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Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs (SOMNIA) A news aggregator since when there weren't many news aggregators. SOMNIA is a great geopolitical gift from the Canadian Forces College. From the Guardian to the Christian Science Monitor, from the Washington Times to the Washington Post, many military and geopolitical news articles aggregated on a daily basis, segregated into Canadian News, Canadian Commentary, International News and International commentary I myself have been a fan since before the war on Kosovo. Enjoy!
posted by furtive at 11:27 PM PST - 5 comments

Myron Krueger began his pioneering work in interactive art in 1969. He was one of the first to explore the aesthetics of interactivity with his "responsive environments." While preparing a talk that included a reminiscence of Krueger demoing Videoplace in the 80s, I was surprised he'd not yet merited even a stub in the Wikipedia. While that may eventually motivate me to register and start the page, for now, I will just share some links. [more inside, including videos]
posted by KS at 11:15 PM PST - 2 comments

Need a lift? Google Labs presents RideFinder. Amazing. Oh yeah, and remember that 1 GB quota on Gmail? It's gone. They're bumping it up to 2 GB as we speak, but they are indicating they will continue to bump it up as needed. If you have a Gmail account, log out and check out the wacky graph and counter on the login page.
posted by keswick at 11:14 PM PST - 39 comments

Today by far is my favorite holiday. It's the one day that webmasters get to be creative and do things that normally wouldn't fit with their sites general themes. For example, Google attempts a high tech way of quenching peoples thirsts, Wikipedia sells out to Britannica, a RFC is written on Morality, and much much more!
posted by Urgo at 10:24 PM PST - 43 comments

How did I get here, Sarah?
posted by Tlogmer at 9:50 PM PST - 25 comments

Words that sound dirty but aren't. I'm a big fan of the white-breasted nuthatch. You?
posted by diastematic at 9:07 PM PST - 58 comments

Palestinian Rap is au courant. Nasri Zacharia, aka Iron Sheik raps about the Neo-Cons -- Watch the "Neo-Con Luv" music video, (mp3). Other mp3s: About Baghdad, and his remix, Conversation with Edward Said.
posted by derangedlarid at 8:47 PM PST - 10 comments

What is a Foob? When it comes to juvenile insults, I remember dork, doofus, geek, etc. But this is a new one on me.
posted by livingsanctuary at 5:32 PM PST - 24 comments

Die Wunderkammer. Fancy buying a stuffed miniature Collie, or a fossil poo? How about "a miniature perfume library with, among others, the scents of human breast milk, chocolate, swampwater and sex"? This Australian store has all these and more. If you're not Down Under then browse through the Web Wunderkammer, an online wonder-cabinet which archives more modern but equally weird things such as a Jesus Leaf, robot jellyfish and square-dancing chipmunks. Or you could always check out eBay. (a follow-up of sorts on this thread).
posted by wessatong at 4:31 PM PST - 11 comments

ACLU seeks Sanchez perjury investigation. As a followup to yesterday's post, the ACLU has sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Gonzales, requesting an investigation of Gen. Ricardo Sanchez for perjury before Congress. Sanchez is accused of lying about approving guidelines for the use of abusive interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib prison. Now, many of you might think that Gonzales might refuse this request and be done with it. However, the ACLU has the right to request a writ of mandamus, which would compel Gonzales to initiate an investigation. If Sanchez is investigated, will he be pressured to reveal the identity of those in the Pentagon / Bush administration (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, Cambone?!) who knew about and possibly ordered these policies?
posted by insomnia_lj at 3:33 PM PST - 27 comments

The 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers. What, no Kottke?
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 2:31 PM PST - 51 comments

The little bug eats the bigger bug, and "[i]t's bad news for beekeepers, farmers and anybody who likes to eat." An invading parasite imperils the American honeybee -- and your fruit basket. In only six months "40 percent to 60 percent of the bees nationwide have perished". And "that, in turn, hampers production of about one third of the human diet, including almonds, apples, strawberries, cherries, blueberries, sunflowers, melons and cranberries."
posted by orthogonality at 2:20 PM PST - 22 comments

White Shark Released from Monterey Bay Aquarium after six months in captivity. In the last week, aquarists noted several incidents of what they considered to be active hunting of other exhibit animals, and they became substantially more concerned about the well-being of the other fishes. She was not released because of any injury or health problem. At the time of her release, she was 6'-4" long and weighed 162 pounds.
posted by rodo at 1:41 PM PST - 19 comments

Jump Jim Crow, through the hoops of one Robert Christgau's erudition as he surveys the literature extant in In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter, through multiple readings of Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World and and Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Consider, too, The Minstrel Cycle from Reading The Commitments and other various and sundry attempts to peek inside the minstrel mask—all multiple readings reading blackface minstrels from the pejorative to the explorative, subversive to oppressive, past to future, unfolding tesseractly, if not exactly, with singing, dancing and extraordinary elocutions. Buy your tickets and step within for The Meller Drammer of Minstrelsy in The Minstrel Show 2.0…
posted by y2karl at 12:55 PM PST - 17 comments

The Valve, "a literary organ", is a new group blog devoted to literary studies and modelled on little magazines gone by.
posted by kenko at 12:31 PM PST - 3 comments

The TV Squad! A new TV blog from the people who do Engadget. I'm amazed at how fast they get stuff posted.
posted by braun_richard at 11:36 AM PST - 14 comments

Rape, Torture, and Lies An ongoing Canadian saga has a sad new twist today: photojournalist Ziba Zahra Kazemi was likely brutally tortured and raped before her death in Iran in 2003. Arrested after a demonstration, the official Iranian line has been that her death was an accident due to injuries from a fall. The ER doctor who treated her has now spoken out, after being granted refugee status in Canada. Wikipedia has an excellent outline of the entire story.
posted by livii at 9:52 AM PST - 65 comments

A lecutre musical (QT video) by Columbia University spontaneous performance artists PRANGSTGRÜP (warning: flash site). Lots of great stuff in their videos section.
posted by panoptican at 9:41 AM PST - 14 comments

Sin City: From the Comics to the Screen - Film Rotation offers up a side-by-side comparison of stills from the movie's trailer to panels from Frank Miller's comics.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:08 AM PST - 59 comments

Mitch Hedberg is said to have died of an apparent heroin overdose (Howard Stern confirms). Mitch was a fantastic comedian, and it's sad to think that he won't get the attention he deserved because he shares a death day with someone else. You can hear clips from his CDs Mitch All Together and Strategic Grill Locations on Amazon. (Previous MeFi thread on Mr. Hedberg)
posted by revgeorge at 8:55 AM PST - 127 comments

Warren Buffett's letters to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway make for some entertaining reading and are studied in B schools around the country. The 2004 letter [pdf] was recently released.
posted by ChasFile at 8:33 AM PST - 11 comments

Bionic Implants: Brain chip reads paralyzed man’s thoughts, enables him to control devices like a computer or television.
Stanford physicists and eye doctors to design a "Bionic Eye.”
posted by dfowler at 8:13 AM PST - 20 comments

The Single Man's Guide to TV Dinners
Teetering on the fine line between parody and sincerity, Ray guides us through the perilous world of TV dinners.

The box cover boasts "Extra Helpings of Beef Enchilada..". As I mentioned earlier, the dinner only contains one beef enchilada. What is an "Extra Helping"?

The cheese-to-meat-to-vegetable ratio is appropriate. After eating a few slices, you won't be left with a strange aftertaste.
posted by chrismear at 8:12 AM PST - 33 comments

Terry Schiavo has died.
posted by bshort at 7:11 AM PST - 178 comments

Okay, the numbers are in. Now that die hard fans of the UK edition have vented, I'm curious to know what those who have not yet had the pleasure of Ricky Gervais' company make of the American version of The Office. Comments?
posted by IndigoJones at 6:29 AM PST - 49 comments

The Cheerful Transgressive Ever since 1971, when Larry Clark published Tulsa, an austere series chronicling his meth-shooting pals in sixties Oklahoma, Clark has made it his mission to document teenagers at their most deviant, their most vulnerable, their most sexually unhinged (possibly NSFW). And now “Larry Clark” the first American retrospective of Clark’s work, currently on display at the International Center of Photography, demonstrates the richness with which he’s mined this single subject (NSFW). More inside.
posted by matteo at 6:24 AM PST - 48 comments

Fitness to Practice is a collection of songs written and performed by Amateur Transplants, two practicing doctors from the UK. The album consists of original songs as well as witty parodies of songs originally performed by among others Tom Lehrer and The Jam (mp3 links). The lyrics contain a lot of medical in-jokes, but the humour is broad enough to appeal to everyone.
posted by bap98189 at 6:01 AM PST - 9 comments

Analysis of the Personality of Adolf Hitler by Cornell University in 1943 has been released online. The analysis was comissioned by the predecessor to the CIA and declassified several years ago, according to The New York Times. This official analysis should be of interest to those who have been doing amateur analyses for years.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 5:56 AM PST - 20 comments

With girya or kettlebell training you can hack the fat off without the dishonor of diet and aerobics.
posted by the cuban at 3:48 AM PST - 19 comments

National Review's Heather McDonald responds to columnist Steven Levy's question: Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem? "Could it be that the premise of the 'diversity' crusade is wrong—that there are not in fact hordes of unknown, competitively talented non-white-male journalists held back by prejudice? Don’t even entertain the thought. Steven Levy certainly doesn’t. 'It appears that some clubbiness is involved'—that is, that white male bloggers only link to other white male bloggers." Do we need a race-based quota for web journalism? As racial identity is often anonymous, where would we start?
posted by jenleigh at 11:04 PM PST - 56 comments

SCANDAL!!! Wordpress caught with Spam and Hot Nacho! Blogosphere Cheesed! (Waxy investigates)
posted by shoepal at 10:45 PM PST - 55 comments

Phila Lawyer reads like fiction (awesome, Hunter S. Thompson -esque fiction -- Part 1, 2 ) to outsiders, but that might just be because it's so fucking good. The lawyers commiserating in the comments, at least, think it's real.
The navigation is cumbersome -- if you're not careful, you'll come into a story in the middle. For your perusal, then, I've laid a few out:
Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Part 1, 2
Part 1, 2, 3, 4
posted by Tlogmer at 9:48 PM PST - 7 comments

Christopher Eccleston, the new Doctor Who, has tendered his resignation. Geez, his first episode wasn't that bad.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:59 PM PST - 44 comments

People either love them or they hate them. In our spuddish history, we have fought wars and named queens. Canadians build monuments, Americans misspelle.
They entertain us, they destroy our livers, sometimes they go BOOM! In some parts of the world, they're famous.
Solanum Tuberosum forever.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 7:58 PM PST - 9 comments

The Cat is back. After a hiatus of over 20 years, Yusuf "Cat Stevens" Islam is back with his first original song (as opposed to the voice-and-drum Islamic songs he did occasionally). Previously discussed here when he was deported from the US for allegedly being on a "terrorist watchlist", Islam has had a change of heart when it comes to playing the music he shunned for so long. "Music is a lady that I still love because she gives me the air that I breathe," he quotes from one of his old songs. "We need all sorts of nourishment. And music satisfies and nourishes the hunger within ourselves for connection and harmony. It's part of God's universe." His new song Indian Ocean is now available on iTunes, with all proceeds going to victims of the tsunami disaster.
posted by laz-e-boy at 7:47 PM PST - 15 comments

There's a new DVD on GG Allin. Born Jesus Christ Allin he was a front-man of the still-touring Murder Junkies. An overdose in 1993 did him in. A profile, Hated:GG Allin and The Murder Junkies, was made just before his death and features a portion of his strange funeral. Needless to say, his lyrics and well, his life are NSFW.

"...That audience is there for me. I'm not a performance artist or any of that, I'm not out to please anyone. Just me. Rock'n'roll has to be destroyed and rebuilt in my name if it's ever gonna accomplish anything. It's not about being in some clique, it's for people who don't fit in with any thing....I believe I am the highest power, absolutely. I am in control at all times. Jesus Christ, God, and Satan all in one." -GG, in an interview
posted by john at 4:16 PM PST - 48 comments

Lenticular printing to the nth degree Urban Mapping has made a very cool multi-dimensional map for lower Manhattan with more cities to come. Depending on how you hold it, you see a different map. via Transportation Communications newsletter
posted by agatha_magatha at 3:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Tesco, the UK's biggest retailer, recently announced record full-year profits and now controls a frighteningly dominant 27% share of all grocery sales in the UK. Put another way, the retail juggernaut now accounts for one in every eight pounds spent in British shops. Such a lofty position has got many worried and Tesco is getting flak for everything from being responsible for shutting down rural post offices to becoming a fully-paid up agent of Big Brother. Now Tesco has its very own nonaffiliated bloggers. The team behind Supermarket Sweep Up - a vertically targeted blog - say their aim is to place the UK's biggest retailer under "greater public scrutiny". Now that big media can't afford to run decent investigative journalism, is a collaborative 'investigative blogging' the best way forward?
posted by MrMerlot at 3:45 PM PST - 11 comments

Anything goes. A Libyan court began hearing an appeal by five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who face the death penalty for allegedly infecting 380 children with the AIDS virus, in spite of testimony from Luc Montaignier, the French doctor who first isolated the HIV virus, and Swiss and Italian colleagues, that the epidemic was due to a lack of hygiene. Tripoli has said that in exchange for the freedom of the nurses, it wants compensation equal to that paid by Libya to relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie plane bombing carried out by its secret service in 1988. (Yahoo/AFP news)
posted by semmi at 2:23 PM PST - 18 comments

Rise of the Man-Eating Cyberloo: the latest RotM, or Rise of the Machines, another regular feature at the Register like the BOFH (the link is this week's, more here). Rise of the Machines is a ultraparanoid technophobe's view of the latest happenings in and around technology - fictionalized for your delight. Here is the ROTM take on clocky (previously). Many of the episodes refer to the various efforts of the "lizard army" (Shades of Free Your Brain?) and their eternal enemies, the NeoLuddite Resistance Army. Take a minute to read a few, it's quite a funny theme, written well and in true cheeky Reg style. Here's the archive. For a more serious (though likely sham) example of this, try the Anti-Robot Militia.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Camouflaged and Walking octopuses Octopus marginatus and Octopus (Abdopus) aculeatus, that walk along the seafloor using two alternating arms and apparently use the remaining six arms for camouflage.
posted by dov3 at 12:06 PM PST - 23 comments

Sarah Sze is an incredible artist (link is to a large image). Things fall apart (jeep cherokee), slow growth sets in and paint peels off the walls. Objects stretch out toward each other. Detail persists on a large and small scale. Here's a resume. Here are a few more images and a review. Here's another short article.
posted by nobody at 10:48 AM PST - 24 comments

Canada's seal hunt started yesterday and though I wondered if the numbers on the Protect Seals site were accurate, this somewhat gory and disturbing slideshow at Yahoo/AP news seems to support the high numbers of slaughter. There doesn't seem to be much you can do to stop seal clubbing in 2005, just boycotting Canadian seafood and calling congressfolks. Shame to see up to 300k seals killed for some fur coats -- seems so last century.
posted by mathowie at 9:47 AM PST - 209 comments

Planes check in but they don’t check out. At boneyards across the country, derelict airliners await cannibalization, destruction, or possible restoration.
posted by breezeway at 9:19 AM PST - 26 comments

Robert Creeley, one of the most exquisite and influential poets of our era, died this morning at age 78. I'd link to a story, but it's not in the news yet. This is a note from one of Robert's friends: "American poet Robert Creeley passed away this morning at 6:15 am in Odessa, Texas, where he was fulfilling a Residency at the Lannan Foundation. (Mr. Creeley was a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.) His wife of twenty-eight years, Penelope, and son Will and daughter Hannah were at his side. The cause of death was complications from respiratory disease." Though a comrade and muse for Beat Generation writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Creeley was much less well-known, and had a style rather unlike theirs, distinguished by extreme economy of words and an understated approach toward emotion. Creeley was often cited as a pioneer by the so-called language poets, and his most creatively generative friendship was with another poet's poet, the late Charles Olson. Creeley's subtlety and balance will be missed.
posted by digaman at 9:17 AM PST - 38 comments

A look at arranged marriages for Indian-Americans.
posted by daksya at 8:43 AM PST - 26 comments

The Aurora   (mostly pictures, slightly more info here). One car, two men, three decades of rust. Guy buys truly hideous 1957 prototype car from junkyard, restores it to gleaming unsightliness. Conne_ticut?
posted by planetkyoto at 8:19 AM PST - 28 comments

The Many Sides of Pat Sajak: In case knowing about his over 20 years on the Wheel is not enough, you can learn about his minor league baseball investment, his record label, and his deep politcal thoughts. (Via this via that.)
posted by hackly_fracture at 8:09 AM PST - 31 comments

Dark Energy, envisioned as “the major component of the universe,” is believed to accelerate the expansion of the universe, though some physicists disagree.
posted by dfowler at 8:08 AM PST - 4 comments

Conscientious Objector Policy Act would allow Michigander doctors and health care providers to refuse treatment on moral, ethical or religious grounds. Yet another OMG MORALZ OMG sort of bill. But wait, what are morals? And does Nicole Kidman figure into this somehow?
posted by taursir at 8:06 AM PST - 58 comments

Four high school students -- gold chains, fake diamond rings, patchy, adolescent mustaches and sharp brains -- take on MIT and others in a robot competition. They're undocumented Mexican Americans living in trailers and shabby houses in Arizona. They raise only $800 from the community to fund their project, while the MIT team raises $11,000 from corporate donors. They have to scrounge for the "most best tampons" at the last moment to fix a leak in their robot. The other teams snicker at their garishly painted robot when it's unveiled poolside. You know how this is going to end. You know. But it's very satisfying to read nonetheless. (via Amygdala)
posted by maudlin at 6:59 AM PST - 86 comments

WebWaste.net • "WebWaste is an Internet rubbish dump; a collective yet anonymous dustbin, open to all Internet users. By going onto WebWaste you can browse through the rubbish and inspect what Internet users before you have thrown away. This might include images, texts, sounds and movie clips. WebWaste collects trash from your own computer's Recycle Bin and uploads it to the waste dump through the downloadable Dustman-application. This process too is anonymous so no one can know who threw what away."
posted by dhoyt at 6:11 AM PST - 15 comments

Sanchez Perjury Proof ? That depends on the meaning of "never" Mainstream media once again caught with pants down as blogger citizen-journalist notes apparent perjury by Gen. Sanchez during testimony before the US Congress concerning whether he authorized torture or not. The Globe and Mail noticed the ACLU release of a FOIA-obtained memo showing that Sanchez did in fact authorize torture, but the implication of perjury seems to have escaped MSM notice, to be pointed out by a blogger Metafilter's own citizen journalist Mark Kraft, who declares : "Sanchez is clearly guilty of perjury, and should face the wrath of Congress... and the Senate should determine the guilt of his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, while they're at it."

The case all hinges on the meaning of the word "never" which - rumor holds - is much more flexible in Sanchez' native "Never-never Land" where - as with the rumored numerous Eskimo terms for different kinds of snow - denizens of that realm have many different meanings for "never", some of which in fact mean "sometimes" or "occasionally" !
posted by troutfishing at 5:53 AM PST - 62 comments

Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up' according to a preliminary report(PDF) from the royal society due out later today from the millennium ecosystem assessment project started by Kofi Annan of the united nations.
posted by cytherea at 2:05 AM PST - 55 comments

"Freedom of speech does not exist, don't try to test it." Anarchist web portals Infoshop.org and flag.blackened.net are under investigation by the FBI. While site operators are under gag order and cannot discuss the specifics of the situation that prompted this action, they confirm that logged IPs have been handed over under threat of arrest and seizure. This is eerily familiar. Just how slippery has this particular slope become?
posted by Embryo at 9:39 PM PST - 70 comments

Imbedded backdoor reporter - I like it below the fold! AMERICAblog is soliciting suggestions for protest signs to commemorate the national Press Club's panel on blogging and journalism. Dirty cracks abound. Surely some of our resident wits can add to the ribaldry. (NSFW)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:21 PM PST - 15 comments

Yo, books! Absolute masses of maths, physics, and CS books chez bhargav. Via Madame Martin
posted by Wolof at 8:37 PM PST - 7 comments

Alan Greenspan Takes A Bath : a profile of Greenspan
posted by Gyan at 8:30 PM PST - 8 comments

Where do you hide your nasty-ass toilet plunger so the house guests won't see it? Under an attention-getting, gawdy as hell fake plant - duh.
posted by shoppingforsanity at 8:28 PM PST - 20 comments

Illusion of Gaia and my cousin David
posted by Tlogmer at 7:24 PM PST - 20 comments

So the story as I understand it is that this guy (.mp3) is a manager for a Jack in the Box restaurant. He was on his way to a meeting, was running a little late and called in to leave a voicemail message. While he was leaving the message, he witnessed an auto accident and basically gives us play-by-play of the events. It's pretty entertaining, but I'm not sure if I completely believe it. Apparently it was quite the talk within the Jack in the Box family.
posted by Witty at 7:00 PM PST - 23 comments

Look who came to Lebowski Fest West! I love that picture. He really tied the Fest together.
posted by tizzie at 6:25 PM PST - 25 comments

In a shocking, or not turn of events the Pope may be getting a feeding tube to match Terry Schaivo's and complement his big hat.
posted by petrilli at 6:04 PM PST - 58 comments

Brian Eno's next big thing?! Politics, it appears. Brian Eno, an outspoken opponent of Tony Blair's administration in Britain, has started up http://www.libdemthistime.org, encouraging prominent Brits to show their support for the Liberal Democrats. If that isn't enough, he's helping bankroll the father of a British soldier killed in Iraq to run against Tony Blair in his constituency, in the hope of unseating him. Could Labour win and Tony lose?
posted by insomnia_lj at 5:46 PM PST - 47 comments

Time Traveling with Tetsuya Mizuguchi: an auditory interview with the producer of such classics as Rez, Space Channel 5, and Lumines. (via)
posted by graventy at 5:10 PM PST - 5 comments

What's going on in Kyrgyzstan? Remember what happened in Georgia and Ukraine? Now it's Kyrgyzstan's turn. Unimpressed with February's Parliamentary election, Kyrgyz stormed across the country and drove President Askar Akayev and his buddies into exile. Can Kyrgyzstan's heretofore weak and divided opposition hold together enough to make real improvements? And who's next?
posted by thirteenkiller at 4:56 PM PST - 18 comments

Ever noticed how silly those people dancing in music videos start looking when you turn the sound off? Next June, see that live as a spectator at the Glastonbury festival, which will feature a Silent Disco this year in an effort to sidestep noise curfews.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 4:26 PM PST - 23 comments

The experiment has ended. Roughly 8 months ago, the Star Tribune joined forces with blogger Twins Geek. The hope: a productive union of traditional journalism and online weblogs. The verdict: an unholy marriage, apparently. And this was just a baseball blog.
posted by panoptican at 4:03 PM PST - 3 comments

Johnnie Cochran, R.I.P. "Cochran died at his home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles of an inoperable brain tumor, according to his brother-in-law Bill Baker. His wife and his two sisters were with him at the time of his death. "Cochran, his family and colleagues were secretive about his illness to protect the attorney's privacy as well as the network of Cochran law offices that largely draw their cachet from his presence. But Cochran confirmed in a Sept. 2004 interview with The Times that he was being treated by the eminent neurosurgeon Keith Black at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles."
posted by allaboutgeorge at 3:27 PM PST - 89 comments

Get Me a Faith Healer, STAT!
Marvin Andrews, a Trinidadian and Tobagoan defender with the Glasgow Rangers, sustained damage to his knee that team doctors say requires surgery to repair. He's decided that God will repair him and says that he will continue practicing and playing. This is on the heels of a recent faith-healed groin injury.
The question is this, if a professional athlete refuses to take the advice of the team's doctors and continues to play with an injury, is his team still responsible for his health and well-being? What about paying out his contract if the injury progresses to the point where he can no longer play?
posted by fenriq at 1:45 PM PST - 19 comments

"...God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." The re-introduction of this bill on March 3rd seemed to have been hardly noticed. It was first brought up last year by Senator Richard Shelby, Rep. Robert Aderholt, and Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore. I wonder if section 201 of the CRA will affect Article VI, Sect. 2. (born of, the 2004 thread (s))
posted by john at 1:34 PM PST - 47 comments

MC Hawking's A Brief History of Rhyme (Flash) silliness for a Tuesday afternoon.
posted by furtive at 12:55 PM PST - 15 comments

Sony Ordered to pay 90.1 million in damages, and immediately stop selling Playstation 2's that come with a dual shock controller. Why has this not been in the news?
posted by AMWKE at 12:36 PM PST - 25 comments

Suppressing Free Speech
On "...Monday, March 28, the Secret Service called three everyday people into their offices to discuss why we were kicked out of a presidential event in Denver last week where Bush promoted his plan to privatize Social Security. What they revealed to us and our lawyer was fascinating.

There we were - three people who had personally picked up tickets from Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez's office and went to a presidential event. But as we entered, we were told that we had been 'ID'ed' and were warned that any disruption would get us arrested. After being seated in the audience we were forcibly removed before the President arrived, even though we had not been disruptive. We were shocked when told that this presidential event was a "private event" and were commanded to leave....The Secret Service revealed that we were 'ID'ed' when local Republican staffers saw a bumper sticker on the car we drove which said 'No More Blood For Oil.'" Related Associated Press story.
posted by ericb at 11:30 AM PST - 142 comments

White Power if it's a boy, Aryan Justice if it's a girl.
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:26 AM PST - 142 comments

Clonus (AKA Parts: the Clonus Horror) was released on DVD today. This ultracheap 1979 sci-fi thriller is about a compound where clones are raised, unaware that their purpose in life is to provide harvested organs (more detail here). MST3K sent it up, the Onion sneers at it, but this NY Times review (reg. reqd., scroll down) is respectful. You can rent it now, or you can wait until July for the megabudget, Michael Bay-directed version of the same damn story.
posted by barjo at 9:28 AM PST - 25 comments

Mind control revealed. Derren Brown, magician turned hypnotist, performs amazing feats of mind control and then gives away the basic psychological tricks he uses. The link is to the video clips from England's Channel 4, an article is here. Via boingboing.
posted by blahblahblah at 9:19 AM PST - 31 comments

Radio David Byrne. Music for haircuts.
posted by liam at 8:12 AM PST - 12 comments

Laura K. Pahl is a plagiarist. In which a blogger exacts poetic justice on a spoiled little rich girl at university.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 8:04 AM PST - 560 comments

Laser vaporization employed to create Superatoms, atomic clusters that behave like individual atoms and could be used to create new materials.
posted by dfowler at 7:49 AM PST - 11 comments

Southeast Asian refugees, like other immigrant populations, have had a mix of experiences and successes since they began arriving in the U.S. in the 1970s. Among the refugees, two groups, the Mien and the Hmong, tribes who populate the mountains of Laos and Thailand, fled when the Communists took over. Today, some Mien, also known to some Asians as the Yao, continue to live in China, where they are a recognized minority group and elsewhere. Large numbers of the Mien people have settled in Portland, Ore., and California, and appear to be doing pretty well. The Hmong settled primarily in Minneapolis and St. Paul because their military leader, Gen. Vang Pao settled there. You may have read about the Hmong man who killed six white hunters, claiming racial animosity, but before that occurred, the Hmong themselves have experienced one tragedy after another.
posted by etaoin at 6:52 AM PST - 17 comments

The Nature of Normal Human Variety A talk with Dr. Armand Leroi (his website). "Almost uniquely among modern scientific problems [the problem of normal human variety] is a problem that we can apprehend as we walk down the street. We live in an age now where the deepest scientific problems are buried away from our immediate perception. They concern the origin of the universe. They concern the relationships of subatomic particles. They concern the nature and structure of the human genome. Nobody can see these things without large bits of expensive equipment. But when I consider the problem of human variety I feel as Aristotle must have felt when he first walked down to the shore at Lesvos for the first time. The world is new again." (via Arts & Letters Daily)
posted by Kattullus at 4:58 AM PST - 17 comments

Does the right to life trump the right to die? In an increasingly hysterical debate surrounding Terry Schiavo, Garret Keizer provides a thought-provoking analysis of who should decide when and how a person dies: "The alarms raised in America’s ongoing right-to-die debate have always been characterized by a curious selectivity. You will notice, for example, how the fear of playing God operates exclusively on one side of the medical playground. Thus to help a patient end his or her life “prematurely” is playing God, while extending it in ways and under conditions that no God lacking horns and a cloven hoof could ever have intended is the mandate of “our Judeo-Christian heritage” and the Hippocratic oath."
posted by MadOwl at 4:46 AM PST - 30 comments

A good reason to hate cats. However if that is not enough, this guy has 32 other reasons to hate cats.
posted by Hands of Manos at 12:14 AM PST - 70 comments

The Human Condition. A Mac-based homage to Magritte. [via]
posted by Slithy_Tove at 12:01 AM PST - 20 comments

A look at the US through China's eyes. The US has been critical of China's human rights practices for decades. In retaliation, China examines the US, and finds it comes up short in many ways. Instead of indulging itself in publishing the "human rights country report" to censure other countries unreasonably, the United States should reflect on its erroneous behavior on human rights and take its own human rights problems seriously. Summarized text in NYT
posted by crunchland at 9:20 PM PST - 53 comments

Blogging it Live from outside SCOTUS and MGM vs. Grokster, it's NickD.
posted by malaprohibita at 7:36 PM PST - 16 comments

New Chemical Brothers video. (Flash/WMV/Real). With great power comes better special effects.
posted by jeremias at 6:46 PM PST - 45 comments

Joash Woodrow. An artist who's story is not unlike that of Henry Darger - a recluse who's lifetime of work has only recently been discovered. But unlike Darger, Woodrow was British, and a trained artist who studied alongside Frank Auerbach and Peter Blake. And he's still alive. Now this pensioner, who's lifetime of painting, drawing and sculpture was discovered by accident while his family were halfway through incinerating it, is being called "one of the great British artists of the 20th Century" and the price of his paintings, which call to mind Picasso, Soutine and Rouault, are skyrocketing. Aged 77, and confined to a nursing home, he is unwilling to ever paint again or discuss his art, and it is unclear if he is enjoying the benefits of his belated success.
posted by fire&wings at 5:35 PM PST - 19 comments

Sails to harness Vox Populi winds : "Technology is changing politics" [ not to mention journalism ] intones the well connected Personal Democracy Forum, and everybody's leaping into the "Blogging vs. Journalism" fray. Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media, has quit his job after receiving seed money from Mitch Kapor and from Omidyar Networks, to found the for-profit "Grassroots Media Inc." : Gillmor's got a hand, as well, in the noble and name studded OurMedia.org : "We'll host your media forever — for free.....Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads"

Meanwhile, SusanG - in her most recent recently released investigative piece into the Jeff Gannon/fake journalism scandal notes her research group's effort "now encompasses so much more than Gannon" and announces future stories will post under the organizational name of ePluribus Media

"We're the People ! No you're not, we're the People ! No way ! We're the...."
posted by troutfishing at 5:24 PM PST - 110 comments

Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal Years 2005-2011 --a Dept. of Homeland Security document outlining groups to watch out for in the coming years completely omits rightwing and militia groups and individuals as a threat. Clearly listed in the document? ELF and ALF--leftwing groups that destroy property, but have never murdered, unlike Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph and the many others who have arsenals and plenty of hatred, and have already proven themselves killers.
posted by amberglow at 5:11 PM PST - 15 comments

e-file ... FREE-file. Yes, TurboTax too. via Tom Martino's radio show
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:00 PM PST - 15 comments

The Bible as sentencing device If the Constitution sanctions such direct reliance on religious sources when imposing criminal sentences, then there is nothing to stop prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers from regularly citing religious sources like the Bible, the Talmud, or the Koran to justify their respective positions on punishment.
posted by docpops at 4:25 PM PST - 46 comments

360°, semi-panormaic, bullet-time, mega-wicked light graffiti. That is all. [via]
posted by panoptican at 3:38 PM PST - 16 comments

From her perspective, it was just opening fire by a tank. Giuliana Sgrena, the freed Italian journalist who was shot at by American troops upon her release, sets the record straight: there was no checkpoint, she was on a secure VIP road that runs directly from the Green Zone to the Baghdad airport, and her car was shot at from behind. Transcript, audio, and video of an interview with Naomi Klein, who talked to Sgrena in Rome.
posted by muckster at 3:33 PM PST - 38 comments

The next logical step in living wills
posted by Asparagirl at 2:46 PM PST - 20 comments

• Things which we will rock:
- you

• Songs in list form:
- the best thing ever to come from LiveJournal
- Amazingly addictive
- via waxy.org
posted by me3dia at 2:44 PM PST - 86 comments

The narrative strategies of Genesis, according to EL Doctorow.
posted by semmi at 2:38 PM PST - 8 comments

As long as we're on the subject of Lovecraft, did you know that his works had inspired a role-playing game, a cute plush toy, a breakfast cereal, and a number of blasphemously bad films (flash, sound)? The best, though, is the unspeakably evil musical.
posted by gurple at 1:57 PM PST - 26 comments

Mustache March is a silly little idea/project where every guy at a company grows a mustache during March, they take photos, then at the end of the month a BBQ fundraiser is thrown with proceeds going to a charity. A side benefit is that the month of ridiculous facial hair leads to questions from strangers which leads to awareness of the charity. I only wish I had heard of this in February.
posted by mathowie at 1:47 PM PST - 30 comments

Happy Dingus Day! The little known day-after-Easter holiday originally celebrated in Poland involves men dumping water on women and women chasing men around with sticks or pussywillows.
posted by tsarfan at 11:19 AM PST - 28 comments

The Liner. "The entire graduating class of Hamline University, 1925, in drawings of varying quality made semi-nightly in about one hour each." (Appears to be by our very own interrobang.)
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 10:52 AM PST - 44 comments

On this day in 1963 Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" was released into the world, causing us to forever tread lightly around pigeons. Anyone wanna lend me $18,950 so I can celebrate?
posted by shoppingforsanity at 10:38 AM PST - 21 comments

Strange dolls
posted by madamjujujive at 10:08 AM PST - 29 comments

Conceived in 2003 and modeled after West Point, The National Military Academy of Afghanistan began its academic year last week, welcoming its first class of soldiers to pass basic training, after which they'll complete a four-year Academy degree and become commissioned officers. Back in February, a US officer passed on photos of the Academy's opening. "We had kids walk into the Academy with nothing but the clothes they were wearing and open sandals, (no socks). These are good cadets."
posted by jenleigh at 9:13 AM PST - 36 comments

Magnitude 8.2 earthquake off Indonesia Tsunami warning bulletins are posted here.
posted by Mwongozi at 9:06 AM PST - 74 comments

The results are in for the Best of Photojournalism 2005 . From sports to nature, from sorrow to celebration, photojournalists around the world continue to document humanity’s highs and lows 24-7.
posted by TheGoldenOne at 8:42 AM PST - 8 comments

A Living Saint.
Audrey causes a frenzy with her blessings.
Her mother clears the corners
and opens the doors, ringing in the constituency
and clicking the number-cruncher as they come.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:49 AM PST - 13 comments

Condi's plan for Iraq: cut and run. Conservative columnist Robert Novak -- the same guy who hung Valerie Plame out to dry -- launches the media campaign to prepare the US electorate for withdrawal even if, as he puts it with exquisite understatement, "what is left behind does not constitute perfection." (I'll say.) US commander Gen. George Casey seems to be on the same page.
posted by digaman at 7:40 AM PST - 64 comments

Human beings have a gift for fantasy which shows itself at a very early age and then continues to make all sorts of contributions to our intellectual and emotional life throughout the life span.
posted by dfowler at 7:33 AM PST - 8 comments

The Happy Poster Project : because Nothing is Unpossible.
posted by whatnot at 7:07 AM PST - 18 comments

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Brought peace? Oh. Peace? Shut up!
posted by gimonca at 5:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Cell phone art is here. Not to be confused with art by or about cellphones, Wooster Collective is offering art for your cellphone. The project is designed to raise money for young artists, "in much the same way that a songwriter can earn money from radio play."
posted by grapefruitmoon at 5:31 AM PST - 1 comment

The time for more public poetry is at hand with the soon-to-arrive National Poetry Month. Perhaps you favor love poems? Poets and Writers listed the 25 best (among those online: #1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 13, 15, 19). Or perhaps ballads with a beat? This was once considered the best example, but this offensive poem is even more famous. Of course, nonsense is good, as is alliteration. Eager to take your own turn? Try some complex forms. Double sestina, anyone?
posted by blahblahblah at 10:54 PM PST - 21 comments

skydiving photos skydiving or skydriving (via)
posted by hortense at 10:19 PM PST - 39 comments

Paul Hester, Aussie drummer of such antipodean bands as Split Enz and Crowded House (as well as occasional television performer), has committed suicide at 46.
posted by scody at 10:10 PM PST - 41 comments

International signage. Gaian philosophy. Psychedelic illumination. Bohemian Cats. Crones. Radical Fairies. Though the venerable Rider-Waite (available in several versions), Crowley's Thoth, and the enduring Tarot de Marseilles continue to dominate most people's idea of Tarot, independent decks featuring a variety of themes breathe new life into the historical Tarot. No longer merely a fortune-teller's prop, Tarot is gaining popularity as a tool for do-it-yourself therapy. Even skeptics, who once speculated the decks were "used ... mainly in fortune telling" by emotionally crippled adults, are reluctantly (and subtly) revising their commentary on the cards.) Massive review sites post sample card images and extensive reviews. Associations and mailing lists provide community, and authors give away detailed "how to" courseware online. With thousands of decks on the market -- incorporating everything from the Life of Lord Buddha to subtle jabs at America's Favorite Fool -- your deck (even your virtual deck) is out there.
posted by MadeByMark at 8:39 AM PST - 26 comments

Happy Easter, everyone!
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 6:13 AM PST - 24 comments

The Tasmanian Tiger or thylacine [Thylacinus cynocephalus], a marsupial, was thought to have become extinct when the last known animal died in captivity from exposure in 1936. There have been numerous alleged sightings since. A German tourist supposedly photographed one recently (free reg.). Now there's a reward out for producing a live specimen but with prohibitive conditions requiring a permit that won't be issued. The thylacine cloning project has just been abandoned because the pup (from 1866) was kept in alcohol and not formalin - degrading the DNA.
posted by peacay at 3:40 AM PST - 16 comments

"Time: elusive and immediate...limited yet infinite. Because time is important to you, Hewlett-Packard introduces the HP-01, a new dimension in time management and personal computation." Truly, such an important model number could only be bestowed upon the king of all early calculator watches. No less than three batteries were required (two for the LED display alone), and even HP's impressive engineering was unable to save the HP-01 from the curse of bulkiness; it did not sell well at the $650 price point. The HP-01 was discontinued in 1980, as inexpensive LCD calculator watches began flooding the market (don't lie, you know you had one).
posted by Galvatron at 12:03 AM PST - 17 comments

Another victim of 'The Amazon Treatment'. Remember the Amazon post from the other day? Well, if you liked that, you'll love this one. This time, it's an anal douche getting what I'm calling "The Amazon Treatment". Amazon's going to scope this out and delete the 'reviews' - therefore if you're so inclined here's your chance to wallow in the merriment. If it's gone by the time you read this, I've copied some of the posts here.
posted by humannature at 9:52 PM PST - 19 comments

Net Disaster lets you destroy your favorite websites.
posted by nathan_teske at 8:54 PM PST - 16 comments

Necessity has nothing to do with it. But I'm glad someone's dreaming up these things.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:50 PM PST - 10 comments

Kris Kross loves bloggers
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:17 PM PST - 21 comments

Crispin Sartwell is a cryptic and sensational man. The Chair of Humanities and Sciences at the Maryland Institute College of Art, he has translated the Tao Te Ching, published philosophy papers and books, maintained pages on hip hop, founded the American Nihilist Party (and gave a speech to young Democrats urging them to reconsider their votes for John Kerry), taught courses on conjuring and illusion, etc. etc. See also his essay on the pagan cult of mathematics and his thought experiment on music.
posted by painquale at 6:16 PM PST - 17 comments

Tired of accidentally catching a second or two of FOXNews? I personally don't have this problem but if FOXNews is driving you so nuts you just can't take it anymore, we now may have a solution for you. Not sure if (or how???) this little filter would actually work. I cannot wait for someone to do a detailed dissection online.
posted by pwb503 at 3:40 PM PST - 38 comments

Putting his money where his mouth is regarding the recent Symantec (Norton Utilities, Anti-Virus etc.) Mac OS X virus claims...? Seems not to be, but the fellow who was sponsoring the $25,000 reward has a, shall we say, checkered past. Mac users are still waiting for the first real attack. I could live without it, but this particular religious war (however insane and inane it can get) does liven up our computing experience. If the pop-unders at MacDailyNews get around your browser's pop-up blocker, go here.
posted by indices at 2:35 PM PST - 13 comments

Oh Wolfie! Wolfie! Invade me like you invaded Iraq! Pegged to head the World Bank, is Wolfowitz' lover, Shaha Riza, one of the reasons we invaded Iraq? Critics say it would be impossible for Wolfie - as he is nicknamed by Bush - to make independent decisions when his lover, who works on Middle Eastern and North African issues, is so committed to overthrowing Middle Eastern regimes. "His womanising has come home to roost," a Washington insider said. "Paul was a foreign policy hawk long before he met Shaha but it doesn't look good to be accused of being under the thumb of your mistress."
posted by amberglow at 1:21 PM PST - 34 comments

Chankonabe. If you've ever wondered how sumotori achieve their epic bulk, this article from Gastronomica details the complex preparation and serving rituals of the (perhaps not) delicious, protein-rich chunky soup that's the staple of their diet (with recipe helpfully included).
posted by melissa may at 11:09 AM PST - 7 comments

Hello. I am stuck in rehab with Pat O'Brien. I don't know what's worse, being stuck in rehab with Pat O'Brien or being addicted to painkillers.

With that, Pat O'Brien buried his face in his hands and cried.
posted by miss lynnster at 10:50 AM PST - 35 comments

On the role of government. The Houston Chronicle had a story (404 now) on then governor Bush's 1999 law giving hospitals the power to remove life support of the terminally ill. The decision hinges on the prognosis and, of course, the patient's ability to pay. The law recently gave power to the Texas Children's Hospital to remove the breathing tube of a 6-month old infant over his mother's wishes. What do people who support Bush's intervention in the Schiavo case think about Bush's Futile Care Law?
posted by jikel_morten at 8:10 AM PST - 85 comments

A Child's View of the Army "....Like every other boy he was going through the little green army men phase....Gabe is roughly five years old and very articulate. Thus it should have come as little surprise when he began having one army man in charge, and the rest start building something. "Sir, we're ready to build the rocket." " : Five year old Gabe explains - via stacked creamers and table bricabrac, at an IHOP breakfast - the ramifications of mindless subservience to authority.
posted by troutfishing at 6:43 AM PST - 26 comments

Sugar Bush Squirrel Sugar Bush Squirrel is 'The Military Mascot' and a 'Superhero' to our troops everywhere. She is working to keep our country free while helping to free Iraq. Sugar Bush Squirrel is boosting the morale of our military troops everywhere by posing for humorous photos in military clothing with guns, tanks, planes and helicopters while wearing helmets, camouflage caps and a turban. Watch for more of her military shots in the near future as they shoot around the globe for freedom!!!
posted by srboisvert at 4:58 AM PST - 29 comments

Remember this? It has won recognition as "Best Interactive Viral" in the Viral Awards. With all the viral¹ and stealth² marketing campaigns, comment spam, astroturfing³, and other tools that marketeers are using to infiltrate the Brave New(ish) World of blog, we sometimes forget that we also have the power to do good, so "you know, like, reclaim the streets, or re-frame the conversation, or some damn thing". Words of wisdom from our not-so-subservient chicken. [and, a bit more...]
posted by taz at 1:15 AM PST - 20 comments

"I'm going to just come right out and say this... I've been trying to avoid this, to avoid telling this, because if you know this you'll fucking hate me or at least think less of me... I know I'm not a slut, I mean, maybe I am, perhaps I am! but does that matter? ... I've become a prostitute." [nsfw]
posted by tranquileye at 7:52 PM PST - 69 comments

Scientific American to stop reporting science, more creationism. There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming...But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 6:58 PM PST - 205 comments

Average accessories for your laptop computer. But I suppose Proporta has been expanding its target demographic lately with this device.
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:11 PM PST - 19 comments

Breakfast Brawl is some very fun Friday Flash Fun Mike Tyson's Punch-Out style. This is a direct link to the .swf...if you'd like to play the original (small and full of ads) hit it up here.
posted by gren at 1:38 PM PST - 25 comments

Meet the NSP It was a long time ago, you understand. 1957-58, if you will. One of the best 27mb movie files you will see this year. the real story is somewhat different.
posted by yonation at 1:06 PM PST - 20 comments

A tool that turns English into computer code? Maybe someday. Metafor is a code visualizer from researchers at MIT which produces non-executable (but meaningfully-structured) code out of natural language. Here is a quicktime demonstration of what it looks like in action. Here's the paper as a PDF.
posted by Hildago at 12:35 PM PST - 23 comments

Chicken Payback [WMP streaming video; Real Player stream here.] At first, this music video from The Bees [Flash site] seems like a quick, harmless Friday diversion. Not for me, though. For me, it’s rapidly becoming a truly painful earworm, and worse: is there such a thing as an “eyeworm?”
posted by Man O' Straw at 12:24 PM PST - 12 comments

Social Explorer. "Social Explorer is dedicated to providing demographic information in an easily understood format, data maps. We serve hundreds of interactive data maps of United States. Here, you can visually analyze and understand the demography of the U.S., explore your neighborhood and learn about the people that live around you."
posted by jokeefe at 11:26 AM PST - 13 comments

Nicaragua and El Salvador, Tres Santos, Honduras, Peru , that Geoff Watts guy can write about coffee.
posted by jonah at 10:30 AM PST - 2 comments

Paintings Inspired by the Music of Frank Zappa. The cynical and humorous representations of show business appeared to be reflected in the music they were listening to at the time - the music of Frank Zappa - which led to the next series of paintings, inspired by and celebrating the music and lyrics of Zappa.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Consolidated B-24 Liberator nose art archive. Signs of the zodiac, dirty jokes, self-fulfilling prophecies, and stumpers. (Some questionable content [NSFW-ish] and site design)
posted by breezeway at 9:47 AM PST - 7 comments

TORK! For your friday flash fun, a game about...linguistics? Learn a language, have some fun. Now if only I could figure out how to work that damn oven....
posted by jearbear at 9:15 AM PST - 31 comments

Friday flash fun.
posted by panoptican at 9:13 AM PST - 14 comments

A foundation has been established to help the Iraqi orphans that survived the January shooting (earlier Mefi thread) by American forces. There's also more recent information about the shooting in this Newsweek article. Check out this BoingBoing post to read an e-mail from the photographer that witnessed the shooting and is now establishing this foundation.
posted by exhilaration at 8:41 AM PST - 8 comments

"In the end, it's the audience that counts." Imax theater chains take imaginary sides in the pretend controversy over evolution.
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 7:29 AM PST - 125 comments

Peak Oil discussed in the US Congress. Roscoe Bartlett (Rep. 6th District, Maryland - R) delivers a presentation on Peak Oil to the 109th United States Congress. More here and a backup of the full text with a bit more of an introduction by Rep. Gilchrest here (PDF)
posted by loquacious at 7:23 AM PST - 47 comments

The World Expo 2005 opened doors to visitors today. Attractions include robots, a mammoth, and participating countries from Australia to Zimbabwe. Some think that in the age of the Internet and intercontinental travel, world expos are becoming obsolete; others think the Aichi Expo might spawn a new industry: industrial tourism. The last Expo in Japan was held in Osaka in 1970, and brought us arguably the world's ugliest artifact.
posted by sour cream at 6:13 AM PST - 7 comments

The New York City Department of Education has recalled 3rd-7th grade basic math prep materials after finding multiple errors. Like what? Multiplication errors, addition errors, poorly worded questions, and incorrectly spelling Fourth on the cover of the Fourth Grade Book. "The fact is, if third- or fifth-grade students made the mistakes made in the test prep materials, they would be flunked and no one would be asking them for an explanation."
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:53 AM PST - 43 comments

Pretty and pretty interesting: unrooted haplotype networks -- diagrams showing the relation and mutational distance between different sets of DNA, with haplotypes represented by circles proportional to haplotype frequency, joined by lines proportional to mutational difference between haplotypes -- in cichlid fish (on page 3 ) [pdf], in stone loach fish ( on page 3) [pdf], in lesser prairie chickens (on page 6) [pdf] and in a ring species! (on page 2) [pdf]
posted by orthogonality at 4:26 AM PST - 14 comments

The greatest sexual moments in video game history. From Rampage to the cheapest japanese NES games to Mortal Kombat and beyond, someone out there took the energy better spent on... anything else to create a list of sexuality in societys black sheep: Video games. Does not hold preference to any sexual preference, NSFW.
posted by Dean Keaton at 9:34 PM PST - 30 comments

Inspired by Abe Vigoda: The Terri Shiavo mortality-status Firefox plugin.
posted by docgonzo at 8:33 PM PST - 62 comments

He-Man mini comics
posted by srboisvert at 8:20 PM PST - 16 comments

Haunted Possessed Disney Stitch Teddy Dangerous? No reserve - I just want it gone.
posted by limitedpie at 6:50 PM PST - 22 comments

Pumpkingutter. It's not particularly seasonal, but... pumpkins!
posted by Wolfdog at 4:45 PM PST - 5 comments

Smegma
(so NSFW it isn't funny at all, most links are not safe either)
'The animal kingdom would probably cease to exist without smegma.' - Thomas Ritter, MD.
Smegma's a widely misunderstood substance, rather than being a noxious waste product it moisturizes the glans and keeps it smooth, soft, and supple. Its antibacterial and antiviral properties keep the penis clean and healthy though a build up can result in balanitis. Here's an article on how to collect it for experimentation as an extracted bacterium from smegma has been successfully used to treat bladder cancer as well as a strange experiment on the potential carcinogenic effects of smegma on mice (hint, there were none found, if anything, the smegma'ed mice outlived the control mice). Smegma is also related to vernix, the cheese-like substance on a newborn's skin.

Lots of humor to be had, including the Devil's Dictionary definition as well as a band called, yeah, Smegma and even a cocktail recipe for something called a Smegma Delight (vodka, bourbon and parmesan cheese, umm, pass).
posted by fenriq at 4:35 PM PST - 48 comments

T. rex soft tissue! No, not dino-kleenex -- scientists have extracted organic compounds from a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex bone. Can Jurassic Park be far behind?
posted by jimray at 3:07 PM PST - 40 comments

Happy Birthday Steve McQueen! He would have been 75 today. Sadly, his particular brand of cool died in 1980. He created some of the most memorable screen characters of all time. His breakthrough role was in the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive, which will be released on DVD this summer. Want a poster? He was a man of action, a troublemaker, a race car driver, and, most importantly, a paragon of cool. He's been immortalized in dozens of songs and at least one album. And even though he's dead, he's still driving that Mustang.
posted by goatdog at 2:07 PM PST - 40 comments

"The purpose of the Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair is to get kids excited about Creation and motivate them to discover the truth of our Lord on their own."
Winning exhibits this year include "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)", "Women Were Designed For Homemaking", and "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria".
Via
posted by Mwongozi at 12:30 PM PST - 74 comments

The Lost Worlds of the Romanovs
posted by anastasiav at 12:27 PM PST - 5 comments

What About Judas? Dante condems Judas to eternal damnation in the darkest, deepest circle of hell. But what if someone came to the great traitor's defense in a trial to win his entrance into heaven? The playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis imagines just such a scenario in "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot," directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and running at the Public Theater in New York City. More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:56 AM PST - 21 comments

Witness "I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated." -James Nachtwey- (First post, I don't know if this is a re-post, if so--sorry!)
posted by countzen at 11:24 AM PST - 30 comments

For 30 days, we're going to shut down that illegal alien smuggling alley Ok, probably not; but when the War on Terror™ doesn't seem to include our own borders, what else is a citizen to do? The President has this take: "I'm against vigilantes in the United States of America," Mr. Bush said at a joint press conference. "I'm for enforcing the law in a rational way." Is the Minute Man project irrational? When the government refuses to put troops on the borders or even beef up the current border patrol, what are the available options?
posted by j.p. Hung at 11:05 AM PST - 49 comments

Fake name. Fake reporter. Fake news agency....Fake Marine ! Latest tasty research treat from Propagannon Group : Guckert lied re military service. Whips 'n chains and web based military theme escort services ? Whatever. Hey, I'm a social libertarian. But lying about being in the marines? - Tacky.
posted by troutfishing at 11:01 AM PST - 126 comments

Yahoo Releases a beta tool that searches for Creative Commons content. It even allows you to specify the type of license you're interested in (derivitive works, commercial use). Lawrence Lessig obviously has something to say about it. If nothing else, it will increase awareness of the cause.
posted by o2b at 11:00 AM PST - 8 comments

The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights is slowly making its way through the Florida Senate. This bill would give students the right to sue professors if they feel their beliefs are not being respected during a class.
posted by hex1848 at 11:00 AM PST - 58 comments

Weightless in Sweden
posted by meg6212 at 9:47 AM PST - 20 comments

"In every existing government we find clamor, abuses of power, newspapers with triumphant, lying headlines, lies of every kind in public life. This being the case, someone like me, who understands nothing of politics, is compelled to think about politics and despair of ever understanding it, is compelled to envision something entirely different." Natalia Ginzburg, Member of the Italian Parliament, writer, and critic.
posted by semmi at 9:44 AM PST - 4 comments

Bee crimes against the colony. Worker policing: the policing of insect societies.
posted by dfowler at 7:30 AM PST - 15 comments

Vincent Canby never saw a Woody Allen [nyt reg. req.] movie he didn't greet with a superlative. The director's new Melinda and Melinda opened in Brooklyn yesterday. Critical reaction has ranged from lukewarm to quite negative. Alternet and n+1 call this a case of miscastration. Is the shark dead or has it been jumped? [n+1 and suicide girls interview via gawker.]
posted by oldleada at 7:14 AM PST - 21 comments

The Undoing of America. Gore Vidal on war for oil, politics-free elections, and the late, great U.S. Constitution. And he doesn't pull his punches either.
posted by acrobat at 7:03 AM PST - 92 comments

Now I have stolen some things from bars, and I know some people who have a hard time not stealing something. Most of us are just happy with the toiletries from hotels. These guys trump everyone - they stole an entire house
posted by thebwit at 5:05 AM PST - 30 comments

What is the ID SNIPER(TM) rifle? "It is used to implant a GPS-microchip in the body of a human being, using a high powered sniper rifle as the long distance injector. [...] At the same time a digital camcorder with a zoom-lense fitted within the scope will take a high-resolution picture of the target. This picture will be stored on a memory card for later image-analysis." Other popular products by Empire North include JUJU the Citizen Eye. Empire North is run by Jakob Boeskov.
posted by sour cream at 4:52 AM PST - 22 comments

Koalas.txt
posted by LimePi at 3:17 AM PST - 58 comments

Iconic graffiti artist and cult hero, Banksy, has expanded his 'establishment' art resumé with exhibits in New York's most important art galleries.

Not very guerrilla of him.

Except that the galleries didn't know.
Naughty Banksy.
posted by NinjaPirate at 2:17 AM PST - 41 comments

The US Living Will Registry electronically stores advance directives, and makes them available to health care providers 24 hours/day via secure internet or telephone facsimile... a free service, by the way. Be sure to check out the state-by-state list of Advance Directive Forms. See also, the American Bar Associations information for advanced medical directives.
posted by crunchland at 9:55 PM PST - 11 comments

Weathering the Weather: The Origins of Atmospheric Science A "glorious selection" of strikingly beautiful pages from classic publications about meteorology. [via plep].
posted by mediareport at 9:44 PM PST - 8 comments

Big Box Reuse: How Communities are Re-Using the Big Box. (via, via Planetizen)
posted by shoepal at 9:41 PM PST - 3 comments

Eat like an Athiest or eat like Jesus. Because godless heathens know how to make 2 minute microwave cakes while good Christians might whip up the prodigal son's fatted calf.
posted by wtfwjd? at 8:13 PM PST - 17 comments

A mandala is a symbol of the universe. It is a diagram whose colors, lines, and forms all have meaning. In the Buddhist religion, mandalas are used in sacred ceremonies and meditation, to help people on their journey toward spiritual enlightenment. Mandalas have been made since ancient times. They can be painted on cloth or carved or created from sand.
If you don't like those, you can just make pretty sand pictures on your monitor.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 8:09 PM PST - 9 comments

GM in trouble: "If you erased the company name from the balance sheet and showed it to a forensic accountant, the recommended treatment would probably be to seek protection from creditors by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. " GM's troubles are as much a result of the exploding costs of health care as they are due to the company's dropping market share. In Canada increasing health care costs (PDF with many charts) are taking a greater and greater share of government expenditures. In the US it's hurting big employers and regular people. But either way the problem doesn't seem likely to get better any time soon.
posted by bowline at 7:14 PM PST - 43 comments

Mo' MAO. "If you stare at a red shape for a long time, when you turn away, your retina will hold the image but you will see a green version of the same shape. In the same way, when I lived in China, I saw the positive image of Mao so many times that my mind now holds a negative image of Mao. In my art I am transferring this psychological feeling to a physical object." --Zhang Hongtu
posted by gimonca at 6:50 PM PST - 15 comments

david hasselhoff 2005 calendar even worse than it sounds - startled by my girfriends screaming, i rushed over to see what was the matter. this is what is the matter.
posted by subpixel at 6:50 PM PST - 37 comments

solar deathray
posted by philcliff at 5:59 PM PST - 19 comments

Physicians and scientists around the world even go as far as to state that smoking leads to premature death. Don’t we all know someone who smokes constantly, even heavily, yet is still living — or has lived — to the mature age of eighty, ninety, and older? Furthermore, the MDs and PhDs state that smoking causes cancer and emphysema. If this diagnosis were definitive, wouldn’t these afflictions affect all smokers equally, rather than the small percentage that it actually does affect?
posted by Eekacat at 5:29 PM PST - 77 comments

Look up more - Improv Everywhere has been mentioned before but this latest mission is the largest yet. After reading about it here, I wonder how many people signed up for the NYC list? Were there any other MeFites there? I was window 39...
posted by xmod2 at 5:11 PM PST - 11 comments

Can you never think of the right thing to say? Trouble relating in social circumstances? Maybe Taxi1010 can help. This guide to verbal self-defense is extensive, detailed, and quite clearly the work of a troubled mind. Start here, or search by insult on the "sunporch", key/codeword in the "kitchen", bridge in the "wine cellar", or response in the "nursery." Examine one of the many, many stargates(use this handy map, organized by stage of psychological development)... read one of the many, many essays... wherever you go it is an explosion of advice, comebacks, hypothetical situations, and who knows how many MSPaint masterpieces. Spend a minute, spend a day, spend your life trying to figure this site out.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:40 PM PST - 31 comments

Kraken comes to The O.C. More dead jumbo squid are washing up along Orange County's coastline, and although that's bad news for the creatures, it's good news for scientists eager to learn more about the mysterious deep-sea dwellers. If your calamarical appetite hasn't been quenched: Squidblog! Also, classical irony with Electra killing the Kraken.
posted by Dante5Inferno at 4:35 PM PST - 13 comments

texas city timewarp... ... and my friend charley lou rattled in her bayou vista home 5 short miles away.
posted by oigocosas at 2:55 PM PST - 19 comments

Have you checked your humors today? Not the gunky jelly stuff in people's eyes, the other kind.

Are you melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, or choleric? Are you a salamander, gnome, nymph or sylph? Earth, water, air or fire? Elf, Ninja, Pirate or Dwarf? (arrrr! buckets of blood! flagons of phlegm and barrels of black bile!)

If nothing else, the theory of humors adds to one's arcane vocabulary.
posted by Capn at 2:17 PM PST - 16 comments

Democracy is kufr. (A 26-page PDF.) "The democracy which the Kaafir West promotes in the Muslim countries is a system of Kufr. It has no connection whatsoever with Islam. It completely contradicts the rules of Islam..." Lots of interesting reading at 1924.org. (Look for the "PDF Version" links, they're a dim light gray in my browser.)
posted by davy at 1:29 PM PST - 23 comments

2 GB of data per second, piggybacking on your skin's electrical field. You == organic lan for small electronic devices. And it's a little more secure than bluetooth. via kottke, like everything else.
posted by Tlogmer at 12:02 PM PST - 24 comments

Free public domain shows & movies streamed to your desktop. Watch "Attack of The Giant Leeches", "Arsenic & Old Lace" and a few other classics (Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, etc.,) The schedule changes hourly from what I can tell. [I didn't directly link to the movies].
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Mythmaker of the Machine Age. In the statue erected above his grave in Amiens, in Picardy, Jules Verne, who died exactly 100 years ago, resembles God. He is, after all, the second-most-translated author on earth, after Agatha Christie. To celebrate the anniversary, there's a Verne exhibition at the Maritime Museum in Paris, one of a series of events from Paris to the western city of Nantes, where Verne was born on Feb. 8, 1828, to the northern town of Amiens, where he died on March 24, 1905. His many fans, some of them quite famous, will be treated to exhibits, concerts, films and shows in Verne's honor. “Underground City”, a lost classic written by Verne and never before published unabridged in English, emerges this month in not one but two new unique editions.
100 years later, questions remain about his life: Why did he have two homes in Amiens? Why did he burn all his private papers? Why was he shot in the foot by his nephew, Gaston, in 1886? Gaston was locked in an asylum for 54 years after his attack on L'Oncle Jules. Was Gaston, in fact, Verne's natural son? More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:44 AM PST - 8 comments

Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei [MP3, Coral cache] has been performed in the Sistine Chapel every Holy Week since 1638, but the haunting a cappella piece had a long, strange trip to get to the outside world.
posted by turbodog at 11:03 AM PST - 26 comments

Fifteen Elvish Ways to Die. Tidy creatures, elves insist on the cleanest of bathrooms. But don't mix bleach and ammonia. Lohaton's skill with the longbow is of no use to him now.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 10:48 AM PST - 12 comments

At the CCC, we're dedicated to putting an end to the victimization associated with purchasing a counterfeit MINI Cooper.
posted by tomplus2 at 10:30 AM PST - 19 comments

The Credit Card Prank Part 2 Not satisified with the results of an earlier experiment, John Hargave kicks it up a notch and tries to get someone, anyone, care about the signature on his credit card receipts.
posted by Robot Johnny at 10:28 AM PST - 27 comments

The art of George Aden "Twok" Ahgupuk: Denali, oomiak, blanket toss, whale hunt, caribou, and quite a few more subjects. Don't miss the fourth-graders.
posted by breezeway at 9:09 AM PST - 1 comment

Local Chaos. In the early 1980's, Ann Arbor, Michigan had a small, but thriving hardcore/skate scene. At the time, the scene was documented in a 'zine called Local Chaos by a guy named Wes and his friends. But the 80's faded, as did the scene and the 'zine, and only the memories were left.
Then, a couple of years ago, Wes created a site dedicated to Local Chaos, and the scene of yore. In the wake of the site going live, several of the bands have gotten back together and even played some live shows. If you've ever wondered what the bald youth of 80's hardcore would look like playing at 40, then check out the music page for current photos, and video clips, of legendary locals like Ground Zero, The State, and arguably Ann Arbor's longest-running punk act, The Cult Heroes. The sCrapbook features a trove of old interviews, photos, and odds and ends. This is a great look back at the Ann Arbor hardcore/skate scene in the 80's.
Punk's not dead!
posted by cows of industry at 8:38 AM PST - 21 comments

Berliner? Or broadsheet. Or tab? Your newspaper may be changing, its looks, its ownership and how it markets itself. Do you value or even need your local paper? Or can you and your neighbors do it yourself? (Scroll down to "backfence" link.)
posted by etaoin at 8:33 AM PST - 12 comments

Jeff Weise's livejournal. The rumors over at livejournal are that Jeff Weise, the shooter in the Red Lake school shooting was a member.
posted by nile_red at 7:43 AM PST - 74 comments

Chicago Poet = Massachusetts Killer. J.J. Jameson lived as a Chicago Type for two decades. We knew him as an old-time activist. An eccentric, somewhat disheveled open-mic reader. An author (scroll down or search page for “cauliflower”). A heavy drinker who tried recovery at least once. A quick-wit rabble-rouser. In short, a Chicago guy, despite the New England accent. He was also the #1 Most Wanted Killer back east. My only question is: if you had killed two people, escaped from prison, turned around an saw no one chasing you, and could end up anywhere you wanted, would you choose to build a life in the influential if somewhat goofball and seasonally cold Chicago Poetry Scene? Or would you go the Caribbean route?
posted by juggernautco at 6:33 AM PST - 128 comments

Nation on film Hundreds of short clips of British life through the years from the BBC, exploring the use of film as an eyewitness to history.
posted by brettski at 4:31 AM PST - 3 comments

Misty Welcome to the mysterious world of MISTY,where the unusual is usual, where the unexpected is expected, where every thrill's a chill. Enjoy your journey through these pages... and the strange lands and people you'll meet. Your friend, Misty
posted by srboisvert at 4:12 AM PST - 19 comments

(A)bort, (I)gnore, (R)evert to Grandma's DNA A jaw-dropping revision to Mendelian inheritance: bad genes can be replaced from a secret ancestral stash. (The same researchers have previously mentioned other ways to get around Mendel.) Also, DNA gets a fake fifth letter.
posted by orthogonality at 3:59 AM PST - 40 comments

looking at buildings A website letting you take a leisurely jaunt around some of the cities of England.
posted by johnnyboy at 3:58 AM PST - 4 comments

The future is now on Amazon.com: a 10 Ghz processor, 30 Terabyte storage, .14 pound wonder of the world.
Some customer reviews:

"... although Windows still crashes, the machine is so fast it crashes before you even boot it up. So by the time you booted, you've already crashed and rebooted and didn't know what happened. "

"This thing is fast. Bad fast! I can see space and time warping, bending and "melting" around the vicinity of this machine when I run Microsoft Werd. Eventually a strange mini-black hole will open up and Steve Jobs' face will appear. He tells me lots of secrets about the future."
posted by zardoz at 3:52 AM PST - 32 comments

Welcome to Ourmedia.org We provide free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches.
posted by lacus at 3:27 AM PST - 27 comments

Come quick! I'm being eaten by a bear! In 1977, Cynthia Dusel-Bacon, a 31-year old geologist working for the US Geological Survey, lost both arms after an encounter with a hungry black bear during a field trip in Alaska. Not only she survived her ordeal, but she resumed her work as a USGS scientist. She can also tell you a few things about living a life without arms (she calls it "a multi-media approach"): how to chop carrots, undress, wash the dishes, read, and use a mouse.
posted by elgilito at 2:54 AM PST - 23 comments

PIANOGRAPHIQUE the graphics piano is a multimedia instrument,each letter on the keyboard sets off a sound and an animation. audio-visual-collage (flash)
posted by hortense at 11:58 PM PST - 6 comments

What's a namber? A namber is a word that acts as a mnemonic for a number. For example, 65 is drum, and 181 is push. A namber address uses an arbitrarily-chosen list of nambers to represent each of the numbers from 0 to 255 in order to assemble four words to represent any IP address. Metafilter.com's namber is earth.frog.brown.tooth, and mysteryrobot.com conveniently provides translation and forwarding to the real IP address.
posted by TheCowGod at 8:08 PM PST - 31 comments

Pop Quiz Hotshot: You're in the middle of an arena. You're being attacked by 5 year olds who will stop at nothing to kill you. How many can you take on before they overcome you? (from twobytwo forums)
posted by Arch Stanton at 7:05 PM PST - 121 comments

13 things that do not make sense From the New Scientist. From Cold Fusion to Tetraneutrons. Enjoy
posted by edgeways at 6:31 PM PST - 49 comments

Zelda Classic is a tribute to (what we think is) the greatest video game of all time: Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda. It has been developed into an exact replica of the NES version that we all know and love. For windows and DOS.
posted by crunchland at 5:50 PM PST - 22 comments

My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable Monkey-style defeats Tiger-style {embedded vid}
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 5:08 PM PST - 31 comments

Meet Jakob Lodwick of Blumpy.org. You may be familiar with him because of sites like this or this.
Blumpy.org i s a bit of a step up, however, featuring some pretty nifty skits and a great video-journal.

He has also made a video for Cex, Baltimore's soon-to-be legendary (any day now) basement rock god, whose site also has a huge stash of excellent b-side material and another video.
not the biggest sites, so go easy on'em and be patient.
posted by es_de_bah at 2:09 PM PST - 9 comments

Stanley Sadie has passed away. For those of us in various fields of music, we saw his work almost every day in the New Grove dictionaries, the unflagging starting point for any and all historical research in music.

In an email forwarded from one of my professors: After the concert was over the Chilingirian [Quartet] quietly came over and, sitting down in the room with Stanley, played the slow movement from op.135. It was deeply moving - Stanley gradually woke up and listened, gently, all alert again, but so weak. He rallied enough to be helped upstairs but then lapsed into a peaceful sleep.
posted by teletype1 at 12:30 PM PST - 7 comments

Fiona Freed. Remember the Free Fiona campaign (discussed last month here)? Well, Sony hasn't caved (yet), but the entire album has been leaked online (get it here or via torrent.) I've listened to it a few times through, and all I can say is... wow.
posted by salad spork at 11:57 AM PST - 53 comments

M M M My Sharona... M M M My real estate agent? Sharona Alperin was only 17 when she inspired the Knack's 1979 hit single "My Sharona." Now she sells real estate in Los Angeles...On the flip side of lyrical fame, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer inspired another set of lyrics in 1979 -- the Boomtown Rats' haunting song "I Don't Like Mondays" -- which chronicled Spencer's slaying of eight school children and a principal at an elementary school near her San Diego, CA-area home. It's not an urban legend: Spencer told a reporter who called her during the 6 1/2 -hour siege that she opened fire because, "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." Spencer reminds us today that schoolyard shootings are not a new phenomenon. Now 42, Brenda is serving a 25-year sentence and is up for parole soon...
posted by Mr Pointy at 11:49 AM PST - 48 comments

Girls With Guns In Cinema And Television is acollection of images of women in film and on television holding firearms, sorted by film/show title, weapon, IMDB ranking (needs some updating...Sticks got a 9.9?), and more. Scroll down past the lengthy news updates to get to the actual archives. (The site itself SFW but some of the images linked aren't. Beware!)
posted by mcsweetie at 11:47 AM PST - 12 comments

The world's most impressive skylines. If Hong Kong is #1, and Mandaluyong, the Phillipines, is #100, where's your city? (via Bostonia, based in city #43)
posted by barjo at 11:10 AM PST - 80 comments

RollerCycle! Just $450 with a signed insurance waiver. [via]
posted by grateful at 10:32 AM PST - 39 comments

Journalists at large. With the mysterious murders/suicides of Gary Webb and Steve Kangas, have underground reporters signed a death wish with their unconventional tongue? Webb's Dark Alliance is hot material for those protest cheerleaders but who is to blame?
posted by Viomeda at 10:06 AM PST - 9 comments

"Remember what your favorite pub or cafe was like before they put in the TV screens?" White Dot, the "international campaign against television", has teamed up with the makers of TV-B-Gone, the key chain that turns off any television, to reclaim these public spaces. And they are recruiting an army for direct action. The White Dot website offers a form to enter the names of ruined eating and drinking establishments. Nominate the most diners and you win a TV-B-Gone (there will be 200 winners). Then, during TV-Turnoff Week (April 25 through May 1, 2005) you can join the Ruined Diner Liberation Army and zap these cafes back to life, leaving propaganda behind some of it disguised as menus.
Other plans for TV-turnoff week here.
posted by boo at 9:51 AM PST - 65 comments

Neuroeconomics: "Eventually it could help economists design incentives that gently guide people toward making decisions that are in their long-term best interests in everything from labor negotiations to diets to 401(k) plans." Note the ambiguous use of the pronoun "their"--are we talking about the long-term interests of people in general or of economists?
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 8:23 AM PST - 25 comments

Trade Tricks is a collection of all the little 'tricks of the trade' which people build up with experience. Some are pretty hum-drum, but others are useful even if you don't practice the trade. For example, this tip for checking if a diamond is real may at some time be handy, and this one for washing a pan would have been useful last night. Found via, and run by the writer of, defective yeti
posted by darsh at 8:16 AM PST - 32 comments

The New Pitch
posted by Gyan at 1:45 AM PST - 26 comments

Dear Sex Addict, Is Osama Hot or Not? (Sunday Magazine, Vancouver) I think OBL is totally hot, but my friends think I’ve lost my sense of judgement. What do you think? Do you think Osama is hot or not? Some people find Osama sexy. He is tall and aristocratic looking. Personally, I could do without the beard. I imagine people find him sexy because he is an outlaw. Some people say they find Osama sexy just to be outrageous. I think he looked much sexier when he was younger (don’t we all?); lately he looks tired, old, not vibrant. One thing you can be certain of, though, is that Osama doesn’t find you sexy.
posted by hoder at 12:34 AM PST - 24 comments

Logos. Lots of Logos. EPS vector art of Logo's from around the world, just waiting for you to generate parodies and a flood of cease and desist letters. Although some of the images aren't logos you would expect to find.

I swear to god I searched google and metafilter with several dozen word combinations in an effort to make sure this isn't a doublepost because I simply cannot accept the fact that this hasn't been posted here already.
posted by Jeremy at 10:11 PM PST - 15 comments

Copy Shop   is a 12-minute dialogue-free film by director Virgil Widrich about a guy inadvertently duplicating himself over and over (320 x 240 streaming Real format download link). The most interesting aspect of the short, however, is that it was made frame-by-frame of photocopies, manipulated for jarring visual effects and then shot with a camera to put together the final cut. (Mentioned previously by film aficionado pxe2000.) Also see Widrich's photocopied short Fast Film with even more calamitous, unraveling effects. Get this guy toner refills for his birthday.
posted by planetkyoto at 9:36 PM PST - 14 comments

School shootings in Red Lake Minnesota leave ten dead.
posted by Demogorgon at 9:16 PM PST - 117 comments

The Garage Compilation Database. A great tool for Garage Rock neophytes and research tool for longtime fans. From the great folks at Ugly Things.
posted by jonmc at 8:24 PM PST - 9 comments

An evolutionary basis for altruism. These findings suggest that true altruism, far from being a maladaptation, may be the key to our species' success by providing the social glue that allowed our ancestors to form strong, resilient groups. Sharing isn't just caring, it's surviving.
posted by Anonymous at 7:38 PM PST - 44 comments

Is plagiarism at universities out of control? Academic Plagiarism is a growing problem in the university world and is not just making headlines in the United States anymore. While some professors are morally opposed, the growing popularity of professors forcing students to submit works ahead of time to companies like Turnitin may be an indicator of of this growing problem. With more and more employers complaining about the writing skills of new hires, are we just cheating ourselves in the end?
posted by tozturk at 6:39 PM PST - 55 comments

Risin' up, back on the street
Did my time, took my chances
Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive
posted by Witty at 5:33 PM PST - 22 comments

Droogle it (and give me a double) Taking a large page from Google suggests, this is dynamic search at it's slurriest. The Liquor cabinet, which locates drink recipes based on your available ingredients, seems a bit buggy, but it's a great idea.
posted by jeremias at 5:11 PM PST - 15 comments

The latest BOFH, or Bastard Operator From Hell. If you read The Register you're familiar with him... It's the story of an abusive IT guy basically doing whatever he wants to users and getting away with it. It's been going on for about 10 years, all of which is archived, so if that one doesn't tease your fancy, maybe some of those will. If you're not familiar with basic IT stuff some of it may be foreign to you, but once I started reading I couldn't stop. Try a couple years back, 2002 is a good vintage. >clickety<
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:51 PM PST - 48 comments

A Parent's Guide to Anime includes a few hundred informative and opinionated reviews, organized by rating. Found via this thread at the Christian discussion site Arts & Faith, whose users included Waking Life, Bad Lieutenant, Life of Brian and Fight Club in their list of the Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films.
posted by mediareport at 4:19 PM PST - 26 comments

A short list of neat things to see.
-Bird's-eye Views of NPS Cultural and Historical Sites
-Bee eye views
-Solar pics and movies
-Manatee
posted by edgeways at 4:12 PM PST - 10 comments

Have you given up on the Atkins Diet? Tired of miracle diet pills that don't work? Maybe you, like many other Americans, can find dietary salvation in the Bible. Try the Hallelujah Diet®. It's a primarily vegan diet that's "Biblically Based. Scientifically Validated. Personally Evidenced." Unless of course, it's actually dangerous quackery, or worse, heresy. Maybe you're better off with the Maker's Diet, "based on Biblical precepts and scientific resources". Uh oh.
posted by casu marzu at 4:09 PM PST - 26 comments

Federal Intervention in Schiavo Case Prompts Broad Public Disapproval Blowback? "The public, by 63 percent-28 percent, supports the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, and by a 25-point margin opposes a law mandating federal review of her case. Congress passed such legislation and President Bush signed it early today...."
posted by Postroad at 3:36 PM PST - 254 comments

a closer look at the new director of national intelligence: john negroponte
"Velasquez says she and other relatives met with the ambassador around March 1983. "It was like a bucket of cold water," she said. "Our hopes were high, because we knew the influence that the embassy had with the government. But he denied knowing anything, and said it was an internal affair of Honduras. We got out of there wanting to cry.""
posted by specialk420 at 2:39 PM PST - 7 comments

At her wedding, Carol had the rings extracted from the Velvet Vulva, the purse with petals (embedded QT?) seen, apparently, at RenFest's everywhere. Don't worry, fellas, the G-string pouches are "coming soon."
posted by danOstuporStar at 1:58 PM PST - 82 comments

R.I.P. Bobby Short. One of the finest cabaret singers of all time, and a Manhattan fixture at the Carlyle Hotel since 1968, Short died of leukemia yesterday. He was 80. Listen to an NPR tribute. Time Magazine once said of him, "In an increasingly inelegant world, Bobby Short is the very symbol of elegance." Thankfully, many of his best recordings are available on CD. (Requisite Wikipedia entry.)
posted by goatdog at 1:45 PM PST - 10 comments

The Ultimate Nick Fury. Agent of SHIELD? No. Agent of SHAFT.
(An occasionally hilarious politico-conspiracy-fueled parody of Marvel Comic's Ultimate series.)
posted by grabbingsand at 11:42 AM PST - 2 comments

Thom Mayne, co-founder of morphosis and Sci-Arc, has won the Pritzker Prize.
posted by xowie at 10:48 AM PST - 13 comments

This dog is made from animal pictures, this one from beer labels. Here's Nicholson in The Shining, there's Fonda in Barbarella. Kittens, Grant, Santa, and Uncle Sam: all mosaics created with Mazaika. Added bonus: Soviet postcards.
posted by breezeway at 9:54 AM PST - 12 comments

"I'm glad I wore these pants." (QT(5.3 MB) or MPEG-1) Nintendo Cartoon Hour, a funny mashup of NES footage with voiceover. The Lonely Island, three guys from LA straight from the "Revenge of the Nerds" comedy school.
posted by schyler523 at 9:38 AM PST - 14 comments

Copyright a yoga move? If yoga has been around for 5,000 years, can a 21st century businessman claim to own a piece of it? Bikram Choudhury says yes. The Beverly Hills yoga mogul, who popularized his style of yoga and then franchised a chain of studios bearing his name, has long rankled traditionalists, who dislike his tough business tactics and brash outspokenness. Now Choudhury is facing a challenge in a San Francisco courtroom, where a federal judge is hearing arguments in a lawsuit that some legal experts say could define a new frontier in intellectual property. At issue: Can Choudhury take a sequence of two breathing exercises and 26 yoga poses from an ancient Indian practice, copyright it and control how it is practiced? The Open Source Yoga Unity people say he can't. More inside.
posted by matteo at 9:04 AM PST - 81 comments

1917: The largest man-made non-nuclear explosion in history and yet (outside of Canada) a largely unknown disaster - The Halifax Explosion. [more inside]
posted by spock at 8:19 AM PST - 43 comments

Charles Darwin has a posse.
posted by sudama at 7:40 AM PST - 33 comments

Charles Kellogg was born in 1868 in California and claimed to have the larynx of a bird (called a syrinx). Until his death in 1949, he lectured and entertained audiences as a performer of bird calls. He travelled across the continent in the Travel Log, a mobile home carved from a single Redwood log mounted on a 1917 Nash Quad truck chassis. In 1939, he smuggled samples of the Kakaula plant out of Fiji in hopes of providing birth control leader Margaret Sanger with the perfect contraceptive.
posted by 327.ca at 7:18 AM PST - 4 comments

Be a medical retro-pioneer. Adopt a brood of maggots.
posted by bricoleur at 6:48 AM PST - 21 comments

Kofi Annan has issued his recommendations for tackling poverty and promoting security and human rights, incorporating the greatest alterations to the UN and Security Council in history.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:31 AM PST - 23 comments

R.I.P. John Z. DeLorean (January 6, 1925 - March 19, 2005) Lived his life flamboyantly.. Leaving behind a legendary car and a 'treasure' in the Bay off of Northern Ireland
posted by borq at 3:42 AM PST - 26 comments

Freebird!
posted by Tlogmer at 3:24 AM PST - 99 comments

Aussie Rules Fantasy Football In case you don't have enough fantasy sports in your life already.
posted by McBain at 11:40 PM PST - 9 comments

Eyes on the War. Streaming audio interviews with 24 photojournalists who've covered Iraq, with some of their best photos.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:25 PM PST - 6 comments

The Secret of Bananas - Caught on tape!
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:13 PM PST - 31 comments

How do you say “Give me the bat, Wendy” in Italian?
posted by growabrain at 10:58 PM PST - 33 comments

one giant step for mankind...
posted by onkelchrispy at 8:41 PM PST - 17 comments

Do I need a jacket? The next best thing to looking out the window.
posted by Arch Stanton at 7:57 PM PST - 26 comments

After Walker Evans Alternatively, After Sherrie Levine. In 1936, Walker Evans famously photographed a family of sharecroppers. In 1979, Sherrie Levine rephotographed Evans' work. Performance artist Michael Mandiberg has reproduced Levine's work online, made them available for printing, and assembled texts and wrote plays to give the site's conceptual art concept - and Levine's work - meaning, and a punchline.
posted by livii at 6:23 PM PST - 16 comments

Explore your sense of hearing with LSD... the Leamon Sound Device, that is. The LSD is an extremely interesting audio project that I'd love to be able to listen to. [via]
posted by thebabelfish at 5:39 PM PST - 15 comments

Sony-Ericsson officially endorses upskirt photography. (Flash, SFW)

"If you see some bright lights at about the height of your ankle, you'd better watch out."
posted by chrismear at 4:11 PM PST - 41 comments

GeoURL 2.0 (beta) launched today... We've talked about GeoURL before, but it's been so long, and the service was offline (sadly) for much of that time. Of course, the blogosphere is much, much bigger than it was two years ago... I wonder what syntheses we'll see? [via Urban Cartography]
posted by silusGROK at 3:35 PM PST - 15 comments

What does all of Unicode look like? At once, as a poster? Ian Albert decided to find out... No full image of the whole thing, sadly (but understandably, given its 22,017x42,807 resolution).
posted by wanderingmind at 3:03 PM PST - 26 comments

...The rumors are true. Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr & Ludicorp. What does this mean? Well, Flickr will continue to be a seperate entity, but Yahoo! Photos will be getting those shiny Flickr geegaws. AND "Pro account holders will get super mega bonuses, to be announced soon." (i can't wait!) The Flickr community's reactions seem positive.
posted by keswick at 1:31 PM PST - 54 comments

The greatest rap video ever: ... or at least in recent memory. England's DJ Format teams up with Reuben Fleischer and a breakdancing shark to produce a pretty sublime piece of silliness (Quicktime).
posted by ryanshepard at 1:10 PM PST - 19 comments

The worst jobs in history. Channel 4 takes you on a journey through 2,000 years of British history and the worst jobs of each era for minions like you and me. If you are curious whether you are best suited to be an Anglo-Saxon guillemot egg collector or a Georgian loblolly boy, take the career guide quiz. (via Malbec.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:39 PM PST - 21 comments

Sand circles. A group called Phidelity has been making sand art on the beaches of California with some string, a couple of rakes, and a trowel. Check out photos, and a time lapse video [.mov] of the team at work. Just make sure you check the tides before you start working. [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:20 AM PST - 12 comments

The dirty bomb hoax. One of the biggest threats from terrorism was the supposed dirty bomb plot by Jose Padilla which eventually turned up nothing. Even if there was a plot, the threat of a dirty bomb has been over-exaggerated. The U.S. military had already tested the possibilities of a dirty bomb and discovered that "any immediate deaths or serious injuries would likely result from the explosion itself, rather than from radiation exposure." The radiation could be cleaned up with a geiger counter and a vacuum cleaner. But don't forget to buy your nuke pills! (via the Power of Nightmares)
posted by destro at 11:20 AM PST - 38 comments

Hitler's "fountain of life." In 1935, Heinrich Himmer and the SS launched a network of Lebensborn maternity centers to increase birthrates among Aryans, where German soldiers were encouraged to mate with genetically desirable local women in occupied countries like Norway. These women were given the option of raising their kids themselves or turning them over to SS-run homes where they would be "Germanized." The lives of these kids was hell after the war, when they were shunned and worse by the Nazis' previous victims. To those who are nostalgic for the Reich, like this veritable eBay of Nazi memorabilia, the Lebensborn program represented " wonderful social experimentation."
posted by digaman at 10:59 AM PST - 37 comments

Scenes from the Cultural Revolution. A compilation of quotes about American Universities as compared to Maoist propaganda.
"'If the system were fair,' says Larry Mumper, sponsor of the Ohio bill, 'Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be tenured professors somewhere.'"

"We will strike down the reactionary, bourgeois academic savants! . . . We will vigorously establish proletarian intellectual authorities, our own academic savants."
posted by borkingchikapa at 10:51 AM PST - 60 comments

Look at eBay from a different angle. eBay Pulse shows the most 10 most popular search terms, as well as the 10 most 'watched' items on the auction site for any category, including the weird ones. Updated daily.
posted by crunchland at 10:38 AM PST - 10 comments

Jesus Freak Rock of the 60's & 70's. Rising out of the post-hippie "Jesus Freak" culture, many of the adherents were disenchanted counterculturists or just plain casualties of the time. Many of the musicians were already rockers before converting, so they were comfortable with the idiom, and it seemed to be more about sincerity than political propoganda. Compared to today's CCM corporate juggernaut it seems positively guileless.
posted by jonmc at 9:15 AM PST - 20 comments

Tom Waits on his twenty most cherished albums of all time. Also Looking for Clues: the fan's verdict on Tom's choices. "There is plenty to suggest that Waits's iPod in shuffle mode would keep you on your toes."
posted by marxchivist at 8:36 AM PST - 43 comments

Quarantine camps head toward reality Proposed law would allow round up HIV+ and People living with AIDS
posted by halekon at 7:14 AM PST - 28 comments

It came from the 1971 Sears Catalog!! Child models of the damned! Tacky bedspreads. Gracious women.The Nursery of Death. Lamps and awful paintings. At home wear - you wouldn't be caught dead outside the house wearing these. Pages and pages of incredibly yucky things people bought and put in their homes. I know, I was there. (Underwear links questionable at work, maybe.)
posted by pyramid termite at 6:16 AM PST - 64 comments

Transferring the problem does not transfer the moral responsibility. According to Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, Afghanistan is the hub of a global network of detention centres, the frontline in America's 'war on terror', where arrest can be random and allegations of torture commonplace. I leave it up to each reader to judge for themselves, but if they are right can the world afford to turn a blind eye?
posted by MadOwl at 4:47 AM PST - 10 comments

Davie Cooper was one of Scotland's greatest ever players. Today sees two of his former clubs Rangers and Motherwell battle it out in a cup final, or Coop final as it has been called. A fitting tribute if ever there was one.
posted by the cuban at 4:12 AM PST - 7 comments

LSD documentary records were a forgotten side-track in the war on drugs, reaching a high point in 1966 with the release of LSD, an album featuring interviews with Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, and Ken Kesey, and featuring a live recording (which may or may not have been real) of a kid going on his first bad trip. (Not to be confused with Leary's own record of the same title.) In 1966, with neither internet nor home video, the record album was one of the most sophisticated communications media available, and it was a big year for LSD hysteria, with a LIFE cover story and a Sal Mineo-narrated LSD version of Reefer Madness called Hallucination Generation. LSD-related magazines and periodicals, reviews of psychedelic music, and more from lysergia.com.
posted by dhartung at 1:10 AM PST - 21 comments

Happy Noruz 1384! Learn about the Persian new year and festivities and traditions that take place.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 12:48 AM PST - 9 comments

Amina Wadud has stirred up controversy before. But this time, some think she's gone too far when she led the (Muslim) Friday prayer at a church in NY (mosques wouldn't take them, and an art gallery backed off after a bomb threat). Traditionalists are foaming, while progressives are cheering here on.
posted by sour cream at 9:53 PM PST - 54 comments

The Price Is Right has been around forever.. and has plenty of great fan sites. But not at BobBarker.com. No, sir.
posted by AloneOssifer at 9:23 PM PST - 23 comments

A Japanese artist retells the creation myth with sand trickling through his hands. Amazing. (wmv, 19MB)
posted by BoringPostcards at 8:38 PM PST - 27 comments

"Russian Oligarachs Want Immortality". Vladimir Bryntsalov has had a course of stem cell injections and feels no older than 20, though his biological age is about 60. Treatment will cost you $10,000-20,000 in Moscow. In many Western countries, such clinics would not even get the opportunity to open their doors. During a recent speech, President Bush denounced stem cell therapy as "godless."
posted by stbalbach at 4:51 PM PST - 25 comments

The legend of Hogzilla approaches its dramatic conclusion.
posted by obloquy at 4:07 PM PST - 12 comments

Pet Pillows!
posted by loquacious at 2:32 PM PST - 35 comments

Fried Doughs from Around the World.
posted by Espoo2 at 2:27 PM PST - 18 comments

The End Of Faith

A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person’s life. Are you a scientist? A liberal? A racist? These are merely species of belief in action. Your beliefs define your vision of the world; they dictate your behavior; they determine your emotional responses to other human beings. If you doubt this, consider how your experience would suddenly change if you came to believe one of the following propositions: 1. You have only two weeks to live. 2. You’ve just won a lottery prize of one hundred million dollars. 3. Aliens have implanted a receiver in your skull and are manipulating your thoughts.
posted by nofundy at 1:21 PM PST - 156 comments

“Gödel put logic on the mathematical map.”
An excellent interview with Rebecca Goldstein, biographer of Kurt Godel
posted by thatwhichfalls at 1:12 PM PST - 23 comments

The Wise Man. George Frost Kennan, (Feb. 16, 1904 — Mar. 17, 2005). Architect of the Cold War, father of the Marshall Plan and the doctrine of containment in the "Kennan Century".
In February 1946, as the second-ranking diplomat in the American Embassy in Moscow, he dispatched his famous "Long Telegram" to Washington. Widely circulated, it made Kennan famous and evolved into an even better-known work, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which Mr. Kennan published under the anonymous byline "X" in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs. More inside.
posted by matteo at 12:20 PM PST - 22 comments

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark", Fit the First: The Landing.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 12:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Whoa! I'm not a big fan of GWB or the Iraq debacle but that might be going a bit far. (found here) It does make me think how odd it is to have nuts on what you consider the correct side of an issue. Pedantic idiocy aside, it seems that in a broader sense the left and the right have to deal with their own nuts. At what point do the fringes sabotoge the main message?
posted by Smedleyman at 11:27 AM PST - 37 comments

Potato bugs. The most universally feared, hated and disgusting creatures on the planet.
posted by slackdog at 11:22 AM PST - 71 comments

Vintage exposures from pre-war Poland, with scratchy “Summertime” on the soundtrack. (Slightly improper for libraries & children under the age of 15)
posted by growabrain at 10:47 AM PST - 12 comments

"These people in Congress are walking all over my personal and private life... I'm telling you, the United States citizens, you better start speaking up, because these people are going to trample into your personal, private affairs."
posted by johnnydark at 9:24 AM PST - 34 comments

Remember Lejo? He's got the funk now. From the guys who brought you Shitty Bum (and who are now probably living it up with #1 down in Austin for SXSW), here is C-Mon & Kypski vs. Lejo (Flash). [via]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Tools for Editors. Find all kinds of useful language-related links; take a side trip to a site where you can recall the joys of diagramming sentences, corral misplaced apostrophes, check your spelling, set free pet peeves, or read lovely essays on the English language written by a retired professor of Dutch.
posted by etaoin at 7:30 AM PST - 14 comments

An Objective Legal Look (and more) on Schiavo-- As a Florida law blogger, I have created this page to help people understand the legal circumstances surrounding the Terri Schiavo saga. In my view, there continues to be a need for an objective look at the matter. There is an unbelievable amount of misinformation being circulated. Links to all court decisions, timelines, questions and answers (some shocking)...you name it. All the info available on this tragic situation.
posted by amberglow at 7:22 AM PST - 156 comments

Fellow automatically combines 50 Flickr images with the same tag into a single image. So who owns the copyright? Heh.
posted by jeremias at 5:19 AM PST - 29 comments

[TheFaceBook]: It comes in the genre of LiveJournal, MySpace, and Friendster - except with a focus on digitally connecting pre-existing friendships on college campuses rather than finding new friends worldwide. Subsequently, it has thus far avoided the stigmas I’ve seen attached to its predecessors by non-users. Its use has skyrocketed: about 15% of my campus has signed up since this past winter. All of it through word-of-mouth. One of the neat tricks it does is show a visualization of your friends on the network in a spider webbed vectored graphic connecting them based on their mutual friendships. It’s also proven very useful in tracking down those “where do I know him/her?” names through a prominently displayed list showing up to two-degrees of separation to the mystery person. Oh, and you can send text messages to cell phones through it. Did I mention it also reminds you of birthdays?
posted by trinarian at 3:54 AM PST - 29 comments

Centipedes...in my vagina?
posted by angry modem at 1:50 AM PST - 26 comments

"I had to give a statement. I offered them coffee and asked them if they would like to try some swan terrine but I think they were rather horrified. That was a mistake, wasn't it?" The Queen's composer wonders whether he should rethink his thrifty attitude towards accidentally acquired food.
posted by maudlin at 6:43 PM PST - 28 comments

Simlish as 21st-century Grammelot? I love Simlish. Never heard of Grammelot, before now, but, well, as they say "Hoh! Abba Da No!"
posted by WolfDaddy at 4:54 PM PST - 13 comments

Progenitorivox- the solution to all your problems. Amazing animated music video by the Lounge Lizards and the Animation Farm for the Consumers Union. There are a few things you should keep in mind (QT WMP Real), but it's worth it for the drugs you need. For those of you who prefer a more herbal solution, Rob Cockerham has the perfect thing for you.
posted by The White Hat at 4:50 PM PST - 7 comments

"On March 18 [1937] students prepared for the next day's Inter-scholastic Meet in Henderson. At the gymnasium, the PTA met. At 3:05 P.M. Lemmie R. Butler, instructor of manual training, turned on a sanding machine in an area which, unknown to him, was filled with a mixture of gas and air. The switch ignited the mixture and carried the flame into a nearly closed space beneath the building, 253 feet long and fifty-six feet wide. Immediately the building seemed to lift in the air and then smashed to the ground. Walls collapsed. The roof fell in and buried its victims in a mass of brick, steel, and concrete debris. The explosion was heard four miles away, and it hurled a two-ton concrete slab 200 feet away, where it crushed a 1936 Chevrolet. Of the 500 students and forty teachers in the building, approximately 298 died. Some rescuers, students, and teachers needed psychiatric attention, and only about 130 students escaped serious injury. -- From the Handbook of Texas Online. (Other accounts, personal recollections, and photos .)

It was one of the worst disasters in Texas history. With Texans' love of superlatives, why is this a story no one tells? [more...]
posted by mudpuppie at 3:03 PM PST - 35 comments

The 30 least hot things you can say to a naked woman. Based on The 30 hottest things you can say to a naked woman. via the always hilarious defective yeti.
posted by graventy at 2:11 PM PST - 79 comments

They're all here. Or most of them. This will make you dust off your NES/Genesis/Turbo GraphX-16... but this time with a pixel-perfect map of every level of your most beloved games. From Amiga to Xbox. Castlevania, Zelda, and Megaman among hundreds of others and links to even more in-depth sites. Warning - some of these maps are EXTREMELY large, like 13000x5000 large. NSFCW (Not safe for child within)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:37 PM PST - 32 comments

We all like getting mail and soldiers stationed far from home or recovering from war injuries in a veterans' hospital really like getting mail. So go through your bookcases and closets and dig out those books you don't read. Got duplicate copies of books or DVDs? What about recent magazines? The Books For Soldiers program sends "care packages for the mind"—books, DVDs and magazines for servicemen and women overseas and in hospitals at home. Just sign into the site, browse soldiers' book requests and send your package.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 1:19 PM PST - 16 comments

"Man, I DO love a good album cover!" -- Dana Countryman
posted by breezeway at 11:56 AM PST - 21 comments

Want it? Make it! 3D printers aren't that new -- already there are robots that print houses, inkjet printers that print human tissue, and for you CSI fans, machines that can reconstruct bullets, among other things. What's new, you ask? Machines that can produce anything and self-replicate, too. All under a GNU General Public License.
posted by greatgefilte at 11:39 AM PST - 25 comments

Malt liquors are often sold in 40-ounce bottles
posted by svidrigailov23 at 11:35 AM PST - 55 comments

The Seven Dwarfs of Auschwitz were subjected to experiments by famed Nazi Dr. Mengele. 81-year old Perla is the subject of a 1999 film .
posted by gregb1007 at 9:37 AM PST - 29 comments

The Mysterious Voyage of Donald Crowhurst and the Teignmouth Electron In the autumn of 1968, Crowhurst set out from England in a homebuilt trimaran, to compete in the first solo nonstop around-the-world sailing race. Eight months later, the boat was found drifting and abandoned in mid-Atlantic. Crowhurst's diaries revealed that, although he had apparently radioed messages from his round-the-world course, he had in fact never left the Atlantic.
posted by carter at 9:22 AM PST - 19 comments

underreported.com :: Headlines for the rest of us
posted by anastasiav at 9:15 AM PST - 12 comments

The Retail Alphabet Game I guessed about a third of these, but I really want to know where that letter Q comes from. I'm not desperate enough to buy a clue.
posted by mokujin at 8:38 AM PST - 47 comments

To the Lost City. Researchers at the University of Washington discovered an undersea hydrothermal vent field that promises new information about the origins of life. A monthlong research trip in 2003, documented online, yielded results that have just now been published in Science (subscribers only, sorry). The UW's Lost City site has much of interest, including an online journal from the excursion; pictures and video are also available here and here.
posted by jeffmshaw at 8:31 AM PST - 1 comment

How To Hypnotize a Man
(NSFW and may be offensive to some, nude female backside)
Friday Fun. I couldn't stop playing with this one.
I dare you to bounce it once and then stop. I double dog dare you.
posted by fenriq at 8:28 AM PST - 94 comments

Flashback to the 60's and 70's.
posted by srboisvert at 7:47 AM PST - 15 comments

Illumination. Art of helicopters, nuclear powerplants, and powerful projectors.
posted by jba at 7:22 AM PST - 8 comments

Drummer Buddy Rich's appearance on the Muppet Show (QuickTime embedded, or get it "direct").
posted by safetyfork at 7:09 AM PST - 34 comments

Can Ashlee Simpson get any worse? Who knows? But it appears that at least one critic has had it with her lack of talent. Because this is America, we have dueling petitions seeking to encourage her to continue or push her off the stage for good.
posted by etaoin at 6:48 AM PST - 103 comments

What Are Death Towers? Current news from Educate-Yourself.org a sort of one-stop shop of crankery and fine journalism.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:32 AM PST - 22 comments

What do Norman Cook (AKA Fat Boy Slim), Lord (Richard) Attenborough, Aubrey Beardsley, Lord (Laurence) Olivier, Sir Winston Churchill, Magnus Volk, Dame Anna Neagle, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Rowland Hill and Annie Nightingale, have in common?

They've all had a bus named after them [full list here] in the city of Brighton & Hove on the south coast of England. In Jamaica the buses are named a little more irreverently but this whole naming tradition doesn't seem to be as popular as naming trains with the late Joe Strummer one of the latest in a long line. Pix of the Stummer train here. [Scroll down a bit.]

Anyone live in a place where they name their buses? Or other inanimate objects?
posted by i_cola at 3:47 AM PST - 24 comments

Private Johnson Beharry awarded the Victoria Cross. The Victoria Cross is Britain's highest award for bravery in combat. It's awared is incredibly rare. The last awards were made posthumously after the Falklands War in 1982. The last living recipients were two Australians in the Vietnam War in 1969. It is said that in order to qualify for a VC, conditions must be so dangerous that only 10% of recipients survive. The actions of Private Johnson Beharry are therefore worthy of a mention.
posted by salmacis at 2:13 AM PST - 19 comments

American Apparel ads: Porn pushers or youth prophets? (Now, Toronto) Some believe American Apparel's amateur porn-styled ads using real models are retail brilliance – others say it's time for a boycott.
posted by hoder at 11:52 PM PST - 62 comments

Another Fan Of Torture Reveals Himself Eugene Volokh, a former clerk to Justice O'Connor and a leading voice in conservative legal circles has some interesting opinions on punishment:

[T]hough for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there's a good explanation.
posted by expriest at 9:51 PM PST - 82 comments

HIV prevention efforts are failing. Last year, the discovery of a New York man with a novel form of drug-resistant HIV that rapidly progressed to AIDS caused some to warn of the emergence of a "superbug." The first clinical analysis of the case will be published Saturday in The Lancet (NYT preview); Dr. Martin Markowitz concluded the cause of the rapid progression to AIDS may be incomplete -- but that efforts to prevent the epidemic must be redoubled, especially in light of the growing use of methamphetamines. Dr. Carlos del Rio is blunt: "This is telling us that AIDS prevention programs have been a failure." The Gay Men's Health Crisis agrees.
posted by docgonzo at 8:17 PM PST - 79 comments

Sometimes, we type what we really think.
posted by mmahaffie at 7:32 PM PST - 33 comments

Still Available
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:40 PM PST - 32 comments

"BATMAN - We've got to stop the joker! Those boner crimes are making us look bad! And I'm worried about the boner he's readying for YOU!" (slightly related) (Via Radosh.net)
posted by soyjoy at 2:43 PM PST - 27 comments

Play "Kaboom!" (1981) by Activision's Larry Kaplan. [both links feature loud noises] And because you didn't ask, here's a 1984 article about the not-so-legendary 30 secrets of Atari.
posted by Kleptophoria! at 1:37 PM PST - 20 comments

In those days, he could do no wrong. In the Sixties, he was the man who published Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint and Hemingway's A Moveable Feast; he put John Lennon's doodles into cold print, launched the careers of John Fowles and Gabriel García Márquez, looked after Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut and later, in the early 1980s, was the godfatherly mentor of Amis fils, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. He was equally adept at commissioning inspired non-fictions such as The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris's zoological inspection of human behaviour.
The Independent profiles Tom Maschler, publisher, founder of the Booker Prize. (via Bookslut)
posted by matteo at 1:29 PM PST - 7 comments

Inside the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic. Memorize the keywords with which the lizards of the stage world will attempt to distort your reality. Can you accept your own vampirism? Are you familiar with the most common reality fishing techniques and horse movements? This is the painstaking record of a man for whom delusions have completely overtaken reality. Spend some time with it - the detail is mind-numbing and the reality he has created is utterly insane... and occasionally convincing. Mirror in case Geocities croaks.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:50 AM PST - 45 comments

Juan Gelman. An Argentinian poet's search for remains of his daughter-in-law, kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1976.
posted by plep at 11:00 AM PST - 2 comments

Ever Read Hyperion, by Simmons? In that story, the earth was accidentally destroyed by a man-made black hole. We are now one step closer. Physicists may have created a black hole in a lab at the RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider). H. Nastase has posted a paper on the possibility. Fascinating discovery, but there's no real danger of destroying the earth. This might be a good time to check up on some of the myths surrounding black holes. (Found via that other site, /.)
posted by teece at 10:57 AM PST - 29 comments

Missing Friends - Information Wanted - a Database of Advertisements For Irish Immigrants Published in the Boston Pilot.
Boston College has posted more than 31,000 historical entries of Irish Immigrants who were looking to reunite with family and friends between 1831 to 1921 in a searchable database. The ads were published originally in the Boston Pilot.
posted by tpl1212 at 10:56 AM PST - 7 comments

The Mystery of Danny Boy - Most everyone has heard the song "Danny Boy", and while the lyrics have a traceable history, where did the tune originate? It is known as "Londonderry Air" in some folks circles, and a lovely band arrangement was done with the title "Irish Tune from County Derry". Regardless of the facts, it is still a poignant tune covered by many.
posted by frecklefaerie at 10:56 AM PST - 18 comments

"An autopoietic system is one organised to respond to the world. Prod it and it will react homeostatically, striving to reach a new accommodation that preserves its integrity. There is a global cohesion - a memory of what the system wants to be - that reaches down to organise the parts even while those parts may be adding up to produce the functioning whole."
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 10:14 AM PST - 29 comments

I say a E-A-S with a T-E-R and an EGG with a double G! Flash, Shockwave, 10 days early, not Friday, \/\/hateva
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:53 AM PST - 16 comments

Another Hot Topic in NJ Politics.... Why don't I ever hear about this stuff in the Jersey Journal?
posted by lilboo at 9:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Fascinated by glassblowing? <- More video and info than you can shake a stick at. See also: Glassblowing in Antiquity as well as today. View the process via a mpeg video (or step through the pictures). See some old glass recipes and learn about what the individual ingredients do. Ever seen a Chihuly exhibition? (or via QuickTime (now in several locations). Wow. There is also a process for fusing, slumping and kiln-forming glass called "Warm Glass". Gallery here. If you are into this you may need to save this one for the weekend, but I couldn't wait.
posted by spock at 8:30 AM PST - 19 comments

MusicalGenius: What does a comedic genius stuck in lonely ol' Minneapolis do for fun? He becomes an ice cream eating, elephant fanatic who opens a Mashed Potato bar, of course. (Amazon.com)
posted by MotorNeuron at 8:14 AM PST - 11 comments

Spell with Flickr! [via]
posted by Quartermass at 7:05 AM PST - 39 comments

R.I.P. Lyn Collins [NYT, reg. req.] Backing singer for James Brown, whose revue she joined in 1971 (she was also the sister of his band members Bootsy and Catfish Collins), her first hit was the monster Think (About It) in 1972, one of the most sampled records in hip hop, maybe most famously in Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's It Takes Two. (Extensive, but by no means full, list of Collins samplers here.) Audio sample (mp3) of You Can't Love Me If You Don't respect Me here. Brief obit and full mp3 of a great live version of Do Your Thing here.
posted by Len at 6:26 AM PST - 9 comments

Rainbows, pots of gold, and leprechauns are images that come to mind on St. Paddy’s Day. They are beautiful to behold, but how much do you really know about rainbows? Did you know that there are double, triple, and supernumerary rainbows, that no two people ever see the same rainbow, and that rainbows consist of more than just the ROYGBIV colors? Rainbows permeate mythology, prophecy, spirituality, symbolism, mentality, and sexuality. Rainbows are a job for one, a link to the past for some, and a hope for the future for others.
posted by debralee at 6:05 AM PST - 23 comments

Feed Me Better Jamie Oliver (UK fat tongued food wizard) campaigns to ban the junk food and get fresh, tasty and, above all, nutricious food back on school dinners menu.
posted by Spoon at 6:02 AM PST - 47 comments

Poguetry: "The Parting Glass: An Annotated Pogues Lyrics Page".
posted by mwhybark at 12:56 AM PST - 16 comments

It all seemed perfect: Smiths side A, Pogues side B - or whatever else you wanted. For all the folks getting nostalgic further down the page,we are trying to turn back time for 60 minutes… or, maybe, for 90...
posted by bunglin jones at 12:50 AM PST - 11 comments

Six degrees of Nirvana, see how bands are connected to each other.
posted by drezdn at 11:23 PM PST - 46 comments

Female X chromosome 'cracked' - "The discovery, by an international consortium of scientists, shows that females are far more variable than previously thought and, when it comes to genes, more complex than men." Nature reports two new studies; one on the complete sequencing of the X chromosome for humans, which sheds some light on how sex evolved and how women differ from men, and another on how women express many genes from X chromosomes previously thought dormant.
posted by kliuless at 10:26 PM PST - 31 comments

Listening to Antarctica is a daily web diary, including audio clips (RealMedia) of ambient sounds and conversations onboard the Aurora Australis, a research vessel currently on its way to the Australian Antarctic bases. Margot Foster's next port of call is Casey Base.
posted by Jimbob at 8:56 PM PST - 4 comments

Quantegy, the last remaining branded manufacturer of professional audio tape, closed its doors and filed for Chapter 11. But it seems there's hope that they'll bounce back.
posted by starscream at 8:18 PM PST - 14 comments

Copy-art.net is an ongoing curatorial project that aims to create an online platform to exchange works between artists, curators and the public and give the audience free access to works of art. Artists have been invited to submit work to Copy-art in any medium that will then be available online, making it possible for visitors to use these works in any possible way and without restrictions. Submitted works can be downloaded, changed, distributed, exhibited and used by all visitors for free. All submitted works will be present online in an archive, and available to the public to access. Commercial use of the works is excluded.
posted by onkelchrispy at 7:41 PM PST - 3 comments

Braingle
posted by daksya at 7:32 PM PST - 6 comments

GoogleX : Homage, late night idea or something more? (via a comment @ Mofi)
posted by shoepal at 7:25 PM PST - 21 comments

Artificial Anatomy
posted by Gyan at 7:09 PM PST - 2 comments

Watching "The L Word" might cost an Ohio cop her job. A police officer assigned to a school in Camden, Ohio may lose her job because a few students saw that she had a screen saver which included promotional photos for a TV show that featured (gasp) lesbians. Remind me again why anyone with brains bothers to live in rural Ohio any longer?
posted by the wind at 5:58 PM PST - 71 comments

Not guilty. It's been nearly 20 years since Air India Flight 182 crashed into the ocean off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people aboard, after a bomb went off in the luggage compartment. Today, the two main suspects in the case were acquitted. Families of the victims are upset, disgusted. Of the 329 victims, 82 of them were under the age of 12. Let's take a moment to remember them; victims of one of the worst terrorist acts prior to September 11th, 2001.
posted by juliebug at 5:09 PM PST - 53 comments

The Office on MySpace Even though the leaked pilot met poor reviews on Metafilter, it's interesting that NBC turned to massive social networking group MySpace to launch the American version of The Office. MySpace will stream the whole first episode of The Office on March 16th at 8PM while the episode will air for the first time on NBC March 24th. Maybe BitTorrent has really gotten to them.
posted by jonknee at 3:22 PM PST - 24 comments

Hurling, the national sport of Ireland is known as the fastest (mpeg) field sport. It is one of many Gaelic games unique to Ireland, collectively they are known as the GAA. The origin of hurling date back at least 2000 years and is prevalent in many Irish legends (rm). Playing hurling (wmv) requires great skill and bravery, it’s described as cross between field hockey and lacrosse, but with the ability to hit the ball like a baseball into the air. Equipment mainly consists of the hurley and the sliothar (ball), while many players wear helmets, many choose not to. Every year, the All-Ireland Championship is played in Croke Park where the top two counties compete. All hurlers are amateur athletes, there are no professionals. Its popularity is on the rise in North America as well as Europe. The women's version of hurling is called camogie.
posted by Meaney at 3:14 PM PST - 24 comments

Free stuff at the SXSW Music Festival for the wristbandless.
posted by Julie at 2:57 PM PST - 8 comments

Of Superheroes, Product Placements, and PSAs. A nostagia-filled gallery of comic book covers with all your favourite (and no so favourite) spandex-clad superheroes shilling everything from Hostess cream-filled Twinkies to saying no to crack.
posted by Sully at 2:44 PM PST - 12 comments

David Edelstein's article in Slate on idiotic twist endings should make it easy to score 10/10 on this Guardian quiz. For a more challenging quiz, try this one (answers here).
posted by Armitage Shanks at 12:54 PM PST - 30 comments

Mercury Connections: The extent and effects of mercury pollution in northeastern North America. a summary of the major findings reported in a series of 21 papers. Evers, David C. 2005. BioDiversity Research Institute. Gorham, Maine. 28 pages. Mercury Connections is a summary of the major findings reported in a series of 21 papers. These papers are published in: Biogeographical patterns of environmental mercury in northeastern North America. 2005. Ecotoxicology. Volume 14, numbers 1 and 2.
posted by hank at 12:37 PM PST - 5 comments

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Motorbike Unveiled (BBC link, no reg. req.)
The Emissions Neutral Vehicle (ENV), has a top speed of 50mph (80km/h), a range of at least 100 miles (160km) and can run continuously for four hours before the fuel cell needs recharging.
What's more, the bike's "exhaust" is water vapor and is so clean that its drinkable.
Concerns are that the bike is too quiet and plans have been made to add a motor sound to the bike so as to not startle pedestrians. Though I must admit to kind of liking the idea of "stealth mode" motorcycling.
A sort of follow up to this post.
posted by fenriq at 12:32 PM PST - 57 comments

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows users to create scripts that alter the display of existing web pages. Like removing ads from google pages. I learned about the google script from boingboing. Oh, here's a script to remove the ads from there. Greasemonkey has a lot of uses, but has adblocking gone too far?
posted by gwint at 11:33 AM PST - 40 comments

Wildcats, Falcons, Dragonflies, Dominators, Lancers, Starlifters, Sea Stallions, Shooting Stars, Stilletos (or is it Stilleti?): instrument panels
posted by breezeway at 10:44 AM PST - 10 comments

In an effort to undermine California's vehicle global warming law, the auto industry has been running an ad claiming today's vehicles are virtually emission free. The Union of Concerned Scientists says "poppycock on that!" and is seeking a FTC false-advertising investigation. Fortunately, no matter who's bullshooting, you can help wipe away the problem.
posted by danOstuporStar at 10:24 AM PST - 30 comments

"The 52 funniest things about the upcoming death of the Pope," by New York Press columnist Matt Taibbi, generated controversy that spread from conservative blogs outward. The Press was denounced by legislators, one of whom suggested New Yorkers throw the paper away; it was slammed by gossip columnist Lloyd Grove, possibly in retaliation for Grove's being named No. 20 on this list. After refusing a suspension, Press editor Jeff Koyen resigned and bashed his bosses, calling one a "spineless alt-weekly weenie." The public back-and-forth between erstwhile editor and former boss continues, but Taibbi's response to the whole thing is probably the best after the fact summary.
posted by jeffmshaw at 10:07 AM PST - 64 comments

Bush nominates Wolfowitz for World Bank post. "Willingness to accept a long-term American occupation force" is now set to become a condition for future bailouts.
posted by clevershark at 9:59 AM PST - 81 comments

Duct-tape czar appointed to Home Depot executive board. In a decision that sends hardware futures skyrocketing, Tom Ridge gets a real job. (Old news, but funny nonetheless...)
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 9:29 AM PST - 15 comments

Songs titles containing the numbers 1 to 100.
posted by kenaman at 8:32 AM PST - 68 comments

Build a huge house for only $782?! Low-cost housing for the masses! Unfortunately, you have to travel back in time to build houses for less than $1000. How many of these homes are in your town or on your block? (courtesy of J-Walk)
posted by crunchland at 8:05 AM PST - 21 comments

Congressional Copy Editors Needed To Prevent Future Diplomatic Incidents A minor typo in an unofficial transcript at a Congressional hearing a couple of weeks ago caused Sudan to think the U.S. had conducted a secret nuclear weapons test there in 1962. As one might expect, they didn't take the news well.
It snowballed: within a day, the Chinese news service was reporting that the Sudanese government held the U.S. responsible for "cancer spread in Sudan" caused by "U.S. nuclear experiments in the African country in 1962-1970."
posted by zarq at 8:01 AM PST - 17 comments

I dont know whether to be upset or envious? Dont know about the kid market but i could totally see this for "older" (read my mom) consumers.
posted by ShawnString at 5:59 AM PST - 47 comments

Out of Time : a long time R.E.M. fan discusses the albums made for Warner in terms of how they changed his life on first listen. The review is honor of the band's decision to rerelease their albums from this time period on DVD (with few to no "extras"). The band arguably hit their nadir with Around The Sun, reintroducing fans to their previous greatness might not be a bad idea. But will old fans pay $24.99 for albums they already own? Furthermore, what does it say about a great band when their songs are available as ringtones?
posted by grapefruitmoon at 5:46 AM PST - 100 comments

EGIL: The Electronic Gateway for Icelandic Literature. Digitised texts related to Iceland.
posted by plep at 5:20 AM PST - 8 comments

The country music of the atom bomb. Via 3 Quarks Daily
posted by Tlogmer at 5:16 AM PST - 12 comments

Anti-fascist researcher Dave Emory: George Seldes was inspiration to Mae Brussell,whose first computer was donated by conservative Frank Zappa. Dave Emory continues the tradition of investigative muckraker in his weekly program on the great WFMU. Key to the for the record material:Paul Manning. annotated program descriptions here Dave's 500th show real&mp3
posted by hortense at 3:16 AM PST - 15 comments

The greatest cover ever. 10 years ago, a Norwegian band called Hurra Torpedo performed a cover of the 80s classic "Total Eclipse of the Heart". Thankfully, Bill Bradford has shared with the world this sublime rendition of Meatloaf's Finest Contribution to Society. [via ubermondo]
posted by pikachulolita at 2:49 AM PST - 47 comments

Dr. Who Returns to the BBC on Saturday, 26 March at 7pm on BBC One. To those of us of a certain age, this is good news. Russell T Davies, creator of "Queer As Folk", is the writer and executive producer. North American fans with access to the CBC won't have to wait long to see the new series. It starts Tuesday 5 April at 8pm.
posted by paddbear at 2:43 AM PST - 46 comments

"A theory that can't predict anything is not a scientific theory," Woit says. That would be string theory, which was going to be the theory of everything, but apparently can't even agree how many dimensions there are. "Those who dabble in alternate-universe speculations might be just modern versions of '16th century theologians (who) speculated that spirits and angels emerge from the extra-dimensional universe,' says Krauss, who is also an outspoken foe of creationist teaching in schools."
posted by raaka at 2:19 AM PST - 52 comments

the simplest ideas are usually the best ones. Its easy to forget that the internet is a relatively new medium. Whats the bet that in the future that we will all be wishing that we still had all of our content that we contributed to "cyberspace" such as reviews, comments, posts... Who knows if 10 - 15 years from now, if the sites we post on will still be up, even stable sites such as MetaFilter may not exist in the future. sites have shut down before, taking everyones content with it. Its a simple idea, why not just store your content, be it on your desktop or a web application? So who wants to start a MeFi label over at bulletin board buddy.
posted by omega at 2:15 AM PST - 30 comments

The Most Ambitious Game Ever? At this year's Game Developers Conference, Sims creator Will Wright's upcoming game Spore drew standing ovations. Not to be outdone, Peter Molyneux (of Populous and Black & White fame) revealed his own ambitious game-like project The Room. While the top game designers have freedom to play, independents rail (read Greg Costikyan's amazing bit in the middle) at the restrictions of the publisher system. For those who doubt games can be art.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:25 PM PST - 60 comments

It is more likely than not that most of America’s enemies in the near future will continue to be at least as awkwardly and inconveniently asymmetrical as they have been over the past 15 years. However, it would be grossly imprudent to assume that they will all be led by politicians as incompetent at grand strategy as Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. There is probably a General Aideed lurking out there, not to mention a General Giap. A no-less-troubling thought is recognition of the certainty that America’s strategic future will witness enemies initially of the second-rate, and eventually of the first... One may choose to recall the old aphorism that “unless you have fought the Germans, you don’t really know war.” That thought, though one hopes not its precise national example, holds for the future.

How Has War Changed Since the End of the Cold War?  The answer seems to be not that much at all: The truth of the matter is that war is not changing its character, let alone miraculously accomplishing the impossible and changing its nature.
posted by y2karl at 8:10 PM PST - 8 comments

amaztype A typographic Amazon search engine, created by Keita Kitamura and Yugo Nakamura.
posted by LinusMines at 7:45 PM PST - 14 comments

Containing subversive Latin America [via]. The Bush administration hasn't forgotten the troublemaker to the south (or if you prefer, the "Anti-Bush"). The US will be taking a tougher stance (that tough?) with Venezuela because they say its leader is a subversive force in the region, destabilizing surrounding countries. Is Chavez a hero? A threat? For anyone who has seen the Revolution being Televised, it's hard to say he's a villain. I suppose it depends on who you ask. (As previously discussed.)
posted by blendor at 7:27 PM PST - 33 comments

Apparently, thousands of Ten Commandments monuments around the country began their lives as promos for the 1956 movie "The Ten Commandments" (Including the one in the case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month). "The stars of the movie, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner and Martha Scott, attended many of the dedications." Transcripts of the March 2nd arguments here and here. This was also pointed out on the NPR radio comedy program "Wait, Wait - Don't Tell Me" (click the "Listen" link next to "Opening Panel Round: The Supreme Court and Cecil B. DeMille"). Does/should this affect your views on the case? Is this a minor detail, or is it an under-reported fact in the U.S. media? [via Monkeyfilter]
posted by spock at 6:17 PM PST - 26 comments

Illustrated Notes from Computer Science: Tom Murphy VII gets more bored in class than you. And thanks to his free fonts, your boredom can look just as snazzy. (Previous Tom7-related action here. This guy keeps busy. I blame the 80/20 rule.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:00 PM PST - 13 comments

Suburban sweatshops. Jorge Bonilla is hospitalized with pneumonia from sleeping at the restaurant where he works, unable to afford rent on wages of thirty cents an hour. Domestic worker Yanira Juarez discovers she has labored for six months with no wages at all; her employer lied about establishing a savings account for her.
In 1992, Fordham law professor Jennifer Gordon founded the Workplace Project to help immigrant workers in the underground suburban economy of Long Island, New York. She has written a book ,"Suburban Sweatshops", to describe the experiences of these immigrants. More inside.
posted by matteo at 4:58 PM PST - 14 comments

Ramadi Madness. Unfiltered video of the Bush war in Iraq, shot by a soldier with a digital minicam.
posted by four panels at 1:21 PM PST - 126 comments

COOL Javascript Trickery. Useful? Sure seems like it could be, though I can't think how. Fun? YES!
posted by gummo at 1:07 PM PST - 23 comments

Billy Bragg videos from 1991 I'm not much one for music videos, but Billy's "Sexuality" with Kirsty MacColl was one of my favorites back in the day. Sometime in the late 90's, I just assumed I'd never see it again. But ask and the Internet provides. There is also "You Woke Up My Neighborhood," with Peter Buck and Michael Stipe. I hadn't seen that one before, but it's wonderful, too.

Also enjoy a greyer Billy playing at a fairly recent Strummerville benefit. first link may be dodgy in firefox. Worked once for me but not on subsequent viewings.
posted by Mayor Curley at 12:28 PM PST - 35 comments

Recent bubbles offer first confirmed desktop plasma generation through sonoluminesence. You remember sonoluminesence right? Responsible for brilliant shrimp, and skinny people...
posted by johnjoe at 12:24 PM PST - 12 comments

Cigarettes from a time gone by. "A collection of quaint cigarette packs, boxes, tins and advertising" We had candy cigarettes in January, now the real thing.
posted by caddis at 12:15 PM PST - 9 comments

Senators Charles Schumer and Susan Collins urge stronger action on Saudi Arabia | "Sen. Schumer said, It is a massive contradiction that a country we call an ally could be both so regressive in their own country and so brazen in its propagation of anti-American, anti-women, anti-Semitic books, publications, and practices. American security is undermined as the Saudi government exports these hateful commodities to millions beyond its borders, planting the seeds for new generations of terrorists and totalitarian Wahhabi leaders." In the recent past, Schumer has demanded answers on the Islamic Saudi Academy in Arlington, VA—where Omar Abu Ali graduated as 1999 valedictorian—and on the growing Wahhabi influence in the U.S.
posted by jenleigh at 11:05 AM PST - 40 comments

Prairie dogs (Quicktime clips), also known as sod poodles, are like preschoolers on the prairie with only squeak toys (Real audio) for communication. These historical, intelligent, social butterflies of the lowlands are the subject of old wives’ tales and a source for surreal, realistic, humorous, and sometimes kitschy artistic inspiration. They are newsworthy and Metafilter-worthy. They are both despised and loved. The fact that they are being hunted for sport is causing alarm, and their dwindling numbers are affecting the Great Plains as they are key to its survival.
posted by debralee at 10:48 AM PST - 29 comments

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's 19 million acres comprise one of the last places on earth where an intact expanse of arctic and sub arctic lands remains protected.

Drilling in the Arctic Refuge can't make even a small dent in meeting America's energy needs. U.S. Geological Survey scientists estimate that there is very likely only enough oil to supply America's needs for six months. And oil companies admit that, even that, won't be available for at least 10 years.

An irreplaceable natural treasure, the Arctic Refuge is home to caribou, polar bears, grizzly bears, wolves, golden eagles, snow geese and more. Millions of other birds use the Arctic Refuge to nest and as a critical staging area on their migratory journeys.

The Arctic Refuge supports more than wildlife. For a thousand generations, the Gwich'in people of Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada have depended on it and lived in harmony with it. To them, the Arctic Coastal Plain is sacred ground.

Yet where God sees life, Republicans see black profit by adding Alaskan drilling to upcoming legislation.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 10:21 AM PST - 86 comments

Delivery a short film by Till Nowak, is a dystopian, Escheresque daydream, digitally animated.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:47 AM PST - 18 comments

Funding for the International Space Station may dry up next year. The Iran Non-Proliferation Act of 2000 will prevent further Russian Soyuz flight sponsoring from the U.S. budget. This problem looms large as a new NASA Director is appointed by shrub and the Space Shuttle project hopes to have it's first launch mid-year since the Columbia explosion in Feb. 2003. via
posted by peacay at 9:25 AM PST - 13 comments

Web of Letters Type in a word -- instant type collage.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:16 AM PST - 15 comments

91 pounds of LSD? ...at that dosage level, Pickard and Apperson possessed 2 billion hits of acid—enough to give every person in the Western Hemisphere two doses and still have 250 million hits left over.

Ryan Grim is writing about acid again at Slate.
posted by Gankmore at 8:53 AM PST - 97 comments

six-legged walking machine, exciting video footage, unlikely future designs
posted by breezeway at 8:19 AM PST - 18 comments

ASBOs (or Anti Social Behaviour Orders) are used to stop a variety of different anti-social behaviours.
(Wikipedia Link only included to give background. The fun stuff is in the following BBC links)
posted by seanyboy at 8:18 AM PST - 25 comments

There is an island where all the inhabitants are either knights or knaves. Knights always tell the truth, and knaves always lie [PDF]. Can you tell which is which?
posted by skoosh at 7:12 AM PST - 17 comments

And the sign says you got to have a membership card to get inside.
posted by LouReedsSon at 6:54 AM PST - 45 comments

If the same journalistic standards applied to CBS by the independent Rathergate panel had been applied to the Pentagon Papers, they never would have seen the light of day, says James Goodale, former vice chairman of the New York Times.
posted by digaman at 6:22 AM PST - 20 comments

Bridge the gap
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:18 AM PST - 23 comments

TiVo saved? After a grim 4Q04 conference call, focusing on bells and whistles for which there's little evidence of customer demand, it's now reported that TiVo is on the verge of striking a deal with Comcast to integrate TiVo software and services into Comcast's integrated tuner-DVRs. TiVo needs this deal very, very badly...
posted by MattD at 4:32 AM PST - 29 comments

Beaterator - From the folks at Rockstar Games comes an easy to use flash implementation of MOD Tracking. You can upload sound files to add your own samples, and save your songs (after registering). See also the Rhymerator.
posted by addyct at 3:02 AM PST - 4 comments

Death Valley in bloom. Lots more here and the story is here. Flickr photos with tags deathvalley+flowers. (Full disclosure: I work on Flickr. -ericost) NPR did a segment recently. Desert USA has a guide. The Death Valley National Park news page has a link to two PDFs. Wildflower Update. (via MetaTalk, five fresh fish, monju_bosatsu, ericost, euphorb, ori, and the MeFi community. All text and copy directly lifted from the thread.)
posted by loquacious at 2:06 AM PST - 24 comments

Hero stones are carved stones (found all over India) erected in the honor of a brave man or woman who perished while defending the interests of the village. Image search.
posted by dhruva at 11:01 PM PST - 6 comments

The Haunted Nintendo "On one occasion, the arrow icon moved down to the 2 player icon without me touching the controller..."
posted by AMWKE at 10:31 PM PST - 18 comments

Eat your favorite deity, the way to your heart (and soul) is through your stomach. Buddha, Ganesh, or even chocolate Jesus. These would even make for a nice dessert after supper. Tom Waits would be proud.
posted by Arch Stanton at 10:27 PM PST - 12 comments

Star Wars Revelations (13 MB QT file) A new, lush looking Star Wars fan movie. The CG looks (I think) close to the real deal. The production Web site is hammered at the moment. But here's an article with background on the production [via slashdot]
posted by Dag Maggot at 9:26 PM PST - 56 comments

Getting Bored is Not Allowed at the Plaza Hotel, at least not according to its famous fictional resident, the exhausting, spoiled and infectiously ebullient Eloise. Sadly, though, today's news is anything but boring: the Plaza's new owners announced plans to close the iconic hotel for 18 months, and renovate it to create private condos -- throwing hundreds of employees out of work. It's been said that nothing unimportant ever happens at the Plaza: from its 1907 opening to Truman Capote's 1966 Black and White Ball, the Plaza has hosted literati, glitterati, rock stars, and royalty. It has graced the screen in movies such as Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Great Gatsby, making Hollywood history when it became the first fully on-location film shoot for North by Northwest. Ernest Hemingway told F. Scott Fitzgerald to give his liver to Princeton and his heart to the Plaza; Dorothy Parker got her pink slip from Vanity Fair there. Residents, at various times, included Frank Lloyd Wright, Cary Grant, and Judy Garland. Every President since Taft has stepped through its giant engraved revolving doors. Chef Boyardee of canned-spaghetti fame got his start in its kitchens. No New York tourist's rounds are complete without a bloody mary and some bluepoints at the Oyster Bar, a martini in the Oak Room bar, or tea in the Palm Court, and its French-chateau facade is a Central Park centerpiece. An employees' group and a supporting 'Friends of the Plaza' group have begun working to save the gracious place, with the goal of preserving not only the building and their jobs, but the very idea of the quintessential New York luxury hotel. Almost enough to make folks want the Donald back.
posted by Miko at 9:11 PM PST - 15 comments

Down in San Deigo, the 2005 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (etech) just got started. Things don't really get rolling until Tuesday, but a few have already informed those of us who couldn't be there in person that they'll be blogging it - Official blog - Stream Archive including a BluetoothBot logging when people (or at least their cell phones) are coming and going - Flickr photos - Weblogs Inc.'s coverage - Sean Bonner and Ian Hay. Look for all sorts of cool things to be popping up throughout the blogosphere in the next few days. For those of us who unfortunately couldn't make it this year, please post your favorite blogger who is there in the comments.
posted by pwb503 at 6:38 PM PST - 4 comments

Best Job safety video ever! It seems that Sam Raimi is doing work safety videos now. FYI you don't need to know german.
posted by MrLint at 6:36 PM PST - 23 comments

30 years of Sundays in the 23rd century. Magic Time Square of all Fridays. Magic Square portrait of Queen Victoria. A few pieces from the web site of Savant artist George Widener, whose extraordinary memory, drawing skill and calendar calculating abilities have "only recently come to public notice." Found via Dr. Darold Treffert's fascinating Savant Syndrome site, with tons of info that raises compelling questions. [previous Savant-related MeFi threads]
posted by mediareport at 6:30 PM PST - 3 comments

Tyler Hinman: Legend, Zoalesquianist, Champion. The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament has a new kid in the grid.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 6:17 PM PST - 4 comments

Play ["Stomp" style flash, via]
posted by moonbird at 5:40 PM PST - 9 comments

Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage... California joins New York in a lower-court decision for marriage equality, with the judge stating, "The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts — separate but equal," ... And in DC, Ken Mehlman, (closeted) head of the RNC, in an interview with the AP, backslides on his party's trumpeting of anti-gay sentiment: - It's not his job as head of the party to tell states whether they should allow same-sex couples to wed or form civil unions. "Certainly our platform states that the party is committed to ensuring that there is traditional marriage," he said, but he didn't think the party should take a position on state initiatives. More on today's court decision here.
posted by amberglow at 4:43 PM PST - 131 comments

Elections Run by Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste its my first post, go easy on me.
posted by nola at 1:22 PM PST - 71 comments

We're number one! So, how are we going to divide up the $20.04?
posted by sfslim at 1:22 PM PST - 27 comments

What Can Art Do for You? We’ve all heard that Art enriches our communities, makes our children smarter, and brings in money and jobs. In response to the recently released RAND study (PDF) which critiqued the arguments made by arts organizations for the funding of the arts, Doug McLennan of ArtsJournal.com invited “11 prominent arts people” to discuss if there is a better way to advocate for the arts. Why do we need to market the arts? Shouldn’t Art advocate for itself? Are there different ways to sell the benefits of the arts in this day and age?
posted by geryon at 1:09 PM PST - 6 comments

An interview with Brad Bird.

Bird: Some people said it was Ayn Rand or something like that, which is ridiculous. Other people threw Nietzsche around, which I also find ridiculous. But I think the vast majority of people took it the way I intended. Some people said it was sort of a right-wing feeling, but I think that's as silly of an analysis as saying The Iron Giant was left-wing. I'm definitely a centrist and feel like both parties can be absurd.
posted by hughbot at 1:07 PM PST - 75 comments

Gun education - what doesn't kill you makes you smarter. I don't know whether to wet my pants laughing or poop my pants in fear. "I'm the only one in this room, that I know of, professional enough to handle one of these."
posted by GernBlandston at 1:02 PM PST - 43 comments

The Great Book of Gaelic. Illustrated poetry.
posted by plep at 10:13 AM PST - 15 comments

While the proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions, the internal government memos collected in this publication demonstrate that the path to the purgatory that is Guantanamo Bay, or Abu Ghraib, has been paved with decidedly bad intentions. The policies that resulted in rampant abuse of detainees first in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo Bay, and later in Iraq, were product of three pernicious purposes designed to facilitate the unilateral and unfettered detention, interrogation, abuse, judgment, and punishment of prisoners: (1) the desire to place the detainees beyond the reach of any court or law; (2) the desire to abrogate the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of persons seized in the context of armed hostilities; and (3) the desire to absolve those implementing the policies of any liability for war crimes under U.S. and international law.

Regarding the Torture Papers, which detail Torture's Paper Trail, and, then there's Hungry for Air: Learning The Language Of Torture, and, of course, there's ( more inside)
posted by y2karl at 9:55 AM PST - 94 comments

Experimental Gameplay is the result of a project undertaken by a group of students at Carnegie Mellon University to create 50 to 100 games in 1 semester. Some of the games are good, some awful, but I particularly recommend Particle Suck, Opposites Attract and Tower of Goo.
posted by bap98189 at 9:24 AM PST - 21 comments

Blockland is a non-competitive multiplayer game where you build with interconnecting bricks. (via del.games)
posted by TuxHeDoh at 8:58 AM PST - 6 comments

Project for Excellence in Journalism Report NYT: The annual Project for Excellence in Journalism report on the state of the media says that the use of anonymous sources in newspapers has dropped significantly over the last year. USAT: Non-traditional media gaining ground, consumers. LAT: Study warns of "junk news" diet. E&P: Survey finds newspapers slipping, facing cutbacks. WaPo: Study finds no shortage of opinion on Fox News.
posted by psmealey at 7:01 AM PST - 8 comments

While looking to cook something new, I found a woman's story of growing up in Romania and her immigration to the United States.
posted by pieoverdone at 6:43 AM PST - 6 comments

"A Collection of Rarities" The John Tradescants (Elder and Younger) lived in London in the 16th and 17th centuries. Adventurous travellers, diplomats, horticultural pioneers, polymaths, they were also collectors, acquiring (and asking their friends to acquire) specimens of the wonders of the world. Their growing collection was housed in a large house -- "The Ark" -- in Lambeth, London. The Ark was the prototypical Cabinet of Curiosity or Wunderkammer, a collection of rare and strange objects. The Tradescant's collection was eventually transferred to -- and some say it was swindled out of them by -- Elias Ashmole, who used it to start The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The Tradescants are buried in St. Mary's Churchyard, Lambeth, now home to the Museum of Garden History.
posted by carter at 6:30 AM PST - 2 comments

Louis Alvarado, U.S. Citizen.
posted by swift at 5:44 AM PST - 27 comments

How we work. "The habits, rituals and small (and occasionally big) methods people and teams use to get their work done." Includes Damien Hirst, J.G. Ballard, Pierre Omidyar, Mohamed al-Fayed, Scott McNealy, and Gibson vs Doctorow on the effect of blogging on work.
posted by iffley at 5:43 AM PST - 6 comments

Damien Hirst has a new show up in New York. (NYT link) The British artist (previously discussed here, here, and here) has turned away from sheep in boxes and towards photo-realist painting. His subject matter hasn't gotten any cheerier - "The Devastating Impact of Crack Cocaine" is downright frightening. Slightly more accessible is "Six Pills," which is reminiscent of his Pharmacy installation.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:22 AM PST - 28 comments

Freedom on the Fence: The Polish Poster. While we're at it: The history and culture of the Polish poster and an analysis of American Films in Polish Posters. Or, if you'd prefer, The Classic Polish Film Poster database (where the Disney/Children's film posters are quite lovely). Also, The Wallace Library at the Rochester Institute of Technology has a fantastic searchable and browse-able database, with many hi-res images. Finally, some other Polish Poster Galleries. (What's that? You want more? You want artist-specific galleries? Okay. Here's work by Mieczyslaw Gorowski, Piotr Kunce, Wieslaw Walkuski, and Jan Sawka. Oh, you wanted Communist-era Polish propaganda posters? Fine. Here ya go.) [previous MeFi discussion on Polish film posters; also, some of the images from these links may be NSFW, depending on how S your W environment is.]
posted by .kobayashi. at 9:16 PM PST - 10 comments

People of the pancake: "I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the 'instantly available'. A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become 'pancake people'—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button." Writing on the Edge, Richard Foreman and George Dyson speculate on a 'thin-client' view of the self where most cultural processing occurs not only somewhere else, but by something else! [reality checks provided by Kevin Kelly, Jaron Lanier, Steven Johnson, Marvin Minsky and Douglas Rushkoff, among others :]
posted by kliuless at 8:19 PM PST - 10 comments

More than Human - Ramez Naam's site promoting his new book (about emerging technologies for engineering human biology, more or less), has excerpts, a list of upcoming appearances, and even a full-fledged blog linking to articles and commentary that might be of interest to people curious about the book's transhumanist ideas. Now this is the way to do it.
posted by Mars Saxman at 6:48 PM PST - 10 comments

Tim Thornton-Allan is a film editor who's collaborated with the best advertising and short film directors around the world.

Some other favorites: Cherry, Arcade, and Hong Kong
posted by bigtimes at 1:59 PM PST - 8 comments

Amul hits. A series of highly popular ads from Amul, India's largest food products marketing organisation
posted by growabrain at 9:08 AM PST - 7 comments

Terry Ratzmann's Homepage. After reading some accounts of the Wisconsin church shooting, I noted he was into horticulture. A Google search turned up only four entries, one from his church, and three forum posts written by Terry himself about plants, which included his email address at "traven@execpc.com". I went old school, and formatted an URL in Unix style, trying his email name as a web directory and hit paydirt.
posted by tpoh.org at 8:58 AM PST - 54 comments

Most folks know about Jane and Annie but there were many more oldtime daredevils and rodeo queens who paved the way for contemporary cowgirls (flash). More than 170 trailblazers are included in the Dallas Cowgirl Hall of Fame...women who have been the inspiration for art, erotica, kitsch, and the dreams of girls of all ages.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:35 AM PST - 12 comments

So it's Sunshine Week. That's not a weather forecast, but a creation of the press to focus attention on the need for more open government. Some sites have posted How-To Guides on filing a FOIA request, a skill without which sites like this wouldn't be able to publish entertaining mugshots and court documents. My local paper has a package of articles on Sunshine Week. Anything happening in your town?
posted by baltimore at 8:10 AM PST - 8 comments

So, Taiwanese firm Luxpro have released a clone of the iPod Shuffle, but with an FM tuner and a voice recorder built in. Let the comparison commence!
posted by armoured-ant at 6:38 AM PST - 64 comments

Oh what you can do with a colored pencil. Colored pencils are not just for grammar school projects. Some of these drawings are pretty realistic. Others are just pretty. Who knew there is an organization devoted to colored pencil work?
posted by caddis at 6:23 AM PST - 28 comments

Journey Through a Jet Engine [flash]
posted by srboisvert at 5:13 AM PST - 12 comments

Africa. Lol.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:01 AM PST - 58 comments

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder*
*Statement suspect for museum curators, "critics", "experts" and "connosieurs".
posted by daksya at 2:26 AM PST - 56 comments

Blogging is good for your health? [via] Despite all the open hatred and backlash against online journaling (not to mention an infamous study indicating that diary-keeping could be bad for your health), there may be actual merit to telling someone that they should get their own (damn) blog!
posted by Lush at 1:41 AM PST - 4 comments

Soviet Anti-Alcohol Prop. Interesting historical collection.
posted by McBain at 10:48 PM PST - 11 comments

I mean, programming's a bitch, but... I'll bet there's something else to it.
posted by postmodernmillie at 10:05 PM PST - 32 comments

never get stuck on the 405 again? serving los angeles, san diego, san bernadino and riverside counties along with san francisco and miscellaneous cities throughout california, sigalert.com will give you up to the minute traffic information on almost any freeway in california, including average speeds, closed roads, detailed info re: traffic accidents, etc.
(if you're living in LA county, the only con is that it doesn't have information on the canyons...)
posted by mgkaelen at 8:10 PM PST - 24 comments

"Which search engine should I use?"
posted by iffley at 6:52 PM PST - 42 comments

Green roofs "are living, vegetative roofing alternatives designed in stark contrast to the many standard non-porous roof choices."
posted by dhruva at 6:13 PM PST - 21 comments

There are very big things in Canada. There are very big things in Australia. There are very big things in Minnesota, in Texas, and at least 18 other states. There's so much to see, but my favorite is probably the many dinosaur statues of Drumheller, including the Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Smileasaurus Banana Eater, Shysasaurus Jelly Bean Eater, and, ummm, Jesus.
posted by .kobayashi. at 4:24 PM PST - 18 comments

I come not to bury love, but to complicate it. There is something wrong with our concept of love. Romantic love (just “love” hereafter) isn't what many of us think it is when we ask ourselves “Do I love her?” or “Does he love me?” Many of us are making some kind of mistake. But what kind of mistake is it, and what is love if it isn't what many of us think it is? A concept, roughly, is a way of thinking of things or features of things in the world. To have a concept of something is to have a kind of psychological ability to “individuate”, or pick out, all kinds of things in the world, for thought and talk, and for action. Some of our concepts are of psychological states. For example, I have a concept of pain and a concept of belief. I also have a concept of love, as do you. The suggestion that I am making is that there is a mismatch between love and our concept of love. But what is the nature of that mismatch?
Love's complications From The Philosopher's Magazine
posted by y2karl at 3:39 PM PST - 49 comments

Reptilian Imagery and Demonology: A well researched analysis of astral archetypes and modern/post-modern American culture. [via our friends at the cDc]
posted by kuatto at 2:56 PM PST - 17 comments

formerlyROSIE hit Blogger with Rosie O'Donnell's name and photo in the profile, but of course we all knew the poems about the Black Album were posted by some fan or mocker. But the New York Times interviewed Rosie and confirmed that she indeed wrote this blog. The article depicts Rosie as the ultimate blogger, though some may feel she belongs on LiveJournal.
posted by NickDouglas at 11:41 AM PST - 34 comments

Mississippi Musicians as compiled by the students of Starkville High School, Starkville, Mississippi.
posted by gimonca at 8:56 AM PST - 13 comments

The new Batman movie is here! Starring Adam West, Mark Hamill and Courtney Thorme-Smith, with Dick Van Dyke as Commissioner Gordon.
(quicktime, lego)
lego?
posted by yhbc at 8:39 AM PST - 19 comments

Project Fox (Flash Inside) brings together young artists, designers, cooks, hotel industry professionals and managers to develop and implement their own ideas.
These will be presented to the public in 3 sites (hotel, factory, warehouse) in Copenhagen for three weeks in April.
"21 Artists. 61 Rooms. 13 Countries" via
posted by peacay at 7:55 AM PST - 3 comments

Galang-alang-alang-a. (insane, 18MB QuickTime music video)
[MusicFilter] Cranking out music somewhere between hip-hop, electronica, Nintendo cartridges, and reggae, 27-year-old Maya Arulpragasam is getting a lot of attention for the results of tinkering with one box. M.I.A. (her stage name) dresses in garish flourescents like it's 1983, dances like no one's watching, and is making waves all around the critic-o-sphere. [RS|NYT|Eye|pm|pfm|New Yorker|CBC] Want a sample? The video for "Galang" takes her grattifi-esque art, animates it, and mashes it all together with her, um, unusual style of dance, for a music+video experience that is hard to forget. Is M.I.A. redefining the world of 21st century global pop... or is it just crap?   (via WG)
posted by blacklite at 2:26 AM PST - 118 comments

"He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying." --thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the ACLU has received documents detailing detention, abuse, and death, of many, including children, at Abu Ghraib. Mostly PDFs, but summaries available on most pages: ... Investigation closed because furtherance "would be of little or no value" ... --statements of that sort are common throughout.
posted by amberglow at 9:00 PM PST - 94 comments

Dave Allen drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes while telling jokes about sex and the church from his swivel chair on BBC2 in the early 70's. Some called him the "Irish Lenny Bruce" and he was a major influence on England's alternative stand comedy scene. He passed away this week and is fondly remembered by Eddie Izzard and other current British comedians.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 7:53 PM PST - 39 comments

Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
posted by srboisvert at 6:18 PM PST - 11 comments

When authorities arrested Omran Saleh and 18 others in 2003, they touted the bust as one of Cincinnati's biggest theft cases in years. The arrests resulted from a two-year investigation involving 160 officers from five law enforcement agencies. And then came the kicker: Cincinnati Police Chief Tom Streicher said the group may have netted as much as $37 million and funneled money to terrorists. The case has been unraveling ever since. (Neverminding those day-one convictions in print and on the internets...)
posted by airguitar at 5:15 PM PST - 4 comments

Rube would have been proud [6 mb AVI].
posted by psychotic_venom at 2:35 PM PST - 26 comments

Chris Barr is available on Thursday for the next two months. So what you ask? You can schedule things for Chris to do and view things he's done in the past. I especially enjoyed the "ask strange women to hold a sign saying I Like Spike" and "ask a bunch of random folks what is on their iPod." Can wait to see what he has to do next.
posted by mathowie at 1:59 PM PST - 31 comments

Well, for a fact or two, The Beirut Wall Isn't Falling, Lebanon is not Ukraine and it is not democracy that's on the march in the Middle East. And while remembering all those arguments made 1,500 deaths ago--not to mention those so far uncounted but estimated at 100,000+ civilian deaths--let it be, all the while the Iraq War compels Pentagon to rethink Big-Picture Strategy, it is that American military intevention which makes America as a Revolutionary Force in the Middle East, according to some. Meanwhile, Kishore Mahbubani, author of Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World lists Five Strategic Mistakes the West has made which continue to destabilize the Islamic world. Along related lines, comes The Origins of al Qaeda’s Ideology: Implications for US Strategy. Sound bites, wishful thoughts and stage managed demonstrations aside, could it be something more thoughtful might be required? Say, like, Understanding Islamism ? (Now available in new slow acting convenient Word or pdf form) Say, Which War Is This Anyway ?
posted by y2karl at 1:41 PM PST - 54 comments

MYSTERY ‘MINI-MONSTER’ WASHED UP: PARTON residents are baffled by what has been described as a “mini Loch Ness Monster” washed up on their beach. What could it be? Another interesting tidbit: a pro-creationist site is citing this as an example of an OOPArt (out of place artifact) that debunks the theory of evolution. Check out the British lady.
posted by Dante5Inferno at 1:13 PM PST - 48 comments

Kasparov retires. Garry Kasparov, ranked the #1 chess player in the world (and who's at least among the top three players all-time) said the 2005 Linares tournament will be his last as a professional player. It seems this announcement leaves professional chess and FIDE, at least, in a bit of a bind. Although he's not an official champ, he's still ranked as the strongest player by FIDE. If he really is gone, how much legitimacy will any successor as "unified champ" have? Or does it really matter? How many people on Metafilter care about this, and is it more or less than those who worry about the hockey strike?
posted by Leege at 12:14 PM PST - 36 comments

Porn Titles Based on Real Movies [NSFW] - Some of this stuff you just can't make up. [via Fleshbot (NSFW)]
posted by StopMakingSense at 9:01 AM PST - 79 comments

We're Knights of the Round Table
We dance whene'er we're able.
We do routines and chorus scenes
With footwork impeccable.
We dine well here in Camelot.
We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot.
We're Knights of the Round Table.
Our shows are formidable,
But many times we're given rhymes
That are quite unsingable.
We're opera mad in Camelot.
We sing from the diaphragm a lot.
In war we're tough and able,
Quite indefatigable.
Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable.
It's a busy life in Camelot.
posted by terrapin at 8:52 AM PST - 42 comments

It is impossible to read this sexuality material from the University of Missouri and not conclude that Michael Jackson is a pedophile. But then you read about the inconsistencies in the current case and wonder if he has ever actually acted on his pedophilic urges; the overwhelming majority never fulfill their fantasies.
posted by johnnydark at 8:49 AM PST - 45 comments

Indeed, all over the world, millions of born-again Christians have vanished into the mystical ether--leaving behind their clothing, their eyeglasses, even their dentures--along with every child under the age of twelve. Airplanes are crashing, automobiles are veering driverless and out of control, and fetuses are disappearing from their mothers' wombs, as the born-again and the unborn alike are abruptly "raptured" to heaven. Harper's Magazine reviewer Gene Lyons discusses apocalyptic entertainment.
posted by iamck at 8:39 AM PST - 48 comments

The Case for Comics Journalism
posted by njm at 8:37 AM PST - 18 comments

Location location location [mp3s] The Phonography Archives, field recordings from around the world. Also, DeadSCSI, a global collaborative remix/collage/reremix project of tracks all generated from a single original sound file of a SCSI drive breaking down. These and other music/art projects are on Radiant Slab.
posted by carter at 8:27 AM PST - 3 comments

Cinema Therapy : I recently discovered that there is actually a field of study for something that I have long felt existed - a way to access blocked emotions and memories simply through movies. More info: Books, Newsletters, and an Index of films recommended by issues. If movies can indeed "change the way we think and feel" for good, does this not lend credence to those who claim that movies contribute to negative behaviors ("inciting violence", "contaminating society's values") and even crimes? Or does the recognition of the good that films can do actually assist in the battle against those who blame films for negative influences? After all, "Courts do not award extra dollars to entertainers for the unforeseen positive byproducts of their work. Why penalize them for the less fortunate consequences of what they do?" Have you ever felt a theraputic effect from seeing a film?
posted by spock at 8:23 AM PST - 14 comments

Like misbehaving teenagers, Jetsgo passengers find themselves grounded indefinitely. As it turns out you can't both operate on razor-thin margins AND spend millions upon millions in expensive marketing campaigns. Who'd have thunk it?
posted by clevershark at 8:11 AM PST - 23 comments

Idealist and realist: What we can learn from Albert Einstein's free spirit. "Einstein was a Freigeist, and his self-appointed, conscious task was to be a liberator –- a Befreier. In this he continued a great German cultural tradition established by Kant, Goethe, and simultaneously with Einstein, by Ernst Cassirer." [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:12 AM PST - 4 comments

KOTO is a charity training restaurant for street children set up in 1996 in Hanoi, Vietnam by Vietnamese-Australian Jimmy Pham (pdf file).
Of the more than 100 or so former street kids who have learned cooking, waiting and bar skills, 100% of KOTO graduates have since become employed in hotels and restaurants in Hanoi.
KOTO stands for Know One Teach One and they provide uniforms, accomodation, most meals and a small wage during the traineeship.
Even Bill Clinton ate there.
Street children number something in the order of 20,000 or more in Vietnam and most head to the city from poor villages in the countryside, seeking their own slice of the wealth that transition to a market economy is said to generate. Most make little money shining shoes and selling postcards and many become involved in drugs, crime, prostitution or are harassed and arrested by the Police.
Hoa Sua restaurant is another exemplary training enterprise (French affiliation) run along similar lines to KOTO excepting that they also have bakery outlets and embroidery training.
These organizations are hopeful examples of education combatting the cycle of poverty.
(Aside: but no contribution to the Vietnamese economy will be forthcoming from U.S. chemical companies who supplied agent orange during the war)
posted by peacay at 5:57 AM PST - 11 comments

With The Evangelical Air Force. "The NRB's influence was best summarized by its new CEO, Frank Wright, who, in describing a recent lobbying excursion to Capitol Hill, said, "We got into rooms we've never been in before. We got down on the floor of the Senate and prayed over Hillary Clinton's desk." I think this is quite funny, not tragic. There's an interview with the author over here [MP3].
posted by gsb at 5:05 AM PST - 24 comments

No capes , no monoguing, and no ex machina. Brad Bird's 'The Incredibles' notched the clichés of the superhero genre - if not all action/adventure movies - with a thick red marker. These lists have apparently been circulating since 1994. Why do (bad) writers persist in using these plot devices?
posted by vhsiv at 4:51 AM PST - 85 comments

Hand bookbindings.
web design by Mihai Parparita, via Evan Martin's LJ
posted by Slithy_Tove at 10:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Art or not is brought to you by Johannes Blank, the same guy who gave us Rent-A-German.
posted by sour cream at 10:31 PM PST - 5 comments

EP3 Trailer Awesome.
posted by jimjam at 10:09 PM PST - 84 comments

Things are looking up for London. With the launch of LondonPrayer.net and with just a few quiet minutes alone, you can pray for a specific area of London and if we all get together, we can complete the 24/7 Shield of Prayer.
posted by Arch Stanton at 9:03 PM PST - 23 comments

Nobel Prize Winner Charles Townes, co-inventor of the laser wins this year's Templeton Prize Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities. The award is given each year to those who "...encourage the concept that resources and manpower are needed to accelerate progress in spiritual discoveries, which can help humans to learn more than a hundredfold more about divinity." Past winners include these fine folks.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 6:50 PM PST - 12 comments

Alien Hominid is a completely hand-drawn cartoony action game in the style of Metal Slug and Contra, and is based entirely around the very playable (and very hard) flash game of the same name. Here's a video of the console version in action, and a delightful Insert Credit article.
posted by Kleptophoria! at 6:28 PM PST - 14 comments

Respected arts reporter David D'Arcy has been dumped by NPR apparently in response to complaints by MoMA, who were unhappy with his recent coverage of the controversy surrounding Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally. (D'Arcy's previous report here.) The portrait was stolen by the Nazis in 1939; since 1997 it has been on loan to MoMA from the Leopold Collection. The concerns and controversy surrounding the Nazis' looting of art, of course, continue to be thorny issues.
posted by scody at 4:34 PM PST - 14 comments

Customized Google News , launched today, requires no registration, unlike Yahoo News or MSNBC News or even clean-format My Way News. A revolution in customization without commitment, based on Google's largely no-registration strategy. One giant leap in Google commoditization. I'd link you to the Google Blog entry, but although it reached my RSS reader it disappeared from the blog.
posted by NickDouglas at 2:51 PM PST - 39 comments

Buzzed Bunny -- XTreem! A Flash cartoon about the hip new look for Bugs Bunny. Warning -- contains lots of harsh language, mostly bleeped out.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 2:29 PM PST - 38 comments

Great Circle Mapper "Never again will I sigh and stammer when presented with the question, "Why does my flight from Chicago to Hong Kong fly over goddamn Siberia?" (via Salon registration or viewing short ad required)
posted by quonsar at 1:21 PM PST - 30 comments

What do Charles Krauthammer, Harry Lime and Sideshow Bob have in common? Discover The Nutwork
posted by y2karl at 1:17 PM PST - 25 comments

"I felt like hurting someone before, now I feel like hugging people". Only weeks after professing his belief in Jesus Christ, former Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch was baptized in the Jordan River last Saturday. With “Jesus” tattooed across his knuckles and “Matthew 11:28” along his neck, Welch received full immersion in the historic river, along with 20 other white-robed Christians from a Bakersfield, CA church. Welch said the ritual baptism, “washed away his anger.” "My songs are God saying things to me, him talking to people. He's going to use me to heal people and people are going to be drawn to it, just watch, they will be.” For the latest information (and a free mp3) go to Welch's personal website, http://www.headtochrist.com/
posted by matteo at 12:47 PM PST - 147 comments

Is it American literature or African-American literature...or is it literature at all? Nineteenth-century novelist Emma Dunham Kelly-Hawkins, author of the little-read novels Megda and Four Girls at Cottage City, is getting dumped from The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers (previously mentioned in this thread) because she was probably white. Let the literary bickery begin!
posted by butternut at 11:58 AM PST - 19 comments

Ever wonder who gets the spin money from the government to sell us everything from wars to reforms to reconnect the Army with the American people. A rundown on the seven biggest PR firms doing business with the government, and their refusal to come clean about what it is they're doing with our tax money. PRWatch has much, much more, including exposing the funding and associations pushing Social Security "reform"
posted by amberglow at 10:44 AM PST - 83 comments

Only a couple of years ago, it used to be like that: Gore continues to cling to the creed of his fellow Earth-worshippers that the unproved theory of global warming will vaporize us all unless government steps in and forces us to reshape our lives and lifestyles. Under Gore, we'd trade in our SUVs for the transportation equivalent of Yugos. Unemployed people could be absorbed into environment-related positions that would promote the secular dirt gods with the zeal of Buddhist temple fund-raisers. But now (a bit late for the last Kyoto decision-making gathering...) we get this: Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence Behind Effort to Combat Global Warming (NYT link). Is this a real swing in people's opinions despite prominent polemic by the likes of Michael Crichton and George Will? Or just an aberration in mainstream (evangelical) thinking?
posted by carmina at 9:53 AM PST - 52 comments

Iceland awaits grandmaster Bobby Fischer ...if he doesn't first get extradited to the United States for tax evasion. Fate hangs in the balance for a man who played a uniquely patriotic role during the Cold War, ending more than two decades of Soviet domination of the sport of chess.
posted by AlexReynolds at 9:37 AM PST - 19 comments

The CCL game. "we reckon that its the most playable flash game we've done to date and will take a bit more brain power than most of the idiocy that we crank out." - According to Kerb. I have no idea how I ended up on their mailing list. I did have more fun on their flash 5 site than the CCL game.
posted by 13twelve at 2:51 AM PST - 11 comments

Because "Tanning Salon" just won't bring in the punters. Where its worth spending some money just to see the names show up on your credit card statement.
posted by bunglin jones at 2:06 AM PST - 48 comments

Taxi_onomy – classification and urban mapping from the purview of the taxi.
posted by dhruva at 9:51 PM PST - 5 comments

Leisure Town has long been considered one of the most brilliant web 'comics' to ever exist. Authored by one of the geniuses at Jerkcity, the site is finally back after an extended hiatus. Enjoy some of the finest offensive humor ever written. [all links offensive, probably NSFW]
posted by Ryvar at 9:04 PM PST - 22 comments

The Edelweiss Pirates - Not all German kids joined the Hitler Youth in the 1930's and 40's. A loosely-knit group of thousands of working-class teenagers called the Edelweiss Pirates existed in Cologne and nearby towns. Growing out of a youth hiking group (rather than swing dancing), they created their own anti-Nazi subculture through clothing and protest music. Many were arrested for tagging the city with anti-Nazi graffiti and working with the Underground--and they eventually killed the head of the Cologne Gestapo in 1944. Orders to root them out came from Himmler himself, and some were hung in the streets or killed in the camps. Their story is now being told in a film playing at film festivals around the world, including its European premiere in Berlin a few weeks ago. But the surviving members' criminal records officially remain on the books in Germany.
posted by Asparagirl at 8:58 PM PST - 42 comments

If natural born leaders are also natural born liars, can we really hold it against them when they do what comes naturally? Maybe instead of dwelling on it, we just need a little more sanity in our lives. Or are we better off deluding ourselves?
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 6:58 PM PST - 20 comments

Gallery of Albinos.
posted by ori at 6:51 PM PST - 23 comments

Interactive Human Body Rotate, drag, and drop human organs into place. Educational and fun.
posted by ColdChef at 6:39 PM PST - 16 comments

Timelines and a family tree or two. Got a wide screen? Bring it.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:38 PM PST - 5 comments

You Suck! Forbes recently published an article detailing [their favorite] top 10 corporate hate websites, with some not so surprising names on the list. Or you can roll your own. Grassroots in action, but does that action actually change anything? (found via /.)
posted by raygun21 at 4:09 PM PST - 13 comments

Young + Brilliant, Blessed + Cursed
posted by Gyan at 3:55 PM PST - 36 comments

Easy colorization of photos and videos, with examples. Matlab code for algorithm available. [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:50 PM PST - 29 comments

Man takes apart Google's cookie - Google bites man.
posted by iffley at 2:43 PM PST - 82 comments

Ah, the toon filled memories.. Remember all those 80's cartoons that used to keep us amused when our parents were too busy to do the job and game consoles were unheard of? Great little collection of cartoon nostlagia that includes most of the theme tunes and a great Thundercats Bloopers mp3 of Snarf swearing! (some NSFW)
posted by Nugget at 2:11 PM PST - 21 comments

Aerial Propaganda Leaflet Database. Propaganda from WWI to Operation Iraqi Freedom, including many safe conduct passes. Also, leaflets from the Korean War & Vietnam, Sefton Delmer's "Black Propaganda Radio, and even some NSFW (work, not war) propaganda. Come On Boys, Himmler For President!
posted by armage at 2:01 PM PST - 6 comments

Let's say you like cats. When you visit a friend's house and he happens to have a cat, you make a big deal about stroking it, picking it up, talking to it. And you do the same thing with every cat you encounter. It demonstrates to the people around you that you're a sensitive, sympathetic, tactile person. All these things are true of you, including your innate adoration of cats. But that doesn't mean to say you haven't cultivated your cat-fancying into a self-conscious, gushing performance that somehow represents you. This doesn't make you a phony; it makes you something else: mediated. "Me" culture : Reality is so passé
Salon interviews Thomas De Zengotita, author of The Numbing Of The The American Mind and Closure for You, Jedermensch ein Übermensch.
posted by y2karl at 1:13 PM PST - 50 comments

It's all about the journey, not just the ending.
posted by Jim Jones at 1:03 PM PST - 17 comments

It's a dance-off A new take on cross-promotion of movies.
posted by dougkess at 12:55 PM PST - 11 comments

The Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art. Images from Japanese psychiatric medication advertisements: 1956-2003 (via Absent without leave)
posted by matteo at 12:46 PM PST - 14 comments

Alnwick Castle , used in various films including Harry Potter and Robin Hood, has started planting the Poison Garden as part of its most recent additions (pdf). The Poison Garden includes belladonna and other examples of the worlds most deadly plants. Some specimens are kept behind bars for security purposes. Both the castle and the extensive garden seem like wonderful places to visit.
posted by onhazier at 12:38 PM PST - 2 comments

Naked portafilter photos!!1! (SFW) Naked is hot (about 200 degrees F)
posted by turbodog at 12:17 PM PST - 33 comments

Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated. Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina Wednesday as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army. "I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.
posted by Postroad at 10:40 AM PST - 67 comments

Creationism in our schools may be more a product of liberal relativism than of Christian Fundamentalism. "But even on a seemingly clear-cut issue such as creationism, the division is not so sharp. Liberals have often been at the forefront of questioning the authority of science. It is liberals who have argued that science education should respect cultural differences and that the curriculum should be immediately relevant to everyday life of students. Creationists have leapt at the opportunity presented by educational theories to put the knowledge of pupils on the same level as that as scientists, by putting forward the demand to 'teach the controversy'." Previous (and very different) MetaFilter discussion of ID here. Current FPP about the dangers of PC liberalism here.
posted by OmieWise at 10:24 AM PST - 112 comments

Who really killed Rafik Hariri? Does it really matter? Is the current finger-waving at Syria really about an assassination, or the culmination of long-held US plans?
posted by clevershark at 9:52 AM PST - 22 comments

Oh Say Can You Seethe • The Board of Education in Brick, NJ "may toughen its policy on use of wireless telephones in schools, after a videotape showing a Brick Township High School teacher screaming at his students to show respect for the national anthem — and then pulling the chair from underneath one student who refused to stand — was posted on several independent Web sites (.wmv)." Some have come to the teacher's defense, and three students connected to the incident have been arrested for separate charges of prior vandalism--which they also taped.
posted by dhoyt at 9:35 AM PST - 124 comments

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. "As far as I could determine, this 1969 session features tracks from a CBS Studios session in Nashville, TN that did not see an official release." Nineteen largely unknown MP3s of the two greats singing together.
posted by BackwardsCity at 9:11 AM PST - 44 comments

fore-edge painting. Books that, when fanned, reveal paintings on their edges. Hot, fore-edge action! (QuickTime.)
posted by steef at 8:13 AM PST - 30 comments

"It's time for the IRA to go out of business." So says a US envoy after the IRA offers to kill suspected murderers of a Belfast man (hoping to mollify claims that they held up investigation of the murder). Britain and the US have called for an end to the IRA, as "criminality will not be tolerated" in a democratic party. Meanwhile, one suspect turned himself in. Things aren't looking bright for St. Patrick's Day.
posted by NickDouglas at 6:19 AM PST - 35 comments

How will civilization end? With a bang, a crunch(last link is PDF), a splash? Are we no longer more likely to kill ourselves than being killed by "Mother Nature"? (more inside)
posted by Chunder at 6:03 AM PST - 29 comments

Indiana University's main library is not sinking. Neither is the University of Waterloo campus library, but what about the University of Calgary's Mackimmie Library? If the University of Nottingham's Jubilee library is really sinking, readers better grab their snorkels. But guess what — The University of Nebraska at Omaha library is actually sinking, and the University of Las Vegas Lied Library came this close. This library sunk into an ancient burial site, and now it's haunted! Finally, is it art? Or does Melbourne, Australia have the greatest sinking library ever? See Snopes on one of the most persistent of urban legends — the amazing sinking library.
posted by taz at 5:32 AM PST - 36 comments

Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal is a photographic trip through the Bosnian War that is heart-breaking, odd, horrifying, brutal and even eerily beautiful. [via Neeka's Backlog]
posted by Ljubljana at 5:20 AM PST - 8 comments

$127 Billion Army Modernization Project Sidesteps Oversight. A nice story about how a system designed to streamline simple and small commercial purchases is being used to avoid congressional oversight while spending $127 Billion USD in taxpayer funds.
posted by fixedgear at 1:41 AM PST - 13 comments

Is political correctness the enemy from within? (via A&L Daily) Lillian Rubin writes, "...the consolidation of power by the political right in recent years has convinced me that by insisting on political correctness, we not only played a part in impoverishing the national discourse but, in doing so, we also marginalized ourselves politically and lost what should have been our natural constituency."
posted by mono blanco at 12:48 AM PST - 187 comments

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. Excerpt from Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman
posted by pieoverdone at 7:15 PM PST - 48 comments

A Senate bill to overhaul federal bankruptcy laws, a top priority of retailers, auto lenders and banks, cleared a key hurdle Tuesday afternoon. Sixty-nine senators -- nine more than needed -- voted for "cloture," a procedural move that limits debate. Republican leaders hope to push the bill to a final vote by the end of the week. Earlier, the Senate turned back a controversial, abortion-related amendment that has scuttled previous efforts to pass bankruptcy legislation. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was first introduced in 1998 as The Consumer Bankruptcy Reform Act.
posted by airguitar at 7:09 PM PST - 63 comments

Build an Igloo. Snow f**king sucks.
posted by jeremias at 6:59 PM PST - 12 comments

The Unspoken Language of the Office. Not to be confused with the BBC or NBC television programs. How to get back to reading MetaFilter as quickly as possible. [via lifehacker]
posted by FlamingBore at 6:59 PM PST - 11 comments

Vader Boosts Morale [via golublog]
posted by kliuless at 6:46 PM PST - 15 comments

Stonecipher Out At Boeing. While it may seem Harry Stonecipher, the Savior of Boeing, quit over an affair, is that all there is to it?
posted by nj_subgenius at 6:26 PM PST - 6 comments

This is a very odd way to find out about a volcanic eruption. Shame it is sunset, and the webcam isn't showing much.
posted by eriko at 6:24 PM PST - 9 comments

The 2005 Flashforward Finalists for the San Francisco conference have been announced. Loads of cutting-edge Flash fun for a snowed-in evening. Vote for your favorites.
posted by ChasFile at 5:39 PM PST - 6 comments

Maine is an exciting place for children.
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:33 PM PST - 24 comments

Raise a herd of bizarre neon sheep things. AND BUILD A SPACESHIP!! Mean guys try to make them work in jewel mines and you need to defend them. I think it's about Marxism or something. [More incredible BBC games here.]
posted by Kleptophoria! at 3:16 PM PST - 6 comments

"We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wheresoever we find it!"
Clouds can be strange looking, majestic, colourful, freaky, ominous or electric to name but a few.
Perhaps you’d like to go cloud ’surfing’ in a glider along a 600 mile cloud formation that appears in Queensland (film links/explanation) later in the year?
Or would you rather view your clouds from satellite?
You can otherwise study cloud formations at your leisure if you want.

There’s a million more sites around of course – first link via.
posted by peacay at 3:08 PM PST - 14 comments

Drawn! is Johnny Martz's new baby... and I'm pretty excited, as I love looking at illustrator's work but I'm just not motivated enough to go out and find it myself. Hopefully he'll include Adam Rex, our own Claire Robertson, and Kyle Cummings in up-coming posts.
posted by silusGROK at 2:53 PM PST - 6 comments

SexID Some researchers say that men can have 'women's brains' and that women can think more like men. Find out more about 'brain sex' differences by taking the Sex ID test, a groundbreaking experiment designed by a team of top psychologists:
posted by srboisvert at 2:26 PM PST - 81 comments

Todd Solondz + Childrens Television Workshop [Flash; Not Safe For Anyone]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 2:25 PM PST - 18 comments

A new poll finds that the American public would significantly alter the Bush administration’s recently proposed federal budget. Presented a breakdown of the major areas of the proposed discretionary budget and given the opportunity to redistribute it, respondents made major changes. The most dramatic changes were deep cuts in defense spending, a significant reallocation toward deficit reduction, and increases in spending on education, job training, reducing reliance on oil, and veterans. These changes were favored by both Republicans and Democrats, though the changes were generally greater for Democrats.
What America Gets Right (pdf) via The Gadflyer
posted by y2karl at 12:53 PM PST - 47 comments

Yikes! The strange case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck pushed out the boundaries of knowledge in a rather improbable way when it was recorded by Dutch researcher Kees Moeliker.
posted by Shanachie at 11:24 AM PST - 17 comments

“The problem is not to make political films but to make films politically.”
In "Tout Va Bien", just released on Criterion DVD, four years after May '68 Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin examine the wreckage: fading workers' empowerment (page with sound), media fatuity, capitalist sprawl, global imperialist mayhem, interpersonal disconnections. "Tout Va Bien" is the story of a strike at a factory as witnessed by an American reporter (Jane Fonda) and her has-been New Wave film director husband (Yves Montand). Included on the DVD is also Letter to Jane (1972), a short film in which Godard and Gorin spend an hour examining the semiotics of a single, hypnotizing photograph of Fonda as she shares feelings with a Vietnamese villager. More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:13 AM PST - 18 comments

“Martin Meyer shoots what remains. The material of everyday life and death on the street. A dead pigeon, cat, rodent, squirrel. Accidents of everyday expression. A plastic doll fallen in a cake, her nose white with frosting. Jesus Christ's senior picture hanging from the rear view mirror. The fallen and the raised. Religious paraphernalia. Nationalistic displays. Epithets in aerosol. A dashboard hero pirouette. There's a story being told here.” And his Flash virtual tour of Brooklyn is amazing, too. [Probably safe for work, but definitely includes some disturbing imagery. YMMV]
posted by Man O' Straw at 11:07 AM PST - 7 comments

Pinball an historic American art form. Although early versions were boring by today’s standards, modern machines are a marvelous blend of sophisticated software and ingenious hardware. Pinball is often associated with gambling, and has always had a bad reputation. The industry has been in decline since Pong and Pac-man conspired to take over the arcade. With fewer and fewer machines available for the public to play, enthusiasts have started collecting and repairing the machines for home use. Some people take it to extremes.

The great pinball makers of the glory days are gone: Williams now makes slot machines, Gottlieb is long gone, and Bally was folded into Williams in the mid-90’s. Only one company is still making pinball machines: Stern Pinball, Inc. If you have an old favorite, find it in the Internet Pinball Database. For the sake of completeness, Mefites have talked about pinball before.
posted by cosmicbandito at 10:28 AM PST - 57 comments

If your European ancestors survived the Bubonic Plague 700 years ago, they very likely may have also passed on to you a mutation of the CCR5 gene -- called delta 32. This may not sound exciting, but delta 32 is a powerful mistake. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, attacks the human immune system, infecting the white blood cells sent to destroy it. The delta 32 mutation, however, effectively blocks the crucial gateway into human cells the virus needs. In fact, possessing delta 32 could save your life, and the lives of your children.
posted by lola at 9:36 AM PST - 47 comments

KA-BOOM! I know Duke was based on him, but i was expecting...oh i dont know...a little nicer?
posted by ShawnString at 9:28 AM PST - 98 comments

Living Jewels: amazing photographs of beetles. [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:22 AM PST - 17 comments

Russian prosecutors have apparently decided not to take any action against Allofmp3.com (previously discussed here) , a Russian website which offers copyrighted mp3's for sale. The Moscow prosecutors reason is that Russian copyright laws only apply to physical media such as CD's tapes etc., not to digital media. If this decision is upeld, will it open the floodgates for others to start openly selling copyrighted material?
posted by bap98189 at 8:57 AM PST - 25 comments

Information for Disabled Travelers Travel may be a basic human right, but it's one that some find harder to exercise; from getting past clueless immigration officials to dealing with a constipated service dog on a cruise ship, tourism presents special challenges to the physically disabled. Fortunately, there's a wealth of information online, including accessibility info for Eurostar trains and specific airlines (the latter courtesy of The Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality), and first-hand accessibility reports from Global Access, Access-Able Travel Source, Rebecca's Travels, The World On Wheels and The Gimp On The Go.
posted by yankeefog at 8:49 AM PST - 2 comments

If you are going to SXSW next week, you might want to download the 2005 Showcasing Artist BitTorrent file that CitizenPod has put together. It features over 750 high-quality songs; over 2 GBs worth of tracks from bands playing the festival. [via OneLouder]
posted by Quartermass at 7:23 AM PST - 10 comments

Punk Rock Scrapbook. J Neo Marvin carried an instamatic camera to a lot of gigs way back when, and he has posted them on his band's website. The Clash, X, The Ramones and more.
posted by planetkyoto at 7:05 AM PST - 19 comments

The Cathode Ray Tube Site Electronic glassware: history and physical equipment.
posted by carter at 7:02 AM PST - 4 comments

101 Zen Stories.
posted by sciurus at 6:17 AM PST - 27 comments

Favela Faces. The stories of four people in Rio's favelas.
posted by plep at 5:17 AM PST - 3 comments

Free Radio San Diego I thought you Mefite Rebels might like the idea of Pirate Radio. Just in case you're not into satellite.
posted by snsranch at 7:45 PM PST - 13 comments

Postrock. A relatively new genre which continues to evolve in scope and definition, postrock is a treat to the ears. With bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós, Do Make Say Think, and Mogwai at the helm, it has slowly grown in recognition through movie soundtracks. Yes, there's quite a plethora of postrock bands, but is anything necessarily revolutionary, or just a rehash of past ideas brought into contemporary context?
posted by Mach3avelli at 7:36 PM PST - 116 comments

Uncyclopedia. Why put up with Wikipedia boring or questionable entries? Uncyclopedia has the straight dope on Life, Universe, and Everything.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 7:30 PM PST - 30 comments

Motive Entertainment has staked out a niche in marketing to Christian audiences and they have been working with Disney in promoting The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to evangelicals. They previously worked on the Faith-Market campaigns for Passion of the Christ and the Polar Express.
posted by Arch Stanton at 7:15 PM PST - 14 comments

Oops. (Wash. Post Login/ Bugmenot) Jim Gibbons seems to have stolen most of his lefty-baiting, righty-rousing rambling from another crazy Republican. This is good for people who want to get rid of the guy.
posted by PhatLobley at 5:41 PM PST - 20 comments

Independent coders remake Origin's Privateer. Once upon a time, Wing Commander and Free Enterprise had a beautiful baby. Then the dastardly Electronic Arts killed Origin Systems, the maker of the Wing Commander and Privateer series. The townspeople trembled in fear. From where would come their salvation? Sure, they had Freelancer, but you couldn't even use a joystick with that game! For a long time, it looked like the decent HOTAS and Sci Fi loving populace would be doomed to wander stickless through the desert of action oriented Space Simulation games, when Lo! from the far away land of Independent Game Makers came the 1.0 release of the Privateer remake for Linux, Windows and OS X simultaneously. And the people played it, and it was good. [via /.] [more inside]
posted by shmegegge at 4:28 PM PST - 29 comments

Is there no stopping Gemma Cartwright? Scooping awards from both EMAP and The Independent in both online and traditional media categories The Bag Lady, Catwalk Queen and Shoewawa are worth checking out if you're interested in fashion. Will she be the next Anna Wintour? Only time will tell. Boyzone? Pah!
posted by dmt at 3:31 PM PST - 5 comments

RoboType, a way to make art with letters without forming actual words or sentences...
posted by wendell at 3:29 PM PST - 13 comments

What Bush got Right.
Recent events: Syrian withdrawl. Palestinian reform. Egyptian Elections. Libyan disarmament. Iraqi elections. The Domino Theory in action.
posted by dios at 3:13 PM PST - 225 comments

Quantum physics made relatively simple. Personal and historical perspectives of Hans Bethe, who has died at 98.
posted by liam at 2:59 PM PST - 12 comments

Interview of R Crumb, 60's legendary twisted cartoonist creator of Fritz the Cat and Snoid. This is no conservative man. Of Serena Williams he foams: "This butt is just bionic. It's beyond anything. It's unbelievable. Imagine having access to that?" He has a foot fetish, an obsession with piggybacking and delights in drawing outlandish pornographic cartoons. {more links at bottom of page} Related discussion/links here [All FPP links are SFW but some links from above sites are guaranteed NSFW]
posted by peacay at 2:20 PM PST - 29 comments

Hey, let's ask the Head Butler! A newish site devoted to giving you book, music, and film recommendations, and more. (more inside)
posted by braun_richard at 12:28 PM PST - 12 comments

The Musical Giants page, which contains portraits of recording artists from various genres, is my favorite section of Wayno's on-line portfolio. In this interview, Wayno discusses his influences, work routine and collaboration with fellow Pittsburghers The Karl Hendricks Trio.
posted by njm at 12:03 PM PST - 2 comments

I enjoy being a girl boy. - 4th grader
posted by soyjoy at 10:48 AM PST - 225 comments

CBC 60's archives and much much more
posted by srboisvert at 10:47 AM PST - 4 comments

A Los Angeles Times article describes a Justice Department behavior rectifying years of "illegal discrimination against religious groups and their followers". Registration required. Found through the excellent How Appealing.
posted by the Real Dan at 10:45 AM PST - 10 comments

George Bush set to nominate John Bolton as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Known as the treaty killer by his friends and critics, as well as the anti-Ambassador, John Bolton may well change the course of American Democracy. He hints at recognizing Taiwan, and in the past has rejected the idea of a Palestinian state. He is the man Jesse Helms would most like to stand with at Armageddon.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 10:28 AM PST - 71 comments

Horseballs! (SFW) (Quicktime)
posted by Swampjazz! at 10:02 AM PST - 24 comments

This disturbingly realistic video gives us a peek at the not-too-distant future when we will be able to send robots to fight our wars in third world countries. Remember, we already have unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles that patrol skies and can attack target targets with Hellfire missiles.
posted by Davenhill at 10:00 AM PST - 33 comments

On the mission to understand and communicate miracles of Life on Earth and the mysteries reaching beyond the stars.
posted by breezeway at 9:40 AM PST - 5 comments

In Clouds Over Iran, Stephen Kinzer. author of All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, meditates upon the current confrontation in a review of Christopher de Bellaigue's 'In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs': Reflections on Iran. Also by Kinzer, Iran and Guatemala, 1953-54 - Revisiting Cold War Coups and Finding Them Costly. And here is a biography of Mohammed Mossadegh, who, Time magazine named 1951's Man of the Year and who the Iranian.com names Iranian of the Century (More inside, of course...)
posted by y2karl at 9:19 AM PST - 13 comments

Ever wonder what the London Underground Map [105 KiB PDF] would look like if it were geographically accurate [255 KiB GIF]? If you could morph [13.7 KiB Flash] between those two versions and Harry Beck's 1933 map [112 KiB JPG]? What it will look like in 2016 [218 KiB PDF]? What if you replaced all the stations, even ones that are no longer used, with well-known personalities [46 KiB JPG inset]? If you knew exactly which carriage to get on so you'd already be at the Way Out (never "exit" [23 MiB PDF]) when your train stops (or doesn't stop)? If you had a similar schematic for buses [245 KiB PDF] or river boats [50 KiB PDF]?

Pass your Oyster card over the reader and go on a tour of interesting, imaginative, and subversive maps and diagrams of London public transport. And as you leave, remember to Mind the Gap, Stand on the Right [671 KiB JPG], and Always Touch Out.
posted by grouse at 8:23 AM PST - 65 comments

Bright Coop are an industrial farm supplies hardware manufacturer whose latest product, the "e-z catch" is essentially a giant street sweeper used for rounding up loose chickens in a coop. For a fascinating & kind of horrifying quicktime video of the device in action, click here.
posted by jonson at 8:13 AM PST - 27 comments

Zopa put people who want to borrow money in touch with people who want to lend them money - it's eBay, but for loans.
posted by Orange Goblin at 8:07 AM PST - 22 comments

Apskati uzmaniigi!
posted by nthdegx at 7:49 AM PST - 18 comments

North Korea sets BoingBoing up the bomb. All their base are belong to BoingBoing. via joi ito.
posted by loquacious at 5:31 AM PST - 43 comments

Ponder This. 'You are cordially invited to match wits with some of the best minds in IBM Research.' Monthly puzzles, with solutions, going back to 1998.
posted by plep at 4:42 AM PST - 12 comments

How does your marketing salary compare?. The Aquent AMA Compensation Survey of Marketing Professionals 2005 has recently been released. (scary staring people warning). Or view the AIGA Aquent 2004 Designer Survey. Apologies - US salaries only.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:29 AM PST - 7 comments

Freedom's Defenders or Politicians' Pawns? No pretense of protecting Americans’ freedom went into the decision to enter into the Spanish-American War. It was out-and-out imperialism and nothing more. Veterans of that war may have helped to liberate Cuba , Guam , Puerto Rico , and the Philippines from Spanish rule; but those same veterans then turned around and rammed the jackboot of the U. S. military into the faces of those they had just liberated. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans and Filipinos, who had thought they were being freed only to find out they had merely exchanged one colonial master for another, were killed in their own independence-from-Uncle-Sam movements. When they finally did throw off direct U. S. rule, they were then saddled with dictators of Uncle Sam’s choosing. No credit for the defense of Americans’ freedom can be granted to veterans of this war. Compare to this: Gunning For Saddam We report, you decide indeed...
posted by Elim at 11:02 PM PST - 23 comments

Keep your hands where I can see them. - Can't say Mom didn't warn you. Side effects include: fatigue, stress, thinning hair, eye floaters or fuzzy vision, and tail bone cramps. [via Monkeyfilter]
posted by AlexReynolds at 10:47 PM PST - 29 comments

According to Benny Hinn's wife, we need a Holy Ghost enema. [safe for work unless you work in a church]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 9:30 PM PST - 31 comments

Boys performs ultimate Mortal Kombat fatality on friend. In related news, some would like videogame creators to be accountable for influencing the tender young minds of our children.
posted by Kleptophoria! at 9:16 PM PST - 44 comments

The most expensive record in the world! Another music post for today's MusicFilter. The true story of a yard sale, a couple of quarters, and one happy lad's good fortune. Velvet Underground included.
posted by underer at 8:13 PM PST - 15 comments

Ghosts in the Machine. How many email addresses do you have? How many forums have you joined? How many people do you speak to online? Where does the trail of your Internet life take you--and what would happen to it when you die? MyLastEmail and DiedOnline haven't been available for a while now. Executors' jobs may get a lot more complicated.
posted by Anonymous at 6:42 PM PST - 23 comments

Vicki Bennett is better known as People Like Us, and just so happens to be the anointed queen of Plunderphonics. Her music is comprised almost entirely of uncleared samples and has avoided lawsuit only by virtue of their (and her own) obscurity. Similar in style and sense of humor to The Evolution Control Committee and the (amazing, really, really amazing) Avalanches, you'll find nearly her entire body of work here.
posted by StopMakingSense at 6:07 PM PST - 11 comments

The Dr. Demento Show : Post all 1,338 Dr. Demento Shows in my collection as high-quality stereo...
posted by cedar at 5:52 PM PST - 24 comments

"Chinese Democracy" - The Most Expensive Album Never Made (NY Times article)
posted by davebush at 5:52 PM PST - 35 comments