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Here is a Photoshop filter that can make Kirby dots.
posted by JHarris at 9:24 PM PST - 19 comments

I work in Wall Street and work in hedge fund analysis. I'm the only person in my office who supports OWS.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:57 PM PST - 66 comments

Linda Ronstadt plans to publish her autobiography (aptly titled “Heart Like a Wheel”). “Linda Ronstadt is one of the most versatile and commercially successful female singers in U.S. history, recognized for her many public stages of self-reinvention and incarnations.” [more inside]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 7:39 PM PST - 39 comments

Reading Blaise Cendrars is like stepping into another universe. His fiction is unlike anything else I've ever read. His poetry influenced the mighty Guillaume Apollinaire and helped shape the face of modernism. But it is his mockery of biographical detail and the very notion of literature that fascinates me the most. If, like me, you're not a fan of autobiography, then Blaise Cendrars is the memoirist for you.
posted by Trurl at 6:51 PM PST - 10 comments

The world's largest smallest airport has finally joined the world's largest model railway [YouTube, has some discreet miniature people nudity]. As discussed previously, after six years of work Miniatur Wonderland has the airport its 10,000 train cars and 200,000 inhabitants require. Though Miniatur Wonderland has little close competition for size, it is far from the most important model railroad. That honor goes to the ugly tracks of the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT. Rather than focusing on beautiful railroads, the TMRC fixated on building the best control systems for their model trains. As a result of playing with ever more complicated programming challenges, from the TMRC came some of the first important hackers and hacker culture, and the seeds of the modern video game industry.
posted by blahblahblah at 6:03 PM PST - 29 comments

Safety Warning Signs
Sprout From NYC Street Poles
It's Curbside Haiku!
[more inside]
posted by zarq at 3:42 PM PST - 43 comments

The Great Shift in Japanese Pop Culture: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. [more inside]
posted by subdee at 3:12 PM PST - 35 comments

"When I said in the beginning that absolutely everything that’s represented in this document is in response to stuff that has actually occurred at conventions, that is not hyperbole..." Author Peter David has posted his Fan/Pro Bill of Rights for sci-fi conventions and convention-goers. [more inside]
posted by magstheaxe at 3:03 PM PST - 77 comments

Ravel's Bolero in Copenhagan train station. that is all
posted by eggtooth at 2:44 PM PST - 59 comments

The University of Florida Book of Insect Records (UFBIR) names insect champions and documents their achievements. [more inside]
posted by zamboni at 2:14 PM PST - 9 comments

Turns out you can up learning rate with a small current across brain Scientific American: Amping Up Brain Function: Transcranial Stimulation Shows Promise in Speeding Up Learning Electrical stimulation of subjects' brains is found to accelerate learning in military and civilian subjects, although researchers are yet wary of drawing larger conclusions about the mechanism.... I believe I've also seen some posts on external (strong) magnetic fields being able to hinder or help learning as well. Strange times we live in.
posted by aleph at 1:58 PM PST - 37 comments

Studies have shown that chimps are capable of insightful reasoning and nuanced communication. Apparently, the individuals that are the smartest are also the most adept at slinging their own poo.
posted by Laminda at 1:10 PM PST - 33 comments

Mr. Data Converter takes CSV, Excel, or tab-delimited data and coverts it into web-friendly formats, including HTML tables, PHP arrays, JSON properties and MySQL tables. via
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 1:02 PM PST - 28 comments

Morrissey gets a job. [more inside]
posted by EvaDestruction at 1:02 PM PST - 77 comments

Zdeněk Miler, the animator of the beloved Krtek ("Little Mole") animations died today. Conceived in 1954 after stumbling on a mole's burrow on his evening walk, Krtek appeared in about fifty films all drawn by Miler. The first Krtek film ("How Krtek Got His Pants"), originally an educational video about the manufacture of linen, won first prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1957. The Krtek films have been aired in about eighty countries. Miler's young daughters did the uber-cute vocalizations for Krtek, and were the films' test audience as Miler tweaked the films per their suggestions. Here are some perennial favorites: Krtek and the Radio, Krtek and the Green Star, Krtek at Christmas, Krtek and the Robot. Miler, like most film buffs, was surprised that Krtek had remained largely unknown in the United States. "Pretty much the whole world knows Krtek," Mr. Miler said. "America, which is usually first in everything, is last in this. I always look at American history," he said, "and it is a very hard one. People came. They conquered a continent. They suffered hardships, and that hardship is reflected in its movies. I look at children there and think what they are watching is a reflection of that hardness. If you look at America, it is epic. Whereas here, it is more poetic. I feel here there is more lyricism."
posted by Atrahasis at 12:04 PM PST - 22 comments

Daniel Ellsberg on the Limits of Knowledge He recounts a story in which he advised Kissinger about the mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.
posted by Weeping_angel at 11:58 AM PST - 83 comments

The Netanyahu government has paid for US TV ads saying US Israelis will never understand what it means to be Israeli, and American Jews will lose their religion
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 10:56 AM PST - 187 comments

ThinkUp is a free, open source PHP/MySQL app that you install on your web server to collect and store all of your activity on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+. It can be used to search and backup your own social nework activities, create a time capsule of online activity, analyze social media discussions, or create a more interactive discussion. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:43 AM PST - 19 comments

Generic sales of Lipitor, the world’s number 1 selling pharmaceutical drug, start today. (via) [more inside]
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 9:56 AM PST - 36 comments

Locked up in the bowels of the medical faculty building here and accessible to only a handful of scientists lies a man-made flu virus that could change world history if it were ever set free.
posted by pashdown at 9:50 AM PST - 89 comments

For a band that doesn't exist, Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes's song "Mad About Me" -- more widely known as "Cantina Band" or "Mos Eisley Cantina Theme" -- has received a fair share of interesting covers. Like a ragtime piano duet. Or on harp. Or the Chapman Stick. (The what?)
posted by griphus at 8:26 AM PST - 26 comments

id Software have released the source code to Doom 3 under the terms of the General Public License. [more inside]
posted by smcg at 8:26 AM PST - 24 comments

Critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement have complained that the protestors have no clear goals, so WE DON'T MAKE DEMANDS composed a list of 12 concrete, specific suggestions focusing on economic reform, stronger regulation, and closing loopholes.
posted by The Whelk at 8:01 AM PST - 187 comments

The UK is experiencing some of its worst disruption to services in decades as more than 2 million public sector workers stage a nationwide strike, closing schools and bringing councils and hospitals to a virtual standstill. [more inside]
posted by Jakey at 6:25 AM PST - 78 comments

「こくせん　―　黒板戦争」(Blackboard War) is a homemade stop motion video created by some students (out of more than 2500 still photos) for their school's culture festival. There is also a sequel (made from more than 3000 photos this time).
posted by emmling at 5:46 AM PST - 14 comments

The ruins of Gede are the remains of a mysterious lost city on the Swahili Coast of Kenya, located deep within the Arabuko Sokoke forest. The mystery of Gede (Gedi) is that it does not appear in any Swahili, Portuguese, or Arab written records and present day research has not yet been able to fully account for what actually happened to the city. The inhabitants were of the Swahili, an ancient trading civilization that emerged along the eastern coasts of Africa ranging from Somalia to Mozambique. Archaeological excavations carried out between 1948 and 1958 have uncovered porcelain from China, an Indian lamp, Venetian beads, Spanish scissors, and other artefacts from all over the world, demonstrating the occupants were engaged in extensive and sophisticated international trade. Questions still remain as to what caused the downfall of Gede, but by the 17th century, the city was completely abandoned to the forest and forgotten until the 1920s. Today, a National Museum, Gede's sister cities from the period are part of the ethnography based archeological work of Dr Chapurukha M. Kusimba of Chicago's Field Museum, whose lifework has thrown light on the precolonial heritage of the Swahili peoples.
posted by infini at 5:35 AM PST - 23 comments

Science writer Angela Saini on the joys of avoiding tech upgrades and being a late adopter. Some of us haven't adopted at all. Perhaps there are some less resistant to peer influence? Or just more into making stuff? Or perhaps it's anotherway to be cool?
posted by mippy at 5:32 AM PST - 42 comments

Otome games - a subgenre of visual novel where a female protagonist romances one of a selection of male characters. (Make your own!)

Hatoful Boyfriend (TV Tropes) - a visual novel (download, English patch), where a female protagonist attends high school with, and romances, one of a selection of giant talking pigeons and one partridge. Also she lives in a cave and forages for food. [more inside]
posted by emmtee at 3:14 AM PST - 24 comments

What if anyone in need of blood could find it anywhere? Based on this question, Hospital Albert Einstein created an innovative way to make people aware of the need for blood donations. They placed blood bags in refrigerators of several convenience stores throughout São Paulo. The customers were amazed to find them beside sodas and sandwiches. Their reactions were filmed.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:03 AM PST - 47 comments

Music From Other Minds is a radio program of art music by living composers from the folks behind the other minds festival.
posted by idiopath at 1:39 AM PST - 3 comments

Siri Can't or Won't Search for Certain Things Is this on purpose? You decide
posted by Splunge at 11:18 PM PST - 293 comments

CarrierIQ, a data-logging software present on most new Android, Blackberry and Nokia phones, secretly records keystrokes, dialed numbers and text messages. It also can't be turned off. Trevor Eckhart, the Android user who discovered and recorded it, labelled CarrierIQ a rootkit (you can read Eckhart's further analysis here). CarrierIQ sent Eckhart a cease-and-desist letter (PDF here), but has since backed off. Eckhart's findings confirm earlier rumors.
posted by alexoscar at 11:06 PM PST - 95 comments

In 2009, Urumqi, China exploded in riots. The assessment of Western media was on-going ethnic clashes. Behind the scenes, Beijing now stands accused of The Xinjiang Procedure, ground zero for the organ harvesting of political prisoners. [more inside]
posted by nickrussell at 10:22 PM PST - 27 comments

Protesters vs. Supreme Council of Armed Forces Tahrir Square: "For five straight days, nearly 120 continuous hours, thousands of protesters, most of them young men and women, did battle with security forces. Police used live ammunition, rubber bullets, shotgun cartridges, and an astonishing amount of tear gas. Protesters fought back mostly with rocks and sometimes Molotov cocktails." [more inside]
posted by jcrcarter at 8:35 PM PST - 37 comments

The art form of airline safety cards. [more inside]
posted by gman at 7:29 PM PST - 23 comments

A recent PNAS paper (Kee and Farid 10.1073/pnas.1110747108) proposes a standardised (1 - 5) metric for photo retouching. The authors suggest that, for the sake of public health and wellbeing, that published retouched photos should disclose the amount of retouching undertaken.
posted by wilful at 4:57 PM PST - 44 comments

"Skyrim is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to Skyrim. [...] Lately, one of my favorite parts of Skyrim are the in-game books. At any time, you can pull a book off the shelf, and get a nice fresh slice of lore to go along with your hearty adventures. I’ve even gone so far as to break into houses in the middle of the night just to read their books." — So says the blogger who decided to extract all 1000+ pages of text contained in the books of Skyrim and format them for EPUB and Kindle. (Skyrim previously)
posted by 256 at 4:55 PM PST - 94 comments

On July 26, 1965, at the Antibes Jazz Festival, the John Coltrane Quartet made its only public performance of A Love Supreme. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 4:11 PM PST - 19 comments

Swedish dreams: Jan Johansson was an amazing Swedish jazz musician and composer, author of the ground-breaking Jazz på Svenska, where Swedish folk music was combined with jazz improvisation. He inspired other European artists, like Niels Henning Ørsted Pedersen. But for younger Europeans, his most important achievement is the creation of the Pippi song. If you grew up with this, no wonder you like melancholic jazz.... [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 4:00 PM PST - 4 comments

Page 23. [SYLT] Apparently, life isn't as perfect as you would assume for the immaculate models living inside the IKEA catalog. With this amusing short, Jeroen Houben, Tim Arts and Stefan van den Boogaard show us the real-life drama that goes on beyond what we can see from the outside. The four minute short won the juryprize and audience award at the 48 Hour Film Project in Utrecht (Netherlands). [Via: Adverblog]
posted by Fizz at 3:46 PM PST - 19 comments

When you're the 44th largest university in the UK, how do you set yourself apart and gain some attention in the era of viral video? You release a short film showing an alien invasion and your student body's reaction to it. And, yes, that is the voice of Locutus of Borg (he is the University's Chancellor).
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:44 PM PST - 27 comments

"You can imagine the effect of feeling that if you open your mouth you will sound wrong, that you are somehow thinking wrongly in your own head. Instilling such a feeling is one of the most fundamental ways to control a population. Now imagine what happens when the feeling stops – that miracle." - writer Al Kennedy (Oranges are not the only fruit) in the Guardian talks about Scottish cultural identity, especially relevant in terms of possible Scottish Independence.
posted by sgt.serenity at 2:19 PM PST - 76 comments

For twenty years, the fastest known algorithm to multiply two n-by-n matrices, due to Coppersmith and Winograd, took a leisurely O(n^2.376) steps. Last year, though, buried deep in his PhD thesis, Andy Stothers discussed an improvement to O(n^2.374) steps. And today, Virginia Vassilevska Williams of Berkeley and Stanford, released a breakthrough paper [pdf] that improves the matrix-multiplication time to a lightning-fast O(n^2.373) steps. [via] [more inside]
posted by albrecht at 1:48 PM PST - 50 comments

MeFi's own Alan Taylor brings us another crop of stunning aerial imagery from Google Earth, inviting you to guess what you're looking at. Now with multiple choice! (previously)
posted by theodolite at 12:45 PM PST - 47 comments

Animator James Curran has created an unofficial title sequence for Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin, "featuring elements from each of the 24 books." Evidently Spielberg likes the work and has offered Curran a job on a future film.
posted by brundlefly at 11:51 AM PST - 44 comments

The Voynich Manuscript (many previously) has been uploaded in its entirety online for your leisurely perusal by Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library. [via]
posted by SomaSoda at 11:38 AM PST - 19 comments

Soft robotics are inspired by animals which don't have hard internal skeletons, like squid, worms, and starfish. Developed at Harvard, with funding from DARPA, this particular soft robot, "not only walks, it knows several different gaits and can deflate to stuff itself through tiny little gaps." Another design here, and another (also), and another. In addition to movement, soft robotics can also be used for grip. More information about the Harvard lab is available here (with a student describing the research here).
posted by codacorolla at 11:20 AM PST - 26 comments

Girl Walk // All Day (previously), an epic dance video featuring Girl Talk's album All Day (previously) as the soundtrack, is finally premiering at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple on 12/8. Don't fret if you can't make it to the free dance party though, because the entire film is being released in 12 parts for free over the next six weeks starting today. Here's part one, School's Out.
posted by carsonb at 11:09 AM PST - 13 comments

As the Occupy protests spread, the latest phenomenon to emerge is the Stealthy Wealthy. Sensitive to negative perceptions of extreme wealth inequality in hard times, and concerned about the possibility of history repeating itself, the super-rich have been swapping their limousines for nondescript-looking yet luxuriously outfitted cargo vans.
posted by acb at 11:03 AM PST - 93 comments

Comedian Patrice O'Neal passed away on Monday evening, following a stroke suffered in October. A few clips. Rest easy, Big Man.
posted by VicNebulous at 10:48 AM PST - 49 comments

Portrait of a Handmade Artisan: Korehira Watanabe The Sword Maker (one of a number of films by Etsy) [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:23 AM PST - 5 comments

"Primitivism is the pursuit of ways of life running counter to the development of technology, its alienating antecedents, and the ensemble of changes wrought by both. This site is an exploration into primitivist theory, as well as various works that contribute to an understanding of the tendency." [more inside]
posted by edguardo at 9:50 AM PST - 98 comments

Berg London's Little Printer is a small, net-connected printer for your home that will print you a small, daily newspaper with content you add or subscribe to via a phone app.
posted by secretdark at 9:42 AM PST - 68 comments

Eleven Equations True Computer Science Geeks Should (at Least Pretend to) Know [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 8:40 AM PST - 138 comments

November is not just about Movember - we're now firmly into Wovember, the month-long campaign by knitters to celebrate wool fibres and denounce misleading marketing. But what do we mean when we talk about 'wool'?
posted by mippy at 3:45 AM PST - 74 comments

A woman has been arrested after a swearing, racist rant (YouTube) on a tram in Croydon, London trended on Twitter. Daily Mail reports with comments switched off, far right EDL member declares her a patriot to be proud of. Satire site The Daily Mash weighs in sardonically.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:39 AM PST - 199 comments

A new perspective on crime scenes. (warning: panoramics are of crime scenes, and some include victims of violent crime.) [more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:28 PM PST - 20 comments

In a room near Maida Vale, a journalist for The Nation wrote around 1914, an unfortunate creature is strapped to the table of an unlicensed vivisector. When the subject is pinched with a pair of forceps, it winces. It is so strapped that its electric shudder of pain pulls the long arm of a very delicate lever that actuates a tiny mirror. This casts a beam of light on the frieze at the other end of the room, and thus enormously exaggerates the tremor of the creature. A pinch near the right-hand tube sends the beam 7 or 8 feet to the right, and a stab near the other wire sends it as far to the left. "Thus," the journalist concluded, "can science reveal the feelings of even so stolid a vegetable as the carrot."
posted by vidur at 10:26 PM PST - 28 comments

It's Good to be Tim Tebow. "Tim Tebow’s completion percentage is 44.8 percent. Take away his magical fourth quarters and the number is closer to 30 percent. This kind of awful is in the 'Shaq free-throw percentage, Mario Mendoza batting average' sports hall of fame. But he’s not awful in the turgid unwatchable way that, say, a Kate Hudson movie is awful. He’s fascinating/awful."
posted by sweetkid at 9:05 PM PST - 208 comments

Webcam is a short film which explores the concept (and apparent reality) of "webcam hacking." Straight link Vimeo. Warning: Vimeo comments contain spoilers.
posted by kkrvgz at 8:19 PM PST - 36 comments

"Daria" Photoshoot More with Trent
posted by The Whelk at 7:09 PM PST - 71 comments

Hi. Here's Stephen Colbert (out of character) and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson having an 85 minute conversation about science, physics, and the universe.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:09 PM PST - 44 comments

YaCy is an open source fully decentralized peer-to-peer search engine designed prevent any single entity from exercising power over search results. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 6:42 PM PST - 25 comments

The Nation's William Deresiewicz looks at Ann Beattie's evolution as a writer.
posted by reenum at 5:57 PM PST - 5 comments

An innocuous question in Comics Alliance's weekly Ask Chris column about whether Chris Sims (previously) prefers the monsters in Scooby Doo to be real or people in costumes results in a stunning defense of secular humanism and the importance of the search for truth in order to expose lies perpetuated by Authority through the use of fear & superstition.
posted by KingEdRa at 5:50 PM PST - 82 comments

Denver Post cartoonist Mike Keefe took a buyout after 35 years. On the way out the door, he's asked about digital media. He says, "Someone has to crack the code concerning online profits. Till that time, it will be a forum for the dedicated and passionate cartoonist who also works at Starbucks." Which may come as a surprise to an online cartoonist that's been profitable for more than 10 years, and those other profitable guys with the charity that just broke $1 million in donations earlier than ever.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:36 PM PST - 113 comments

The National Ignition Facility (and fusion power) has been in the news lately. (pdf) [more inside]
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 2:31 PM PST - 38 comments

Cassell first heard about the "diablos rojos," or red devils, in 1995, from some Mexican fishermen as he was filming gray whales for German public television in Baja's Laguna San Ignacio. Intrigued, he made his way to La Paz, near the southern tip of Baja, to dive under the squid-fishing fleet. It was baptism by tentacle. Humboldts—mostly five-footers—swarmed around him. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 2:19 PM PST - 16 comments

Growing up, she was a beloved celebrity in her home country. Thousands of girls were named after her. So was a bestselling perfume. But Josef Stalin's "Little Sparrow," his only daughter, (born Svetlana Stalina) defected to the United States in 1967. Upon arriving in New York, she promptly held a press conference that surprised the world, denouncing her father's regime. Svetlana became a naturalized US citizen, moved to Taliesin West, married an American, changed her name to Lana Peters, then returned to the Soviet Union in 1984, declaring that she had not been free "for one single day" in the U.S., only to once again return to America in 1986. She lived out her remaining days in a small town in Wisconsin. Mrs. Peters passed away from colon cancer on November 22nd, at the age of 85. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 2:16 PM PST - 38 comments

Dorkly Bits is an ongoing collection of short skits based around classic and contemporary videogames. The collection includes: Mistaken Hero Identities, Tails Can't Die, The Diablo Townspeople Should Move, Noob Saibot is a Noob, Yoshi Hates Mario, and many more.
posted by lemuring at 2:13 PM PST - 12 comments

"Because of our mutant powers of obsession, it’s my guess that a lot of nerds suffer from addiction. Nerds get caught up in minutiae, because there is a tremendous and fulfilling sense of control in understanding every single detail of a thing more than any other living creature. But we also tend to have a very active internal monologue (in some cases, dialog). These are some delightful ingredients—mixed with a bit of genetic predisposition—for overdoing things that make us feel good in the moment." Chris Hardwick offers "self-help for nerds."
posted by jbickers at 1:58 PM PST - 23 comments

MotherBoard TV: The Thorium Dream If, like many of the world's leaders, you are eager for a dependable and cheap energy source that doesn't spew toxins and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- and that doesn't result in terrible, billion dollar accidents -- you can end your search now. At least, that's the news from a tight-knit collective of energy blogs, dedicated to a common but relatively unknown metal called thorium. In the right kind of nuclear reactor, they say, thorium could power the world forever -- and without the problems that come with the nuclear energy we use today, from Fukushima-like meltdowns to the difficult by-products of plutonium that leave behind radioactive waste and weapons material. The idea certainly sounds like the stuff of fringe internet conspiracists, but it was actually born in the U.S. government's major atomic lab in the 1960s under the auspices of one of the country's most respected nuclear scientists, and the inventor of today's most common kind of nuclear technology, the light water reactor. - Thorium: World's Greatest Energy Breakthrough? [more inside]
posted by ninjew at 1:08 PM PST - 58 comments

"The political elite have actually no interest in explaining to the people that important decisions are made in Strasbourg; they are only afraid of losing their own power." Jürgen Habermas on the crisis of the European project and how it could be overcome.
posted by daniel_charms at 12:45 PM PST - 29 comments

Peter Kornbluh, of the National Security Archive, has written an article about Iran-Contra coinciding with the release of the Reagan/Bush 'criminal liability' evaluations(contains video of Reagan's testimony). Confused about what exactly the Iran-Contra affair was? Here you go. [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 11:43 AM PST - 42 comments

Teddy Bear does not believe in caring and sharing when it comes to corn on the cob. Snickers pretty much feels the same way. (Sorry, no dubstep remix -- yet.)
posted by maudlin at 11:36 AM PST - 31 comments

Do you like men's clothes but don't like sweatshops / department stores / spending too much money? The Internet is here to help! Well Spent categorizes "honestly made" stylish men's clothes of all kinds. Their holiday gift guide might be helpful. Did you want to look at some pretty ties? Check out The Knottery. A belt? Narragansett Leathers makes belts of all sorts. Need some inspiration? My Grandfather's Ties or Evolving Style might help. Alternatively, just dress like Carl Sagan.
posted by Apropos of Something at 11:00 AM PST - 34 comments

Reader, I marinated it. [independent.co.uk] What if Virginia Woolf, Geoffrey Chaucer or Raymond Chandler had turned their talents to food writing? Mark Crick imagines the contents of the celebrity cookbooks of yesteryear.
posted by Fizz at 10:10 AM PST - 26 comments

The Burzynski Clinic (selling an unproven cure for cancer) has started to threaten those who talk about them with legal action. Even going as far as trying to intimidate young blogger Rhys Morgan by sending him pictures of his own house (very, 'I know where you live...') and threatening another blogger's family.
posted by Nufkin at 10:10 AM PST - 83 comments

"The thing is, some really good scripts come my way, but there’s nothing in them for me to come to grips with, they are complete in themselves ... There’s no uncertainty. I don’t look for answers; I look for questions. I like when people leave the cinema and feel like the world has been altered for them somewhat." Terry Gilliam: The Heir of Fellini and the Enemy of God. (Also, recently on the blue.) [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 9:41 AM PST - 38 comments

David Hill is a gambler. Each column will tell the story of a single bet that he made and examine what that bet reveals about life in America. The most recent is $5 Chess Game, Best of 3, Zuccotti Park.
posted by davidjmcgee at 9:15 AM PST - 23 comments

Lots of countries have never won an Olympic medal. And they aren't all micro-states, either. [more inside]
posted by Chrysostom at 8:54 AM PST - 32 comments

RIP Ken Russell enfant terrible of British cinema, director of Women in Love, The Devils, Tommy, Altered States and The Lair Of The White Worm. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:53 AM PST - 54 comments

Japanese artist Namio Harukawa (NSFW) has a singular vision/obsession: women in charge. In virtually all of his paintings and drawings, women radiate the bemusement of the Mona Lisa as they are sexually serviced by men who appear to be little more than appendages of the women’s sexual organs. Astride the faces of hapless males, the women are magnificent in their utterly cruel detachment.

- The Erotic Art of Namio Harukawa
posted by beshtya at 8:34 AM PST - 50 comments

What happens when you stop time in a cartoon universe? You get animation smears. (single-serving Tumblr)
posted by theodolite at 8:31 AM PST - 23 comments

This past weekend was Canadian Football League (CFL)'s title game -- for the Grey Cup. But almost as much as the game itself, a sideshow eruption of an old feud took centre stage this year. 48 years ago, Hamilton Ti-Cats' Angelo Mosca was widely ripped for having levelled BC Lions' running back Willie Fleming with a "questionable" hit in the 1963 title match that took Fleming out of the game. Hamilton went on to win and BC's quarterback at the time, Joe Kapp, has apparently been fuming about the hit ever since. When he and Mosca appeared on stage together at this year's CFL Alumni Luncheon, it was game on all over again. (Some coverage has since suggested it was staged but a viewing of the video, which has since gone viral, leaves that an open question. Mosca, who followed his football career with several years on the pro wrestling circuit, swings a mean cane, while Kapp appears to have kept his right cross in form.)
posted by Mike D at 7:11 AM PST - 36 comments

The term never event describes when something happens in a medical setting that should never occur. The list of never events (formally called "Serious Reportable Events) released by the NQF includes mistakes such as performing surgery on the wrong body part (or the wrong patient!), or patient suicide while under care. Despite their moniker, "never" events do happen. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 7:02 AM PST - 53 comments

The Candy Critic This candy catalog shows (almost) everything from Ramen candy to Kit Kat apple vinegar, reviewed.
posted by Tarumba at 6:52 AM PST - 24 comments

Video: An Italian pilot flies a glider through the Alps for eleven hours (video highly condensed, obviously) at times coming agonizingly close to the mountains, not because he's reckless, but because that's what's keeping him aloft. Fullscreen viewing recommended.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:35 AM PST - 24 comments

A radical new idea is turning schools upside down. 'Flip the Classroom' is based on a simple concept: kids watch podcast video presentations of lecture material on their own time - at home. They then do the 'homework' at school, in an environment where the teachers can guide and support them, instructing on specific points as required. Colorado teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams have been pioneering the technique, and their Learning4Mastery website is a fount of information on it. [more inside]
posted by woodblock100 at 5:23 AM PST - 65 comments

It has long been noted that style manuals and other usage advice frequently contain unintended examples of the usage they condemn. (This is sometimes referred to as Hartman's law or Muphry's law - an intentional misspelling of Murphy.) Starting from this observation, Joseph Williams' paper The Phenomenology of Error offers an examination of our selective attention to different types of grammatical and usage errors that goes beyond the descriptivism-prescriptivism debate. (alternate pdf link for "The Phenomenology of Error") [more inside]
posted by nangar at 5:23 AM PST - 16 comments

The Bedouin are an ethnic group of tribes that live in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Sinai Peninsula, amongst others. The Bedouin have lived a largely nomadic life, developing a menu, style of dance and sport they can call their own. Today they are a culture in transition as "startling changes over the last two decades have irrevocably altered the nature of life for the bedouin and for the land they inhabit." However a glimpse into their past can be seen through this great collection of images taken between 1890 and 1920.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:58 PM PST - 12 comments

BlackBerry Babes: A Nigerian Movie About A Group of Girls Who Love BlackBerry [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 9:54 PM PST - 19 comments

The Caravan magazine takes a long, hard look at the Formula 1 inaugural enterprise in India.
posted by vidur at 9:49 PM PST - 33 comments

The Scary Lawyer Guy blog has a detailed analysis of Howard Stern's lawsuit (or, more specifically, the lawsuit filed by his production company and agent) against his employer, Sirius XM.
posted by The Gooch at 9:26 PM PST - 37 comments

Islands make up only about 3% of the earth's land area but host about 20% of all species and 50 to 60% of endangered species. The biggest threat to islands are invasive species, mainly rats, but also pigs and cats, who feed on nesting birds and native plants. New Zealand has been the innovator in clearing islands of rats because of its endangered populations of flightless birds which are vulnerable. One species of flightless parrot, known as the kakapo, has only 131 individuals left in the "wild" - they are closely guarded 24x7 on Codfish Island, their nests surrounded by rat traps and cameras vigilantly on the lookout for invaders. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 9:02 PM PST - 39 comments

Yet by 1944 the IRS named Barbara Stanwyck the highest-paid woman in America. From 1930-57, she did a minimum of two pictures a year, sometimes even four or five. Yet it wasn't workaholism, according to the actress: "I was afraid they'd get somebody better, frankly. I never really thought I had any clout. For a lot of years I was free-lancing, by choice, but I think discipline stays with you. It's this fear that maybe somebody can come in and take over. Maybe a Redford or a Streep can take the luxury of a year off, but I never thought I could. Of course, we were more workable in those days. And they make more money now. Anyway, I never had self-assurance about leaving."
posted by Trurl at 4:19 PM PST - 41 comments

"Little is changing modern India more than the spread of cars, a four-wheeled reflection of its economic transformation and a window into the aspirations of the new Indian middle class."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:55 PM PST - 23 comments

The Recipe Project (as heard recently on a number of food radio programs), by One Ring Zero, takes recipes from famous chefs and sets them to music. The chefs got to choose the style of music, and some even have videos too! Listen to a recipe for "Brains and Eggs" (Chris Cosentino) in the style of the Beastie Boys, or recipes from Mario Batali, David Chang and many more.
posted by AnnaRat at 3:30 PM PST - 2 comments

"I can’t even tell you how excited I was to finally see the cards that “killed my grandfather” and drove my family into extreme poverty. I actually think Haruo did a pretty good job interpreting my grandfather’s original sketch, considering the severely confusing nature of his drawing. It’s anybody’s guess as what my grandfather expected to get back, but needless to say it wasn’t this beautiful card." Bradwick J. McGinty III tells the story of the Japanese cut-away Santa cards from 1955, similar in style to the yōkai and kaiju illustrations seen previously. (via)
posted by filthy light thief at 2:40 PM PST - 74 comments

The Chick-fil-A corporation doesn't want anybody to ”eat more” anything, unless it comes from them. Not even non-food items — once again they're after the Vermont artist whose t-shirts and stickers have become legendary (in certain crop circles, at least) for extolling the wonders of kale. Kale t-shirts — they taste like chicken, right?
posted by LeLiLo at 1:32 PM PST - 145 comments

Missed "The Muppets" in theaters this weekend?* "How They Felt" is a short film co-starring a Muppet (apparently a Muppet Whatnot with custom wardrobe) that was part of this year's Boston 48 Hour Film Project, where it placed 2nd for Best film, won Best Actress (for the woman behind the Muppet) and also... "Best Sex Scene". Yeah, now you wanna see it. But be warned. Not a happy ending. It will either make you cry or make you want to strangle the filmmakers.
*then it's YOUR fault "Breaking Dawn" was #1 at the box office (does not apply to non-USAians)
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:17 PM PST - 68 comments

There has been a string of recent crimes and other less positive events at Waffle House restaurants spread across the American south. "Another day, another Waffle House robbery" read a headline in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Waffle house has is its own museum, detractors, and supporters and opinions on all sides. (NYT)
posted by Xurando at 12:06 PM PST - 60 comments

SF author and Mefi's Own Jscalzi was alone one night during a LOTR marathon and decided to live-tweet a running commentary.
posted by The Whelk at 11:20 AM PST - 56 comments

Even a little too much Tylenol over a few days can cause a liver failure. Paracetamol or acetaminophen, active ingredient of such over-the-counter painkillers as Tylenol, Panadol, Anacin-3 and many, many others, is considered safe - and it is, in prescribed doses. But even a single overdose can lead to liver failure despite treatment, and then only a liver transplant can avert a fatal outcome. [more inside]
posted by hat_eater at 11:19 AM PST - 105 comments

David Graeber profile: Meet the anthropologist, activist [1,2], and anarchist who helped transform a hapless rally into a global protest movement... " 'Most people don't think anarchism is a bad idea. They think it's insane,' says Graeber. 'Yeah, sure it would be great not to have prisons and police and hierarchical structures of authority, but everybody would just start killing each other. That wouldn't work, right?' Graeber's father, however, had seen it work."
posted by kliuless at 11:11 AM PST - 70 comments

Audubon's "The Birds of America" has been mentioned here before (1 2). The University of Pittsburgh's digital library has now made available zoomable high-resolution scans of each page of the first 'double elephant' folio edition, as well as a scanned copy of his Ornothological Biography, which is an entertaining read in itself. [more inside]
posted by carter at 10:42 AM PST - 18 comments

"The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death": an exploration of a collection of eighteen miniature crime scene models that were built in the 1940's and 50's by a progressive criminologist Frances Glessner Lee (1878 – 1962). The models, which were based on actual homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths, were created to train detectives to assess visual evidence. This seven-year project culminated in an exhibition and a book The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (The Monacelli Press, 2004). [Image Gallery]
posted by Fizz at 7:40 AM PST - 29 comments

10 Myths About Introverts: "Myth #2 – Introverts are shy: Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite." [via a comment at this similarly accurate post from Diamond Geezer].
posted by feelinglistless at 4:59 AM PST - 170 comments

The world’s most prestigious consultancy prides itself on its intellectual prowess and ethical standards. But this year, an insider trading scandal surrounding former McKinsey luminaries has left staff and alumni reeling
posted by infini at 4:12 AM PST - 39 comments

"Speech on the Internet requires a series of intermediaries to reach its audience. Each intermediary is vulnerable to some degree to pressure from those who want to silence the speaker. Even though the Internet is decentralized and distributed, "weak links" in this chain can operate as choke points to accomplish widespread censorship." Free speech is only as strong as the weakest link
posted by rjs at 12:44 AM PST - 24 comments

"This is a piece created to question whether it was possible to film animation in realtime."
posted by kaibutsu at 12:33 AM PST - 21 comments

"...I'm here to present to you - not lectures that are part of some curriculum; but in fact, I've combed the universe for my favorite subjects, and I'm going to spend twelve lectures bringing those favorite subjects to you." Renowned astrophysicist and television host Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses the various aspects of our universe in twelve separate half-hour long lectures (MLYT). [more inside]
posted by Evernix at 10:26 PM PST - 40 comments

Was Dominique Strauss Kahn set up? This recent NYRB article suggests that there was some serious skullduggery going on, although that doesn't mean that DSK isn't guilty of something.
posted by cell divide at 8:52 PM PST - 133 comments

Azealia Banks (a 20-year-old lyricist from Harlem, NYC) 212 Ft. Lazy Jay (NSFW, explicit lyrics ... implicit too) [more inside]
posted by phoque at 8:29 PM PST - 15 comments

Serum hemoglobin is related to endurance running performance. Smoking is known to enhance serum hemoglobin levels ... alcohol may further enhance this beneficial adaptation.

A recent paper by Kenneth Myers in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reviews the potential benefits of smoking for endurance atheletes. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 5:17 PM PST - 35 comments

Alan Moore discusses current use of the V for Vendetta mask as a symbol of protest. After Frank Miller attacks the Occupy movement (previously), another giant of the comic book world gives his own, rather more nuanced, view of the protests.
posted by howfar at 4:17 PM PST - 119 comments

Shattered Families, a new report from the Applied Research Center, has found that there are at least 5,100 children currently living in foster care who are prevented from uniting with their detained or deported parents. Executive Summary(PDF) and Full Report(PDF) [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 2:06 PM PST - 19 comments

Japanese Horror Film Ghoul Makes a Friend, [SLYT] all thanks to Winnipeg's Hot Thespian Action. [Earworm-trigger warning: Hall & Oates]
posted by wreckingball at 1:43 PM PST - 11 comments

Planking with Nick Offerman. (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by yellowbinder at 1:18 PM PST - 24 comments

TIME magazine really dumbs it down for American subscribers.
posted by Renoroc at 11:46 AM PST - 93 comments

Back in 2006, a red sketch book started a journey around the world, traveling not through the mail, but from artist to artist. The idea came from Dice Tsutsumi and Gérald Guerlais, two animators at Blue Sky Studios. They compiled a list of 71 artists, personal friends and influential people they would like to have involved in their traveling sketch book. Dice and Gérald thought they could get it done in a year, but the book is now full, five years later. Another component of the project was to auction off the completed book and 9 reproductions, which was done in October, 2011, collecting more than 76,000 euros (100,000 US$) for the Room to Read international library-building organization. You can browse through the past travels on the Sketchtravel blog, view the participants by name or location on Sketchtravel.tv, along with video interviews and clips with 15 of the 71 artists. There are even more videos in Curio's Vimeo collection, and two informative interviews with Gérald Guerlais on NoWatch.net. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:02 AM PST - 1 comment

The BBC broadcasted the science and technology showcase show Tomorrow's World (titles on piano) on 7 July 1965 on BBC1, it ran for 38 years until it was cancelled at the beginning of 2003. Unlike the boosterism of US science programs, Tomorrow's World was more famous for it's live stunts and wry outlook ( James Burke experiences the "convenient" office of the future and the future of home gardening and crushing ennui). The BBC has an archive of episodes and clips for UK visitors, everyone else will have to be content with clips concerning Home Computers, New Banking, Nellie The School Computer, The Elliot Light Pen, Mobile Phones, and Moog Synthesizers.
posted by The Whelk at 10:18 AM PST - 17 comments

Curiosity launched today and is on its way to Mars!
posted by Tom-B at 10:09 AM PST - 56 comments

In summer 2011 The Flaming Lips released collaborative vinyl EPs with Lightning Bolt, Neon Indian and Prefuse 73. The 'starter blob' of vinyl for each disc was assembled by hand using random amounts of different vinyl colors, ensuring that every record would be unique. Here are a couple of Flickr photosets of the finished products (and a bit of the process) as they came off the presses. [more inside]
posted by mintcake! at 9:01 AM PST - 15 comments

Steal this record. A 1-CD (with DVD, vinyl EP, book, poster and other collectables) edition of live recordings from Elvis Costello's most recent tour is being released as a limited edition - for around $260, with free Super Saver shipping. Expensive special editions aren't new, but this one seems to have caught even Costello by surprise; his official website is advising fans not to buy it, and to get a box set of Louis Armstrong records instead. [more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:12 AM PST - 43 comments

The Internet is Made of Cats! Lolcats and kittens chasing string and singing kitties. Sometimes, kitties singing some silly original songs; other times, they cover songs by other people. (Warning: all the work of the idiosyncratic Joel Veitch, he of We Like The Moon and A Frightened Boy and Tales of the Blode infamy.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 7:42 AM PST - 9 comments

Gaga singing into my vagina: [SLYT] "Ok, it was my sister's and my dad's birthday the day I met Gaga. So I asked her if she could wish them a happy birthday into my crotch, because we couldn't bring phones up and I snuck it into my pants. This is what she said, well sang. _{Not my vagina. The poster of this video.}
posted by Fizz at 7:33 AM PST - 60 comments

Tom Wicker, Times Journalist, Dies at 85 (obvious NYT link), best known and most often noted for covering the assassination of President Kennedy, but also a columnist for 25 years and 6 Presidents as contrasted with today's NYT columnists by the always-critical NYTimes eXaminer.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:02 AM PST - 7 comments

How Money Corrupts Congress (previously) - John Baez sez: "It's easy to get distracted in a thicket of issues. Thoreau said 'There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.' But what's the root? Watch this video for Lawrence Lessig's answer."
posted by kliuless at 6:09 AM PST - 32 comments

The Master Game was a BBC production of televised chess tournaments that ran for seven series on BBC2 from 1976 to 1982. [more inside]
posted by night_train at 4:47 AM PST - 7 comments

Brian Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos is online in its entirety on NOVA's website, in four one-hour episodes. Time, Space, Quantum Mechanics, Multiverses.
posted by empath at 1:43 AM PST - 32 comments

Today is the third anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. And India, tired of waiting, wants answers. [more inside]
posted by infini at 11:12 PM PST - 7 comments

A progressive Australian political advocacy group have produced a 2-minute advertisement showing their support of Marriage Equality Down Under. Warning: May pull heartstrings. [more inside]
posted by schmod at 10:44 PM PST - 45 comments

As part of the "Live On Letterman" webcast series, Peter Gabriel arrived with a full orchestra backup to perform many of his best-known songs in their new settings as found on his recently released New Blood album. You can watch the entire 68 minute performance online.
posted by hippybear at 8:45 PM PST - 37 comments

Renaissance Babies in various stages of choking and passing out from noxious fumes: A Study. This is what happens when the Madonna eats way too much turkey, yall. Happy Thanksgiving! (Warning: Tumblr)
posted by Hal Mumkin at 7:11 PM PST - 25 comments

In 1986,[Vladimir] Horowitz announced that he would return to the Soviet Union for the first time since 1925 to give recitals in Moscow and Leningrad. In the new atmosphere of communication and understanding between the USSR and the USA, these concerts were seen as events of political, as well as musical, significance. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 5:14 PM PST - 13 comments

Amelia Andersdotter of Sweden's Pirate Party (Piratpariet) will finally become the youngest ever member of the European Parliament this December. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 3:47 PM PST - 19 comments

"Almost 1,500 people from Royal Wootton Basset [Wiltshire, England] have taken part in a music video filmed on the same high street that they once lined to pay their respects to Britain's fallen soldiers."* They hope to raise £1 million for military charities with their cover of Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends". [more inside]
posted by ericb at 2:42 PM PST - 27 comments

World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore can memorize a deck of playing cards in under 30 seconds. Sometimes he imagines elaborate, on-the-fly tales of absurdity to aid his memorization. One such story was brought to life by DJ Shadow (way previously) and a cast of thousands: Scale It Back (bonus, helpful recall of entire story at end of video)
posted by obscurator at 1:39 PM PST - 15 comments

"Downstate families are tired of Chicago dictating its views to the rest of us." Two Downstate Illinois state legislators, Rep. Bill Mitchell (R-Forsyth) and Rep. Adam Brown (R-Decatur), have proposed a bill to make Cook County its own state. Of course, this is a lot easier said than done.
posted by SisterHavana at 1:22 PM PST - 94 comments

Freebirds: A Thanksgiving lesson in forgiveness.
posted by homunculus at 12:24 PM PST - 7 comments

It's that time of year again... the contenders for the Literary Review Bad Sex Award have been announced. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:33 AM PST - 41 comments

Federal Prosecutors Are Allowed To Break Laws and Ethical Violations U.S. Senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens was charged with and convicted of corruption in 2008. The prosecutors were admonished by the judge for their actions during the trial such as sending home to Alaska, a witness who would have helped Sen Stevens. Furthermore in direct violation of Brady v Maryland, the prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense. The DoJ decided that the DoJ did nothing wrong with such violations because they were not explicitly told not to break the law. Because the judge took the government at their word, that they would obey the law, he did not issue a court order demanding that they do so, therefor allowing the attorneys carte blanche.
posted by 2manyusernames at 11:13 AM PST - 44 comments

The US Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy runs a non-profit, Extending the Cure, which conducts policy research to extend antibiotic effectiveness, and ResistanceMap, which generates interactive analysis tools and maps regarding antibiotic use in Europe and the US. The most recent ResistanceMap visualizations indicate that the US Southeast overprescribes antibiotics at a high rate compared with the rest of the country. Science journalist / "Superbug" blogger Maryn McKenna speculates (while acknowledging that correlation ≠ causation,) that the map might also indicate a link between overuse of antibiotics, obesity, diabetes and stroke. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:33 AM PST - 29 comments

Although Aphex Twin has not been releasing much music recently, he still plays frequent live shows. At a recent show in Poland he reworked two pieces by Krzysztof Penderecki, with Penderecki conducting the original versions prior to Aphex's versions. [more inside]
posted by Frobenius Twist at 8:56 AM PST - 36 comments

Jell-O Turkeyfest - the turkey-shaped Jell-O mold annual competition. David Byrne is a returning participant. (Past winners/entries: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, and where it all began: 2005.)
posted by flex at 8:32 AM PST - 18 comments

New York Times 2011 List of 100 Notable Books.
posted by Fizz at 7:16 AM PST - 36 comments

Here's me Arnold Schwarzenegger riding towards the screen... You asked, and now you've got it: dvd commentary on Total Recall - Arnold giving you his insight into everything that you can see happening on the screen in front of you. ("Ow. That hurt.")
posted by HopStopDon'tShop at 5:09 AM PST - 67 comments

Danger Room, the tech magazine Wired's section for covering military and security matters, have compiled The Worst War Movies Ever, From Delta Force to The Empire Strikes Back for your Friday list viewing pleasure.
posted by Harald74 at 4:30 AM PST - 41 comments

"One for my Baby and one for my BRAIN" "The Last Flight of Onan V" "And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Bread" - GameToilet collects and illustrates one man's game ideas. It's Friday Flash Fun - in your imagination! (Warning: illustrations, imagination may be NSFW.)
posted by Zarkonnen at 3:52 AM PST - 8 comments

It started with your name' '@byleaveswelive', and became a tree.… This was followed by dragons, coffins, lost sinners and, 10/10, ‘Gloves of bee’s fur, cap of the wren’s wings’ but there were only 8? A dinosaur was found in the museum, but what of the last? [more inside]
posted by BadMiker at 1:23 AM PST - 16 comments

A Month In Music - "There are 10,513 MP3s on my hard disk. According to iTunes, that’s nearly 30 days worth of music. It has taken half my life – 15 years – to build this collection but I decided to listen to them all in one go. One continuous concert, playing songs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I wanted to revist all the songs I'd once loved, and the memories and places they called up. The only choice I made was the first track. After that, the computer randomly decided what was going to play. No stopping. No skipping. No changing the volume. Music, all the time, for a whole month. The Month In Music blog charts the progress of the playback project, updated once a day with original writing and photography." [via mefi projects]
posted by radioedit at 12:16 AM PST - 70 comments

Forget shopping, Friday is Update Your Parents' Browser Day!
posted by brenton at 11:42 PM PST - 53 comments

High school student Emma Sullivan posted a tweet disparaging Kansas Governor Sam Brownback while on a field trip to the State Capitol. Brownback's staff called Sullivan's principal and complained. This has not resulted in postive PR for Brownback.
posted by reenum at 10:14 PM PST - 126 comments

Oh, hai. You weren't thinking of sleeping tonight, were you? SLYT NSFW inexplicable electronic disturbing/erotic Canadiana.
posted by unSane at 9:04 PM PST - 25 comments

"Too many people are out of work, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Many are lacking health insurance and foregoing staples that in different times were a given. So please, protesting retail workers, stop whining about having to work holiday hours. Be grateful to have a job." [more inside]
posted by mightygodking at 6:43 PM PST - 234 comments

Frank Kunert is happy his photographs have an “analog” look about them. After all, he did hand-make the models himself. Before the German photographer even snaps a single shot, he is in his studio, creating 3D model subjects — usually industrial grey constructs in still, almost poetic, settings — out of deco boards, plasticine, and paint. It could take weeks, even months, before Frank is fully satisfied. The result? Models that could could pass for the real thing, and photographs that portray complete worlds of their own.
posted by netbros at 4:15 PM PST - 15 comments

Tampa's Big Cat Rescue celebrates a Thanksgiving feast (via)
posted by The Whelk at 3:48 PM PST - 35 comments

The creators of Italian Spiderman were hired by Australia's multicultural TV network, SBS, to produce Danger 5: "Set in a bizarre, 1960s inspired version of World War II, action comedy series DANGER 5 follows a team of five spies on a mission to kill Adolf Hitler." The six-part TV series will air in February 2012, but the trailer and the first instalment of a promotional web-series are now playing.
posted by robcorr at 2:29 PM PST - 29 comments

Can the Bulldog Be Saved? (SLNYT)
posted by box at 11:39 AM PST - 65 comments

The most economically efficient use of a turkey is to use it for conceptual art while others starve. Generalized equilibrium theory wishes you a happy and Pareto-optimal Thanksgiving, via Cosma Shalizi.
posted by escabeche at 11:27 AM PST - 31 comments

The best Thanksgiving song for nerds ever. In which geek comedy songsters Paul and Storm essay the things they are thankful for and ask whatever motivates the universe to take a moment and deliver a special message to your friend and mine, George Lucas. (NSFW language, but if you're in the US, hopefully you're not at work on Thanksgiving.)
posted by jscalzi at 10:47 AM PST - 9 comments

Despite appearing early in his career, Aguirre, the Wrath of God is for me the quintessential Herzog movie. ... It deals with possibly the most obsessed group of people in history, the Spanish conquistadors, and their desperate hunt for the most magic of all Grails, the elusive golden land of El Dorado – leaving destruction and death to millions in their wake. A few lines in an old chronicle is all that remains of the historical facts, thus leaving plenty of room for Herzog to employ his imagination and re-arrange the facts. In short: an ideal topic for a visionary director, tackled with just the right crew, and on a location guaranteed to make the shooting an ordeal in itself.
posted by Trurl at 9:31 AM PST - 40 comments

Nearly a decade of US road accident casualties mapped by location across America from ITO World via the Guardian (they have also done the UK)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:57 AM PST - 31 comments

Steve Jobs at NeXT. Videos of Steve Jobs brainstorming with the NeXT team, describing the goals of NeXT and demoing NeXTStep.
posted by Ad hominem at 6:43 AM PST - 62 comments

"The rigorous division of websites into narrow interests, the attempts of Amazon and Netflix to steer your next purchase based on what you’ve already bought, the ability of Web users to never encounter anything outside of their established political or cultural preferences, and the way technology enables advertisers to identify each potential market and direct advertising to it, all represent the triumph of cultural segregation that is the negation of democracy. It’s the reassurance of never having to face anyone different from ourselves." – Charles Taylor, The Problem with Film Criticism
posted by Rory Marinich at 6:30 AM PST - 53 comments

When they were making The Karate Kid, they decided to shoot each scene's rehearsal with budget cameras so the actors could watch themselves back afterwards. Now it's been edited together so that it forms a version of the movie that looks like it was shot and made by eight graders in their basement, including loads of unseen scenes (SLYT)- The Karate Kid Rehearsal Movie.
posted by rudhraigh at 5:41 AM PST - 27 comments

Neil Gaiman’s audiobook record label: [Salon.com] The best-selling author talks about introducing his new, hand-picked lineup [Audible.com] of favorite books to American ears. Neil Gaiman Presents is part of a larger enterprise by Audible.com, called ACX (for Audiobook Creation Exchange). It aims to bring new titles to the public by hosting a service through which authors (and other rights holders) can connect with professional narrators.
posted by Fizz at 4:25 AM PST - 20 comments

Vladimir Putin booed live on Russian TV. Taking a rare evening off from propping up Bashar Assad and threatening to station missiles on EU borders, past and future President - and current Prime Minister - Vladimir Putin relaxed at a mixed martial arts fight last Sunday night at Moscow's Olimpisky Arena. When he stepped into the ring after the bout to address the crowd however, his reception was as hostile as the fight had been. The muzzled Russian media have either ignored the incident or claimed the booing was directed at Jeff "The Snowman" Monson, but thousands of comments on the American's facebook wall tell a different story. [more inside]
posted by joannemullen at 4:00 AM PST - 28 comments

Google StreetView Art Aaron Hobson creates beautiful landscape photographs out of Google StretView
posted by mitocan at 3:27 AM PST - 11 comments

As we wind down 2011, we think of the most exciting moments from the last year. We measure these moments by "Tweets per minute". The 10 Most Tweeted Moments Of All Time all happened during the last year. Remember when Osama bin Laden died? (Number 10: 5,106 tweets per second.) There was an earthquake in Japan (Number 7: 5,530 tweets per second.) There were sporting events. But the Number 1 most tweeted event of 2011 was... [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:16 AM PST - 53 comments

In 1978 a tiny English company called Electronic Dream Plant produced their first product, the EDP Wasp synthesizer, the first of a short-lived range of creepy-crawly-named devices. In the golden age of big wooden and metal synths the wasp was made of plastic, battery-powered, with a built-in speaker, a keyboard with no moving parts, and used a brilliantly minimalist CMOS circuit design (in fact, people are still copying the Wasp filter circuit). It was the first analog synth to be truly affordable. The Wasp's accessibility, unique sound and portability saw it quickly used by musicians ranging from buskers to rock stars. [more inside]
posted by w0mbat at 12:11 AM PST - 22 comments

Just in time for Turkey Day.
Recently something unique came into my possession: the original 16mm work-print of Manos: The Hands of Fate. (made famous by these guys).
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:36 PM PST - 34 comments

A revolutionary new food supply, announced by author Mykle Hansen. [more inside]
posted by msalt at 10:03 PM PST - 9 comments

Australia's Qantas Airlines has been left red-faced after an ill-timed public relations campaign and Twitter competition backfired, drawing thousands of angry responses. The contest ran a day after talks with unions broke down, and after Qantas grounded its entire fleet in October. Thousands of passengers were stranded worldwide after the firm halted flights in an attempt to end months of strike action by workers angered by the firm's restructuring plans. The "Qantas Luxury" promotion, launched on 22 November, quickly tapped into customers' ire. ~ BBC
posted by infini at 10:03 PM PST - 20 comments

Elvis Costello :: Watching The Detectives.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:50 PM PST - 27 comments

"Somebody's turkey might come out better and somebody's turkey comes out worse but just remember: it's just a f*cking turkey." Tante Marie offers last-minute, no nonsense advice on how to make a Thanksgiving turkey. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 7:27 PM PST - 77 comments

Hans Reichel, of Wuppertal, Germany, maker of exquisitely beautiful guitars, on which he made exquisitely beautiful and idiosyncratic music, inventor of the delightfully expressive daxophone, on which he made delightfully expressive and often humorous music, creator of elegant fonts and architect of one of the most endearingly creative flash websites you'll ever see, has died at the age of 62. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:57 PM PST - 25 comments

Panama Priti Bikes, by José Castrellón.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:44 PM PST - 6 comments

Yo boys. I am sing song. Soup song. Flop song. "It's not meant to be anti-anything. Director [Aishwarya Dhanush] said the situation demanded a light-hearted fun song about love failure. I came up with a tune in ten minutes. I don't know what kind of mood Dhanush was in… he started singing in broken English and came up with this in 20 minutes. It just happened". Presenting India's newest music phenomenon, a Tamil-English dada-ist patische eulogizing unrequited love through Madras street-slang, and hypnotic earthy drums. [more inside]
posted by the cydonian at 5:35 PM PST - 26 comments

Ulysses 31 Redux (YT) is a shot-for-shot remake of the opening credits of Ulysses 31, the Franco-Japanese sci-fi retelling of The Odyssey (and perhaps high water mark of 80s children's television). The remake was directed by Dermot Canterbury.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:10 PM PST - 28 comments

In Time for outrage! (Indignez-vous in French, ¡Indignaos! in Spanish), a short pamphlet published at the end of 2010, 93-year old Stéphane Hessel, a former French Resistance fighter and diplomat, called for young people to fight injustice. He struck a nerve, and his little book not only became a surprise best-seller (3.5 million copies worldwide, translated into 10 languages) but gave its name (Indignados) to the Spanish protest movement that started in May 2011 and later inspired other protests in many countries, including France, Greece, Israel, and the USA with Occupy Wall Street. Interview with Hessel about the Occupy movements. First page of the official translation. Unofficial translation (of lesser quality). Bonus: Stéphane Hessel's mother, played by Jeanne Moreau in Truffaut's classic Jules and Jim.
posted by elgilito at 3:03 PM PST - 13 comments

There's a fairly old urban legend [Snopes; pop-ups galore] regarding the feasibility and/or incidence of young people getting drunk via the insertion of tampons that had been soaked in vodka into body cavities. Snopes was skeptical of the claim, but apparently no one had gone on record as having tested the method... until Danielle Crittenden stepped into the breach. (HuffPo) [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:58 PM PST - 127 comments

Mahna Mahna -- the signature Muppets tune you all know and love? It came from the soundtrack of an Italian soft porn film about Swedish lesbians.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:57 PM PST - 61 comments

Le Crimp (mostly en français) is a French collective that explores organic and abstract geometric [ I | II | III ] (PDFs) approaches to the art of origami. Read the white papers, browse the gallery or watch videos of artworks being made or being used in still-motion animations
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:34 PM PST - 6 comments

Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens snapped controversial (and artistic) portraits of children between the ages of four and nine smoking fake cigarettes. The photo shoot in action was recorded and her portfolio can be seen here. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by gman at 2:24 PM PST - 27 comments

Korehira Watanabe, one of Japan's last swordsmiths (SLYT).
posted by mahershalal at 2:09 PM PST - 26 comments

The Open Notebook looks at how science writers, and some general nonfiction writers, practice their craft. Their Story-Behind-the-Story interviews are especially interesting, showing how projects like Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and David Dobbs Atavist story "My Mother's Lover" developed from start to finish. For writers, there's also a database of successful story pitches.
posted by gottabefunky at 1:55 PM PST - 3 comments

Professor Herwig Schlunk of Vanderbilt University explores whether a law degree is a good investment today. (SSRN link) [more inside]
posted by reenum at 12:38 PM PST - 49 comments

South Korean MP Kim Sun-dong sets off a tear gas canister in parliament to try to block passage of a free trade agreement with the US. Another video here.
posted by Numenius at 12:35 PM PST - 58 comments

A Cherry Pie, an Apple Pie and a Pumpkin Pie, Each Cooked Inside a Separate Cake, and Then All Cooked Together inside Another Cake.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:25 AM PST - 92 comments

"Transforming the second chapter of Ellen Ripley's ongoing war with the Xenomorphs into an icecapade is the kind of loony idea that that can only possibly exist after someone has exploded fireworks inside a crowded bar to simulate RoboCop's iconic gas station explosion while the titular cyborg breaks into a musical interlude describing his existential crisis. Anything else would be a step back after that."

The Old Murder House Theater is a comedy troupe in Austin known for doing... shall we say... unusual movie adaptations. Last weekend's show: "Aliens On Ice!" (Scroll down for Youtube footage, or check out a two minute summary of the show, from the troupe.) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:56 AM PST - 24 comments

American biologist Lynn Margulis has died. Prolific and determined, Margulis was best known for her development of Endosymbiotic Theory, the now widely-accepted idea that complex cells began as a combination of simpler, prokaryotic ones, and the Gaia Hypothesis, which posited the Earth as a type of living organism. Some of her later ideas, including the claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS or that caterpillers and butterflies were once separate organisms, received less support, but Endosymbiotic Theory, in the words of Richard Dawkins, remains "one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology."
posted by Tubalcain at 10:34 AM PST - 32 comments

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is using a challenge program to find out whether it's possible to put shredded documents back together again. "DARPA’s Shredder Challenge calls upon computer scientists, puzzle enthusiasts and anyone else who likes solving complex problems to compete for up to $50,000 by piecing together a series of shredded documents. The goal is to identify and assess potential capabilities that could be used by our warfighters operating in war zones, but might also create vulnerabilities to sensitive information that is protected through our own shredding practices throughout the U.S. national security community." [more inside]
posted by keli at 9:30 AM PST - 54 comments

If we trace liberal disappointment with President Obama to its origins, to try to pinpoint the moment when his crestfallen supporters realized that this was Not Change They Could Believe In, the souring probably began on December 17, 2008, when Obama announced that conservative Evangelical pastor Rick Warren would speak at his inauguration. “Abominable,” fumed John Aravosis on AmericaBlog. “Obama’s ‘inclusiveness’ mantra always seems to head only in one direction—an excuse to scorn progressives and embrace the Right,” seethed Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow rode the story almost nightly: “I think the problem is getting larger for Barack Obama.” Negative 34 days into the start of the Obama presidency, the honeymoon was over.

Jonathan Chait asks in New York magazine, When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable? [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 9:18 AM PST - 345 comments

Benton! Jesus Christ! [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:36 AM PST - 48 comments

Forty-eight years ago this evening, BBC viewers were introduced to a cranky old man, his granddaughter Susan, and the singular device they used to travel the universe. Happy birthday, Doctor Who! [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 7:57 AM PST - 118 comments

Address is Approximate. "A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View."
posted by BoringPostcards at 7:54 AM PST - 12 comments

"London Bridge is currently closed to the public and a section 60 in place due to the presence of a depressed swan." - The Metropolitan Police Twitter Feed: Giving you the lowdown on all the criminal shit that's going down in London town. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 7:49 AM PST - 27 comments

For US users, today's Google Doodle is a turkey. For those outside the US, today's Google Doodle commemorates the 60th publication anniversary of Stanisław Lem's first novel, in their most ambitiously interactive doodle yet. [more inside]
posted by McCoy Pauley at 6:47 AM PST - 63 comments

Shopper Stalking: Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones. "It's just not invasive of privacy," said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. "There are no risks to privacy, so I don't see why anyone would opt out." (Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.)
posted by Blake at 5:14 AM PST - 152 comments

"In winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can be below -20C, whereas the sea water is only about -1.9C. Heat flows from the warmer sea up to the very cold air, forming new ice from the bottom. The salt in this newly formed ice is concentrated and pushed into the brine channels. And because it is very cold and salty, it is denser than the water beneath. The result is the brine sinks in a descending plume. But as this extremely cold brine leaves the sea ice, it freezes the relatively fresh seawater it comes in contact with. This forms a fragile tube of ice around the descending plume, which grows into what has been called a brinicle." A BBC film crew has recorded one of these freezing life on the sea floor.
posted by cosmac at 4:08 AM PST - 46 comments

Television New Zealand have captured some extraordinary, gut wrenching footage of a helicopter getting its rotor blades tangled in cables and crashing on Auckland's waterfront. The pilot has apparently walked away without serious injury.
posted by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 3:02 AM PST - 55 comments

Mieders Alpine Coaster - No Brakes. SLYT. POV ride down a single-pipe alpine coaster in Mieders, Austria. Strap in, headphones on, full screen. That is all.
posted by Skygazer at 10:24 PM PST - 40 comments

Truman Capote's, The Thanksgiving Visitor. [more inside]
posted by timsteil at 8:54 PM PST - 3 comments

You may be familiar with the song, and you may even know that it was based on a true story... But if you're only familiar with the original recording (or even the best-known version from Greatest Stories Live), you may not know that Harry Chapin's epic trucker song 30,000 Pounds Of Bananas actually had not three but FOUR endings. Now you can hear them all.
posted by hippybear at 7:08 PM PST - 30 comments

Possibly you remember Albino Black Sheep, home to a vast collection of puerile, amusing Flash animations. And if you do, perhaps you remember The Demented Cartoon Movie (warning: flashing, strobing stuff), the longest and the puerilest, or its shorter, less popular sequel, The Greatest Present Ever. [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 5:57 PM PST - 19 comments

Governor John Kitzhaber halts all executions in Oregon [more inside]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 5:15 PM PST - 49 comments

Scott Walker, Michele Bachmann, Robin Vos, Karl Rove, Joe Moore, Ron Paul, Scott Serota, Newt Gingrich, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Cantor, and, today, Barack Obama
posted by finite at 4:55 PM PST - 188 comments

Graphic designer Susan Kare was responsible for much of the look of the original Mac operating system. Now, you can take a peek inside the notebook where she sketched out on graph paper the icons for cut and paste. (previously)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:03 PM PST - 38 comments

Why leave name choosing to the whim of marketing consultants, grandparents and significant others? Wordoid will name your company or designer drug so as to sound natural in a range of languages. Wordmixer and Company-Name-Generator may help too. Babynamegenie will conjure up a tag for your offspring. This dog name generator accounts for your pet's size and physique. FakenameGenerator (see previously) will surround you with credible sounding friends and colleagues. Thenameinspector blog may be able to help with find something unique.
posted by rongorongo at 3:37 PM PST - 36 comments

Milton Berle vs. Statler and Waldorf.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:08 PM PST - 28 comments

Anne McCaffrey, author of Dragonriders of Pern, the first woman to win a Hugo award, is reported dead.
posted by Zarkonnen at 2:34 PM PST - 220 comments

Paul Motian (wiki) (myspace) (allaboutjazz), one of the great jazz drummers of our time, is dead at 80. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski at 2:17 PM PST - 30 comments

?uestlove is grounded. As the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Roots are known for providing guests of the show with impressive, personalized entrances. Last night, however, in an ill advised attempt at snark that has left some feelings hurt Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann entered the stage to the song "Lyin’ Ass Bitch” by Fishbone. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:08 PM PST - 223 comments

Women journalists confront harassment, sexism when using social media You come to expect it, as a woman writer, particularly if you’re political. You come to expect the vitriol, the insults, the death threats. After a while, the emails and tweets and comments containing graphic fantasies of how and where and with what kitchen implements certain pseudonymous people would like to rape you cease to be shocking, and become merely a daily or weekly annoyance, something to phone your girlfriends about, seeking safety in hollow laughter.
posted by modernnomad at 1:58 PM PST - 39 comments

Chef Sanjay Thumma (vahrehvah.com) wants to teach you how to make pretty much any Indian dish you can think of.
posted by curious nu at 12:50 PM PST - 18 comments

The world's lightest material -- 100 times lighter than styrofoam -- has been created at UC Irvine & CIT. It's a metal alloy with surprising compression strength.
posted by msalt at 12:44 PM PST - 42 comments

Training in 'concrete thinking' can be self-help treatment for depression. 'New research provides the first evidence that depression can be treated by only targeting an individual’s style of thinking through repeated mental exercises in an approach called cognitive bias modification. The study[pdf] suggests an innovative psychological treatment called ‘concreteness training’ can reduce depression in just two months and could work as a self-help therapy for depression in primary care.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:10 PM PST - 61 comments

NPR's food blog gets wordy: for the origins of "pie," look to the humble magpie. Though the etymology of pie doesn't present one clear path, the possibilities are fascinating. English surnames point to pie and pye as a baked good in the 1300s, with a Peter Piebakere in 1320 and Adam le Piemakere in 1332. Chaucer referred to "pye" as both a baked good and a magpie (Google books). Or perhaps the fillings were like a magpie's collection of bits and bobs, similar to haggis. You know, like the French "agace," or magpie (Gb), and similar to chewets, those baked goods, or another name for jackdaws (Gb), relative of the magpie. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:01 PM PST - 21 comments

Today the South African parliament, dominated by the ANC, passed by a large majority a media law which will restrict and constrain independent journalism in that country. Indeed, the law seems designed to squeeze, chill or eliminate independent reporting. The state is going to be accountable to the state. [George Brock]

[more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 11:46 AM PST - 17 comments

Monty Python's Terry Gilliam explains his cutout animation technique. The technique itself doesn't really matter -- whatever works is the thing to use. And that's why I use cutout. It's the quickest and easiest form of animation that I know. (SLYT)
posted by swift at 11:42 AM PST - 23 comments

Relevant to my interests (YT). Sara Quin (of Tegan and Sara) sings "Still Alive", accompanied by Jonathan Coulton and Dorit Chrysler, in what could perhaps be called a tweefecta. [more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest at 11:10 AM PST - 61 comments

"During my career, I kept my mouth shut. This now, speaking out, it’s about telling you my life. There’s no agenda, no vendetta. This is what football is really like." Kris Jenkins’s View of Life in the N.F.L. Trenches.
posted by cashman at 11:00 AM PST - 79 comments

Tom Bodett: Inside Passage (mp3). Tom Bodett talks about his father for The Moth. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 10:06 AM PST - 9 comments

Why Might A Publisher Pull Its eBooks From Libraries? PaidContent takes a look at Penguin's recent move to pull all of its titles from Overdrive's public library ebook program, a program that even some librarians are upset about.
posted by Toekneesan at 9:58 AM PST - 33 comments

Douglas Rushkoff examines how technology is changing us in “Life On The Virtual Frontier”; a fascinating episode of Frontline.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 9:10 AM PST - 10 comments

A Girl's Guide to Attending a Gay Bar "If you take away one thing from this article, let it be this: keep your fucking bachelorette party out of our bars. If you treat my safe space like your zoo, I will seduce your fiance while you're out selecting stationary." See also: Queers Read This (1990), "Rules of Conduct for Straight People".
posted by sevenyearlurk at 8:46 AM PST - 257 comments

"The following HTML 5 movie contains the sort of images that you see every day in the news, and thus might not be suitable for children. Turn your speakers on if you dare." [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 7:55 AM PST - 19 comments

Stanford has announced new online courses for January 2012. Like the three courses currently running (1,2,3), these courses are free, open to the general public, and have no required textbook (previously). [more inside]
posted by -jf- at 7:54 AM PST - 28 comments

Facebook has been criticized repeatedly for how it treats its users' privacy (this topic is not a stranger to MeFi), but with the introduction of OpenGraph (previously) earlier this year, some are arguing that Facebook has gone beyond general privacy concerns and has become Malware.

Now, we've shown that Facebook promotes captive content on its network ahead of content on the web, prohibits users from bringing open content into their network, warns users not to visit web content, and places obstacles in front of visits to web sites even if they've embraced Facebook's technologies and registered in Facebook's centralized database of sites on the web. [more inside]
posted by Kimberly at 7:33 AM PST - 75 comments

One of my favorite blogs happens to be local to me. Eric Berger, the Houston Chronicle's "SciGuy" usually reports on the weather. But he also posts entertaining and serious stuff as well. [more inside]
posted by PapaLobo at 6:57 AM PST - 2 comments

On the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, filmmaker Errol Morris examines a particularly intriguing figure of conspiracy speculation - "The Umbrella Man".
posted by Tenacious.Me.Tokyo at 5:30 AM PST - 63 comments

The 32 Rules of Thanksgiving Touch Football. [WSJ]
posted by Fizz at 5:17 AM PST - 37 comments

Flour Children (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 5:13 AM PST - 80 comments

Channel 4 in the UK recently began broadcast of their new reality show My Transsexual Summer. The first TV show of its type to have been produced with consultation from Trans Media Watch, MTS follows Channel 4's signing of the Memorandum of Understanding earlier this year. Response has been largely positive, but not everyone was happy. [more inside]
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:46 AM PST - 35 comments

Economics blog VoxEU debates Why do we need a financial sector? Serious, important and very dull articles discuss the trade-offs and myths of innovation, and whether the sector is overrated, critical or a contributor to the wider economy.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:51 AM PST - 35 comments

Lt John Pike, mustached UC Davis campus police officer, now finds himself the subject of the "Casually Pepper Spraying Cop" meme, where the nonchalant Pike is inserted into famous works of art such as the "The Creation of Adam," "The Scream," and yes, the cover of "Sgt Pepper." [more inside]
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:52 PM PST - 199 comments

One of the biggest stars of TV and movies talks about his 30-year career, his relationship with Jim Henson, and his brand new movie. Jian Ghomeshi talks to Kermit the Frog, on the video version of Ghomeshi's radio show, Q. Unfortunately, you have to put up with some ads before and during the interview.
posted by angiep at 10:20 PM PST - 28 comments

“Someone who is exceptional in their role is not just a little better than someone who is pretty good,” Mark Zuckerberg said recently. “They are 100 times better.” Bull hockey, says Bill Taylor in the Harvard Business Review: great people are overrated. See also Great People are Overrated, II and Malcolm Gladwell's 2002 take on the same theme, The Talent Myth.
posted by escabeche at 8:04 PM PST - 105 comments

Mars Rover Spirit's Entire Journey on Mars (A time lapse)
posted by dhruva at 6:59 PM PST - 46 comments

Signature catchphrases from your favorite rappers!
posted by Tom-B at 6:41 PM PST - 53 comments

Protesters in Cairo have re-occupied Tahrir square. As the military brutally suppresses protests with live ammunition and tear gas that has left at least 33 dead and two thousand injured, Egypt's interim cabinet has offered its resignation a week before elections were due to begin. Telegraph liveblog | Al Jazeera liveblog
posted by dustyasymptotes at 6:06 PM PST - 48 comments

Although [Michael] Mann has said he was inspired by a true story from Chicago in the late 1960s, the film is no gritty realist number about desperate thievery. Rather, HEAT is a high-gloss creature of its time, utilizing the classic "duel between cop and robber"... to thematize lifestyle issues in the mid-1990s. Specifically I argue that, for all its slickness and emphasis on style and personality, HEAT is a film about work and its increasing personal costs. For the characters in HEAT, work provides excitement* and challenge, but it ultimately excludes any emotional life outside of the demands of the job. *That's the shootout scene
posted by Trurl at 5:18 PM PST - 106 comments

As the encore for their 12th annual moe.down Festival in Mohawk, NY, the band members of the festival's namesake, moe., paid tribute to the recently-deceased Steve Jobs by performing their song Crab Eyes ... entirely on iPads. [more inside]
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 3:50 PM PST - 16 comments

Scientists have found that people with synesthesia, a condition wherein people have strong links between sensory experiences (such as hearing music as colours, or recalling a particular taste with a strong visual memory), may be caused by neural overstimulation in the visual cortex. The original paper (abstract and full text in pdf): Enhanced Cortical Excitability in Grapheme-Color Synesthesia and Its Modulation [more inside]
posted by guster4lovers at 2:02 PM PST - 59 comments

Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein (previously) argues that the majority of research by literary academics has no meaningful value. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 1:32 PM PST - 73 comments

John Neville, best known for an array of theatre roles, with legions of fans for his portrayal of Baron Munchausen in Terry Gilliam's movie and "the well-manicured man" in the X-Files, has died.
posted by Mike D at 12:57 PM PST - 66 comments

Jeremy Thorn is an abusive, hard-drinking gaijin who will teach you Japanese while verbally berating you. He and his friends will also get drunk and teach you how to cook Japanese food in a similarly abusive fashion. Then he'll take you on a tour of weird Japanese signage, sights, and stuff. (note: MLYT; a lot of swearing is involved) [more inside]
posted by sixohsix at 12:02 PM PST - 56 comments

A short guide to lazy EU journalism: not sure how the EU works or what institutions are involved? –> Just write “Brussels”. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 11:28 AM PST - 68 comments

Atlas Obscura provides a Guide to Communist Mummies, and there's plenty more online. Visit Lenin's Mausoleum, where he has been kept since 1924, defying his wishes to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg. He wasn't alone forever, as Stalin's body was kept in the mausoleum after his death in 1953, until his body was quietly removed in October, 1961. Just under eight years later, Hồ Chí Minh died, and against his wishes to be cremated, a very large state funeral was held and Uncle Ho's embalmed remains were placed in a mausoleum. Chairman Mao Zedong made A Proposal that all Central Leaders be Cremated after Death in 1956, but his wishes were overlooked when he died in 1976, and he joined the growing ranks of the preserved communist leaders in his own crystal casket, housed in a grand mausoleum. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:20 AM PST - 30 comments

Occupy Flash - The movement to rid the world of the Flash Player plugin [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:20 AM PST - 143 comments

Over 40 million Americans move in a year, creating a huge amount of internal migration. In this wonderful interactive map you can see the flows of population by county and year in America. Four experts comment on the map ("The Human Capital Swap-meet," "Vibrant Flux," "Reversing Flows," and "New Patterns?"). In more detail, the Census has a report on the latest geographic flows, and the Migration Policy Institute has terrific data on the population flows of immigrants. And, for a more international view, the map of cities that attract the most outside residents is also really interesting.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:54 AM PST - 23 comments

Dead End Thrills does Skyrim. (Previously.)
posted by Avenger50 at 10:41 AM PST - 228 comments

Indian talent show Warriors of Goja SLYT
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:13 AM PST - 31 comments

Larry Munson, the legendary voice of the Georgia Bulldogs, died yesterday at the age of 89. [more inside]
posted by robstercraw at 9:41 AM PST - 15 comments

Trevor Paglen (aka Agent Plorver) has work featured in Belgium's z33 House for Contemporary Art's current exhibit, Architecture of Fear. Paglen's work includes tracking and photographing 189 classified American satellites in orbit around Earth as well as locating and photographing US-run 'black sites' in Afghanistan. We Make Money Not Art (previously w/r/t Architecture of Fear) sits down with Paglen over Skype for an interview.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:36 AM PST - 4 comments

Maria Popova may be the best curator of Awesome on the Internet after the blue's own hivemind. Her site, Brain Pickings, has been mentioned a few times, but no-one appears to have pointed out her Twitter feed or her contributions to TBWA's tumblr, Curiosity Counts. Some recent posts of note: a piece on digital parasitism and the business of culture, Terry Prachett's self-documentary Choosing To Die, her selection of the best children's and picture books of 2011. Also, the best of Brain Pickings from last week and 2010. When not doing all that, she's writing for several magazines, organising the effort to restock the Brookyn OWS library after its destruction by police, and curating physical objects, sent as gifts every quarter.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:33 AM PST - 20 comments

What Randall Munroe did for Radiation, he does again for Money.
posted by Premeditated Symmetry Breaking at 8:46 AM PST - 146 comments

El Acordéon del Diablo is a captivating documentary about Francisco "Pacho" Rada Batista, the great Colombian accordionist and singer-songwriter. In this film, Pacho Rada, in his nineties, tells stories and reflects on celebrity, copyright, tradition and the shortcomings of pop music. His stories include a shipwreck that left a boatload of accordions washed up on a Colombian beach and an accordion duel with the devil himself. In ten parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
posted by Jode at 7:42 AM PST - 2 comments

If you're looking for some uplifting dance music to help you get your week going, Goldroom's Otoño Mix 2011 is a very soulful nu-disco collection that pairs nicely with The Magician's Magic Tape Sixteen. Need something with more energy? Edwin van Cleef's November mix is a bit more hands in the air, perfectly suited for the elimination of afternoon doldrums. [more inside]
posted by beaucoupkevin at 4:58 AM PST - 41 comments

Around the World in 80 Days is a BBC television travel series first broadcast in 1989. It was presented by comedian and actor Michael Palin.The show was inspired by Jules Verne's classic novel Around the World in Eighty Days, in which a character named Phileas Fogg accepts a wager to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days or less. Palin was given the same deadline... Here's Episode 1 - The Challenge. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:09 AM PST - 34 comments

Australian legislation mandating tobacco products are sold in plain packaging today passed the last hurdle today with plain packaging becoming a reality by December 2012. Some had misgivings, some disagree that plain packaging will be an effective deterrent; while some believe it will be counter-productive, while others take a different view.
posted by the noob at 2:42 AM PST - 150 comments

Dog chasing mountain bike. That is all.
posted by allkindsoftime at 10:23 PM PST - 55 comments

1h by Hans-Christian Schink.
posted by beshtya at 10:03 PM PST - 30 comments

David Frum asks When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?
posted by garlic at 9:30 PM PST - 181 comments

How do you write crime fiction in the wake of a massacre? The mass slaughter on Utøya in July shook Norway to its core. Now the country's crime writers must come to terms with what happened…
posted by infini at 7:37 PM PST - 16 comments

Sociologist Lauren Rivera of Northwestern spent two years researching the way elite financial and law firms really select their new hires. The original paper is behind a sciencedirect paywall, but Bryan Caplan has a nice write-up about the results. You're much better off with a degree from a tippy-top school than just any Ivy -- but they don't actually care about what you learned there. Your grades don't matter that much as long as they're not bad. Climbing a famous mountain or making a varsity team, especially if you're nationally competitive, would be wise. And oh yeah -- they do care what you got on your SATs. More reax from the Chronicle of Higher Ed and physicist Steve Hsu.
posted by escabeche at 5:03 PM PST - 151 comments

Now the story of a wealthy new media company that nearly lost everything and the one TV series that had no choice but to keep it all together. It's Arrested... Development... on Netflix. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:21 PM PST - 70 comments

Today, November 20, is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to remember all the people who've been killed in the past year out of transphobia. As before, the vast majority are poor trans women of color. Also as before, the true numbers are almost certainly far higher than the reported numbers. Ceremonies are being held around the world; see the website for details.
posted by jiawen at 12:25 PM PST - 81 comments

Hidden away in central London, The Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice is a small public monument in Postman's Park, commemorating ordinary people who died saving the lives of others and might otherwise have been forgotten. It was unveiled in 1900 with plans for 120 memorial ceramic tiles, but by 1931 only 53 had been laid down. In 2009, the first new tablet in 78 years was added. Individual collection of the tiles. A blog post about the memorial. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 11:42 AM PST - 15 comments

Gary Garcia, half of the musical duo Buckner & Garcia, died on November 17, 2011 at his home in Florida. The duo is best known for their 1982 top ten hit Pac Man Fever. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:31 AM PST - 36 comments

The Surveillance Catalog: Where Governments Get Their Spying Tools The Wall Street Journal has obtained a "trove" of documents from the secretive retail market in surveillance technology sold to world governments, and has created a searchable database for your enjoyment. "Among the most controversial technologies on display at the conference were essentially computer-hacking tools to enable government agents to break into people's computers and cellphones, log their keystrokes and access their data..." E.g., FinFisher installs malware by sending fake software updates for Blackberry and other devices; VUPEN's Exploits for Law Enforcement Agencies "aim to deliver exclusive exploit codes for undisclosed vulnerabilities" in software from Microsoft, Apple and others. [more inside]
posted by mediareport at 9:45 AM PST - 37 comments

Makes very little difference what happens, the next ten years, because the main thing in the universe isn’t at all affected by these little shifts of anthills, musics, nations, marriages. Let Allen Ginsberg inform your Sunday afternoon. [more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:38 AM PST - 20 comments

Cricketer Basil D'Oliveira Has Died. "In 1968 he was named in England's squad to tour South Africa which was then cancelled as the ruling National Party refused to accept his presence." [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 7:16 AM PST - 22 comments

"Of course water hydrates." or does it? EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration. Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed yesterday after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration. And hysteria over the EU's ruling on water and dehydration ensues. You can read the EU's ruling here (PDF). Highland Spring vows to defy EU rule on water labelling.
posted by Fizz at 4:32 AM PST - 102 comments

In the tradition of Marcus Aurelius and Montaigne, Ghostface Killah (a.k.a. Pretty Toney) has set down his thoughts on living. (audio nsfw) (previously)
posted by Trurl at 9:22 PM PST - 41 comments

Who's coordinating crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street? The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports that, although there was rampant speculation about Homeland Security's role in Occupy Wall Street crackdowns across the nation given multiple police force's paramilitary actions, the Feds are not directly involved. Instead, planning has been facilitated by an affiliated non-profit organization called Police Executive Research Forum, aka PERF.
But what exactly is PERF? [more inside]
posted by stagewhisper at 8:24 PM PST - 268 comments

Throughout time immemorial, songs of patriotism, such as Darryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten?" are a staple of countries at war. Our ballads root for our soldiers to come back safe and sound to families and sweethearts, but who sings the tale about the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the autonomous drone that pines for the vending machine it left at home? Only the evil ghost of Johnny Cash does. [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:06 PM PST - 36 comments

While the nation's attention has been recently drawn to the student protests at UC-Davis after video showing UCPD pepper-spraying a group of peaceful students went viral, this is merely one incident in a wave of student activism over the last three years with the goal of "reclaiming" the University of California for students. Some place the beginning of this mass student movement around the 2009 decision to implement a 32% tuition hike, which led to protests that drew over 5,000 students and a damning expose and condemnation from the President of the UC Faculty Association. (Budget Cuts Previously) [more inside]
posted by Chipmazing at 1:45 PM PST - 624 comments

Where Did All The Adderall Go? A mysterious American adderall shortage has paralyzed the cognition and emptied the pocketbooks of millions of legal tweakers this year. Try to pay attention: it's a fun history of amphetamine, shortages, grotesque corporate greed and the Holy Grail of Big Pharma business models that is the "addiction-proof" addictive drug. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by DarlingBri at 12:29 PM PST - 179 comments

"One of the most moving releases I heard in 2010 was the 90-minute cassette entitled Ornitheology, by a mysterious individual by the name Chubby Wolf. Two long, 40-minute long songs that recalled beautifully the best moments of Brian Eno, yet the two songs struck me as something more…more. In doing research, I discovered two things about this mysterious band: a. that Chubby Wolf was the moniker of Danielle Baquet-Long, who performed in a group entitled Celer with her husband, Will Long, and, b. sadly, that Danielle had passed away suddenly, at the tragically young age of 26." Joseph Kyle of The Big Takeover interviewed Will Long, providing an overview of Danielle's life and art. Much of her music, which was released on limited edition CDrs, cassettes or vinyl is streaming on bandcamp, along with music she created with Will as Celer.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:33 AM PST - 16 comments

Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine.
posted by twoleftfeet at 6:08 AM PST - 20 comments

The Morgan Library Black Hours, one of the world's most beautiful and striking illuminated manuscripts, has been digitized in its entirety. Richly decorated in blue and gold on black vellum, it is one of a surviving handful of such manuscripts produced in late 15th century Bruges. (Poorer quality, but still interesting, images of another such work, the Black Hours of Charles the Bold, are also online.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:50 AM PST - 21 comments

Family Dysfunction: Some Tense Literature for Thanksgiving (Plus a Playlist) In honor of the holidays, here’s a dysfunctional family reading list and playlist to celebrate those good people who you just can’t get away from.
posted by Fizz at 4:18 AM PST - 20 comments

What do you give a spoiled brat who has everything? His own monster, of course. "My Bloody Lad" is two manic minutes of imaginatively morbid mayhem* from a team of four French student animators who call themselves Dead Walter. SLVimeo for now, but we'll be seeing more from these warped toonsmiths for sure.
* probably enough cartoon gore and ghoulish content to earn an NSFW on the weekend
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:45 AM PST - 10 comments

StarCraft changed my life.
posted by Avenger50 at 12:25 AM PST - 87 comments

You probably don't know about a giant 10-story tall Russian memorial to war dead on American soil. It's not a trick statement, like on the contested Commander Islands in the Bering Sea. No, real America. New Jersey. It's called To the Struggle Against World Terrorism (or "Tear of Grief") and was installed in 2006 on the end of a working pier, facing the Statue of Liberty, prime real estate. Snopes created a page after incredulous queries. You can see it on Google Maps, Wikipedia. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 12:08 AM PST - 65 comments

A tumblr blog called Quote Unquote recently presented a series of interviews with indie videogame developers, conducted over the last year, as a collection. The interviews include guys like cactus, Bennett Foddy, Chevy Ray Johnston, Jasper Byrne and Jan Willem Nijman.
posted by pancreas at 9:36 PM PST - 6 comments

Homicide detectives who have reopened an investigation into the death of Natalie Wood after three decades said on Friday that the film star's husband, actor Robert Wagner, was not considered a suspect. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 9:17 PM PST - 48 comments

A rollover accident during rush hour on an Arizona freeway nearly ended in tragedy after two small dogs jumped from the wrecked vehicle and led police on a desperate chase through the busy traffic before finally being safely captured.
posted by griphus at 7:00 PM PST - 56 comments

Tom Samui makes art from junk.
posted by tomswift at 6:55 PM PST - 5 comments

There are those points in every interactive designer’s career when he becomes fed up with producing the same set of graphics all over again for every website he designs. It could be the social network icons or gallery arrows. Similar for interactive developers that have to slice the same GIFs and PNGs each time the art director asks them to. Until now. Just Be Nice Studio came up with a typeface that includes frequently used iconographics and symbols. Although, the idea is not unique — Webdings and Windings have been around for quite some time — all of them have a lot of unnecessary symbols. Web Symbols is a set of vector html-compliant typefaces, so it might be used in any size, color and browser (okay, mostly — but IE7 for sure).
posted by netbros at 4:25 PM PST - 34 comments

Guy buys engagement ring. Guy gets dumped. Guy sells engagement ring and buys a fully armored Master Chief suit. [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 3:54 PM PST - 114 comments

Latet examples of 3D street art from around the world ~ in pictures More from Artist Joe Hill
posted by mattoxic at 3:29 PM PST - 5 comments

Nononono cat is displeased. Nononono cat is autotuned. Nononono cat is in Destiny's Child. Nononono cat brings bass. Nononono cat is stuck in a time warp. Nononono cat goes to rehab. Nononono cat plays Tetris, and Mario Brothers. Is this the Nononono cat? No. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 2:08 PM PST - 40 comments

"But when a saga popular with pre-adolescent girls peaks romantically on a night that leaves the heroine to wake up covered with bruises in the shape of her husband's hands — and when that heroine then spends the morning explaining to her husband that she's incredibly happy even though he injured her, and that it's not his fault because she understands he couldn't help it in light of the depth of his passion — that's profoundly irresponsible." MetaFilter's own Linda Holmes on the "psychosexual horror-show" that is The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. [more inside]
posted by davidjmcgee at 1:44 PM PST - 271 comments

The PLoS Impact Explorer visualises which papers in the Open Access PLoS family of journals are making an impact online.
posted by alby at 12:02 PM PST - 20 comments

What makes music boring?
posted by seriousmoonlight at 11:27 AM PST - 133 comments

Are you tired of reading about how neuroscientists have discovered the area of the brain devoted to a single, oddly-specific function, but lack access to the sophisticated neuroimaging technologies needed to refute them? NeuroSynth has you covered. [more inside]
posted by logicpunk at 11:15 AM PST - 12 comments

I'm a Runner. Yes, the interview series is best known for the Sarah Palin cover, but Runner's World has managed to snag quite a variety of famous pavement-pounders, including Wait Wait host Peter Sagal, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, singer Shawn Colvin, Al Roker Al Roker, Episcopal bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and another Palin you may know and love.
posted by psoas at 11:01 AM PST - 24 comments

A professor integrates a YouTube video of himself into class at Biola University
posted by MHPlost at 11:00 AM PST - 19 comments

American colleges find the Chinese-student boom a tricky fit [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 10:40 AM PST - 56 comments

Modern Game Journalism: The Movie: The Trailer. (Alternate unofficial Youtube mirror.) For context, there was recently a large backlash by fans against reviewers that gave good but less than perfect scores for Uncharted 3. Or, even worse, a mixed review. Rock, Paper, Shotgun had a concise response. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 9:54 AM PST - 58 comments

"By putting an [unelected] senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic." This is The Goldman Sachs Project [more inside]
posted by rubyrudy at 9:28 AM PST - 67 comments

The Decorated Bride - "In Lubinje, a small, picturesque village of 3500 inhabitants, a few hours from Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo, members of the Trebesh community live in colorful houses. They also have a colorful custom - or rite - of beautifying brides on their wedding day."
posted by madamjujujive at 9:26 AM PST - 46 comments

Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result "The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and confirmed the result." [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 8:44 AM PST - 105 comments

The 21 gram keychain computer. "The tiny PC enables what its inventor calls 'Any Screen Computing,' the ability to turn any TV, laptop, phone, tablet, or set-top box into a dumb terminal for its Android operating system." [more inside]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:35 AM PST - 77 comments

Pop-up fabrication of a flapping-wing robot (SLYT)
posted by Behemoth at 7:42 AM PST - 14 comments

If We Only Had Wings explores the long-held dream of personal flight, from da Vinci's gliders to the Swiss Jetman to the in-development NASA Puffin (man, do I want a Puffin). Since the article is from National Geographic, there is also a great photo gallery.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:21 AM PST - 5 comments

Shakespeare was not a full-time writer without other responsibilities, like O’Neill or Williams. But what might look like a distraction for such authors—acting in his own and other people’s plays, coaching fellow players, helping manage the ownership of the troupe’s resources (including its two theaters, the Globe and Blackfriars)—was a strength for Shakespeare, since it made him a day-by-day observer of what the troupe could accomplish, actor by actor. [...]

'According to Pacini,' Julian Budden writes in The Operas of Verdi, 'it was the custom at the San Carlo theatre, Naples, for the composer to turn the pages for the leading cello and double bass players on opening nights.' The composer had to change his score to fit new voices if there were substitutions caused by illness or some other accident. In subsequent performances, he was expected to take out or put in arias for the different houses, transposing keys, changing orchestration. He was not a man of the study but of the theater.

Shakespeare and Verdi in the Theater.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:12 AM PST - 48 comments

Xenology may be defined as the scientific study of all aspects of extraterrestrial life, intelligence, and civilization. Dr Robert A Freitas (known mainly for his work in nanotechnology) has placed his comprehensive 1979 work on this subject entirely online. [more inside]
posted by leibniz at 6:38 AM PST - 7 comments

That's the drawback of the modern lab mouse. It's cheap, efficient, and highly standardized—all of which qualities have made it the favorite tool of large-scale biomedical research. But as Mattson points out, there's a danger to taking so much of our knowledge straight from the animal assembly line. The inbred, factory-farmed rodents in use today—raised by the millions in germ-free barrier rooms, overfed and understimulated and in some cases pumped through with antibiotics—may be placing unseen constraints on what we know and learn.

Slate has just finished a three part series on the pitfalls and promises of laboratory animals. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) [more inside]
posted by tocts at 6:21 AM PST - 20 comments

Bert and Ernie recording their voices for TomTom. This is perhaps the funniest viral ad for a product that I've seen. TomTom in-car navigation systems offer custom voices to read out directions, and their latest additions are from Sesame Street. This is the promotional video, showing what the recording session was like... [SLYTPB]
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:19 AM PST - 33 comments

"When you make something as small and complex as a watch, you can't do a little and put it down and come back the next day and do a bit more. You work until you are exhausted, then pack it in for the night and start again the next day, always working to maximum capacity, or the watch wouldn't get done." [more inside]
posted by IndigoJones at 6:17 AM PST - 16 comments

An astonishing feat of archival reconstruction has turned up the original 1944 Lord of the Rings motion picture
posted by Sebmojo at 6:08 AM PST - 21 comments

"As I built what became the nation’s largest individual lobbying practice -- with 40 employees at its peak -- I remained the only lobbyist in the firm who had not previously worked on Capitol Hill. Former Congress members and staff are everywhere on K Street, the lair of the lobbying world. Why? Because they have access." [more inside]
posted by jadayne at 5:42 AM PST - 38 comments

It's easy to see how a watchmaker could take this device as a kind of challenge across the millennia ... and that's how we arrive at this: Hublot's own working replica of the Antikythera mechanism, scaled down from shoebox size to wristwatch size, and with a built in clock circuit so it can tell the time as well as make its astronomical predictions.
posted by veedubya at 5:27 AM PST - 20 comments

Meme Weaver In which "the author tries—and fails—to cash in on a big idea". Warning: skippable full-screen ad alert. Behind it is an article in the Atlantic (the magazine, not the ocean). Of possible interest to fans and critics of the popular science genre of books, Wikipedians, and underdog/failure sympathisers.
posted by nthdegx at 5:06 AM PST - 7 comments

Last year Minnesota Wild prospect Mikael Granlund turned heads with his Floorball-style (or 'lacross-style' for the uninitiated) goal during Finland's semifinal game against Russia in the World Championships. Mikael's younger brother Markus notched a similar goal today.
posted by mannequito at 1:27 AM PST - 23 comments

"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race". Recent talk from Jay Smooth presented at a local TED conference meet up at Hampshire College. Previously.
posted by catchingsignals at 11:06 PM PST - 27 comments

Good news, muffin fans! Amy Winfrey posted six new Muffin Films last year. They're in the smaller tin on the right. And there's still a few days left to enter her 2011 Muffin Art Contest!
[way previously]
posted by free hugs at 10:25 PM PST - 9 comments

As the salar has no natural outflow, when it does rain the salar floods with an extremely thin layer of water (barely ankle deep even at its most extreme), creating what is essentially the world’s largest mirror.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:42 PM PST - 16 comments

Donald Crowhurst (1932–1969) was a British businessman and amateur sailor who died while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race. Crowhurst had entered the race in hopes of winning a cash prize from The Sunday Times to aid his failing business. Instead, he encountered difficulty early in the voyage, and secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions, in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually circling the world. Evidence found after his disappearance indicates that this attempt ended in insanity and suicide. (previously: 1, 2)
posted by Trurl at 9:14 PM PST - 11 comments

PETA's latest public target is Super Mario 3D Land, specifically Mario's use of the tanooki suit, which PETA claim signify the wearing of a tanuki skin. To raise awareness, PETA had a little flash game made: Mario Kills Tanooki (warning: cartoon blood and gore), in which you play a skinless Tanuki trying to get your skin back from Mario (YT, 1:19 - slightly stuttery gameplay video). But as this Kotaku article points out, PETA's outrage is "an epic culture misunderstanding," overlooking the long, cultural history of the shape-shifting trickster. Nintendo's quick response: "Mario often takes the appearance of certain animals and objects in his games," that are "lighthearted and whimsical transformations." PETA clarifies: the graphic little game was just a joke.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:56 PM PST - 65 comments

Nature, one of the most well known (and well cited) scientific journals, recently published a humor piece entitled Womanspace. A senior editor of Nature, Henry Gee, commented last month on the article: "I'm amazed we haven't had any outraged comments about this story." Well, the outraged comments have arrived. [more inside]
posted by demiurge at 7:18 PM PST - 86 comments

Some interesting things have recently happened in the world of solar power: Evergreen and Solyndra have gone bankrupt, panel cost has gone sub $1.00/watt, and China has vastly increased production capacities. [more inside]
posted by thewalrus at 6:51 PM PST - 101 comments

He does not cook like you do. But I would like an invitation for dinner: Cajun Stuffed Pork Chops with Bacon [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 6:35 PM PST - 40 comments

More than just Hello Kitty on acid (warning: disturbing imagery) [more inside]
posted by dubusadus at 6:22 PM PST - 22 comments

On 11/11/11, Homestuck entered Act 6 (of 7). This follows an explosive 13-minute finale to Act 5, which brought down its host Newgrounds on the day of its unveiling and was released with a fantastic companion soundtrack. In the two and a half years since it was created, Homestuck has become a full-blown epic, approaching the length of War and Peace, but with hours of accompanying animation, several interactive games, a loop machine, and a baffling 19 soundtrack albums, ranging from VG-inspired soundtrack to jazzy mood music to solo piano to parody kids TV show soundtrack. It also has an obsession with Nic Cage and Betty Crocker, and comes with a metawebcomic called Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff which is in and of itself pure gold. Intimidated? You probably should be! But it's hilarious, epic, and surprisingly addictive, so if you've got nothing else on your plate, you can either start from the beginning, or, if it seems too daunting, you can learn... [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 6:11 PM PST - 64 comments

“Sarcasm detector? That’s a really useful invention.” How do humans separate sarcasm from sincerity? Research on the subject is leading to insights about how the mind works. Really. previously
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:01 PM PST - 27 comments

What Middletown Read.
Robert and Helen Lynd's immersive studies of early 20th century Muncie, Indiana, published as Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937), are classics of American sociology. Ball State's Center for Middletown Studies has created a database of the circulation records from the Muncie Public Library from 1891-1902, providing a rare glimpse of the reading habits of turn-of-the-century middle America. Slate examines the project and what it reveals.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:03 PM PST - 7 comments

"There is a parallel between what amphibian taxonomists do these days and what homicide detectives do. Both arrive at scenes of mayhem. Maybe they solve the crime, but they are powerless to undo it." A fungal plague is killing the world's amphibians. Hundreds of species are already gone. There is no vaccine and no cure. There is, however, an ark.
posted by escabeche at 4:25 PM PST - 29 comments

Great TED Talk of Mr. Kunstler's take on suburbia (kinda NSFW).
posted by analogtom at 4:24 PM PST - 50 comments

Google Music v iTunes Match v Amazon Cloud Player. Google has officially launched its (U.S. only) "Google Music" service, which aims to do for the Android market what iTunes and the recently unveiled (U.S. only) iTunes Match service does for Apple. All three services allow you to upload thousands of songs to the "Cloud". This music store showdown could revolutionise the way people collect, store and listen to music - or not.
posted by joannemullen at 3:45 PM PST - 82 comments

Lovely Owls (SLYT)
posted by babbyʼ); Drop table users; -- at 2:50 PM PST - 47 comments

Irina Werning has once again recreated the scenes from old photographs in a similar fashion as last time. (slightly NSFW)
posted by gman at 2:13 PM PST - 43 comments

A tiny V-12. This video shows the machining, assembly, and running of a very, very small 12-cylinder engine.
posted by FishBike at 1:39 PM PST - 43 comments

In 1975, 10-year-old Stephanie was followed by photographer Jill Krementz as the subject of the book A Very Young Dancer (Stephanie was a student at the School of American Ballet, and was chosen by George Balanchine to play Marie in that year's production of the Nutcracker. Now, 34 years later, the New York Times has found her again.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:55 PM PST - 26 comments

One's a spine-tingling howl of alienation gleaned from a spaghetti western. One's a bluesy transatlantic barnstormer that turned a young British singer into an icon of soul. Both feature powerful voices in unconventional styles mulling over intense feeling. And together, thanks to mash-up artist Divide & Kreate, they make for one of the best remixes out there [.mp3]. There's a similar mix with Cee Lo if you're so inclined, or check out the dueling cover by Upstart to hear the vocals beautifully intertwine. Mash-ups previously on MeFi.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:53 PM PST - 10 comments

Teaching Good Sex -- a profile of Philadelphia's Friends' Central School's Sexuality and Society course and its teacher Al Vernacchio, by Laurie Abraham, author of the book "The Husbands and Wives Club." (Descriptions in the first link may be NSFW.) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:26 PM PST - 38 comments

This morning , the California Supreme Court announced that the proponents of Prop 8 have standing to defend it. The full decision is here (.pdf). [more inside]
posted by insectosaurus at 10:48 AM PST - 100 comments

Great food ideas for a fantasy and sci-fi themed Thanksgiving features recipes from Inn at the Crossroads (medieval recipes/Game of Thrones), Harry Potter Recipes, and The Geeky Chef ("a collection of recipes inspired by books, movies, and video games").
posted by flex at 10:35 AM PST - 33 comments

Leaping Sundogs "...that little wisp suddenly snaps into a new shape, as if someone had stopped the video, waited for the cloud to change, then started up the video again." More here.
posted by dhruva at 9:54 AM PST - 11 comments

When the cows go marching in. [Part 1] [Part 2]
posted by Fizz at 7:52 AM PST - 27 comments

Tomato: fruit or vegetable? In 1893, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Nix v. Hedden that the tomato is legally a vegetable and not a fruit, botanical definitions be damned. In 2001, the European Union disagreed, saying that "tomatoes, the edible parts of rhubarb stalks, carrots, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, melons and water-melons are considered to be fruit". [more inside]
posted by davidjmcgee at 7:51 AM PST - 91 comments

Roger Guimera Manrique and Marta Sales-Pardo have shown that "U.S. Supreme Court justice votes are more predictable than one would expect from an ideal court composed of perfectly independent justices." [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 7:35 AM PST - 45 comments

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, co-founder of Diaspora* died at 22 on Saturday. [more inside]
posted by facehugger at 7:23 AM PST - 31 comments

A typical full term pregnancy is 40 weeks. Premature babies are those born before 37 weeks. Worldwide, 13 million babies are born premature. In the United States, 1 in 8 babies are born prematurely. Prematurity can lead to a host of lifelong cognitive, respiratory, vision, and digestive problems. November 17 is World Prematurity Day, devoted to raising awareness of the problems of as well as prevention of pre-term births. [more inside]
posted by jasonhong at 6:59 AM PST - 33 comments

In Tonsberg, Norway, they are building a Viking Ship. By hand, using the same tools and processes the vikings used. [more inside]
posted by Chrischris at 6:34 AM PST - 49 comments

The UnFacebook World via
posted by infini at 6:26 AM PST - 57 comments

Time Maps maps the Netherlands based on how long it takes to reach a given destination rather than how far away it is.
We can reach almost any destination by train easily and relatively quick. In our busy lives we now think in time rather than distance[...]From the perspective of Eindhoven, for instance, the Netherlands is relatively small because of the quick and easy connections to other cities. At the same time, seen from a more remote and small village such as Stavoren the Netherlands is much bigger[...]At night the map will expand because there are no night trains and in the morning it will shrink once trains will commence their schedules. Here is a video demonstration.
posted by OmieWise at 5:50 AM PST - 28 comments

"I miss Tucson. The Mountains. Blue Skies. Even the heat." ABC News has documented the recovery of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords from a gunshot wound sustained in January, in conjunction with the release of "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope", written by Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly. [more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:21 AM PST - 15 comments

Seven Misunderstandings About Classical Architecture
posted by nthdegx at 3:48 AM PST - 85 comments

Me, Myself, and I: "Coprophagia wouldn’t have fazed them at all, sodomy wouldn’t have slowed them down, incest would have actively interested them—but masturbation: please, anything but that. " A review of Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation, giving a short history of masturbation throgh moral, religious and cultural lenses. [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 3:20 AM PST - 27 comments

Johannes Grenzfurthner on subverting subversion and on how subverting the system has become more difficult over the years as society has changed. Features imaginary artists saving Taiwan, Jackass and the far too banal blood sausage made from your own blood.
posted by DRMacIver at 3:13 AM PST - 5 comments

"Asked if he thought he should have been paid, he said: 'I reckon they should have paid me … I was basically doing what a normal member of staff does for Tesco. I had the uniform and I was in the staff canteen. I obviously got access to the food and drinks in the staff canteen … that's what they let you do … but I got nothing else apart from that.'" -- The Guardian on Britain's "Work Experience Programme," which provides thousands of free man-hours to some of the country's largest and most profitable private companies
posted by bardic at 1:44 AM PST - 69 comments

Mark Ames explains how EU financiers and defense contractors purchased a bloodless coup in Greece, and installed a club-carrying fascist to head its new austerity regime.
posted by clarknova at 11:21 PM PST - 33 comments

Depressed? Has all the negativity in the media got you down? Can't take one more awful news story? Me too. Maybe what you need is a new #1 news source for breaking news and investigative journalism fluffy animals! [more inside]
posted by Space Kitty at 10:11 PM PST - 26 comments

US President Barack Obama is in Australia today. The main policy announcement is a new, permanent US Marine Corps presence on Australian soil. This is interpreted unambiguously as a 'containment strategy' for China and other Asian nations, with Australia playing the loyal deputy Sheriff. Most Australians don't think we should be forced to choose.
posted by wilful at 7:21 PM PST - 127 comments

"I live next door to a house owned by Bank of America, and they are the worst neighbors I’ve ever had. The previous owner, Mike, was a good guy; he occasionally had loud parties, but we were always invited and the food was great. Then he was killed on the job. He had been single and had no will, so his house swiftly defaulted to the lender. More than three years later, that house is still empty." An essay on trying to fight off suburban decay, and the changing face of the margins of American society.
posted by ardgedee at 6:56 PM PST - 62 comments

Mr. Rockefeller has not squandered his income. He has applied it for thirty-five years to accumulating not only oil property but real estate — railroad stock, iron mines, copper mines, anything and everything which could be bought cheap by temporary depressing and made to yield rich by his able management. For thirty-five years he has worked for special privileges giving him advantages over competitors, for thirty-five years he has patiently laid net-works around property he wanted, until he had it surely corralled and could seize it; for thirty-five years he has depreciated values when necessary to get his prey. And to-day he still is busy. In almost every great financial manoeuvre [sic] in the country is felt his supple, smooth hand with its grip of steel, and while he directs that which is big, nothing is too small for him to grasp. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 6:09 PM PST - 7 comments

The goal of the new site Audiofiles is to be the Longreads of public radio, providing an easy-to-use, well-cataloged guide to the best radio stories ever told. Some background.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:54 PM PST - 19 comments

The Miami Marlins have a new logo. Reaction is less than favorable. But the new identity pales in comparison to the homerun feature that will play in the stadium. Reaction.
posted by brappi at 3:35 PM PST - 103 comments

Afflicted with writer's block? Need an extra dose of motivation? Written? Kitten! rewards you with a brand new kitty for every hundred words you write.
posted by changeling at 3:15 PM PST - 51 comments

Why doesn't Britain make things any more?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:48 PM PST - 105 comments

In 1887, a glacial geologist named George Frederick Wright was hiking across the Muir Glacier in southeast Alaska when something strange caught his eye. Just as the daylight began to fade, the previously uninterrupted expanse of white snow around him began to develop what appeared to be a five o’clock shadow....
posted by Chrysostom at 2:48 PM PST - 28 comments

Mark Zuckerberg only eats what he kills.
posted by delmoi at 2:37 PM PST - 101 comments

For the last two years Scott Toepfer have been taking still photographs for a personal project entitled ‘It’s Better In The Wind,’ all the while collecting video footage from each ride as friends traveled around the Western United States together. Toepfer has been slowly editing the footage into a visual scrapbook of sorts for those who partook, and those who followed them via the web. No preaching the triumphs and failures of the motorcycle industry, no divisive commentary between manufacturers and styles…just a collection of imagery that will hopefully inspire more people to take to the road and discover what there is outside of our respective communities. [via]
posted by netbros at 1:51 PM PST - 4 comments

The Metaphysics of Morrowind: an essay series that looks at the deceptively deep lore that surrounds one of the best-loved open world games ever made, and incorporates not only the plot elements of the game world, and the supplementary books scattered for the player to find, but also the meta-narrative of the gameplay itself, including the player character and the construction kit. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4.
posted by codacorolla at 12:07 PM PST - 92 comments

Despite pioneering the use of wikis in instruction back in 1997, this week Georgia Tech deleted all course wikis, out of concern that they were in violation of FERPA. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act was enacted in 1974 and prohibited federal funding of educational institutions that denied the rights of students and parents to review "educational records" or that did not protect the privacy of "educational records." A lot of people are rightfully concerned about the negative educational effects of "schools interpreting these pieces of legislation to restrict students’ communication and access online, right at the time when the Web has such great potential for teaching and learning." The thing is, what if Georgia Tech is right? [more inside]
posted by fogovonslack at 11:56 AM PST - 38 comments

Blind Photography "Taking a picture is so easy, you just need a camera, decide at which moment to shoot, press the button and you have your picture. Why can't the blind do this?" (Previously 1, 2)
posted by spock at 11:37 AM PST - 12 comments

"If you have never been stared down by eight expectant, spray-tanned children in liquid eyeliner and ornate hairpieces, you have not seen what I have seen."

Rich Juzwiak judges a beauty pageant. [more inside]
posted by saturnine at 11:23 AM PST - 51 comments

Atheists in U.S. military seek official recognition. A small but growing movement complains of religious bias and seeks the same status as Christians, Jews and Muslims. 'Religion — specifically Christianity — is embedded in military culture. The Chaplain Corps traces its origins to the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Until the 1970s, the service academies required cadets to attend chapel services. Nightly prayers still are broadcast throughout Navy ships at sea. Fewer than 10,000 of the 1.4 million active-duty members of the armed forces identify themselves as atheists or agnostics. Atheists say many more are hidden among the 285,000 who say they have no religious preference.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 10:51 AM PST - 104 comments

Portland Nights is a series of structured motion controlled time-lapse clips taken in and around downtown Portland, Oregon at night over the course of several months.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:16 AM PST - 13 comments

Nathan, Jordan, and Bobby are Uncastable. (via)
posted by Iridic at 9:49 AM PST - 27 comments

Kristen Haring knits Morse Code (SLYT) (via)
posted by scruss at 9:17 AM PST - 12 comments

Caution: Disturbing, potentially triggering and possibly NSFW content: The Meth Project, known for their gritty, confrontational and disturbing online and print ads, which graphically depict the effects of methamphetamine drug use, launched a new, interactive website last week. The revamped site gives visitors an opportunity to share their own stories. They've also premiered four new 30-second television PSA's by the director of Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky: E.R., Deep End, Losing Control and Desperate. (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:51 AM PST - 90 comments

"Things didn’t happen as I imagined. On the one hand, with the situation in Tehran, I expected the police to arrest me. I also thought that the resulting dress wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. But it turned out to be more homogenous than I envisaged. Most of the passengers wanted to communicate with me and participate in the project. And I enjoyed this attention and collaboration. The point wasn’t their understanding of the project. I didn’t want anything to be imposed on the audience or participants. I wanted ordinary people to encounter their own personalities without any preconceptions about contemporary art. More than anything, I wanted something to emerge that is shared — between me and everyday metro passengers." The story of fashion student Shirin Abedinirad who conceived and carried out an unusual (and unusually bold) performance art experiment by asking Tehran metro passengers to donate their rubbish to pin on her dress. [more inside]
posted by taz at 8:42 AM PST - 10 comments

Turtles that look like Mitch McConnell
posted by garlic at 8:17 AM PST - 30 comments

Standing up for the little guy. Robert Reich spoke last night on the steps of Sproul Hall at UC Berkeley -- the epicenter of recent violence -- as the speaker for the Mario Savio memorial lecture. Reich has been making the rounds, both within corporations, in the media, and at Occupy events, has been lecturing on the dangers of inequality well before the current income/opportunity disparity crisis. "There is going to come a time when the (inequality) trends we are seeing are going to cause something to snap... There are two kinds of snaps... one is the snap back... and the other is the snap break."
posted by markkraft at 8:09 AM PST - 67 comments

"Tarantino is on record as saying that this movie is his “bunch-of- guys-on-a-mission film”—which would mean that it’s a version of the Dirty Dozen or The Guns of Navaron'e. Like almost everything else that Tarantino says in interviews, I think that sentence is a lie." -- The film within the film that is Inglorious Basterds. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:12 AM PST - 181 comments

A child's skull in London's Hunterian Museum shows what your head is really up to when new teeth are coming in.
posted by hereticfig at 10:53 PM PST - 84 comments

How Salman Rushdie Used Twitter to Defeat Facebook On Monday, world-famous author Salman Rushdie, who won the “Booker of Booker” prize for his novel Midnight’s Children, revealed that Facebook had deleted his account at the weekend — and then, when he sent the company a copy of his passport to prove who he said he was, denied him the right to use “Salman” as his first name. (The author’s full given name, which he never uses, is Ahmed Salman Rushdie.)
posted by sweetkid at 9:52 PM PST - 63 comments

The crew of ST:TNG watches A New Hope.
posted by hippybear at 8:42 PM PST - 53 comments

Today marks the 10th birthday of the Xbox. VentureBeat takes an in-depth look back at its history, from its rocky inception to the Kinect. Part 2. [more inside]
posted by kyp at 6:17 PM PST - 24 comments

NASA is hiring new astronaut candidates. Positions are open for all qualified U.S. citizens. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 6:02 PM PST - 122 comments

Library Science is an exhibition at New Haven (Connecticut) libraries that contemplates our personal, intellectual and physical relationship to the library as this venerable institution—and the information it contains—is being radically transformed by the digital era. Some examples: Untitled (Suburban Homes) by Erica Baum, Hurricanes by Chris Coffin, and Chinese Library No. 46 by Xiaoze Xie.
posted by carter at 4:53 PM PST - 2 comments

From Colossal:It never ceases to amaze me: just when I think I’ve seen every possible permutation of an artform or technique—be it figurative sculpture, stop motion animation, or in this case, high speed photography—somebody comes along and manages to do something radically different. His photostream. His set up. (flickr)
posted by elemenopee at 4:33 PM PST - 10 comments

The first Hunger Games trailer has been released. (SLYT) Previously and more previously
posted by revikim at 3:22 PM PST - 161 comments

Google Verbatim Search. Last week Google disabled the '+' operator. In response to feedback, they have now created a search mode that doesn't try to out-think you.
posted by bitmage at 2:19 PM PST - 115 comments

Daniel Yergin was recently interviewed on NPR's always informative Planet Money podcast. Yergin—most famous for his 1992 Pulitzer-winning opus on 20th century petroleum development, The Prize—has penned a sequel, of sorts, examining the modern quest for sustainable energy amidst the looming threat of climate change. If The Prize was an epic glorification of the quest for money, oil and power, The Quest is a look at those who might have to clean up the whole mess. "The heroes are the engineers and scientists of the energy world — the geeks, in other words." [more inside]
posted by hamandcheese at 1:45 PM PST - 11 comments

The Thais, resourceful as ever, have come up with numerous ways to overcome the recent flood waters that have killed over 500 people.
posted by gman at 12:55 PM PST - 27 comments

Solyndra used to make thin-film solar cells, but they could not make any money. The Department of Energy tried to help with a $535 million “Green” loan guarantee but the DOE missed the memo that says EBITDA needs to be in the black if they expect to keep taxpayers out of the red. Private investors kicked in another $70 million eventually but only after the DOE primed itself. As White House economic advisor Larry Summers noted, “…[government] is a crappy vc [venture capitalist]…" Thanks to the DOE though, 40 employees and 150 contractors got to keep their jobs for an extra week last year according to the WaPo.
posted by otto42 at 12:47 PM PST - 45 comments

The 49ers are back, but who's paying attention? Sitting on top of a weak NFC West, is the Niner's impressive rise going overlooked? [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 12:24 PM PST - 77 comments

Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers (SLYT)
posted by leigh1 at 12:18 PM PST - 34 comments

Jane Austen 'died from arsenic poisoning'. [The Guardian] Crime writer Lindsay Ashford bases claim on reading of author's letters and claims murder cannot be ruled out. Almost 200 years after she died, Jane Austen's early death at the age of just 41 has been attributed to many things, from cancer to Addison's disease. Now sleuthing from a crime novelist has uncovered a new possibility: arsenic poisoning.
posted by Fizz at 12:18 PM PST - 36 comments

Yesterday, the Supreme court granted certiorari to several of the challenges to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Here's a great roundup of several news stories. I like the NPR story for a quick summary of the issues. The Court will hear a total of 5.5 hours of oral argument, and a decision is expected by the end of the current term, in June.
posted by insectosaurus at 12:05 PM PST - 77 comments

BBC's "Frozen Planet" series will not be airing an episode about climate change in the United States.
posted by deathpanels at 11:36 AM PST - 71 comments

Built by the Shona (1100-1500 AD), the empire of Great Zimbabwe, one of Africa’s greatest civilizations like Egypt and Meroe, stood between present-day Zimbabwe, eastern Botswana and south-east Mozambique. The empire’s highly developed architecture overwhelmed discoverers. And much in the same manner as German anthropologist Doctor Frobenius ignorantly mistook the Kingdom of Ife in Nigeria for the lost kingdom of Atlantis in 1911, some Europeans blatantly refused to believe that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans. Dawson Munjeri, former director of Great Zimbabwe, a World Heritage site, discusses the history of the exceptional Zimbabwe empire. [more inside]
posted by infini at 11:31 AM PST - 19 comments

DJHistory.com's list of 100 Greatest Dance Records may not be definitive or feature your favorite record, but it's hard to say that each and every record on there hasn't earned its place, from the Northern Soul swing of "The Clapping Song" to the post-ironic dancehall of "Pon De Floor." [more inside]
posted by beaucoupkevin at 11:30 AM PST - 37 comments

Interactive info graphic: 100 years¹ of western² dance³ music, as it has grown and migrated around the world. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:58 AM PST - 24 comments

The Lick (slyt).
posted by googly at 10:39 AM PST - 19 comments

A hypnotic little tutorial on 25 Ways to Wear a Scarf in 4.5 Minutes. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how it was made (filmed in her bedroom). (via Already Pretty)
posted by flex at 10:31 AM PST - 30 comments

Princeton's 5th annual Art of Science Competition "The Art of Science exhibition explores the interplay between science and art. These practices both involve the pursuit of those moments of discovery when what you perceive suddenly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Each piece in this exhibition is, in its own way, a record of such a moment."
posted by dhruva at 10:15 AM PST - 8 comments

Bruce Wayne's medical history, from Gotham City General Hospital. "These recent maladies appear to be in keeping with the pattern that has emerged over the past several years, in which significant medical problems are associated with odd or incongruous explanations." ... "By far the greatest contributor to patient’s ongoing morbidity are his multiple and seemingly ceaseless musculoskeletal injuries."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:59 AM PST - 58 comments

Gullah—the African-influenced dialect of Georgia’s Sea Islands—has undergone few changes since the first slave ships landed 300 years ago, and provides a clear window into the shaping of African-American English. This classic PBS program traces that story from the west coast of Africa through the American South, then to large northern cities in the 1920s. Studying the origins of West African pidgin English and creole speech—along with the tendency of 19th-century white Southerners to pick up speech habits from their black nursemaids—the program highlights the impact of WWI-era industrialization and the migration of jazz musicians to New York and Chicago.
posted by cthuljew at 7:42 AM PST - 12 comments

My assumption has always been: If something like a soul exists, and it affects our consciousness in any manner, then it must be detectable by some scientific device. I find it difficult to imagine that something can interact with my physical body without leaving any physical trace. But though I find it hard to imagine, is it possible for something like a soul to interact with me without leaving any physical trace?
posted by veedubya at 7:25 AM PST - 139 comments

Ozark Giraffe Rock architectural exteriors are a common sight along Route 66 in the Ozarks region of the United States, as they were a popular building choice between 1910 - 1940. The construction materials for giraffe rock exteriors were inexpensive and produced locally from materials found in plentiful supply in the Ozark Mountains, and the style was most predominant on small houses, usually bungalows. [more inside]
posted by aabbbiee at 6:59 AM PST - 30 comments

Check this out really quick, it's basically one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century presented in 3D, and you don't even have to wear glasses!

Guernica 3D: In 1937, during the Spanish civil war, the fascists devastated the town of Guernica with aerial bombings executed by the Nazi Luftwaffe. [more inside]
posted by malapropist at 3:31 AM PST - 75 comments

Occupy Wall Street is building the barricades at this very moment. NYPD has begun clearing Zuccotti Park.
posted by ReeMonster at 10:52 PM PST - 2786 comments

It's smooth, it's stretchy, it's waterproof - Canada's new currency feels a lot like the celluloid film you used to load into your old-fashioned camera. [more inside]
posted by mannequito at 10:11 PM PST - 66 comments

The source code to Android 4.0 has been released. The new OS, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich will be coming out on phones soon, but you can download the code today (using git). The popular cyanogen mod distribution should be updated to ICS in a couple months
posted by delmoi at 10:01 PM PST - 47 comments

In Southern California in the 1980s, KROQ had this weird un-DJ-like guy named (seriously) Rodney Bingenheimer, who came on late at night on Sundays and played punk records and new bands like Blondie, The Ramones, X, Joan Jett, Devo and Cheap Trick. Did this weirdo really have some influence? A 90-minute 2004 documentary now on YouTube, Mayor of the Sunset Strip (Part 1) tells his story, and it's weirder than you may have imagined. [more inside]
posted by planetkyoto at 9:25 PM PST - 24 comments

Howard Jones has posted scans of the music books for his first 4 albums (Human's Lib, Dream Into Action, One To One and Cross That Line) and two early EPs (Action Replay and Like To Get To Know You Well) for free .pdf format download. He asks that a donation be made to the Red Cross if you do decide to download. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:36 PM PST - 27 comments

Harold Cooper’s Extend New York takes New York City to extremes, by extrapolating every street and avenue of the Manhattan grid to whole planet. What subway line stops at your front door, wherever you are? Why do all Avenues terminate in Shaytankuduk?
posted by migurski at 8:22 PM PST - 19 comments

NBC's Community is being put on hiatus. Twitter is pissed. [more inside]
posted by NoraReed at 6:58 PM PST - 373 comments

Regardless of the outcomes and foreshadowing, the lethal combination of the sudden musical revival and the roller disco fad that was freshly in the cultural air in the late 70’s was still too good to pass up. It was only inevitable that someone somewhere would make the explosive connection….and at this intersection, Xanadu would happen... [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 5:56 PM PST - 55 comments

The Fourth Turning is a book written by Williams Strauss & Neil Howe and published in 1997. Watch this 1997 C-SPAN interview of the two authors describing their theory. It is pretty shocking looking back 14 years, the turning is happening, but will the results be like Strauss and Howe predict it? You owe it to your self to check it out. [more inside]
posted by analogtom at 5:56 PM PST - 32 comments

Kangaroo vs. Emu. SLYT
posted by Bukvoed at 5:12 PM PST - 47 comments

"Mama Economy" is the new Tay Zonday song. [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:55 PM PST - 30 comments

This year the CBC Massey Lectures celebrates fifty years with bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik. His subject is winter - the season, the space, the cycle. Gopnik takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists, and thinkers, who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter. Listen to Winter: Five Windows on the Season Streaming files for this years lecture will be available until Friday, November 18. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 4:53 PM PST - 11 comments

Safety nets: hammocks or trampolines? Academic James Wimberley argues that the supposedly entrepreneurial USA fares poorly on business startups, and attributes this to the relative absence of a comprehensive social safety net.(via)
posted by wilful at 4:25 PM PST - 43 comments

This one time in Edo Japan, Bashō got together with a bunch of his rich friends from Nagoya to make up a set of interlocking poems (renku) — 36 of them, to be exact (a format called kasen). Then, 320 years later, the complete cycle was animated by a diverse international team of artists. [more inside]
posted by Nomyte at 3:22 PM PST - 26 comments

In 1995, Penn and Teller were the creative forces behind the-ultimately-unreleased Sega CD game Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, which contained several minigames designed to prank or torture your friends...or yourself. The most notorious of these mini-games is Desert Bus, a game vicious in its intentional monotony. [more inside]
posted by mreleganza at 2:40 PM PST - 33 comments

What do you get when you cross a pug with the Wampa from The Empire Strikes Back? Behold The Wampug. (SLYT 36 seconds of cute)
posted by quin at 2:32 PM PST - 21 comments

In Sweden, a generation of kids who've never been spanked. 'Numerous studies have been conducted in recent years to support the theory that physical forms of discipline do more harm than good' and the effects of physical discipline linger for adults. Most parents in the U.S. and many other countries firmly believe that physical punishment is an important tool in controlling their children. But in Sweden, there's now a whole generation that doesn't believe corporal punishment has any place in disciplining any child. In 1979 Sweden became the first country to ban physical punishment of children. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 2:22 PM PST - 159 comments

Some Google Earth enthusiasts have found a strange and unexplainable grid pattern in the middle of China's Gobi Desert.
posted by reenum at 2:20 PM PST - 69 comments

JFK's Waffles, Adlai's Pie, Humphrey's Soup and 13 More Political Recipes. Political Pot Luck: A Collection of Recipes from Men Only, published in 1959 by the Peninsular Publishing Company in Tallahassee. It was edited by Meg Madigan, whose father was a Florida state comptroller and lobbyist. And she went all out for the cookbook, from governors to senators to media barons. Some of them can cook
posted by sweetkid at 2:12 PM PST - 10 comments

The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin's Teaching Collection at Oxford digitizes the drawings, engravings, and paintings that John Ruskin collected (and created) for use in teaching drawing. The objects can be viewed separately or in their teaching order and context, with Ruskin's own catalog annotations. The site also suggests how modern art students can put the collection to use, with instructional video and a variety of drawing exercises. Ruskin also assembled another fine art collection for working-class viewers in Sheffield; you can see that collection at the Museum of Sheffield, which also helps sponsor a digital reconstruction of the original museum building, the St. George's Museum.
posted by thomas j wise at 1:20 PM PST - 5 comments

Let the robot dancing begin! Yellow Magic Orchestra performs the oft-sampled "Firecracker" on Soul Train, 1980. YMO --". . . presently the most popular band in all of Japan"-- also perform "Tighten Up".
posted by February28 at 1:18 PM PST - 6 comments

Do you like bivalves? Do you like Britain? Then Marine Bivalve Shells of the British Isles is the site for you! [more inside]
posted by Dim Siawns at 1:18 PM PST - 11 comments

Grandville and the anthropomorphic tradition by Bryan Talbot, a 59min youtube lecture and slideshow on the history of anthropomorphism in comics and the creation of his own graphic novel in the tradition, Grandville
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:13 PM PST - 16 comments

Pimento cheese, largely unknown outside of the Southern US, is an important player in the rich culinary tradition of the South. This short (15 min) documentary explores the history of the dish and gives a glimpse at just how passionate some folks are about their pimento cheese. [more inside]
posted by robstercraw at 12:54 PM PST - 81 comments

Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch. Variety reports Harry Potter director David Yates wants to reboot Doctor Who. Topless Robot reacts.
posted by gerryblog at 12:38 PM PST - 150 comments

I have just discovered ABE books "Booksleuth" forum, where people help each other remember that "lost" story or book.
posted by uans at 12:36 PM PST - 12 comments

Life Cycle of a Book: Writer. Editorial. Agent. Production. Design. Marketing. Publicity. Sales. Book Buyer. Distribution. Author Publicity. Full Life Cycle [PDF]
posted by Fizz at 12:15 PM PST - 9 comments

I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way.” Thomas Day, a 31-year-old Iraq War vet, Penn State alum, and product of Jerry Sandusky's Second Mile Foundation, reflects on what he calls the "failure" of the Baby Boomer generation to protect the world they inherited.
posted by downing street memo at 11:36 AM PST - 108 comments

Studio 4°C is a Japanese animation studio, named for the temperature at which water is most dense, which they convey in their creative manifesto: "create only works that are dense with substance and extreme quality." The studio has produced a range of works, from commercials (Honda Edix | Nike iD REALCITY) and music videos (Ken Ishii - 'Extra' [prev] | Utada Hikaru - 'Fluximation'), to animated series (The Adventures of Tweeny Witches | Thundercats reboot [prev]) and feature-length films (Memories [1995] | Mind Game [2004]). More on their movies inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:44 AM PST - 19 comments

Previous youth cultures — beatniks, hippies, punks, slackers — could be characterized by two related things: the emotion or affect they valorized and the social form they envisioned. [more inside]
posted by AlsoMike at 10:20 AM PST - 28 comments

Frank Miller is a giant among comic book creators. He gave us The Dark Knight Returns, which rewrote the book on Batman and comics in general. He also gave us seminal versions of Daredevil, Batman, and Wolverine. His Sin City and 300 books are a triumph of design, if not subtlety. Lately, though, he's taken a different path. He recently released Holy Terror, which in 2005 was to have featured Batman, but now features a renamed stand-in fighting Al-Qaeda. It has been nearly universally panned as a piece of ugly, anti-Muslim propaganda. Last week, Miller blasted the "Occupy" movement on his blog, describing the participants as, "louts, thieves, and rapists," who, "can do nothing but harm America" and pointing to the looming threat of Al-Qaeda.
posted by Legomancer at 9:51 AM PST - 227 comments

"Imagine a world where casual and hardcore gamers can enjoy games together? So instead of hardcore gamers pretending to like wii sports just so they can spend xmas with their family they actually prefer it as opposed to just going off and playing the best hardcore games such as Skyrim or Fable3." From the often hilarious fake Twitter account for "Peter Molyneux 2" comes cascore. Finally, bowling and survival horror come together. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 9:41 AM PST - 13 comments

Sixth grader codes iOS apps, gives TED talks, and - generally - makes me feel like I've been lazy my entire life.
posted by PapaLobo at 9:31 AM PST - 30 comments

"On Friday, a group of comedians took to Twitter, creating a faux-official account for Jack and Jill under the name @JackNJillMovie, firing off a series of digs at the film disguised as a misguided and desperate promotional campaign."

The Twitter account is suspended, but you can't take pee out of a swimming pool.
posted by griphus at 9:18 AM PST - 65 comments

The Museo Europeu de Art Modern in Barcelona presently has an exhibition of contemporary art featuring many catalan and spanish painters and sculpters and is housed in a restaured palacio (click through the "plantas"). MEAM is associated with figurativas en red.
As this is contemporary art, nudes abound and this post is unfortunately NSFW in many places.
posted by adamvasco at 9:06 AM PST - 1 comment

On June 29, 2011, the last remnant of what was once Columbia House — the mightiest mail-order record club company that ever existed — quietly shuttered for good. Other defunct facets of the 20th-century music business have been properly eulogized, but it seems that nary a tear was shed for the record club. Perhaps ... a new generation of music fans who had never known a world without the Internet couldn't grasp the marvel that was the record club in its heyday. From roughly 1955 until 2000, getting music for free meant taping a penny to a paper card and mailing it off for 12 free records — along with membership and the promise of future purchasing.

The rise and fall of the Columbia Record House club--and how we learned to steal music.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:47 AM PST - 97 comments

Jimmy Fallon, as Jim Morrison, sings the "Reading Rainbow" theme.
posted by flex at 6:46 AM PST - 62 comments

In the cufflink of Sherlock Holmes, as depicted in this stamp, you will find the first clue. (It's the letter O.) In the remaining stamps in this collection you will find the remaining clues, which spell a five-letter word. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:23 AM PST - 28 comments

Malpertuis (Belgium, 1971, aka ‘The Legend of Doom House’) is a movie that has been described as ‘bizarre, lurid and baffling;’ ‘a mysterious curiosity;’ and ‘exquisitely bonkers.’ An international cast led by Mathieu Carrière and Susan Hampshire (playing five rôles) also included Orson Welles. Its director, Harry Kümel, is otherwise best known for his stylish lesbian vampire flick Les Lèvres Rouges (aka ‘Daughters of Darkness’). The movie was adapted from an unusual gothic novel, first published in wartime Brussels—the work of Jean Ray (aka Raymond Jean-Marie de Kremer): a convicted embezzler & prolific hack, who was, nevertheless, one of the foremost exponents of the fantastique in French-language fiction. Please note that some of the links above are NSFW (some nudity) & several contain SPOILERS. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 1:37 AM PST - 7 comments

lululemon athletica, the "yoga-inspired athletic apparel company", has rapidly become a brand fixture in the Pacific Northwest since its founding by Chip Wilson in 1998. Recently, a strange ode to Ayn Rand appeared on their website, and a "Who Is John Galt?" advertising campaign has adorned company packaging this November. Meanwhile, one of their employees has been convicted in the bizarre murder of a co-worker, in which the employees of a neighbouring Apple Store ignored the victim's cries for help.
posted by mek at 1:19 AM PST - 107 comments

Look at my fucking red trousers! "A collection of photographs in celebration of the vibrant and burgeoning red-trousered communities of London and elsewhere."
posted by Abiezer at 12:41 AM PST - 89 comments

American Censorship Day is an internet protest against the oft-renamed Stop Online Piracy Act. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 12:00 AM PST - 39 comments

The Fall have a new record out, Ersatz GB. It's their 29th studio album. An excellent interview with Mark E Smith from The Independent. [more inside]
posted by kittensofthenight at 10:17 PM PST - 25 comments

Exposing our skin to the sun's ultraviolet rays unfortunately can give rise to a multitude of adverse health effects. Our skin's ability to produce melanin serves as buffer by absorbing those nasty UV rays. But how exactly does our skin know when it's being exposed to UV light? Well, apparently it can see it. [more inside]
posted by Isosceles at 8:16 PM PST - 21 comments

Thomas Dolby's first album of original material in nearly 20 years is not only a CD and an online MMO game, but it's also an opportunity to look inside the creative process of one of the more respected artists of our time. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:54 PM PST - 61 comments

A woman wonders how she will teach her daughter about sex in an essay titled How I Learned About Sex.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:26 PM PST - 91 comments

Ask yourself, what can cat videos do for your business? [SLYT].
posted by sharpener at 2:57 PM PST - 26 comments

What Games Are is the name of a blog and book by game designer and deep thinker Tadhg Kelly (G+ profile). While the book is planned for release next year, Kelly has been posting in his blog and getting feedback from notables such as MeFi fav Raph Koster. [more inside]
posted by victors at 2:40 PM PST - 13 comments

Erato Covers Robyn -- Cottage Cheese Percussion Version (slyt)
posted by jtajta at 2:05 PM PST - 19 comments

Brian Eno - Composers as Gardeners "My topic is the shift from 'architect' to 'gardener', where 'architect' stands for 'someone who carries a full picture of the work before it is made', to 'gardener' standing for 'someone who plants seeds and waits to see exactly what will come up'. I will argue that today's composer are more frequently 'gardeners' than 'architects' and, further, that the 'composer as architect' metaphor was a transitory historical blip."

Brian Eno quoted from Edge.org issue 11.10.11
posted by ThenCameNow at 1:45 PM PST - 39 comments

This past July, Forbes blogger Kashmir Hill posted a three-part series about "online defamation and involuntary nudity." The first entry focused on an offender: Hunter Moore, owner of IsAnyoneUp.com (Link is NSFW.) The second entry focused on a victim: Paul Syiek, whose company was defamed by a disgruntled ex-employee on the consumer website Rip-off Report. The third profiled a Senior Copyright attorney at Microsoft, Colette Vogele, who co-founded a side project this year to help victims: WithoutMyConsent.org. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:22 PM PST - 53 comments

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the OWS protests
posted by garlic at 11:01 AM PST - 147 comments

Between August and October this year the crew of the ISS used a special low-light HD camera to visually capture the earth as it passed beneath them. The result, edited together by Michael König and set to music, is jaw-droppingly spectacular.

It may be redundant to tell you to set Vimeo to full-screen mode before playing, but do so - you won't regret it. Post intended as something of a sequel to this. Some related channels on Vimeo: The World In HD, HDTime, Slow Motion & Timelapse Theatre.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 10:41 AM PST - 74 comments

Awwwwww yeah, it's that time again! Damien Walters' Showreel 2011 has been released, and while it is slightly shorter than previous years, he sure has some great new tricks up his sleeve. [more inside]
posted by lazaruslong at 10:36 AM PST - 14 comments

Edward Sorel: Nice Work If You Can Get It a 20-minute overview of his career as a cartoonist and illustrator, in which the artist goes through a lot of paper in the search for immediacy. Filmed by his son, with commentary by contemporaries Milton Glaser and Jules Feiffer.
posted by TimTypeZed at 10:27 AM PST - 4 comments

A lot of us are interested in fonts. A lot of us are interested in, or have, leg hair. And now, finally, there's a story for both those groups.
posted by anothermug at 8:56 AM PST - 29 comments

In 95 years of life, Carl Ruggles composed only 84 minutes of music - including his masterpiece for orchestra, "Sun-Treader". Charles Seeger called it "dissonant counterpoint". Charles Ives called it simply "strong, masculine music". In 1980, Michael Tilson Thomas recorded all of it for a long-out-of-print 2 LP set that has never been reissued on CD. Today, with almost none of the music from this significant American composer commercially available in any form, the Internet Archive has performed a valuable cultural service by hosting a 24-bit lossless rip of the Tilson Thomas set. It is powerful stuff.
posted by Trurl at 8:29 AM PST - 32 comments

Signs & Symbols: Decoding Mediaeval & Renaissance Iconography. An online exhibition from the Dunedin Public Library. Does what is implied on the tin, if you have a grounding in the history of tin-decoration.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Tai Star spent seven hours balancing 600 quarters, 501 dimes, 313 nickels, 1699 pennies and five foreign coins (3,118 coins in total) on a single dime. It's not his first attempt to break a record.

Star explained: 'It is on the very corner for a few reasons: to make it easy to see that it is on one dime and I think the structure of the table is most sturdy there - plus I just like precarious balance.'

posted by gman at 6:51 AM PST - 47 comments

The Clothes of Kay Corleone.
posted by Fizz at 5:56 AM PST - 51 comments

The Peel Player... every track of every John Peel Festive Fifty ever
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:22 AM PST - 18 comments

So maybe you've caught some recent iPhone commercials and wondered, "Is that Philip Glass? Surely Glass wouldn't do an Apple commercial, would he?" Well, not yet (although he did appear at the Manhattan Apple Store a while back). That piece you hear in the commercials, which sounds a lot like Truman Sleeps, but faster and tinklier, is by Keith Keniff. But if you want to hear Truman Sleeps covered a little faster and and a lot tinklier, you have to go to Carlo Castellano, a guy with a studio, a glockenspiel, and lots and lots of ping pong balls.
posted by maudlin at 10:15 PM PST - 34 comments

R2-D2 thinks he has whooping cough, a cantina alien gets too drunk to drive, and C3-P0 explains why smoking is bad for you.
posted by GavinR at 6:15 PM PST - 35 comments

On the morning of November 13, 1909 there were around 500 men and boys working in the St. Paul mine in Cherry, IL. It would be more than six months before the last body was recovered. [more inside]
posted by timsteil at 4:47 PM PST - 21 comments

Leonard Nimoy covers Randy Newman's I Think It's Gonna Rain Today
posted by boygeorge at 4:12 PM PST - 30 comments

After exploring the rapture of a summer's night on 2005's Aerial, Kate Bush will be releasing a new album of original winter-themed material on November 21st. (Her previous album from earlier this year, Director's Cut, was revamped versions of older material. Previously) The new album, 50 Words For Snow, has been getting glowing advance reviews. While we await its release, we can content ourselves with the first single from the album, Wild Man. Or if you prefer, the shorter radio edit version (with lyrics). Also, The Quietus interviewed her about the new album.
posted by hippybear at 3:46 PM PST - 17 comments

Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion - er, no, make that: he - he romanticized it all out of proportion. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin ... New York was his town, and it always would be.
posted by Apropos of Something at 3:38 PM PST - 20 comments

Obese monkeys lose weight by new drug that kills off fat cells. Adipotide is the newest weapon in the war on obesity. Unlike other weight-loss drugs that try to suppress appetite, boost one's metabolism, or block the absorption of fat, Adipotide blocks the blood supply that feeds fatty tissue. Studies show monkeys lost 11% of their body weight after 4 weeks of treatment.
posted by 2manyusernames at 3:10 PM PST - 102 comments

Whisperer in darkness ...in miniature! - Props from the movie in their new Vermont home from website of Stephen R. Bissette, which also features a gallery of his Swamp Thing art and posts on the Main Street Museum "Floodraiser" including pictures of some auctioned props (1, 2). Previous Whisperings.
posted by Artw at 1:51 PM PST - 4 comments

With only about as much effort as manufacturing one’s own Great Pyramid of Giza, Atlanta prop-builder Harrison Krix designs and constructs his own Daft Punk–style helmet, complete with 320 red LEDs along the visor and twin cooling fans. (Delightful time-lapse making-of video [YouTube]. Design process: Part 1 ¶ Part 2 ¶ Part 3.) Now, what are you supposed to do with a prop like that? Pop it on and pose next to a DeLorean, obviously.
posted by joeclark at 1:16 PM PST - 17 comments

Looking for work? Come to India!
posted by Tom-B at 11:32 AM PST - 25 comments

I don’t believe in dissing books I used to love, and I always suspect the moral judgment of people who sneer at the taste of the reader they used to be: “I know thee not, old book.” Six writers talk what's on their shelves.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 11:23 AM PST - 71 comments

Sinéad O'Connor performing "Troy" at the Dominion Theatre, London, June 3, 1988
posted by xod at 10:54 AM PST - 46 comments

Today I am sharing with you an article arguing that unemployment rates during the Great Depression were overstated, that current unemployment rates are understated and that the two sets of data considered in combination indicate that we are are firmly in Depression-era levels of unemployment.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:30 AM PST - 78 comments

For decades Dawn Powell was always just on the verge of ceasing to be a cult and becoming a major religion. But despite the work of such dedicated cultists as Edmund Wilson and Matthew Josephson, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, Dawn Powell never became the popular writer that she ought to have been. In those days, with a bit of luck, a good writer eventually attracted voluntary readers and became popular. Today, of course, "popular" means bad writing that is widely read while good writing is that which is taught to involuntary readers. Powell failed on both counts. She needs no interpretation and in her lifetime she should have been as widely read as, say, Hemingway or the early Fitzgerald or the mid O'Hara or even the late, far too late, Katherine Anne Porter. But Powell was that unthinkable monster, a witty woman who felt no obligation to make a single, much less a final, down payment on Love or The Family; she saw life with a bright Petronian neutrality, and every host at life's feast was a potential Trimalchio to be sent up. - Gore Vidal
posted by Trurl at 7:52 AM PST - 38 comments

Running a marathon is a particularly arduous task, even for the most able-bodied athlete. But for a four-year old to run a marathon is extraordinary. Especially a four-year old Indian boy who, at the age of two, was sold by his mother to a street peddler for 800 rupees. Meet Budhia, a prodigious runner and product of the slums, who is taken in and raised by a relentless trainer named Biranchi Das. After Das pushes Budhia to run a 42-mile race (which he completes), governmental agencies intervene and attempt to remove the boy from the custody of Das. Local protests erupt, a man is murdered, and Budhia returns to the care of his mother. This is the story told by the documentary Marathon Boy. // trailer // review // interview with filmmaker
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:12 AM PST - 18 comments

The Boy Who Became Judy Garland. [NYTimes]
posted by Fizz at 5:37 AM PST - 17 comments

Years before Peter Frampton stuck a tube in his mouth and asked the world, through his guitar, "do you, YOU, feel like I do?" there was a fellow who wanted to make his pedal steel guitar talk. And talk it did. Welcome to the wondrously weird musical universe of Pete Drake: Welcome To My World, Blue Velvet, Am I That Easy To Forget, Only You, Roses Are Red... and here you can see Pete in action, with his whole crew of slightly scary looking players and singers, performing Forever. And, hey, just for good measure, let's check ol' Pete's sound without that crazy tube in his mouth, shall we? A snazzy little number called Panhandle Rag, or this (partial) driving waltz, The Spook. But wait! There's more! It's entirely likely that you've heard Pete already! You just didn't know it was he providing that gorgeous, slippery accompaniment for Bob Dylan on Lay Lady Lay. Thank you, Pete!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:30 AM PST - 35 comments

Gnarls Barkley live, Basement Studio: Crazy. Gnarls live, Abbey Road: Who's Gonna Save My Soul, Smiley Faces, Gone Daddy Gone, Surprise.
posted by maxwelton at 4:23 AM PST - 21 comments

Christine Sun Kim is a performance artist working in the realm of sound. She makes beautiful messes. She's also deaf. Todd Selby is a photographer. He's made a film about her. [more inside]
posted by artof.mulata at 3:51 AM PST - 8 comments

Omar Little meets Craig Ferguson and Skeleton Robot Larry King. (With a cameo by Secretariat.) [more inside]
posted by kmz at 10:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Do you remember that silly 'Ohm on the Range' joke from electronics class? Well, OhmArt will satisfy your wildest dreams for this sort of joke.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 9:19 PM PST - 15 comments

Wonder Girls are back in Korea with a 2nd album, after a foray into the U.S. including touring with the Jonas Brothers in 2009, and an upcoming movie for Teen Nick, "Wonder Girls at the Apollo." The first single, "Be My Baby" will also be featured in the movie soundtrack. The album also includes their re-interpretation of Korean rock legend Shin Jung-hyeon's "The Beauty" - "Me, In" (link is to trailer for the song). If Wonder Girls are not your cup of tea, some other Korean girl groups: [more inside]
posted by needled at 8:19 PM PST - 27 comments

The U.S.S. Carl Vinson, which has provided relief in Haiti after an earthquake, launched air strikes in the Middle East after 9/11 and, most recently, dumped Osama bin Laden’s body out at sea hosted an uncharacteristically maritime event this evening: a basketball game on the flight deck. [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 7:44 PM PST - 33 comments

Bluesy Canadian garage duo The Pack A.D. has put out four albums in like five years, the most recent in September of this year. [more inside]
posted by Mister Moofoo at 6:25 PM PST - 13 comments

My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine After a brief, failed experiment paying me to do chores, my dad tried something really neat. It clearly took a bit of legwork, but maybe there are some transferrable lessons for parents who want to lay an entrepreneurial foundation. He gave me a vending machine.
posted by elemenopee at 6:21 PM PST - 99 comments

Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs? “Look, you got immigrants doing more than what blacks or whites will. Look at them, they just work and work all day. They don’t look at it like it’s a hard job. They don’t take breaks!” Businessweek takes a look at the labor supply situation in Alabama, after state legislation sent illegal immigrants packing to other states.
posted by falameufilho at 6:06 PM PST - 221 comments

When Rebecca Coriam vanished from the Disney Wonder in March, hers became one of the 171 mysterious cruise ship disappearances in the past decade. So what happened? Jon Ronson booked himself a cabin to find out…
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:05 PM PST - 85 comments

Liam Neeson Wants to Branch Out. [SLYT]
posted by eugenen at 3:22 PM PST - 31 comments

After an AP exclusive report on how the CIA is using "ninja librarians" to comb through internet postings and social media, NPR's Robert Siegel interviewed reporter Kimberly Dozier about her research for the article. This prompted enough listener response that All Things Considered had to revisit the phrase in their Letters segment today, with clarification about what kind of degree a ninja librarian may have earned.
posted by hippybear at 3:20 PM PST - 37 comments

Pythagasaurus is the fabled Tyrannosaurus practiced in the skills of trigonometry and long division. Apparently he knows all eight numbers. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 3:18 PM PST - 9 comments

In 1933, Anthony Marino, Joe Murphy, Frank Pasqua and Dan Kriesberg decided to make money by taking out life insurance on drunks and then letting the victims drink themselves to death. Then they encountered Mike Malloy...
posted by reenum at 2:46 PM PST - 17 comments

Jailbreak the Patriarchy genderswaps the world for you. A new Chrome extension by Danielle Sucher swaps pronouns and other gendered words on most sites. [more inside]
posted by tarheelcoxn at 2:46 PM PST - 46 comments

Shapecatcher let's you draw a picture to find the matching Unicode characters. via
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:42 PM PST - 33 comments

Koko, the Western Lowland Gorilla who is able to understand more than 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language and 2,000 words of spoken English, has met some celebrities over the years. In 1988, William Shatner had a memorable visit with Koko, as seen in part in this edited clip, and re-told on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in 2009. Mister Rogers visited in 1998 (YouTube clip), as part of series of shows addressing children's fears of meeting someone new or unusual. In 2004, Koko met Betty White and Robin Williams. (Koko and other non-human primates using and learning sign language previously)
posted by filthy light thief at 2:19 PM PST - 12 comments

A helicopter crashed this morning near Mexico City, killing all eight aboard, including Mexican Secretary of the Interior, Francisco Blake Mora. This has happened almost exactly three years to the day a plane crashed in Mexico City, killing a previous mexican Secretary of the Interior, Juan Camilo Mouriño (Blake Mora even tweeted about remembering Mouriño last week, in his last tweet [link in Spanish]). [more inside]
posted by omegar at 1:12 PM PST - 23 comments

Zero Punctuation reviews Battlefield 3 (video), possibly the most reviled game ever to earn itself 93% on Metacritic. Remember to press X to not die (TV tropes).
posted by Artw at 12:59 PM PST - 85 comments

Music is art for the ears. But what about music notation as art?
posted by SpacemanStix at 11:37 AM PST - 61 comments

What do you mean the building codes require us to install handicapped-accessible crosswalk? Fine. Here's your fucking crosswalk. [more inside]
posted by schmod at 11:14 AM PST - 113 comments

ROSA (vimeo) A sci-fi short animated film created by a new Spanish artist, Jesús Orellana. This was a year-long, solo project created without a budget. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:57 AM PST - 8 comments

The Great Debate: What's the most environmentally-friendly way to dry your hands in a public bathroom? Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have completed what is believed to be the first major study to assess the greenest way of drying your hands.
posted by modernnomad at 10:43 AM PST - 85 comments

If mainstream conservatism is a “philosophically flabby movement,” and I won’t argue that it isn’t, this is not evidence of its success but simply of its exhaustion and lack of imagination. Perhaps conservatism should thrive on loss and defeat, but I see little evidence that the conservative movement in America understands that it has already lost on many fronts. There is an illusion of success that the most recent election has kept alive, but it is a temporary one.

As the campaign for the Republican nomination for president gets weirder by the minute, what does it mean to be an American conservative? Daniel Larison and Corey Robin debate the changing nature of conservatism.

Bonus: A Liberal Reads the Great Conservative Works
posted by villanelles at dawn at 10:16 AM PST - 109 comments

Journalist/blogger Jim Romenesko resigns from Poynter after questions of "incomplete attribution" in his stories. [more inside]
posted by Dalton at 9:56 AM PST - 41 comments

Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice An excerpt from what should be a very incendiary academic paper by Hansen, J, et al: Thus there is no need to equivocate about the summer heat waves in Texas in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, which exceeded 3σ – it is nearly certain that they would not have occurred in the absence of global warming. If global warming is not slowed from its current pace, by midcentury 3σ events will be the new norm and 5σ events will be common.
posted by Renoroc at 9:23 AM PST - 38 comments

The IAEA report on Iran has been leaked to the public. But are the new allegations "a game changer"... or, even new, for that matter?
posted by markkraft at 9:21 AM PST - 38 comments

Barbara Grier,founder of the lesbian publishing company Naiad Press, has died at age 78. [more inside]
posted by rmd1023 at 9:11 AM PST - 29 comments

Cartoonist Robert Crumb's drawing for the New Yorker was turned down by editor David Remmick in 2009. Crumb didn't take the rejection well. [more inside]
posted by Ideefixe at 8:52 AM PST - 110 comments

Ijna is backwards for Anji. Anji is a guitar tune known as the most famous piece written and performed by Davy Graham. Inja (on the album cover the track is titled Ijna (Davy Ji) is an homage dedicated to Graham's Anji, written and performed by Steve Tilston in his new album "The Reckoning". [more inside]
posted by lipsum at 6:46 AM PST - 4 comments

Meanwhile, in Montreal, tens of thousands of students take to the streets to protest...tuition increases. [more inside]
posted by googly at 5:42 AM PST - 86 comments

With all due respect, today (11/11/11) is not just for Veterans or those remembering the end of World War I. It is also...
Nigel Tufnel Day (facebook group) (RL event) "It goes to eleven." Whatever you do loud, today do it one louder.
Eleventh Doctor Day "GERONIMO!!!" Wear a bow tie, fez and/or stetson because they're cool.
Pocky Day for the snacks shaped like, well, 1's.
Corduroy Appreciation Day for the material that... oh, if you don't know, don't bother. BTW, what are Christopher Guest's and Matt Smith's pants made of?
But the less said about the movie the better. 11+11+11=33%? Close.
Also, it's 1 year 1 month and 11 days until the end of the Aztec Calendar. Which makes a few too many 1's, so sit back and watch this clock turn to 11:11:11.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:59 AM PST - 116 comments

Simply Beautiful (slv)
posted by astapasta24 at 9:53 PM PST - 41 comments

Parachuting with hawks (slyt)
posted by Pants! at 8:25 PM PST - 31 comments

"As someone who [...] advocates against violence against women and for rape survivors' rights, I never really felt I was allowed to participate in the fantasy of my own violation."
posted by zeek321 at 7:47 PM PST - 93 comments

You have certainly seen a Tree of Life at some point (not the movie; the diagram of the evolution of species). Originally conceived of by Lamarck (though there is some interesting debate on this), it was Darwin himself who popularized the concept, first in his notebook, and next as the only image in The Origin of the Species. Though they have inspired beautiful illustrations, and a large and fascinating web project to map the tree, trees of life remain problematic since taxonomy can be complicated. One truly stunning way of redrawing the tree is the Hillis Plot, which maps 3,000 species by genetic similarity. You can print out the amazing illustration here, but, even though the Plot only contains 0.18% of named species, it needs to be 1.5 meters square to be legible. The Hillis Plot has been appearing in art, notably (and meta-rifficly) this one carved into an English oak, and, of course, tattoos.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:44 PM PST - 19 comments

In November 2002, at a meeting in the White House, the president and his top economic advisers packed tightly around a mahogany table in the Roosevelt Room. With the administration's own forecasts showing that the economy had already regained its footing, one after another of Bush's deputies sounded the alarm about the dangers of a new tax cut. "This burns a big hole in the budget," deputy chief of staff Josh Bolten told the president. "The budget hole is getting deeper," added Daniels, "and we are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." O'Neill warned the president that a "tax cut that benefits mostly wealthy investors" could imperil the budding prosperity. "With the economy already improving, this could cause an unnecessary boost," he said. "That's how you get a bubble." Entertaining the chorus of doubters, Bush himself voiced qualms about more cuts for the rich. "Won't the top-rate people benefit the most?" he asked. "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" But Cheney was having none of it. When O'Neill warned Bush that America was headed for a "fiscal crisis," the vice president, sitting at the Treasury secretary's right elbow, dismissed him midsentence by citing the ultimate champion of Republican tax cuts: "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter, Paul." Rolling Stone's Tom Dickinson on how the GOP became the party of the rich.
posted by therewolf at 6:20 PM PST - 66 comments

Fred Martinez was nádleehí, a male-bodied person with a feminine nature, a special gift according to his ancient Navajo culture. He was one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history when he was brutally murdered at 16. Two Spirits explores the life and death of this boy who was also a girl, and the essentially spiritual nature of gender. (previously)
posted by Trurl at 5:25 PM PST - 14 comments

Purity tests! From the olden days of Usenet: A purity test attempts to gauge how "pure" you are within some realm of experience by having you answer a list of questions regarding which acts, etc. associated with the subject you have engaged in. Generally, for each "yes" answer you lose a purity point. The result is scaled to tell you what percentage of purity you still retain. [more inside]
posted by marble at 5:24 PM PST - 74 comments

Food Lab Filter: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt presents the "Complete Guide to a Stress-Free Thanksgiving"
posted by AceRock at 5:15 PM PST - 29 comments

The Future of journalsim.
posted by sf9719 at 5:02 PM PST - 18 comments

It's the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month where I am right now, so I present to you Europeana, a project collecting memorabilia and stories from the period of the Great War (1914-1918).
posted by unliteral at 4:00 PM PST - 29 comments

Physics! (SLYT via)
posted by curious nu at 3:40 PM PST - 34 comments

Dave Wilton of wordorigins.org (prev) has been compiling etymological snapshots for each year of the past 100 years, based on words that first appeared in English that year. As of now, he is up to 1941. The 1911 entry gives a good overview of his goals and parameters. (via) [more inside]
posted by kmz at 3:23 PM PST - 8 comments

This parrot enjoys dressing up. His owner reviews these fashion choices in adorably broken English. Sorry, ladies, he's taken.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 2:03 PM PST - 33 comments

Splitsider asks "Is the 2011-2012 Sitcom Schedule the Worst in a Decade?"
posted by reenum at 1:55 PM PST - 163 comments

NYC Subway skating.
posted by Obscure Reference at 1:51 PM PST - 64 comments

Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors. "Lower Manhattan’s 60 Hudson Street is one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of Internet connectivity. This short documentary peeks inside, offering a glimpse of the massive material infrastructure that makes the Internet possible."
posted by twirlip at 1:41 PM PST - 17 comments

Shape Type is a letter shaping game, created by the same people that made Kern Type (previously).
posted by Memo at 1:39 PM PST - 14 comments

If you think that airbrushed sci-fi landscapes like like this have been rendered obsolete by time-saving computer graphics, let Brandon McConnell prove otherwise. You can watch him make similar art in five minutes with a few cans of spray paint, magazines and the lid for a pot. Don't have enough time for that? How about a one minute sci-fi landscape? OK, let's go faster: here's a 45 second painting, and faster yet: a 39 second painting. But it's not all pyramids and planets, there are also quickly created nature scenes, and tutorial clips, within the collection of 184 videos uploaded to YouTube.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:33 PM PST - 26 comments

OpenCPU provides a RESTful interface to the popular open-source statistical package R, enabling the user to perform calculations and create publication-quality or web-embeddable visualizations via standard web requests.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:09 PM PST - 17 comments

An illustration of two dimensional vibration. A really cool illustration of two dimensional vibration.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:57 AM PST - 21 comments

In 1969, Sesame Street put together an unaired pilot to test in front of children. The pilot contained the appearance of an actor playing Gordon different from the other three actors who subsequently played that character. Sesame Workshop has no idea who this actor was and has exhausted all leads. Do you know who the mystery Gordon is?
posted by mightygodking at 11:46 AM PST - 89 comments

Marshall Terry, a reporter for WFAE in Charlotte, NC eats a pepper that is being submitted to Guiness as the world's hottest. Caution: there is hurling and hallucinating.
posted by zzazazz at 11:05 AM PST - 154 comments

"Imagine if you had never been homeless before and you'd just lost your job and you lost your home. What would you do? Would you immediately go begging or knocking on a door? No, you would downsize, move into cheaper accommodations, if that did not work you'd move in with friends or relatives and then you'd move into a cheap motel and then ... where would you want to go before winding up at a shelter door? You would much prefer to live at a park with your family and your dog." ... "In just about every major city, there are tent cities. Unfortunately, we're in a growth industry and the numbers are going to continue." -- Michael Stoop, a community organizer for the National Coalition for the Homeless, explaining that the surge in American tent city shantytowns, first highlighted on MeFi in 2008/09: 1, 2, 3, has not slowed. The Great Recession: Life in Tent City, Lakewood NJ / Photo Gallery / Video. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:23 AM PST - 40 comments

Sparkletown, the twitter stories of Jeff Noon.
posted by Artw at 10:14 AM PST - 19 comments

One month ago, Électricité de France S.A. (EDF), one Europe's biggest power producers, went on trial for allegedly hiring a security firm to hack into Greenpeace's computers. Today, the sentence has come down and the security firm, EDF, and its executives (and in a separate sentence of the broader hacking trial, disgraced bicyclist Floyd Landis), will be seeing fines and jail time. Greenpeace responds.
posted by griphus at 10:06 AM PST - 19 comments

Books seen in new ways: the Book Drum World Map (popular books mapped to their locations, and more). The Infinite Helical Bookcase. CodexCloud (store, search and share your eBooks online). Also: galleries and blogs of unique bookshelves, Bookshelf Porn and BookPorn. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 8:28 AM PST - 5 comments

Honestly, Abe? (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by caution live frogs at 8:14 AM PST - 15 comments

Many listeners have written to us since our episode about Georgia Judge Amanda Williams, asking what ever happened to her. Did she face any consequences for the things we documented on our program? Yesterday, Georgia’s Judicial Qualifications Commission filed formal charges [PDF] against her. The twelve counts include a number of things reported in our episode: sending away inmates for indefinite detention, jailing Charlie McCullough for 14 days for exercising his right to contest a drug screen, and using “rude, abusive, or insulting language” with individuals appearing before her. Local reporting from the Altanta Journal-Constitution. Previously.
posted by gerryblog at 8:09 AM PST - 41 comments

The assault on Los Alamos National Laboratory: A drama in three acts
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 7:53 AM PST - 28 comments

Why the Muppets Need to Host the Oscars.
posted by veedubya at 7:36 AM PST - 69 comments

Larry Langford was sentenced to 15 years in a federal prison in 2010 for his role in it. "It’s unclear how much Langford actually understood. Later he told the Securities and Exchange Commission that he wouldn’t know a swap advisor from a rubber band."

Yesterday, Jefferson County in Alabama declared bankruptcy, the largest municipality to do so. "The filing means the county has declared war on its creditors. " [more inside]
posted by dig_duggler at 6:47 AM PST - 47 comments

Joe Paterno, Head Coach of the Penn State football team, and Graham Spanier, Penn State President, have been fired by the Penn State Board of Trustees amid allegations that they did little to address the (alleged) sexual molestation of children at the hands of Jerry Sandusky, the ex-defensive coach of the team. And as day follows night, Penn State students rioted, overturning a news van, shattering car windows, and tearing down street signs. Previously
posted by sutt at 5:15 AM PST - 790 comments

Save the Scrollbar! [slate.com] Why are Apple, Google, and Facebook eradicating a linchpin of user interface design?
posted by Fizz at 5:09 AM PST - 82 comments

An analysis of urban planning and investment, or lack thereof, with Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area as examples A to Zed.
posted by jb at 5:02 AM PST - 27 comments

Machine guns still firing, 70 years later. The BBC's Dan Snow joins in an dig in Ireland to uncover a Spitfire mk2, hoping to find one o the machine guns in reasonable conditions. They find six, and then it's time to see if they still work. Okay so they stripped the six to rebuild just one good one, and used modern .303 calibre ammo as opposed to the ammo in the ground, but hey. 70 years and still spitting fire. Of course the WWII in me will point out that the mk V's Hispano cannons were far more effective, but hey, that's not romantic enough for a modern news bulletin.
posted by ewan at 2:27 AM PST - 18 comments

Garrett McNamara surfs a 90-foot wave in Nazare, Portugal -- a world record.
posted by chavenet at 2:21 AM PST - 11 comments

Texas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry is booked on all the major morning shows tomorrow, and with good reason. After two months of gaffes, impolitic stands, and bizarre speeches that quickly waned his once-strong odds of winning the Republican nomination, Perry went into Wednesday's CNBC debate sorely needing a win... only to deliver a tortuous, cringingly forgetful attempt [video] to recall just which three cabinet departments he'd vowed to abolish, a stunning failure political scientist Larry Sabato deemed "the most devastating moment of any modern primary debate" in his memory. While Perry's slow-motion flameout has boosted the fortunes of dark horse candidate Herman Cain, the unlikely challenger is facing troubles of his own in a volley of sexual harassment claims -- an oddly ineffective scandal Cain is doing his best to (somewhat dubiously) disavow. If Cain collapses, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich may reap the benefits, but his moribund campaign has issues of its own. Pawlenty, Bachmann, Perry, Christie, Cain, Gingrich... the base is loathe to rally round him, but after so many failed, flawed, or forfeited challenges, can anyone topple Mitt Romney?
posted by Rhaomi at 12:54 AM PST - 207 comments

Canopy roads are awesome, iconic features of rural Florida, beautiful, red, bright, green, yellow, normal.
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:24 PM PST - 29 comments

Pete Standing Alone has come full-circle in his dedication to preserving the traditional ways of his people on the Blood reserve in Southern Alberta. His 50 year journey from cultural alienation to pride and belonging has been uniquely captured by the NFB in the Pete Standing Alone Trilogy. [more inside]
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:56 PM PST - 10 comments

To The Moon is a stunningly good game about death, love and memories. If you love games and you enjoy love stories, I highly urge you to download it and play it immediately. Here's a review, but you shouldn't read it. You should just play it. Warning: Have kleenex handy.
posted by empath at 7:58 PM PST - 25 comments

About one tenth of China's farmland is polluted with heavy metals, with whole villages being poisoned. All too frequently, local governments have reacted by ignoring the problems and even denying treatment (HRW report).
posted by jeffburdges at 7:01 PM PST - 37 comments

GPX riding is a general term for using a GPS device to track and record location while riding a bicycle [previously on MetaFilter]. Combining this technology with a planned effort to create art is the premise behind Wallygpx. Think of the images as being akin to a giant etch-a-sketch.
posted by netbros at 6:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Right in Two - Tool ft. Carl Sagan (SLYT/NSFW) Warning: there is some footage of dead bodies. [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 6:08 PM PST - 29 comments

For safety's sake, please consider all links herein either nsfw or potentially offensive* Let's Have a Shambles! with the Country Teasers! Formed somewhere in Scotland in 1993 around one Ben Wallers, the Country Teasers forged an unusual contrast between acerbic lyrics, trash punk twang, and honest affect(at)ion of country-western tropes and sounds. They were also equal opportunity offenders, their songs frequently featuring seemingly misanthropic, misogynistic, and even racist lyrics. But despite their affrontive controversy, perhaps they aren't quite so easy to dismiss. Though rarely does he give in-person interviews, Mr. Wallers will, when confronted, defend his "schlock tease," though not without characteristic aplomb. Although the Country Teasers are pretty much dead, their extensive discography has plenty of noteworthy diversions. Some albums to start with are 1996's Satan Is Real Again or Feeling Good About Bad Thoughts, 1999's Destroy All Human Life, and 2006's Back to the Future. Mr. Wallers continues to release new records under the moniker The Rebel. A number of Teaser records were released on In The Red records. *Although if you do find it offensive, I'd simply request considering if that is perhaps the point.
posted by SomaSoda at 5:50 PM PST - 4 comments

In 1941, the Special Operations Executive forged documents, including passports, in order to help the resistance. Here's the one they made for Adolf Hitler, with a better view of the photos available on this site.
posted by gman at 5:42 PM PST - 16 comments

Something that allows you to easily slice through misinformation online online could make misleading the public a lot tougher. The concept isn't new (previously & many others) but unlike those efforts, Hypothes.is is open, standards-based, and backed by some web heavy-weights.
posted by ATXile at 5:16 PM PST - 59 comments

Three Principles of Self-Defense, by Sam Harris
posted by rollick at 3:45 PM PST - 149 comments

Le Internet Medley, a shockingly well-produced (audio AND video) LinkBait YouTube featuring The GAG Quartet (yes, there are only 3 of them, THAT'S THE GAG).
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:11 PM PST - 16 comments

The most vivid figure in Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields's End of the Century was the least articulate and most archetypal of the Ramones: Johnny, the right-wing prole whose hard-ass sense of style the others nutballed and softened and accelerated and above all imitated. ... Exciting and absolutely right though their '70s sets always were, the film establishes that they kept the faith live till the end, lifted by Joey's goofy dedication and powered by the chords Johnny thrashed out like they were why he was alive. As unyielding in his aesthetic principles as he was in everything else, this reactionary was an avant-gardist in spite of himself. - Robert Christgau
posted by Trurl at 2:01 PM PST - 17 comments

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design - "The next time you make a sandwich, pay attention to your hands. Seriously! Notice the myriad little tricks your fingers have for manipulating the ingredients and the utensils and all the other objects involved in this enterprise. Then compare your experience to sliding around Pictures Under Glass. Are we really going to accept an Interface Of The Future that is less expressive than a sandwich?"
posted by Defenestrator at 1:53 PM PST - 96 comments

Yesterday, Russia's first interplanetary mission in 15 years launched sucessfully from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It ran into serious problems almost immediately. In jeopardy are a sample return mission from the Martian satellite Phobos, The Planetary Society's Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), and China's Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter.
posted by IvoShandor at 1:20 PM PST - 40 comments

You could call it "computer-controlled cyborg yeast," but in reality, scientists have figured out an aspect of cell signaling in the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae, allowing computer-controlled lights to initiate protein creation feedback loops (abstract).
posted by filthy light thief at 1:07 PM PST - 14 comments

With Skyrim coming out soon, why not re-enter the world of the Elder Scrolls through the interactive webcomic Prequel? [more inside]
posted by dragoon at 12:57 PM PST - 50 comments

Elderly men accused of US ricin plot. 'Four elderly men from the US state of Georgia have appeared in court charged with plotting to murder officials using explosives and the lethal toxin ricin. Court documents say the group scoped out federal buildings and asked a contact to produce ricin. The FBI used a confidential informant to record the group's meetings. The men were arrested on Tuesday days after a laboratory test found trace amounts of ricin in their possession, the authorities said.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:16 PM PST - 90 comments

A massive rare 'superstorm' is currently bearing down on Alaska, with hurricane force winds (100+mph gusts), blizzard, sea-surge flooding. "This is going to be one of the worst storms on record over the Bering Sea". The storm passed through an area of unusually high sea surface temperatures. "This may help explain why the storm is turning from an ordinary Bering Sea disturbance into a ‘superstorm’." [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 11:49 AM PST - 65 comments

Bil Keane, creator of famous (and often mocked) newspaper comic The Family Circus, has died at 89.
posted by mightygodking at 11:24 AM PST - 78 comments

“I feel terrible,” [Best Buy chief executive Brian] Dunn told attendees at a conference in San Francisco. “It will change some Thanksgiving plans for our employees. It certainly changes mine...We were going to be open at much more civilized hour, like 3 or 4 [AM].”

Feeling pressure from a weak economy and escalating competition from rival retailers, stores like Best Buy are somewhat reluctantly planning to open stores at midnight on Thanksgiving evening. Traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday has become Black Midnight. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:42 AM PST - 185 comments

Julius Fromm, a “quintessential ‘entrepreneurial proletariat’”, and a modest man with minimal education, sought a career alternative to making cigarettes and began taking evening classes in rubber chemistry around 1912. Julius Fromm then hit upon the idea of making condoms. The early condoms from the eighteenth century were generally made of animal intestines, and were used primarily by wealthy men – like Giacomo Casanova, who referred to them as “English riding coats” . . .

The Great Rubber Robbery: How Julius Fromm’s Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis. via 3 quarks daily
posted by Rumple at 10:33 AM PST - 2 comments

Japan's cat cafes, where you can have tea with cats.
posted by Artw at 10:13 AM PST - 81 comments

Presidential Candidates Explained Through Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheets. That is all.
posted by LarryC at 10:02 AM PST - 38 comments

MOUSTAIR
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:27 AM PST - 45 comments

"As teachers and leaders of communities that promote the development of compassion and mindfulness, we are writing to express our solidarity with the Occupy movement now active in over 1,900 cities worldwide....

"The structural greed, anger and delusion that characterize our current system are incompatible with our obligations to future generations and our most cherished values of interdependence, creativity, and compassion. We call on teachers and practitioners from all traditions of mind/body awakening to join in actively transforming these structures."

Occupy Samsara. [more inside]
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 7:42 AM PST - 51 comments

One of Charles Darwin's lesser-known experiments, on the expression of emotion, is being re-run as an exercise in online crowdsourcing - and anyone can take part. The BBC reports.
posted by beshtya at 7:09 AM PST - 16 comments

The social graph is neither. Maciej Cegłowski, owner/founder/operator/sole employee of Pinboard (recently), blogger of idle words, lays down some science and thoughts about the charting of your personal connections, and why it's doomed.
posted by ardgedee at 6:54 AM PST - 75 comments

“I remember so much of your childhood," he says. "I remember running you around the leaves in the wheelbarrow. Or the time you were so sick we took you to the hospital. I remember walking in the fields.” I nod, because the moment’s not about me. “Yes Dad,” I say. “There were a lot of good times.” No, there weren't. Which is why we both escaped: He into the bottle; I into the nerd.
posted by jbickers at 6:40 AM PST - 63 comments

Science, Skin & Ink A slideshow of science tattoos from Carl Zimmer's new book Science Ink at the New York Times. See more at Zimmer's tattoo emporium. Carl Zimmer’s tattoo emporium previously.
posted by OmieWise at 5:58 AM PST - 17 comments

Arthur recreates scenes from classic movies.
posted by mippy at 4:44 AM PST - 25 comments

Like a children's book for adults. Blok [slyt] a 1982 short by Polish Director Hieronim Neumann.
posted by quoquo at 4:28 AM PST - 10 comments

18 months after Steve Jobs wrote Thoughts on Flash, and despite their protests that "Flash Player performs as well as, if not better than, comparable multimedia technologies", Adobe today announced they are stopping development on Flash for mobile. [more inside]
posted by fightorflight at 12:36 AM PST - 169 comments

Esi Edugyan wins the Giller Prize, the richest prize for English fiction in Canada ($50,000 to the winner). Those on the shortlist get $5,000 each.
posted by anothermug at 8:35 PM PST - 15 comments

For those who wish Iron & Wine was still releasing music in the same vein as The Creek Drank the Cradle, youtube user modestaretaloger has uploaded a treasure trove of early and unreleased recordings. There is aNick Drake cover, an early version of Faded From the Winter, songs that feature drums, harmonica and mandolin, as well as just plenty of songs that would have fit right into Creek Drank the Cradle or The Sea & the Rhythm.
posted by Corduroy at 5:48 PM PST - 18 comments

Pole Riders. A pole vaulting game from the maker of QWOP and GIRP.
posted by loquacious at 5:34 PM PST - 53 comments

Q.R. Markham's just-published Assassin of Secrets, hailed as an "instant classic" by at least one blurber, has been withdrawn by its publisher. Why? Extensive plagiarism. The author who blurbed the book explains how he was duped.
posted by mothershock at 5:29 PM PST - 85 comments

Sucks To Be A Straight Guy. Stepping away from the microphone, Jesse Thorn interviews Dan Savage, advice columnist of Savage Love.
posted by Green With You at 4:57 PM PST - 116 comments

The King of Human Error: Michael Lewis profiles Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman [more inside]
posted by vidur at 4:07 PM PST - 61 comments

The new Boy Scouts Of America recruitment campaign is... well... a bit hairy.
posted by hippybear at 3:57 PM PST - 83 comments

Vintage photographs of Toronto at night is brought to you by the same people who put out Toronto in photos from the 1850s to the 1990s, and several other sets linked within.
posted by gman at 3:38 PM PST - 7 comments

Sylvester Stallone has designed a pen. It's called Chaos. It's by Montegrappa (auto-play music... and oh what music)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:08 PM PST - 111 comments

Nigel loves birds.
posted by straight_razor at 2:58 PM PST - 4 comments

Dwight Arrington Myers, also know as Heavy D passed away today. Hip hop is far less fun today after the passing of the overweight lover. He was instrumental in launching Puff Daddy's career as well. Some of his most popular singles include Somebody for Me, Now That We Found Love and Mr. Big Stuff.
posted by Silo004 at 2:57 PM PST - 74 comments

Teachings on Right Practice by Shunryu Suzuki, as compiled in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, read by Peter Coyote: "Posture", "Breathing", "Control", "Mind Weeds", "The Marrow of Zen", "Bowing", "Nothing Special"
posted by Trurl at 1:58 PM PST - 15 comments

What's the meaning of Stonehenge? [SLYT]
posted by hydatius at 1:53 PM PST - 38 comments

Yo, Is This Racist? (sltp) [more inside]
posted by peachfuzz at 1:34 PM PST - 74 comments

A group of retired Chinese senior citizens singing and dancing to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance on live TV. [SLYT]
posted by schmod at 1:31 PM PST - 18 comments

In 1982, Daniel Shechtman was on sabbatical at Johns Hopkins University studying aluminum-manganese alloys, and discovered that the resulting crystalline patterns of the alloy resulted in five-way symmetry, much like the famed Penrose Tiles. The resulting publication of these "quasicrystals" resulted in scathing ridicule from most of the scientific community, including Linus Pauling saying "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.", and his research director claiming he had "Brought disgrace" upon their program. However, by 1987 he had managed to grow large enough crystals to be imaged with electron microscopy, verifying his results. His subsequent studies of quasicrystals eventually earned him the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
posted by kaszeta at 1:00 PM PST - 44 comments

At first glance, the new inside-the-CIA Showtime series Homeland looks like a cynical socio-political potboiler -- an attempt to exploit fears of a terrorist attack on American soil by Muslim extremists. In reality, the critically acclaimed show, about an anti-terrorism agent (Claire Danes) tracking a U.S. Marine war hero (Damian Lewis) who may now be working for what's left of Al Qaeda, is thoughtful and emotionally complex despite its airplane-thriller trappings. That's why showrunners Howard Gordon and his buddy Alex Gansa gave an interview to Mother Jones, a self-described "news organization that specializes in investigative, political, and social justice reporting." Reflecting on lessons they learned in the trenches of 24, they talk about Homeland's self-aware approach to paranoia as entertainment, and how "dangerous and politically incendiary" a TV show can be .
posted by Joey Bagels at 1:00 PM PST - 67 comments

What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral. Barry Ritholz writes in the Washington Post about the story (the "Big Lie") that it wasn't irresponsibility on the part of the banks that caused the crash--it was really misguided government policies! [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 12:34 PM PST - 81 comments

On October 18, Wired embedded a reporter with both Anonymous and the #Occupy movement, calling both "a new kind of hybrid entity, one that breaks the boundaries between “real life” and the internet, creatures of the network embodied as citizens in the real world." The first entries in Quinn Norton's ongoing special report: Anonymous 101: Behind the Lulz were posted today. Coverage from Wired's other special report, Occupy: Dispatches from the Occupation are already online. NPR: Members Of Anonymous Share Values, Aesthetics [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:24 PM PST - 42 comments

Dev Harlan describes himself as a multidisciplinary artist whose hybrid practice combines the physical and the virtual with the use of sculpture, light and projection. In practice, it looks like this: Suffolk Deluxe Electric Bicycle (2:02), Any Colour You Like (Pyramid III) (1:38), Pyramid IV (3:25), Untitled (Pyramid V) (2:20), and Parmenides I (2:41). See also: Nawer and Temporary Space Design, and Amon Tobin live (previously). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:20 PM PST - 2 comments

Highrise: One Millionth Tower is an interactive documentary, architectural visualization, and virtual transformation featuring a highrise development in Toronto. Presented by the National Film Board of Canada. (via Chrome Experiments)
posted by OverlappingElvis at 12:18 PM PST - 3 comments

"Using the power of light, we have adapted our technology to address a problem related to an industry which is a crucial part of Scottish culture and economy." St Andrews University researchers have claimed they can work out a whisky's brand, age and cask by using a ray of light the size of a human hair.
posted by Fizz at 11:50 AM PST - 21 comments

Allas creates surprisingly novel highlight clips of FC Barcelona, perhaps the most talented football/soccer team of the moment. This fifteen minute video illustrates Barcelona’s tactics, and serves as an introduction to aspects of the beautiful game that were previously invisible to novices like me. [more inside]
posted by ferdydurke at 11:08 AM PST - 35 comments

"See, lots of people love comics. Lots of people make comics. Most of us aren’t included in the mainstream. Now with our own books, we can reach a far broader audience than capes comics or art/autobiographical comics can." Comics creator Alex de Campi talks about digital comics, the realities of funding indie comics, and bypassing the mainstream - finding the Self-Publishing Holy Grail. De Campi is not new to digital comics, and has written at length about the nuts and bolts of publishing a story in a dizzying array of languages and formats. She is now using crowdfunding to publish Ashes, the follow-up to her Eisner nominated graphic novel Smoke.
posted by Artw at 10:10 AM PST - 9 comments

What makes the McRib different from this everyday horror is that a) McDonald’s is huge to the point that it’s more useful to think of it as a company trading in commodities than it is to think of it as a chain of restaurants b) it is made of pork, which makes it a unique product in the QSR world and c) it is only available sometimes, but refuses to go away entirely.

A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage
posted by griphus at 9:57 AM PST - 171 comments

Honda demonstrates the newest version of their Asimo robot. "With a further advance in autonomy, the all-new ASIMO can now continue moving without being controlled by an operator. Moreover, with significantly improved intelligence and the physical ability to adapt to situations, ASIMO took another step closer to practical use in an office or a public space where many people come and go."
posted by empath at 9:38 AM PST - 33 comments

America's First Suburb Turns 60 Almost 60 years ago, a planned community embodied the hopes and prosperity of America. Now, it represents a more realistic picture of the American experience. The BBC investigates Levittown, Pennsylvania, as part of a year-long series. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 8:56 AM PST - 81 comments

Carbon dioxide emissions increased by the largest amount on record in 2010, exceeding the worst case scenario outlined by the IPCC four years ago.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:54 AM PST - 92 comments

The beautiful sight of a black rhinoceros being airlifted to a new home
posted by boygeorge at 8:08 AM PST - 52 comments

Magic Johnson still beating HIV 20 years later 2 decades after being diagnosed with HIV - the virus that causes AIDS, Magic Johnson is still going strong. His foundation is helping others, giving them hope while educating people about the disease.
posted by 2manyusernames at 7:46 AM PST - 37 comments

What does a day's worth of activity look like for Boston's transportation system? Via bostonography, which has been featured previously.
posted by Eideteker at 7:27 AM PST - 26 comments

Kindle Lending Library is now live. (discussed previously). The good news is there are lots of titles and no due dates. The bad news is that there is a one-per-month limit. Oh, and you have to be an Amazon Prime! member. Not everyone is thrilled.
posted by TwoToneRow at 6:59 AM PST - 88 comments

We Love You Joe. Smokin' Joe Frazier has lost his last fight, against liver cancer, at the age of 67. He was the first man to beat Muhammad Ali, in 1971, and held the World Heavyweight Title between 1970 and 1973. He won 32 of his 37 professional fights, his only defeats coming against Ali and Foreman. He was one of the greats.
posted by joannemullen at 5:52 AM PST - 75 comments

After an Islamist party won ^* the first post-revolutionary election in Tunisia, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo^* ran a 'Sharia Hebdo' issue lampooning the result. The prophet Mohammed was named 'guest editor' of the issue and put on the cover proclaiming '100 lashes if you're not dying of laughter'. In response, their offices were promptly firebombed, destroying all their equipment. A week later, from its temporary home in the offices of the daily newspaper Libération, what is Charlie Hebdo's message? Love is stronger than hate. (Guardian story)
posted by Anything at 5:33 AM PST - 361 comments

Daniel Knox prophecies calamity and doom on piano and kazoo. A Chicago musician and songwriter with the voice of a 1920s troubadour, Knox composes tragicomic ballads reminiscent of Will Oldham or Tom Waits. Listen to Evryman for Himself, the harrowing Ghostsong, the poignant You Win Some, You Tie Some, and Disaster. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 5:33 AM PST - 7 comments

The death of Ghaddafi may also herald the end of the battle for the Aouzou Strip." You could call this 44,000 square-mile piece of desert the world’s largest sandbox. Its most remarkable feature is that it was deemed worthy to be fought over at all." (NYT)
posted by Xurando at 1:47 AM PST - 18 comments

Saveur Magazine picks 55 great global food blogs.
posted by carrienation at 11:47 PM PST - 27 comments

The original recordings of Ray Ellis' background music for Filmation Studios were recently destroyed, but enthusiasts carefully isolate and preserve the scores from broadcast cartoons. These archetypal cues were originally composed for Star Trek: The Animated Series, and used in subsequent series for over a decade: "Tension Mounts", "Danger Approaching (Variation)", "Action Cue 03".
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 10:22 PM PST - 18 comments

Detecting alien life by looking for cities at night (a world tour). [via]
posted by stbalbach at 10:00 PM PST - 23 comments

If Edgar Allan Poe's, 'The Raven', was interpreted by David Bowie, as imagined sounding by Ralph Garman. [more inside]
posted by phoque at 9:38 PM PST - 12 comments

The Rhythm of Life is one of those songs that sort of embeds itself in your brain. Originally from Sweet Charity, it's a powerful beat that is able to transcend meaning, transformed by the medium... The original intent was a bit of a bohemian/hippie chant. The song sometimes was voiced by a congregation that appeared somewhat more innocent. Yin and yang, backwards.... it's meaning became something different altogether. Or, there's this...
posted by HuronBob at 8:31 PM PST - 18 comments

It's All Games Now: The Convergence of Games and Social Media (video, 61 minutes), is a talk given by Raph Koster, one of the lead designers of the MMO Ultima Online, at the 2011 Game Developers Conference Online in Austin Texas. In it he looks at how digital games have changed as a social experience from MUDs to World of Warcraft, where they are going in the future, and the bleed between games and the real world. Koster has posted a summary here on his site. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 6:47 PM PST - 15 comments

Before the Second World War, Rose Robertson did secretarial work. During the war, as part of her work for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the UK, Robertson parachuted into occupied France to spy on German troop deployments and act as a courier. Her acquaintance there with a gay couple in the French Resistance, and, after the war, friendship with gay lodgers, led her to found Parents Enquiry, Britain's first helpline to support parents and their lesbian, gay and bisexual children, an organization which she operated for many years. [more inside]
posted by Morrigan at 4:42 PM PST - 36 comments

The New Classics: The most enduring books, shows, movies, and ideas since 2000. [more inside]
posted by vidur at 3:56 PM PST - 130 comments

Brian Eno on technology and music.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:20 PM PST - 31 comments

After visiting Nepal in 1998, John Wood left Microsoft to try something different. His organization Room to Read now has created 12,000+ libraries around the world, and given away 10 million books.
posted by LeLiLo at 3:19 PM PST - 10 comments

How would Cormac McCarthy review products and services for Yelp? Yelping with Cormac, a Tumblr blog, rises to the challenge and shows us how. [more inside]
posted by killdevil at 3:00 PM PST - 17 comments

Yom HaShoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, is Israel's day of memorial for those killed during the Holocaust and those who were part of the resistance.

At 10:00 am on Yom HaShoah, sirens are sounded throughout Israel for two minutes. During this time, people cease from action and stand at attention; cars stop, even on the highways; and the whole country comes to a standstill as people pay silent tribute to the dead.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:39 PM PST - 68 comments

Hervé Attia has made dozens of videos showing movie locations as they look in the present day juxtaposed with clips of the actual film. He also puts himself into the film sometimes. [more inside]
posted by gman at 2:35 PM PST - 8 comments

A famous gay couple has decided to separate, citing irreconcilable differences force by zookeepers.
posted by hermitosis at 2:34 PM PST - 35 comments