depth. In addition to exhaustive lists of games, sorted by rank (with Bayesian averages and standard deviation), there are a gajillion reviews and player aids. You can even search for games based on criteria such as weight, game mechanism, ranking, or even game mechanics. The site is a great example of organically-generated user data.
posted by craniac at 7:46 AM PST - 36 comments

The Beer Hunter I was jealous when New York got subway stations marked on Google Maps, but this more than makes up for it.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 7:42 AM PST - 40 comments

The Other Iraq: "The Government and the peoples of Kurdistan invite you to discover their peaceful region, a place that has practiced democracy for over a decade, a place where the universities, markets, cafes and fair grounds buzz with progress and prosperity and where the people are already sowing the seeds of a brighter future." via Sterling
posted by signal at 7:16 AM PST - 32 comments

"I had been planning to set up a socialist band, which I hope will play a leading role in the world socialist revolution because it is possible to influence people greatly through music and I have acquired sufficiently strong singing abilities through karaoke to convince myself that I would be capable of singing in a band." [music here]
posted by dodgygeezer at 6:39 AM PST - 80 comments

iPud For those of you wondering why Apple fans don't just have sex with their iPods, now they can!
posted by fungible at 6:12 AM PST - 20 comments

BOCOG announced their official Olympic mascots recently. One of them is based on the Tibetan Antelope. Students for a Free Tibet don't like the idea.
posted by tellurian at 8:35 PM PST - 53 comments

If you watch television news stations, you've probably already heard that the latest missing white girl has been found. Naturally, the media is now obsessed with figuring out what led to the murder of the girl's parents. In the unending quest for information, TV news stations have shown the myspace pages of the two teens. And like many other teenagers, the two have xanga journals as well. But several sources, both blogs and mainstream news sites, have publicized the location of these pages. Is this responsible journalism?
Previously on MeFi: Blogging from prison; diary of a killer?
posted by kyleg at 8:09 PM PST - 74 comments

Human Uprgades [flash interface]
posted by philcliff at 7:50 PM PST - 29 comments

Tape It Off The Internet started as a joke, but now they want to beat out the flickrs of video and iTunes, with its $1.99 tipping point, in the world of TV show downloads. If they ever actually release the thing, that is.
posted by TunnelArmr at 5:10 PM PST - 15 comments

ChiliBeer: [flash] Capsaicin has many, many medical uses and a few not so medical ones. Alchohol and capsaicin have been shown to help with heart disease, maybe they are just trying create a heart disease tonic? The good news is there are no interactions with cocaine.
posted by bigmusic at 5:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Radical Cartography. A collection of interesting maps such as place-name etymology, the US suicide rate, animal/vegetable production and an interactive tourist map of Nice, FR.
posted by greasy_skillet at 3:50 PM PST - 14 comments

Volvo Ocean Race round the world, in a sailboat. Leg one, Spain to South Africa is underway. Check out the Virtual specator application a fantasic way of following a not particularly viewer friendly event.
posted by Keith Talent at 3:00 PM PST - 9 comments

Alito documents show he is firmly against abortion. [news filter] So we all kind of new this to be true. But now there are documents showing it. From the Reagan Library of all places. This story also sheds a little light on the topic.

"Of course he's against abortion," his mother said,

posted by stilgar at 2:38 PM PST - 60 comments

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken. The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later.
posted by dash_slot- at 2:21 PM PST - 46 comments

The riots in Paris have becomes such a popular topic for bloggers that even the BBC have noticed, even going as far to produce a TV news package (H.264 video, AAC audio, in MP4 container) about blogging.
posted by Mwongozi at 1:25 PM PST - 21 comments

HELLBENT - The first gay slasher movie. Taking place at the famed West Hollywood Halloween Carnival, there is a serial killer on the loose. A group of four gay friends will have to fight for their lives to make it through a night where flamboyant costumes, beautiful people, drugs, music, dancing and sex are everywhere. Trailer (quicktime, NOT SAFE FOR WORK). The soundtrack looks pretty good.
posted by Captaintripps at 12:39 PM PST - 64 comments

London Topological and Britain of Drains. Cool urban exploration photos from underneath England by International Urban Glow.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:28 PM PST - 6 comments

Anthropodermic book bindings: books bound in human skin. Living in Edinburgh, I knew they existed, but I didn't realise there were so many of them.
posted by Flitcraft at 12:25 PM PST - 28 comments

What is Web 2.0? The air for the next bubble? Infosphermekinalization? Badgers? Register readers chime in on the hype. Complete with pie charts and tag clouds.
posted by whatnot at 12:10 PM PST - 52 comments

Everyone remember MaryRomantic? (Previously on Metafilter) She had a list of demands that a man must meet that bordered on neurosis. Now she counsels! She's known as MaryGentle and will help you with your " excessive water consumption and thirst" and "caffeine abuse" through various personal affirmations.
posted by geoff. at 11:25 AM PST - 40 comments

Ever just stopped and listened? Acoustic Ecology encourages us to be aware of the sound environment around us, and to take responsibility for it.

The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, as well as publishing a beautiful journal called Soundscape, is a starting point for finding many sound resources. Listen to soundscapes from Denmark and California, and field recordings from Vietnam and Vancouver. Take an audiovisual tour of NYC or Portland, Oregon. Experience cicadas, birds, frogs and other animals. Take a soundwalk through the park. Create your own international sound journey. You can even hear sounds from underwater or from the Northern Lights in the sky. And when you're done, learn how to make your own recordings.
posted by chrismear at 10:52 AM PST - 15 comments

"The spiritual, physical, intellectual, social or economic well-being of the general public".
Within the MacDowell Colony's rustic stone and clapboard cottages, Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town, Aaron Copland composed Appalachian Spring and Dubose and Dorothy Heyward wrote Porgy and Bess. Jonathan Franzen finished writing The Corrections and Alice Sebold worked on The Lovely Bones. For decades, the town considered the colony a tax-exempt charitable organization. Not anymore.
posted by matteo at 10:44 AM PST - 9 comments

Traditionally, (video) a DJ uses two turntables, but recently a series of new products has challenged the primacy of vinyl. While local record shops have been closing left and right, online stores have begun offering digital downloads. One digital-only outlet recently sold their 1,000,000th mp3. And now, a new store has taken the DJ completely out of the equation by making mix cds on demand.
posted by empath at 10:32 AM PST - 59 comments

The End of News? From the New York Review of Books. Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, discusses the decline of the mainstream media and the ideal of objectivity: Accuracy in Media (1969), the Center for Media and Public Affairs (1985), the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine (1987), Rush Limbaugh (1988), Fox News (1996), weblogs, cost-cutting at newspapers. Of course, the newspaper business has always been a difficult one, as Walter Lippmann noted in his book Public Opinion (1921): [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 10:27 AM PST - 43 comments

"I know these desires could kill me dead, but how you gonna act instead?" So sings eros-haunted Delta-blues-steeped songwriter Chris Whitley on his superbly dark new album, Soft Dangerous Shores, and he's not kidding -- Whitley is currently "very very ill" and receiving hospice care. After Whitley's 1991 debut, Living with the Law, the slim (drug-addicted?) songwriter was acclaimed by his peers as "the real deal." When he was dropped by Sony in 1998, he released an album of stark poetic beauty recorded in a barn, Dirt Floor. Soft Dangerous Shores updates Whitley's coiled-viper resophonic guitars with dreamlike electronic atmospheres (one reviewer describes it as "a hypnotic wrestling match between juke joint blues and Kraftwerkian beats"). Instead of posting an elegy for another underappreciated self-destructive genius a la Nick Drake after his death, check out Whitley's music (via free downloads) while he's still with us on Earth.
posted by digaman at 9:42 AM PST - 46 comments

family at war an excellent documentary of a family who lost their son in iraq - particularly moving is the soldiers determined, soft-spoken mother who is examining the reasons for her loss.
posted by specialk420 at 9:33 AM PST - 8 comments

Angkor Wat guide. "Published in 1944 in Saigon, republished in 1948 and again in Paris in 1963, The Monuments of the Angkor Group by Maurice Glaize remains the most comprehensive of the guidebooks and the most easily accessible to a wide public, dedicated to one of the most fabled architectural ensembles in the world." Now online, updated, with maps and photos. (More Angkor Wat links in this previous post.) Via Plep.
posted by languagehat at 9:20 AM PST - 12 comments

Google Analytics Yesterday evening Google released Google Analytics - a free Google-hosted web tracking and measurement tool, based on Urchin (which Google purchased earlier this year). Can't see Microsoft or eBay using the service, and I found it rather slow to use, but worth giving it a try...
posted by runkelfinker at 8:43 AM PST - 37 comments

The World's Most Underrated Inventions A curious list of the world's most underrated inventions. Including: the chariot; concrete; horse collar; longbow; eyeglasses; rotary printing press; barbed wire; carborundum; and bakelite.
posted by dios at 8:29 AM PST - 41 comments

"We do not torture" (Bush, Nov. 7)
In an important clarification of President George W. Bush's earlier statement, a top White House official refused to unequivocally rule out the use of torture... (Hadley, Nov. 13) -- The fate of a House provision to ban the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody is in doubt, strongly opposed by the Administration. And don't call it torture: the preferred talking point wording is now enhanced interrogation techniques.
posted by amberglow at 8:25 AM PST - 109 comments

The National Center for Biotechnology Information Bookshelf. I was searching for an online version of the CD that came with my Neuroscience, 3rd ed. (Purves, et al). What I found was pretty amazing - a full, searchable online version of my book (albeit the older 2nd ed.), including full-color diagrams. The NLM under the NIH has a division called NCBI which hosts a horde of other cool books. [Other aspects of NCBI covered previously; book archive previously on AskMe; more inside]
posted by blendor at 8:23 AM PST - 4 comments

Sonic Youth. Mentioned as far back as Bible when the walls of Jericho are brought down by trumpets, sonic weapons have often been the stuff of legend. Now a UK company is selling a sonic device targeted specifically against gangs of youths.
posted by oh pollo! at 7:42 AM PST - 17 comments

Sound 101 Fingernails scraping down a blackboard... the scream of a baby... your neighbour's dog barking: what is the worst sound in the world? This is what this website is trying to find out. Acoustic science is concerned with the production, transmission, manipulation and reception of sound, from unwanted traffic noise to beautiful music. Acoustics is about both the physical properties of sound waves and the reaction of humans. This website is interested in the often complex ways in which people perceive and interpret sounds. The aim is to increase awareness of sound psychology by examining what makes a sound unpleasant to hear. Your votes on the site will also give us an insight into what is the worst sound in the world, and maybe why it is the worst sound.
posted by Ugandan Discussions at 4:52 AM PST - 42 comments

Should programmers refuse to write malicious programs? Doctors take an oath to do no harm. We'd all like our computers to do what we want, and would be quite upset if they didn't. Should Sony's programmers have refused to write the malware?
posted by Jerub at 4:28 AM PST - 94 comments

10 years. Though I already went on and on about this on another thread, I can't shake it: Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged ten years ago. All he did was point out that Shell so scarred, pitted and slimed his tribal Ogoni lands that it was spontaneously catching fire. Oil company cronies showed up with guns, cleared villages. And then Nigerian government officials got pissed, and nine Ogoni were hanged. Wiki. Testimony of his brother. His foundation.
posted by toma at 4:18 AM PST - 14 comments

The atlatl. Maybe you're a little too old fashioned for black powder rifles. You're feeling a little too rugged to build your own siege weapon. You don't even really like weapons as newfangled as the blow gun or the obsidian dagger. Well, friends, then the the atlatl is for you. It might have driven the wooly mammoth to extinction, and soon, at last, you may be able to use it to kill stuff that isn't extinct.
posted by maxsparber at 12:15 AM PST - 29 comments

Here's an interesting series of scale/perspective images showing what all the water on Earth (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it), including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. would look like in comparison to the total spherical area of the Earth, and then again showing All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density. Both illustrations shown on the same scale as the Earth. via
posted by jonson at 10:30 PM PST - 35 comments

Free music from Muncie!
posted by kenko at 10:28 PM PST - 13 comments

Five questions non-Muslims would like answered.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:11 PM PST - 138 comments

Memory - 36 cards. Turn two over. If the pictures match, both get eliminated. Else turn them back and select another two. Repeat till field is cleared. Post the number of moves you took. [via]
posted by Gyan at 9:40 PM PST - 77 comments

Operation Barbarella - from the London Review of Books, a review of Jane Fonda’s War: A Political Biography of an Anti-war Icon by Mary Hershberger.
So, what is the story behind Jane Fonda? You will find few people so reviled among macho warrior types. Back in the Depressingly Christian Private School (DCPS) that I went to, to hear some of the things she had been accused of you'd have thought she was the Whore of Babylon herself.
The truly interesting thing about this article isn't the discussion of the reality of Fonda's anti-war protesting measured against the myth, but as an illustration of the kind of pass-it-along info, whose truth is a matter of almost-scriptural faith, that serves as the conventional wisdom concerning the Left in the ill-educated backwaters that compose so much of our nation. This kind of thing is the political equivilent of the story of the midget who hanged himself on the set of The Wizard of Oz.
Additional reading: the Snopes page on Jane Fonda.
Via Linkfilter.
posted by JHarris at 8:49 PM PST - 34 comments

[WrestleFilter] Eddie Guerrero, a/k/a Latino Heat, was found dead in his hotel room in Minnesota this morning. He was 38. His is the latest in a years-long string of tragic early deaths in professional wrestling.
posted by MegoSteve at 4:18 PM PST - 44 comments

Overheard in New York: A site so complex, so subtle and deceptive, that its site address couldn't possibly tell you all you need to know about the site's content.
posted by shmegegge at 3:33 PM PST - 59 comments

Belgian authorities allow free registration of .be domain names in a temporary promotion. Hilarity ensues. (apparently metafilter.be is still available)
posted by Count Ziggurat at 2:07 PM PST - 62 comments

Zdzislaw Beksinski (warning: music) produced some hauntingly beautiful, disturbing works of art: many, many paintings, as well as photographs, drawings, and digital creations. Sadly, he was killed earlier this year.
posted by Gator at 1:15 PM PST - 11 comments

A Real Live Preacher takes stories from the Bible, originally just a few scant sentences long, and fleshes them out to several paragraphs, adding more context and fleshing out some of the characters. Read about Jesus meeting with the smallest person in the world, and a devoted rich woman. Interesting even for those who, like me, stand outside of the Christian tradition.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 11:05 AM PST - 18 comments

Is Kevin Bacon living near you? I just watched Bacon's amazing performance as a paedophile returning home after 12 years inside, where the public accessibility of the Sex Offenders Register brought about by (amongst other things) Megan's Law is a plot-point. mapsexoffenders.com is a google maps powered site which enables you to see just who is living on your block, and what they did to end up being tracked for life, even after paying their debt to society. Is this information just becoming too easily accessible - is it making the chances of lumpheaded reprisals too high?
posted by benzo8 at 10:44 AM PST - 96 comments

The Caravaggio Trail: "The Lost Painting". (BugMeNot for the New York Times). more inside
posted by matteo at 9:12 AM PST - 9 comments

Would you step on a teenage girl to see B5? No, not that B5, this one ( warning: you'll be greeted by the compelling sounds of a Radio Disney ad).

For many of us of a certain age, The Who in Cincinnati was the defining moment in uncontrolled concert crowds. Those a little younger may only know of this tragedy.

Don't bother creating a helpful site to log crowd complaints--these guys have already done it (complete with cartoonish graphics). If you like your crowd control info framed, try this site.
posted by Kibbutz at 9:05 AM PST - 29 comments

The Virtual Typewriter Museum Including: the 'Holy Grail,' the 1870 Swedish Hansen Writing Ball - weird and wonderful pre-Cambrian typewriters such as an 1887 Miniature Pocket Typewriter, the Cooper circular, and an early wooden Spanish typewriter - early advertising trade cards and postcard (1 2 3) - and typewriter erotica. The end of the typewriter history is the gorgeous 1970s Olivetti Valentine.
posted by carter at 8:11 AM PST - 17 comments

Everything I Know-Buckminster Fuller During the last two weeks of January 1975 Buckminster Fuller gave an extraordinary series of lectures concerning his entire life’s work. These thinking out loud lectures span 42 hours (audio and text available) and examine in depth all of Fuller's major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics.
posted by Enron Hubbard at 7:08 AM PST - 24 comments

Road trip to venus!

The Venus Express was launched on Nov. 9th, 2005 from Baikonur, the historic spaceport in Kazakhstan. It is the first Venus probe sent by the ESA , and you can follow it's progress on the six month journey to the planet.

Exploration of Venus begin in 1962 with Mariner 2, the first space probe to fly by another planet and other flights, including the Russian Venera 7, which was the first probe to land on another planet. The Soviets took quite an interest in Venus and dominated the exploration of the planet through the '70s and '80s. A lot of the images recorded by those early craft have been reprocessed with modern technology.

In the early '90s the Magellan spacecraft spent several years mapping the surface of Venus, providing us many, many, many images and 3D maps of the planet.

As for Venus Express, it's goal is to spend two years making detailed studys of the planet's clouds and atmosphere.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:53 AM PST - 19 comments

Man spends $100k on imaginary nightclub to tax those who hunt its native dinosaurs. Man is likely to make a profit. <bgsound>
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:44 AM PST - 30 comments

The nkondi are the most powerful of the nkisi. They were used to identify and hunt down unknown wrongdoers such as thieves, and people who were believed to cause sickness or death by occult means. They were also used to punish people who swore false oaths and villages which broke treaties. To inspire the nkondi to action, it was both invoked and provoked. Invocations, in bloodthirsty language, encouraged it to punish the guilty party. It would also be provoked by having gunpowder exploded in front of it, and having nails hammered into it. These fantastic Congo nail fetish figures are just one small, wonderful part of the impressive collection of images you can view at the content-rich, gratifyingly obsessive Rand African Art, a site stuffed with nice large photos, lots of lovely, lovely links, and all sorts of intriguing nooks and crannies inviting exploration.
posted by taz at 4:28 AM PST - 14 comments

Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer: A Review of Recent Scientific Literature (PDF). There's a summary and analysis of the report in this article. (Via the Organic Consumers Association).
posted by homunculus at 12:42 AM PST - 5 comments

British man 'recovered from HIV' Doctors are planning further tests on a British man whose body has reportedly cured itself of HIV
posted by bluehermit at 12:02 AM PST - 66 comments

The Buddha's daughter "There is, religiously speaking, no reason that Renji should attract devotion. Her father's position as an incarnation of the Buddha is not hereditary. Nevertheless, large numbers of Tibetans treat her as an object of reverence in her own right."
posted by dhruva at 11:17 PM PST - 34 comments

Peter Drucker; the Prince of Management, dead at 95. He was a visionary leader to many. I tried to look up some opposing views and could not readily find any. Peace out.
posted by Mr T at 10:40 PM PST - 22 comments

ASPO-USA Denver Conference Report. Views on Peak Oil from a wide range of panelists in Colorado this week, including the mayor of Denver "who has joined that brave but small band of honest and courageous politicians willing to go anywhere near the issue of peak oil".
posted by stbalbach at 10:29 PM PST - 16 comments

Ever wanted a stuffed animal with a little more bite? Then the Urban Beast Project is for you. Hundreds of stuffed animals "taxidermied" into their more feral cousins. And if you've ever wanted a small gallery of grille pets, they've got one.
posted by Captaintripps at 9:12 PM PST - 11 comments

Plant Cultures - central aim ... is to convey the richness and complexity of links between Britain and South Asia, through the story of plants and people
posted by Gyan at 7:37 PM PST - 2 comments

After the first time I flew on an upgraded ticket, I wondered why some airline didn't just make slightly more expensive tickets on a plane filled with fewer, roomier seats for those that crave comfort (basically, all business class). Well, it looks like someone has at Eos Airlines. The seating arrangements look fantastic, going from roomy seat area to flat bed to double table with two seats (for a coworker), with privacy and aisle access for all. Unfortunately "slightly more expensive" is pretty high at $5k for NYC to London, though that's cheaper than major airlines. Business Week has the full story on this new venture.
posted by mathowie at 7:08 PM PST - 47 comments

In 1975, over 4 million people attended the funeral of Um Khaltoum who was the dignified voice of female Arabic music. Flash forward thirty years, and the times, they are a-changin'. Unsurprisingly, some consider Nancy an unsuitable role model. Meanwhile, Arab youth are being asked the crucial question, Coke or Pepsi? (Comments more serious than mine appreciated)
posted by IndigoJones at 5:53 PM PST - 20 comments

The Brasher Doubloon has been called "the single most important coin in American numismatics." Struck in 1787 by George Washington's neighbor Ephraim Brasher, it's believed to be the first gold coin made in the United States. Seven of Brasher's 1787 doubloons are in existence, each with the initials EB stamped on an eagle; the one that gets title-case capitalization is the only one where the intitials are stamped on the eagle's breast instead of its wing [hi-res pics: front, back]. In January 2005, it was sold at auction for $2.9 million. It's now on a tour of the United States (and insured for $6 million). In Raymond Chandler's 1942 novel The High Window and the 1947 film adaptation The Brasher Doubloon, Philip Marlowe investigates the theft of the doubloon.
posted by goatdog at 2:35 PM PST - 9 comments

Explore our local chunk of space. Here is a scale view of the Solar System, and here one can take a quick trip around it. Use the guidebook to plan your trip (but beware the pop-up ads). Don't forget to bring a camera and snap some photos.
posted by dazed_one at 1:10 PM PST - 12 comments

From 1964 to 1992, Texaco (.mov, 20.6MB) drilled for oil in the northern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, known as the "Oriente". The company left 627 open toxic waste pits and other facilities which continue to leak highly toxic waste, affecting more than 30,000 local people. A higher incidence of birth defects, cancer, miscarriages, skin diseases, and death continues to plague people whose only source of water is a contaminated river. ChevronTexaco refuses to remediate the damage, claiming that they already "cleaned up" their share of the contract, by shoveling 3 feet of dirt over some of the open oil pits.
posted by mayfly wake at 12:55 PM PST - 15 comments

Sony steps in it again. In the midst of the uproar about the Sony rootkit previously mentioned here, J. Alex Haldeman found a second sneaky piece of work in Sony CD's. It's pretty clear now that the only safe way to listen to music from Sony is to steal it. [via]
posted by pjern at 12:48 PM PST - 71 comments

"It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." As part of the administration's "campaign-style" strategy against criticism of the decision to invade Iraq, President Bush's Veteran's Day speech, which is basically the same speech he gave last month, does a little history-rewriting of its own. The president said that "a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs," and that Democrats "had access to the same intelligence." Neither assertion is wholly accurate. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 12:46 PM PST - 33 comments

Homemade cheese is where it's at, making cheese at home is like extreme sports, but without the sweat and it tastes better. Learn to make your own mozzarella, ricotta, swiss. Some would consider cheese is an essential part of our diet. Some would even consider it an essential part of their music. That is if cheese actually existed. Ah, the power of cheese.
posted by bigmusic at 11:50 AM PST - 24 comments

Intelligent Evolution ...Today we live in a less barbaric age,[than the age of Copernicus and Bruno] but an otherwise comparable disjunction between science and religion, the one born of Darwinism, still roils the public mind. Why does such intense and pervasive resistance to evolution continue 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, and in the teeth of the overwhelming accumulated evidence favoring it? The answer is simply that the Darwinian revolution, even more than the Copernican revolution, challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity. Evolution by natural selection, to be as concise as possible, has changed everything...
posted by Postroad at 10:05 AM PST - 75 comments

What's That? Sadly, the education of the youth of amerika is declining in more than one way. The other day I was at the grocery store and the checker was unable to identify a portabello mushroom. And no, she wasn't new...and to make matters worse the checker next to her didn't know either. (more inside)
posted by MiHail at 9:25 AM PST - 1011 comments

Cereal + Milk = Liquid Cereal.
posted by ph00dz at 9:25 AM PST - 34 comments

The London Cage. Kensington Palace Gardens is one of the most exclusive addresses in the world. Between July 1940 and September 1948 three magnificent houses there were home to one of Great Britain'smost secret military establishments: the London office of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, known colloquially as the London Cage. It was run by MI19, the section of the War Office responsible for gleaning information from enemy prisoners of war, and few outside this organisation knew exactly what went on beyond the single barbed-wire fence that separated the three houses from the busy streets and grand parks of west London. The London Cage was used partly as a torture centre, inside which large numbers of German officers and soldiers were subjected to systematic ill-treatment. In total 3,573 men passed through the Cage, and more than 1,000 were persuaded to give statements about war crimes. A number of German civilians joined the servicemen who were interrogated there up to 1948. More inside.
posted by matteo at 8:16 AM PST - 12 comments

City full of kids gets free college. 6 anonymous donors cover the college bill for any and all graduates of Kalamazoo Public Schools. Including those who immigrate. Neighboring white-collar town says, "No thanks."
posted by Baby_Balrog at 7:25 AM PST - 42 comments

Why is He swimming? I don't know, I am only a man.
posted by Citizen Premier at 12:52 AM PST - 41 comments

Oliver Stone has begun shooting a movie about the September 11 attacks. Despite promising to tread carefully on what is surely sensitive ground, one cannot be worried about Stone's possible interpretation of the events of that day. Furthermore, is it too soon, or does this movie come at just the right time? And finally, will it be more, or less, historically 'accurate' as his last film, Alexander?
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:42 PM PST - 59 comments

Not a particularly interesting person? Perhaps you'd be more interesting if you had been attacked by pygmies, or survived a fall from a 19 story building. But who has the time to actually HAVE crazy life threatening accidents. Now, you no longer need to.
posted by jonson at 11:01 PM PST - 28 comments

Canstruction is a very cool exhibit at the New York Design Center. Take a look at some of these very well done sculptures made using just cans.
posted by riffola at 10:43 PM PST - 9 comments

Apparently before Jed had left us
he wrote some poems
wrote them for no one
I guess I'll show them
here's one of Jed's Poems.
[via the ape]
posted by clunkyrobot at 10:18 PM PST - 20 comments

Man shot and killed after viewing of "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" yesterday at Loews theatre in Pittsburgh. "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" is the title of the new movie by rapper 50 cent, who appeared on ABC's "The View" this morning- 50 Cent says he is sorry for the loss of life, but neither he or his movie is responsible. This isn't the first time that this theatre has had trouble; last Christmas a mob of unruly teenagers overran the theatre. Loews has since pulled the movie from its theatres nationwide, and will do so until the investigation is complete, which may be awhile- in the extremely crowded theatre nobody saw the attackers leaving.
posted by ackeber at 7:53 PM PST - 54 comments

"Brownie's doing a hell of a job"... Part 2? Who is: The "well-connected, ideological, ambitious Republican with zero public health management or medical expertise whose previous job was as a corporate lawyer for Amtrak" who is in charge of the United States' planning for a possible influenza pandemic? A man who recently told a Congressional committee "We're learning as we go"? Meet Stewart Simonson.
posted by docgonzo at 4:37 PM PST - 20 comments

"The Car Music Project was conceived in late 1991 by composer Bill Milbrodt, when his personal car, battered and road-weary, was nearing the end of its useful life. It had endured close to 200,000 miles of road life with little mechanical maintenance and even less cosmetic attention. It would cost more to repair than it was worth and the poor thing had virtually no value as a trade-in. The paint was faded, pesky springs poked through the upholstery, knobs and handles were missing, and the electrical system was iffy. It dripped oil, blew smoke, and made more noise than a cement mixer. It was time to turn the car into music."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Arrested Development Gets The Ax There was no official announcement -- there rarely is when the networks wield the ax -- but after two and a half wonderfully funny seasons, Fox's Emmy-winning "Arrested Development' is dead. It's not like no one saw this coming, but who the hell are all the people watching Nanny 911 and So You Think You Can Dance instead of the best show on TV?
posted by TunnelArmr at 4:19 PM PST - 202 comments

Muammar Qadhafi's Official website (in Arabic, English and French) is a collection of rantsthoughts by the Libyan Numero Uno about politics, including terrorism (Talibans: guilty of "tergiversation libertinism"), Turkey's EU membership (Turk Islamists "believe in polygamy, maids and what the right hand possessed, i.e. European Christian women") and AIDS (a CIA creation). A companion website gives you Qadhafi the Humanitarian, Qadhafi the World Thinker and Qadhafi the Inventor of the Safest Vehicle On Earth ("the leader spent so many hours of his valuable time thinking of an effective solution").
Of course, there are many reasons for not being amused at all by Qadhafi, but these folks know why he's such a despicable character: "This man is actually a Jew". And to teach him a lesson they stole the Qadhafi thumbnails of his official site.
(Slighly related news: Mustapha Akkad, producer of the Halloween horror movie franchise, but also the director of the Qadhafi-sponsored propaganda/epic The Lion of the Desert, was killed (with his daughter) in yesterday's hotel bombings in Amman.)
posted by elgilito at 2:22 PM PST - 49 comments

Significance of numbers. Not to be confused with the concept of "significant figures," this page lists the significance of numbers 0 through 1000. See! "2 is the only even prime." Hear! "24 is the largest number divisible by all numbers less than its square root." Thrill! "3367 is the smallest number which can be written as the difference of 2 cubes in 3 ways." Whoa!
posted by scarabic at 2:09 PM PST - 43 comments

Teen Mayor!
Eighteen year old Michael Sessions can't buy or drink alcohol but he has been elected the mayor of his hometown of Hillsdale, Michigan. He won the office by two votes, which he's credited to his parents for putting him over the top.
His reason for running? Eight races in his town were being run unopposed and he didn't think that was right so he tried to run but was underage at the time. So he ran as a write-in. And won, pending a recount.
It will certainly be an interesting senior year of high school for him.
posted by fenriq at 1:45 PM PST - 26 comments

Mansion impossible is a simple little real estate flipping game that will kill what productivity you have left today.
posted by Badgermann at 12:55 PM PST - 52 comments

Four anarchist labor organizers were hung on this day in 1887 based entirely on their words. On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded at a rally in Haymarket square in Chicago. One policeman was killed. The rally had been called to protest police violence against strikers who were supporting the 8-hour workday movement. Police rounded up the city's radical labor organizers and eventually tried eight for the murder of the policeman at Haymarket. While most of the eight had not even been present at the meeting, the others were shown to have nothing to do with the throwing of the bomb. After the defense appealed as far as they could, five of the defendants were sentenced to death. One committed suicide in his cell the day before the execution was to take place. The other four were hung on Nov. 11, 1887, the birthday of their defense lawyer, Capt. Black.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 12:09 PM PST - 13 comments

An ocean critter flash tribute...
posted by iamck at 11:21 AM PST - 36 comments

Just in case you'd forgotten Katrina, here's a little reminder of what John Tesh has been up to. Apparently he wears ankle socks.
posted by saysthis at 11:11 AM PST - 15 comments

The Pool Hustler. Long an American icon, pool hustlers have all but disappeared. They enjoyed a brief resurgence in the 60’s when pool became popular again, thanks to “The Hustler”. Interest waned through the 70’s, until Newman and Cruise made hustling cool again in “The Color of Money”. Is pool, and by extension hustling, due for a new renaissance?
posted by cosmicbandito at 10:22 AM PST - 46 comments

Flash Animations for Physics. Animations and interactive demos available in many varieties, such as classical mechanics, nuclear, quantum, and relativistic. There's even a nice explanation of the forces at work in Curling. And if that doesn't wet your geek whistle, then take a peek at the patterns of Visual Math.
posted by Gamblor at 10:01 AM PST - 7 comments

I dont know about you but I dont think enough has been said about Ska. Sure, theres guys like Reel Big Fish and Sublime who try to claim the bragging rights for making Ska what it is today, however, many people dont know the real origins of this movement. More inside:
posted by wheelieman at 9:47 AM PST - 71 comments

Star Wars fans are weird.
posted by swift at 9:38 AM PST - 37 comments

Letters If your screen isn't facing anyone, it looks like you're doing work. Happy flash friday everyone!
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:31 AM PST - 33 comments

computers can read your mind!
posted by tarantula at 9:09 AM PST - 41 comments

Breakin' III: Electric Snowshoes. (.MOV) It's not often you get to type the words Breakdancing Creationist (slightly less often than 'surfing bankrobbers). But really, this is best because of the dancing. Well, and the stoner-ific 'Stare at my hands, man' bit. Still not enough breakin' for your Friday? Another pair of performers here(embedded WMV). (Rich via Banana Nutrement.
posted by klangklangston at 9:01 AM PST - 6 comments

Beedogs.com. Dogs in bee costumes. That is all.
posted by onlyconnect at 8:26 AM PST - 32 comments

Game-Oldies.com features a boatload (approximately) of classic games, playable in Java. Lemmings! Duke Nukem! Toejam and Earl! Trampoline Terror! (What?)
posted by Gator at 8:15 AM PST - 30 comments

Wahhabi U. A top U.S. diplomat recently revealed Saudi Arabia still teaches students to hate non-Muslims and the West. So why are we making it easier for Saudi students schooled in that hatred to visit the U.S.?
posted by Postroad at 7:56 AM PST - 24 comments

Pat Robertson to Dover, PA: When disaster strikes your city, don't go running to God.
posted by mikrophon at 7:49 AM PST - 79 comments

Marine's Final Salute to fallen comrades Very emotional piece by the Rocky Mountain News where they shadow'ed a Marine that is responsible for notifying next-of-kin. Seeing as today is Veteran's Day, how 'bout we salute our men and women in uniform ... and leave the political discussions for other forums.
posted by RonZ at 7:49 AM PST - 41 comments

The Digital Dada Library. Because "any attempt to conciliate an inexplicable momentary state with logic strikes me as a boring kind of game."
posted by The Jesse Helms at 7:46 AM PST - 10 comments

The Works of natural philosopher Robert Boyle (1627 - 1697) at the Robert Boyle Project, based at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Widely regarded as the first modern chemist (his book The Sceptical Chymist is perhaps the founding text of chemistry as a science), he was also an alchemist and made significant contributions in physics (for example Boyle's law) and physiology.
The Robert Boyle homepage has as its centrepiece a large collection of images of Boyles' papers. Images and transcriptions of his marvellous work diaries are available at the AHRC Centre for Editing Lives and Letters.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:23 AM PST - 5 comments

Less is More. More is More. Just Enough is More.
posted by gwint at 7:01 AM PST - 5 comments

The Mad Potter of Biloxi: with his 18-inch mustache, his technical expertise, his wildly altered pots, and his command of glazing, George Ohr was America's first art potter. Smithsonian Magazine article here (full pdf link at bottom of page). Left-handed tea pot. Vase.
posted by OmieWise at 6:31 AM PST - 11 comments

High Art at the Geffen Contemporary includes an LSD fountain, wow.
posted by xowie at 6:18 AM PST - 9 comments

It's Friday. It's early. You beat your coworkers into the office. Now for some fun go load up the Office Poltergeist server onto their machines, note their IP address, and wait a few hours. Later today you can send text to their screen, send sounds, move their windows slightly, and open their CD tray. If you're careful, you can probably keep pranking someone for hours using this. [via MeFi Projects]
posted by mathowie at 5:43 AM PST - 26 comments

Be mesmirised by a very complex .gif involving blue balls in a machine. Then, when you've had enough, check out this rather silly but also tragic accompaniment.
posted by Lotto at 5:41 AM PST - 21 comments

RainbowCrack Online aims to enable anyone (who'll pay their subscription) to crack a password given the password hash, and get the clear-text password back instantly by looking it up against their 500GB Rainbow Table. Of course, you've been able to use John the Ripper or l0phtcrack to do this using your own computational power (and time) to crack a password before (or do it online) but now it's just Click and Crack... You still not using shadows?
posted by benzo8 at 3:51 AM PST - 14 comments

Lethal Beauty is a seven-part series by the San Francisco Chronicle about the Golden Gate Bridge and its history of suicides. The articles present both sides of the argument regarding a barrier which would stop such tragedies. The presentation includes graphic representations of suicides by location, a timeline and podcasts from survivors & relatives, among others.
posted by Masi at 3:26 AM PST - 13 comments

Loose change A one hour analysis of 9/11 and how it is more likely than not that the government was actually behind the attacks. A documentary analyzing the footage and presenting an alternative view to the official version.
posted by zeerobots at 12:35 AM PST - 105 comments

Live in Denver? Single? Between 40 & 60? Male? Spiritual? Have enough money to buy a 600,000 dollar house? Then you might be in luck, provided you like blondes.
posted by jonson at 10:52 PM PST - 41 comments

The teaser trailer has just appeared online for Darren Aronofsky's first movie since 2000, and only his third overall. It's the result of an incredibly tumultous Gilliam-style gestation period that included a large budget being greenlighted with Brad Pitt in the starring role, Brad Pitt dropping out of the project to film Troy with Wolfgang Petersen, sets being destroyed, the project being cancelled, the crew members writing a public tirade deriding his desertion that concludes with the "Send the word.... Brad is a dick.", and, finally, a movie (still being edited) that was re-written to be filmed for half the budget with Hugh Jackman as the star in Mr. Pitt's place. Script reviews and early looks indicate it may be one of the most ambitious studio releases in recent memory. Even if it doesn't entirely succeed, isn't this a good thing for films in general?
posted by setanor at 10:29 PM PST - 64 comments

Clearman's Steak n' Stein Inn is a throw-back to a creepier, more velvety time. Anyone living in the Valley is no doubt familiar with the commercial for this Pico Rivera staple, with its Joe Jackson-worthy kinda kute waitresses and stately, Wagnerian score. There're lots (and lots and lots) of people obsessed with old diners, but I have to ask myself: who represents online for the creepy old steak house contingent?
posted by ford and the prefects at 9:34 PM PST - 28 comments

Bones to beauty Flash. Just something quick. Maybe NSFW.
posted by Jimbob at 9:08 PM PST - 25 comments

Britain: Home of freedom, liberty and justice
posted by lalochezia at 8:31 PM PST - 16 comments

"Tonight was a night of dreams -- dreams of many citizens who have almost given up hope for being part of Israeli society."

A new Prime Minister for Israel? Moroccan Amir Peretz, former head of the Histadrut (Israel's general labour union) supplants Shimon Peres as leader of Israel's Labour with an agenda of social welfare and an end to sectarianism and ethnic tension.
BBC Profile. Jerusalem Post article. Analysis from HaAretz. June 2005 Interview. Biography and Open Letter from Official Website. Peretz's "Ethical Roadmap" for Israel.
posted by ori at 8:25 PM PST - 13 comments

NASA: For the Benefit of All Mankind [MPEG; context]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:08 PM PST - 18 comments

Ali G visits an anti-abortion demonstration ....and then beat-boxes to their chants.
posted by elemenopee at 6:47 PM PST - 27 comments

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
posted by wilful at 4:04 PM PST - 75 comments

The White Diamond was one of three documentaries released in theaters this year (in the U.S.) by legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog (the others being the more widely seen Grizzly Man, about a man who studied bears in Alaska, and Wheel of Time, about the practices and rituals of devout Buddhists). In The White Diamond, Herzog introduces us to Dr. Graham Dorrington, a professor of aeronautics who is obsessed with weightless, floating flight, and who is testing the design of a new airship in a large hangar outside of London. Herzog and Dorrington travel to the rainforest of Guyana, where Dorrington hopes to fly the small dirigible over the jungle’s canopy and study the innumerable plants and animals living there with the hopes of finding new species and potentially discovering plants with pharmaceutical and healing benefits – a practice he calls “canopy prospecting”. [more inside]
posted by billysumday at 3:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Upside-Down Christmas Trees - Demand is growing. The media seems to have caught on to the trend...playing right into the hands of the sellers. Get yours today (if they haven't already sold out), for a mere $599.95. On one hand, it seems like a good space-saving idea. On the other, how much more commercial can Christmas get? "Target has three such upside-down trees on its website, touting their best attribute: 'Leaves more room on the floor for gifts!'"
posted by clgregor at 3:08 PM PST - 67 comments

Fallen Art (16mb avi) is the second movie directed by Tomek Baginski, following his Oscar nominated "The Cathedral..." This short animated movie has been made by a group of people for whom the army has always been an unfulfilled dream. (more info)
posted by crunchland at 1:24 PM PST - 8 comments

For those who tire of the usual paper and pencil-based puzzle, try Websudoku.
posted by Rothko at 12:59 PM PST - 42 comments

Did you ever wonder where nursery rhymes came from? Of course, the etymology of some rhymes is contentious, but at least you can get the tune right [uses flash] while you argue about them.
posted by 5MeoCMP at 11:28 AM PST - 16 comments

Do you spend a lot of time worrying about government mind-control satellites? New research from MIT indicates that your tin-foil hat may be less effective than you think.
posted by GuyZero at 10:46 AM PST - 28 comments

Welcome to Idiot America: "The America of Franklin and Edison, of Fulton and Ford, of the Manhattan project and the Apollo program, the America of which Einstein wanted to be a part, seems to be enveloping itself in a curious fog behind which it's tying itself in knots over evolution, for pity's sake, and over the relative humanity of blastocysts versus the victims of Parkinson's disease."
posted by bitmage at 10:41 AM PST - 57 comments

In one corner, precise astronomers who just want to keep things as they are. In the other, revisionist telecommunications officers. Fight!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:26 AM PST - 25 comments

Speaking, as we were, of F1 drivers, fans should take note that Live Fast, Die Young, a documentary about Swiss driver Jo Siffert has recently been released overseas. Siffert died in a crash in 1971, and fifty thousand people turned out for his funeral. Can't see the film (and if you're in the U.S., chances are you can't)? Check out the soundtrack, by the always fantastic (though apparently website-less) Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited. Samples here.
posted by schoolgirl report at 9:54 AM PST - 11 comments

"On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive him at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. [...] Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago." Coral cache quicktime here.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 8:08 AM PST - 191 comments

The world's most expensive photocopy. An untitled cowboy photograph by Richard Prince set a record last night for the most expensive photograph sold at auction, with a price of $1,248,000. The catch? It's a re-photograph of pre-existing Marlboro ad.
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:04 AM PST - 62 comments

"So, tomorrow I take to the trail again, to the canyons south." With these words young artist Everett Reuss left the town of Escalante, UT to head into the desert never to be seen again. He was only twenty but had rubbed elbows with the likes of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. Reuss has been described as a "total artist" [angelfire] working in paint, woodcuts and poetry to describe the marvelous wilderness of the Southwest. [more inside]
posted by Ogre Lawless at 7:42 AM PST - 9 comments

The latest in something of a trend, left-leaning LA Weekly has warmed to nuclear power. Earlier this year, Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore endorsed it as well (along with such practices as salmon farming). The idea that Nuclear is green has appeared in the pages of the New York Times, with (both subscriber only, sorry) Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof making the case back in March and April. They've encountered some resistance, but it seems to be a growing position. (Of course, there are some people who aren't being asked to join the club.) Is this a "Greenwashing" or a legitimate change in the environmental movement?
posted by graymouser at 7:38 AM PST - 76 comments

Explosions in three hotels in Amman, Jordan kill at least 57 people. Authorities suspect suicide bombers. The Grand Hyatt Hotel, the Radisson SAS Hotel, and the Days Inn were involved in the bombings; most of the deaths were focused at a wedding reception where a man allegedly entered into the crowd with eplosives strapped to his body. Arrests have been made, and the government is asking anyone who filmed the bombings to give the government a copy. An al-qaeda website has taken responsibility, stating "A group of our best lions launched a new attack on some dens ..."
posted by Dean Keaton at 7:35 AM PST - 25 comments

When the Waves Turn the Minutes to Hours It's been 30 years since Lake Superior November gales claimed the Great Lakes ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald. The sinking immortalized in song by Gordon Lightfoot is also documented at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on a spit of land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a mere squinting distance on a clear day from where the Fitz actually went down. Here in Detroit, of course, the bells will ring at Mariner's Church -- where a lone priest reacted to the sinking by ringing the church's bells 29 times, once for each man lost. (previously discussed (kinda) here (among others)
posted by chandy72 at 6:27 AM PST - 46 comments

It's the 230th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Every 10 NOV current, future, and former Marines gather to commemorate the founding of the USMC. GoDaddy's founder Bob Parsons is a former Marine, and makes it a habit to send out birthday wishes every year. (flash)
posted by taumeson at 6:23 AM PST - 40 comments

A xylothek is literally a library of wood, a collection of book-like boxes made from trees--the wood and bark with the seeds, leaves, flowers, fruit--or illustrations of the soft parts (site in German), inside.
posted by dhruva at 11:08 PM PST - 29 comments

'Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offense under the law of the United States. No official of the government, federal, state or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor may any official condone or tolerate torture in any form. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification of torture. US law contains no provision permitting otherwise prohibited acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to be employed on grounds of exigent circumstances (for example, during a ‘state of public emergency’) or on orders from a superior officer or public authority, and the protective mechanisms of an independent judiciary are not subject to suspension.’ (Report of the United States to the UN Committee against Torture, October 15, 1999, UN Doc. CAT/C/28/Add.5, February 9, 2000, para. 6.)
posted by alms at 8:57 PM PST - 58 comments

Does this look familiar to these. First transparent alumina, now this. When do we get Holodecks.
posted by notcostello at 8:02 PM PST - 26 comments

American Christianity has distorted the gospel and become spiritually bankrupt. ... “Regardless of what the New Testament says, most Christians are materialists with no experience of the Spirit. Regardless of what the New Testament says, most Christians are individualists with no real experience of community.” He paused for a moment and then continued: “Let’s pretend that you were all Christians. If you were Christians, you would no longer accumulate. You would share everything you had. You would actually love one another. And you would treat each other as if you were family.” His eyes were piercing as he asked, “Why don’t you do that? Why don’t you live that way?”
posted by publius at 6:51 PM PST - 94 comments

Tax and Spend Conservatives. President George W. Bush and the current administration have now borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 U.S. presidents combined. Wow.
posted by caddis at 6:17 PM PST - 42 comments

She interviewed Mussolini. She wrote plays for Eugene O'Neill's Provincetown Players. She got letters from Trotsky. Freud and Helen Keller were in her address book. She married journalist John Reed, and Diane Keaton played her in Reds. And she was nearly forgotten. Now, Louise Bryant is remembered. More here and much more here.
posted by digaman at 3:55 PM PST - 4 comments

A filmmaker and festival director goes on a morning news show to promote his local theater and a traveling flim festival. Totally routine interview until - d'oh! A good reason not to go on tv when you're either super nervous or hungover (Quicktime movie). (via)
posted by billysumday at 3:30 PM PST - 30 comments

Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating Subhumanoid Zombified Living Dead, Part 3 is currently in production. Some other long movie titles of note.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 3:01 PM PST - 29 comments

Morning Musume vs. Lizard. Japanese pop group is attacked, sort of.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 2:53 PM PST - 13 comments

Sounds Cool! Thermoacoustic refrigeration research at Penn State has been sponsored by Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream company. The aim? To produce an efficient yet environmentally friendly ice cream freezer...[more inside]
posted by paulsc at 2:41 PM PST - 17 comments

"A car riged [sic] with a VBIED [vehicle-borne improvised explosive device] blows up on bridge in Hit, Iraq." (Caution: contains audio with profanity.)
posted by crunchland at 1:12 PM PST - 39 comments

Has the C.I.A. legally killed prisoners? Two years ago, Manadel al-Jamadi, a suspected Iraqi insurgent, walked into a Baghdad interrogation room. He was dead in 45 minutes, his head covered with a plastic bag, shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that led to his asphyxiation. U.S. authorities classified his death a homicide. His CIA interrogator has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency. President Bush says "We do not torture." But if that’s true, then why is Vice President Cheney fighting to exempt CIA interrogators from a torture ban? And al-Jamadi? His case is stalled in the Alberto Gonzalez Justice Department, two years after soldiers posed for thumbs-up pictures next to his corpse.
posted by sacre_bleu at 10:59 AM PST - 47 comments

For $1,800, ex-molester Rick Strawn will abduct your kid into an unregulated gulag. A harrowing piece of journalism from the rarely-glimpsed world of the teen punishment industry.
posted by johngoren at 10:41 AM PST - 73 comments

The appeal of Calvin and Hobbes (click "launch" to open the feature)
posted by rxrfrx at 10:23 AM PST - 75 comments

Being Press Secretary is a difficult job. Link to a hilariously uncomfortable transcript of Scott McClellan dancing his way through a White House press briefing doing his best to clarify whether or not the American government sanctions terror.
posted by jonson at 9:55 AM PST - 49 comments

. Chicks in thongs parade
While poor kids are sniffing glue
Awesome charity

[via Independent Sources]
posted by StephenV at 9:44 AM PST - 46 comments

The grammatically poor 1 days linkfarm starts us off so quickly, on to 2 days of Japanese gadgets. 3 days, then 4 days and 5 days too are just farming links, while 6 days does so with the additon (allegedly) of AdorableCats. 7 days is farming too (but no cats) and The Beatles' 8 Days A Week is co-opted to a copy shop. 9 days will sell your house in 7 days (and keep 2 for their commission, I guess). Circumspection is the name of the game at 10 days and 11 days is back to farming links. 12 Days of Christmas, of course. Unluckily, 13 days is another farm... Gwen offers you 14 days of laminate samples for your library walls. 15 days is a link farm again. 16 Days Design "reserves the right to refuse service to anyone". It might take 17 days to look through Jenny's galleries, but much less than 18 days to realise this is just another link farm. There's "no website configured at [19 days]" - you sure? 20 days - links. You can earn $100,00 in a year - so that's $5,753.42 in 21 days. Try MobZilla for 14 days at 22 days (and do what for the other 8?) 81% of investors fall into The Three Most Dangerous Pitfalls because they didn't spend 23 days checking things out. (24 days is coming soon.) The AlphabetAcademy teaches you one letter a day... for 25 days - which one gets the chop I wonder? You can sell your home in 26 days or get $2,600!!! 27 days is back to linkfarming. In 28 days you might be on Reality TV. Want 29 days of "Internal Cleansing" with Blessed Herbs? NetSol aren't above 30 days of links. And finally, 31 days later, everything stops...
posted by benzo8 at 9:36 AM PST - 39 comments

Blair loses in the Commons for the first time since his election in 1997. MPs refused to pass laws allowing terrorist suspects to be jailed without trial for 90 days, and Blair's parliamentary majority of 66 turned into a minority of 31. The government has been holding back on the vote for months in an attempt to persuade their party to back the Prime Minister - they failed.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 9:19 AM PST - 38 comments

Who Is Lying About Iraq? A (thorough) editorial from Commentary Magazine by Norman Podhoretz examining the case for war, the allegations of Bush administration deceit, the yellowcake incident, Democratic party claims and backtracking, and Plamegate. Obviously partisan, obviously biased, but I've never seen such a clearly laid out rebuttal with citations of many of the allegations made against the Bush administration with respect to Iraq.
posted by loquax at 9:06 AM PST - 102 comments

One Red Paperclip. A story of a man attempting to turn a paperclip into a house.
posted by greasy_skillet at 7:59 AM PST - 38 comments

Diagnosis or job description? UK tabloids sometimes lead people to believe that all journalists are the scum of the earth. That's obviously not true, but one journalist who actually fits the bill seems to be ex-Woman's Wear Daily staffer, Peter Braunstein. On halloween, he dressed up as a fireman, called around at the apartment of a friend of his ex-wife and repeatedly drugged and raped her. Normally, this would just be another tawdry true crime, but like most writers, he's ended up leaving his mark all over the net.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 7:21 AM PST - 22 comments

Free Visual Studio Express Is Microsoft suddenly feeling generous, or are they just trying to further improve market share? (It's the latter).
posted by dsword at 6:43 AM PST - 31 comments

More than a BMX - The StreetSurfer is a patented pedal-driven vehicle (think BMX) that you ride like a surfboard in an urban setting. It consists of a normal bike frame, a rear wheel (duh) and four mini wheels on the front. These littler front wheels apparently track the surface of the ground better than a traditional bicycle and therefore give the rider a smoother, more controlled ride. More info via the StreetSurfer's awfully designed website (ugly Flash warning), although there's two chunky videos to download that also help to explain the product in further detail. Via Beyond Tomorrow. …
posted by sjvilla79 at 3:55 AM PST - 48 comments

Newsfilter: All eight ballod initiatives in the California special election fail. $250 million down the drain. Were they all bad measures, or were voters just showing their displeasure with those in power?
posted by team lowkey at 1:33 AM PST - 101 comments

Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature
posted by daksya at 7:43 PM PST - 60 comments

Once a week, Phoneswarm targets a random US payphone, then tells the world to call it.
posted by superfem at 6:36 PM PST - 28 comments

This story made me wonder a bit. I'd never thought to wonder where all those old toilets disappear to. Maybe some lost tribes are out there right now hunting with the remnants of these devices, which seem to have a rich history. Disclaimer.
posted by IronLizard at 5:57 PM PST - 16 comments

Flying Spagetti Monster expelled from Kansas The Kansas School Board has decided that it knows much more about the origins of life than the combined intelligence of all the scientists on the planet, and that fiction can be taught as fact. But seriously, if you don't even understand the scientific method, what business do you have setting academic policy?
posted by gallois at 5:37 PM PST - 186 comments

Newsfilter: Iraq atrocity allegations by former Marine sergeant Jimmy Massey investigated, found to be unsubstantiated. Via The Poor Man.
posted by russilwvong at 5:32 PM PST - 21 comments

Empire Online's 50 Greatest Independent Films
I had no idea The Terminator was an independent film but they explain (a little) how they choose the movies as being made with "an independent spirit".

And if you think they got some wrong or missed the boat entirely, let 'em know. I, for one, wholeheartedly agree with #1, though I'm sure some of you will not.
posted by fenriq at 4:49 PM PST - 98 comments

DeBeers is selling 26% of its mining operations to a South African "black empowerment" holding company. The new company's shareholders include DeBeers mines' local employees and pensioners and trusts benefiting disadvantaged groups. Its chairman has been a prominent figure in the ANC and the National Union of Mineworkers. Seems pretty cool, even if DeBeers is only doing it because South Africa's Mining Charter says they have to.
posted by thirteenkiller at 4:33 PM PST - 35 comments

Staggering reading by Robert Fisk then an interview with Fisk by Amy Goodman - from a 9/2005 program at the ever-wonderful Lannan Foundation.
posted by nromanek at 3:42 PM PST - 17 comments

Once in a while you might come across a website about a celebrity that appears to be maintained by the very celebrity it touts. We've discussed some of these before. But you just haven't lived the 'Web 2.0' until you visit the Official StevenSegal.com. Herein you will find exciting possibly even working links to "Spirituality" and even a very exciting "Steven's Mp3 Page" (where all audio files are in .ram format). There is even 100% Pure Steven Seagal Juice and Steven's Essentail Oils are for sale as well.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 3:31 PM PST - 42 comments

Colbert Nation, the Stephen Colbert "fan site". Definitely read Stephen Colbert fan-fiction, the highlight of which is the Middle-Earth fan-fic. It's a parody of a fan site, apparently written and updated by the Colbert Report's graphic designer. It doesn't matter though, even though my cool side cringes at laughing so hard at something with a marketing budget. Pepsi Blue my ass, Colbert's funnier than I thought.
posted by geoff. at 1:53 PM PST - 54 comments

Coverpop is mostly a bunch of stuff coded into a mouse-over mosaic.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 1:13 PM PST - 4 comments

In 1844, Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber. In 1845, Robert William Thomson invented and patented the first vulcanized pneumatic tire, although his design was too costly to be practical. John Dunlop patented his own design for pneumatic bicycle tires in 1888, and this design was less expensive to produce than Thomson’s, and was widely adopted. André Michelin attempted to make the first pneumatic automobile tire in 1895. Although his initial design was not successful, he persevered, and the company he formed with his brother Edouard flourished. And although the tire has continued to evolve, its basic form -- that of a torus filled with pressurized air -- has remained unchanged for 160 years.

While pneumatic tires provide a ride that is both comfortable and safe, the fact that they are filled with air creates some obvious problems. But what if you could make a tire that had the ride characteristics of a pneumatic but was not, strictly speaking, a pneumatic tire? In an interesting attempt to "reinvent the wheel," Michelin has developed an airless tire they are calling the "Tweel". This press release has the standard yadda yadda you would expect with any new product announcement, but these pictures on a third party site demonstrate what a radical idea the "tire without air" really is.
posted by mosk at 12:16 PM PST - 36 comments

100 Greatest Internet Moments
posted by kirkaracha at 12:00 PM PST - 61 comments

We will act deliberately and decisively, and the cause of freedom will prevail. Now, watch this drive.
posted by 3.2.3 at 11:52 AM PST - 35 comments

Microsoft is frequently the brunt of jokes in the computer world - not always fair. But now, MSN UK is asking for an editor for their front page - and wants the application letters to be hand-written. Oh, if it only were a hoax, but no... It was in the Guardian, too.
posted by SharQ at 11:44 AM PST - 34 comments

The Rise of Faketion I want them to know that even in the age of Faketion, fiction still survived.
posted by oldleada at 10:48 AM PST - 13 comments

"Demand the truth."
A stunningly detailed interview with (Abu-Ghraib-involved) former general Janis Karpinski.
(Interviewer: Diane Rehm.)
posted by Tlogmer at 10:02 AM PST - 33 comments

Listen to some of the g{0,1}[r]e[ea][tk]{0,1}[i]est minds on the planet. Some of the most ubarest geeks on the planet have an hour long interview talking about technology, ideas, and giving away the source code for MacPaint.
posted by eurasian at 7:36 AM PST - 20 comments

Play RISK using Google Maps. From the FAQ: For some reason I decided a bit after the API for Google Maps came out that it would be awesome to be able to play Risk on it... I've always been a gamer and thought this was the perfect step.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:30 AM PST - 36 comments

“The name’s Power. Michael Power..."
posted by longbaugh at 7:28 AM PST - 10 comments

Design your life. Design as a way to think about life.
posted by OmieWise at 5:13 AM PST - 13 comments

Return of the Recluse. After twelve years' absence, this week sees the return of Kate Bush. Released in the States today, Aerial is being received to the expected glowing reviews. Called a prodigy by some, overrated by others, she has had an undeniable impact on a diverse range of artists.
posted by geckoinpdx at 3:30 AM PST - 34 comments

Newsfilter: Emilia DiSanto, chief investigator for Chuck Grassley was attacked at her home. Was the attack connected to the Finance Committee's investigations into Medicare Fraud, drug secrets and insider trading, or the Abramoff scandal? (via)
posted by pandaharma at 11:51 PM PST - 22 comments

When you write a letter to the Pope, be sure to end it: I have the honor to remain Your Holiness's obedient servant, but for a Cardinal, simply use: Yours very truly. And remember that Emperors are addressed Your dignified Majesty while Kings are just called Your Majesty. Titles can be quite fascinating, for example, Queen Elizabeth is also an official Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Gynecologists and is an Honorary Bachelor of Music at the University of Wales. Even if you don't have those impressive titles, you can definitely find one for you in the giant Dictionary of Occupational Titles (largish html file - my personal favorite is "Fancy packer"); or just go for some obsolete job titles.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:49 PM PST - 40 comments

European Wine Fighting For Survival
posted by Gyan at 9:12 PM PST - 35 comments

Are you going to the "Top of the Rock"?
posted by cmicali at 9:04 PM PST - 5 comments

Jesus of the Week (dot com)
posted by anastasiav at 9:02 PM PST - 21 comments

Hamster driven micro Power Plants ... the Hamster powered Night Light from the Otherpower.com guys .... also the school project of a London teen ... "Every two minutes Elvis spends on his wheel gives me about 30 minutes talk time on my phone." The teenage inventor was given a C for his project and has been awarded a D overall for the course" Please no Richard Gere jokes OK?
posted by celerystick at 8:47 PM PST - 16 comments

Charlie Kelly's Website. Between 1979 and 1983 I was part of the first company to make nothing but off-road bicycles when I joined forces with my former roommate, Gary Fisher, and a frambuilder named Tom Ritchey. Meet Charlie Kelly, Mountain Bike Hall of Famer and one of those who was there in the mid-1970s, astride a converted Schwinn atop Marin County's Mount Tam, founding the sport known today as mountain biking.[via]
posted by RockyChrysler at 8:27 PM PST - 7 comments

LA Bars & Restaurants of the 30s 40s 50s 60s as well as motels on Route 66, movie palaces, Vegas motels and all things Googie [previously discussed]. If I ever make it to the States this will be my guidebook.
posted by tellurian at 7:42 PM PST - 15 comments

La strage nascosta (italian language) Today Rainews 24 part of RAI Television (Italian possible equivalent of PBS) broadcasted on a satellite channel a short documentary concerning the conquest of Falluja city. The documentary presents many images and allegations suggesting that U.S. army probably used White Phosphorous on the city during the offensive of 8 November 2004 with devastating consequences on civilians and insurgents. The substance is used on battlefield for purposes including production of dense smoke (M156) and also for incendiary purposes.(Warning, disturbing pictures of dead people). Direct link goes to documentary, English audio WMV link here. NSFW, extremely graphic, and very disturbing. Previous reference [1] here on Meta.
posted by elpapacito at 5:48 PM PST - 55 comments

Stellarium. A free program which renders realistic skies in real time, and more. Handy for anyone who ever wrangled with one of these. And very cool to watch in fast forward.
posted by fire&wings at 5:32 PM PST - 19 comments

Stop Action Photography Fun. (embedded video) Some quality fun to brighten your Monday.
posted by snsranch at 4:29 PM PST - 28 comments

What would you do with $100 million? OK, scratch that. What would you do if you were the head of a top US university with an anonymous gift of $100 million? Well, if you're Richard C. Levin, you'd take a cue from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and decide to let music students in for free.
posted by emelenjr at 2:44 PM PST - 31 comments

Grokster shuts down after their Supreme Court defeat [pdf] this summer, Grokster has chosen to settle its case with MGM et al., admit to wrongdoing, and stop distributing its software. Their website now displays the message: "There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.". Another victoy for Hollywood in the intellectual property war. Who's next?
posted by falconred at 2:26 PM PST - 32 comments

more flickr fun
someone has a little too much time on their hands - the result is cool.
posted by specialk420 at 2:06 PM PST - 23 comments

Yet another Martial Artist goes over the edge. A Chicago teacher of Dim Mak bills himself as "The Human Stungun" for his ability to knock people out from a distance. The fact that it doesn't work on anybody except his students doesn't seem to worry him. The odd thing is his students. In on the con? Or just victims of self-delusion?
posted by lumpenprole at 1:48 PM PST - 73 comments

Built to FLIP!
posted by riffola at 12:29 PM PST - 22 comments

The FBI knows you're reading MetaFilter. [WashPost link]
posted by digaman at 12:15 PM PST - 95 comments

The Dysfunctional Family Letter Generator.
posted by C17H19NO3 at 12:08 PM PST - 8 comments

Burnt Church, the Opera - When I was a kid some of my greatest literary influences were "Quadrophenia", "The Wall", "Tommy", and "Jesus Christ Superstar". And did I mention "Quadrophenia"? Jeff Parker and Paul Roessler have put online their entire Floyd-esque concept album "Burnt Church" (complete with groovy Flash bits) and they are encouraging people to download for free. Check it!
posted by nromanek at 11:08 AM PST - 6 comments

Newsfilter: Vatican rejects Intelligent Design. The Vatican has stated that Intelligent Design is not, in their opinion, science and they do not support it. Their announcement is a part of the effort to end the "mutual prejudice" between science and evolution.
posted by delmoi at 10:53 AM PST - 97 comments

Dahlia Lithwick in Slate urges Democrats to grow a spine, and use the Alito hearings to provide the American public with some liberal talking points for a change. "If the Scalias, Thomases, Alitos, and Borks of the world had their way ... there would be no meaningful gun control. States could have official churches. Hard-fought federal worker, environmental, and civil rights protections would disintegrate. What you currently think of as the right to privacy would disappear. These are the questions Senate Democrats need to ask of Sam Alito: Should property rights trump individual rights? Should the right to privacy be interpreted as narrowly as the framers might have intended? Do you believe that a return to the morals and mores of two centuries ago is in the best interest of this nation?"
posted by snoktruix at 9:15 AM PST - 76 comments

Author John Fowles, 79, died at home this weekend, after a lengthy illness. "I know I have a reputation as a cantankerous man of letters and I don't try and play it down" - John Fowles in 2003. One of the contemporary greats, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Collector, The Magus... there seems like there should be more articles on this, but alas.
posted by eatdonuts at 9:12 AM PST - 19 comments

Factbites is a new approach to web searching - the results make sense! Factbites offers users meaningful, relevant sentences from every site in the search results. For example, durian.
posted by crunchland at 8:38 AM PST - 19 comments

eBaum's World Sucks. "For a long time ebaumsworld.com has been stealing content and rebranding it from Something Awful and many other sites on the Internet. Everyone is used to having their content moved around on the net, but Eric Bauman obscures any references to the creator in favor of slapping his branding everywhere. And he's gotten rich doing it."

A charming little flash animation from some SA goons.
posted by Brockstar at 8:33 AM PST - 77 comments

85% of college students now use Facebook. With such popularity schools such as MU are examing Facebook usage and "a few students have been turned in for content that violates the conduct code." The phone-directory-on-steroids even attracts employers, "Linda Kaiser ... spoke with two people — an employer and a parent — who used Facebook to screen candidates for employment." Oh and for the Greeks the Facebook is creating problems of its own.
posted by geoff. at 7:29 AM PST - 48 comments

Beer and Wine, Not Adam and Steve Just before you step inside of your local supermarket there's a person holding a clipboard asking you if you are a registered voter in this state. "Yes.." Would you like to sign a petition to allow this very store to sell beer and wine? "OK" You glance at the cover page on the clipboard then quickly scribble your name and address on page 5 and hand back the clipboard. Thank you. Just as many other hurried shoppers did before you, you have just added your name to the growing list of voters who support an amendment to ban same sex marriage. The family-focused (or somewhat obsessed) political group that organized the petition drive hired a political consulting firm that in turn hired subcontractors who are paid by number of signatures gathered. Discussed on the blue here before was another effort to make public names and addresses of all who signed the petitions.
posted by StarForce5 at 7:00 AM PST - 49 comments

All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena recently received a letter warning of a revocation of its tax exempt status due to its "anti-war sermons."
posted by The Jesse Helms at 6:59 AM PST - 50 comments

Hong Kong court jails man for creating and posting torrents.
posted by plenty at 6:23 AM PST - 20 comments

Ian Hamilton Finlay is a poet, dramatist and short story writer. However, his greatest work is his garden, Little Sparta, located in the central belt of Scotland and free to visit, it is perhaps Scotland's most impressive piece of public art.
posted by johnny novak at 6:03 AM PST - 8 comments

Nebraska has the only unicameral, non-partisan legislature in the United States. Created by constitutional amendment in 1935, Nebraska's legislature gained brief influence as a model of legislative politics after the "one man, one vote" Supreme Court rulings in the mid-60s. Many states had not reapportioned their districts for years, creating an imbalance in state and national legislative politics. The Supreme Court ruling which sparked the brief campaign for unicameral legislatures.
posted by Captaintripps at 4:56 AM PST - 31 comments

From Oakland to Argentina in a 1981 VW Dasher modified to run on vegetable oil and biodiesel/diesel. David Moders posts updates to a message board of veggie car enthusiasts throughout his five month journey through Latin America with his wife, Mali, and son, Emilio, while trying to power his car with used restaurant grease. Here are some pictures of his journey.
posted by Mijo Bijo at 2:53 AM PST - 19 comments

Blank Tapes
posted by nylon at 1:50 AM PST - 56 comments

Rick Dangerous remade in Flash.
posted by mr.marx at 1:49 AM PST - 15 comments

"What's the matter sweetie? Can't sleep?"
"No, no. I was just going over my answers to the polygraph test your dad just gave me."
posted by Rothko at 1:26 AM PST - 17 comments