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Little Surrealist Dictionary A game of re-definitions.
posted by adamvasco at 5:04 PM PST - 138 comments

At the end of November, 1979, this band was just a year and half old and had played fewer than 40 sets. They had a handful of embryonic songs influenced by Television and Magazine, and a 3-month old, 3-song EP with two decent songs. Then they went to London to play a bunch of gigs behind that EP, and in just 6 months, over 40 gigs, they exploded. They watched in the studio during the January 1980 recording of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” wooing Joy Division’s producer Martin Hannett; appeared on TV that month with a song they had only played 4 times, and released a forgettable single at the end of February. Suddenly new songs poured out at a remarkable rate: ”Twilight”, “Things to make and Do,” “A Day Without Me”, ”Trevor” became ”Touch”, ”Silver Lining” transformed into a second single (produced by Hannett). They signed a record contract in March, and immediately began recording a stunning debut album. By the summer they had more songs: a psychedelic/sexual horror tune, and a hot new single. It all became bloated and sucky commercial and atmospheric soon after, but for a while there, boy did they rock. [more inside]
posted by msalt at 4:10 PM PST - 126 comments

Inside Look at the YouTube Complaints Department
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 3:29 PM PST - 42 comments

Rio Wang has posted a fantastic 1892 photo album of Russian army fashions.
posted by gman at 3:09 PM PST - 23 comments

Among the Republicans by V.S. Naipaul
posted by Cloud King at 1:04 PM PST - 21 comments

Obamacare: One Less Reason to Get Married. Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel writes: Insurance Marriages had become to the 21st century what shotgun weddings were to jokes about hillbillies. Back in 2004, the LA Times wrote about couples that married for insurance, couples who for varying reasons had not wanted to marry, but who had been driven to marriage by financial necessity. ABC News posted its own roundup of With This Policy, I Thee Wed-style couples in 2008, as did the New York Times. In 2008, 7% of couples who married reported doing so primarily for the insurance benefits. [more inside]
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:01 AM PST - 61 comments

Making a Kitchen Knife - A simple video showing the art of crafting a chef's knife from scratch. [slyt] [more inside]
posted by quin at 10:24 AM PST - 43 comments

What's also obvious is that this phase of Occupy, with talk of credit unions and occupying the SEC, while eminently worthy, is also kind of boring, especially when compared to the thrill of Occupy's park phase. Some, though, are ready to move on. "It's easy to go back to the park occupation and fetishize it, in a way," says Occupy Chicago's Brian Bean. "I prefer not to run a mini-society – I want to run society." - The Battle For The Soul Of Occupy Wall Street - Rolling Stone - Mark Binelli.
posted by The Whelk at 9:32 AM PST - 186 comments

MC Sniper: how to be a pirate DJ [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:24 AM PST - 12 comments

Slate: Technology is doing to math education what industrial agriculture did to food: making it efficient, monotonous, and low-quality. [more inside]
posted by beisny at 9:09 AM PST - 70 comments

Chicago students reflect on 13 years of segregated schools
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:19 AM PST - 22 comments

In 2010, DC Comics offered Alan Moore the rights back to Watchmen. This is a factually accurate account of what happened. (SLYT)
posted by MegoSteve at 8:12 AM PST - 46 comments

Introducing Cisco Connect Cloud! Now available mandatory for Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers, Cisco Connect Cloud gives you almost anybody anytime, anywhere access to your home network.
posted by flabdablet at 7:50 AM PST - 65 comments

Born in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, member of the French resistance and the SOE, multiple escapee from Nazi execution, RIP Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld.
posted by Artw at 7:29 AM PST - 20 comments

Two clips from the 70s kids show Marshall Efron's Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Sunday School: David & Goliath and Jonah. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 3:37 AM PST - 17 comments

"Is online dating a different experience for men than it is for women? To find out, I conducted a 4-month experiment in the US and UK using 10 dummy dating profiles. Here's what happened..."
posted by surenoproblem at 2:28 AM PST - 163 comments

The Ph.D. Grind: A Ph.D. Student Memoir is Philip J. Guo's candid book about his six years of working towards a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University. Lots of Hard-earned wisdom and useful advice (especially in the epilogue) for those thinking about getting a Ph.D. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:05 AM PST - 53 comments

"I still buy books faster than I can read them. But this feels completely normal. How weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life." Julian Barnes reflects on his life as a bibliophile, the disappearance of secondhand bookshops and the precarious survival of the physical book.
posted by verstegan at 1:25 AM PST - 89 comments

Renowned L.A. based graffiti crew The Seventh Letter and affiliates have been working on the Detroit Beautification Project (Vimeo link). [more inside]
posted by broadway bill at 11:13 PM PST - 6 comments

Brown Moses Blog curates and analyzes news regarding the Syrian uprising, the wider Arab Spring, and the UK phone hacking scandal. It is written by Something Awful forums moderator Brown Moses. Recent entries include discussion of the increasingly well armed Free Syrian Army, senior members of the Catholic Church criticizing pro-Assad clergy, and a look at the evidence of more sophisticated IEDs being used in Syria. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 10:04 PM PST - 13 comments

Edward Behr is the editor and publisher of The Art of Eating, (named for MFK Fisher's book), a well-regarded food magazine. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:47 PM PST - 12 comments

"Alex White, Professional Snitch: What do you do when the cops you work for are dirtier than you are?" Metafilter previously on Kathryn Johnston.
posted by andoatnp at 9:07 PM PST - 13 comments

Jon Ronson (whose book The Psychopath Test was the basis of a This American Life episode ) interviews folks living in America at several varied levels of income in: GQ - Amber Waves of Green.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:58 PM PST - 38 comments

The Department of Defense staff has reviewed your application for permission to utilize your newly-developed Time Machine (US Patent #4004-BC-10100036, applied for but not processed) in order to, as you put it, "go back and kill Hitler".
posted by mightygodking at 8:25 PM PST - 48 comments

DocFuture (previously) is a video artist who creates bizarre and insightful (NSFW audio, also previously) Dadaist pastiches of pop-culture. His latest video (NSFW) is a confusing and relentless satire of YouTube culture that is equal parts ambitious and absurd. Yes, even more ambitious than a comprehensive playthrough of a Sonic the Hedgehog game that doesn't technically exist
posted by Shadax at 7:00 PM PST - 10 comments

A look at the fashion and flair from last night's NBA Draft
posted by reenum at 6:08 PM PST - 31 comments

UC Santa Cruz announced today the launch of the Grateful Dead Archive Online. It contains over 25,000 digitized items - posters & photographs, audio & video, t-shirts, envelope art... you can even contribute your own content.
posted by gyusan at 5:00 PM PST - 30 comments

The Strongest Woman In America Lives In Poverty. Weightlifter Sarah Robles is an incredible athlete, but outside the world of squats and snatches, barely anyone knows her name.
posted by roger ackroyd at 4:41 PM PST - 101 comments

THE GLOAMING. [SLVimeo, possibly NSFW, via]
posted by homunculus at 3:52 PM PST - 32 comments

Battleship taught us that everything can be made into an action film. Even Dora the Explorer.
posted by Memo at 3:32 PM PST - 40 comments

After a period of relative stability, another leap second will occur on 2012 June 30 at 23:59:60 UTC. (Previously.) Proposals to decouple UTC from the Earth's irregular rotation (previously, previously) have stalled and the International Telecommunication Union has recently deferred the development of a continuous time standard. So enjoy your extra second while you can! [more inside]
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:51 PM PST - 41 comments

106-degree temperatures in Richmond, VA aren't even the worst of it. A weatherman for the local CBS affiliate delivers the last forecast Richmonders will need. (slyt)
posted by emelenjr at 12:49 PM PST - 105 comments

Bei mir bist du scheen (or schejn or schön or schoen) by Azerbaijani pop singer Ilhama (featuring DJ OGB) is a recent remake of a 1930's Yiddish song originally translated for the Andrews Sisters. The visuals featuring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are as much fun as the music. (Check out L&H dancing and singing in "Way Out West".) But still, my all-time favorite interpretation of the 'Bei Mir' song was a 1976 commercial for Shasta Soft Drinks that repurposed it as "Root Beer, Mister Shane".
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:04 PM PST - 38 comments

FF Chartwell is a typeface for creating simple editable graphs and charts, designed by Travis Kochel. Driven by the frustration of creating graphs within design applications and inspired by typefaces such as FF Beowolf and ­­FF PicLig, Travis saw an opportunity to take advantage of OpenType technology to simplify the process. Using OpenType features, simple strings of numbers are automatically transformed into charts. The visualized data remains editable, allowing for hassle-free updates and styling. Watch the demo video. Buy a license.
posted by heatherann at 11:57 AM PST - 19 comments

The significance of plot without conflict
posted by rebent at 11:12 AM PST - 104 comments

Mental Floss has put together eight of Morgan Freeman's classic clips from Electric Company.
posted by gman at 11:06 AM PST - 13 comments

Drag queen Sharon Needles, winner of RuPaul's Drag Race, has lately been facing a lot of criticism for their transgressive act: "Eli Kuti, a bartender at Lawrenceville's Blue Moon, where Needles often performs, recalls one performance in which Needles and another drag queen donned one-piece bathing suits emblazoned with swastikas. The two 'were hailing Hitler' and calling crowd members racial epithets, Kuti says." [more inside]
posted by modernserf at 11:02 AM PST - 74 comments

Would you like to get an anonymous phone call from a stranger who is diametrically opposed to your own political views? Sure, we all do. Now, Political Screaming Match Dot Com is here to help, and can solve this age-old problem in 15 minutes or less.
posted by schmod at 10:35 AM PST - 54 comments

Fad Gadget was the brainchild of Leeds-born electronic music pioneer Frank Tovey He died on April 3, 2002, just as his career was entering a new phase with his first arena tour in support of Depeche Mode's Exciter tour. He left a legacy of 10 albums, most of which are now out of print, and his name is largely forgotten, although his legacy (ever so slightly NSFW) lives on. [more inside]
posted by Mezentian at 10:31 AM PST - 13 comments

A perceptive audio interview with biographer David Maraniss on the life of Barack Obama, including detailed research on his friends and relatives. Pulitzer-prize winning biographer and associate editor of the Washington Post David Maraniss ...collected so much detailed information about the life of Barack Obama and his forbears that when he submitted his introduction and chapter titles to the White House to request an interview, the President himself was intrigued and surprised.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:58 AM PST - 19 comments

I, pet goat II - 'A story about the fire at the heart of suffering. Bringing together dancers, musicians, visual artists and 3d animators, the film takes a critical look at the events of the past decade that have shaped our world.' (SLVimeo, parts may be NSFW)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:03 AM PST - 21 comments

A wall with large buttons that trigger voices, mellotron-style; An Indonesian gamelan xylophone orchestra played with a arcade game-like control panel; A leslie speaker that amplifies whatever a stethoscope touches. These are just a few of the instruments built into a unique New Orleans musical architecture installation called Dithyrambalina, or simply, The Music Box. [more inside]
posted by umbú at 8:31 AM PST - 6 comments

The Sideways Gaze: Roland Barthes’s Travels in China
posted by Cloud King at 8:29 AM PST - 11 comments

Depressed Copywriter [SLTumblr] "Every time I see an example of corporate happiness I can only see the reality of life. I can’t help myself anymore. I can’t stop rearranging their copy."
posted by Fizz at 8:28 AM PST - 24 comments

"There are approximately 250 species of catnip and this figure doesn't include hybrids. But all of these substances have one thing in common. The active ingredient, nepetalactone cycloalkane." (slyt)
posted by RobotHero at 8:16 AM PST - 47 comments

ASAP Science presents: The Scientific Hangover Cure. [slyt] [via]
posted by quin at 7:09 AM PST - 80 comments

If you've ever wondered what it looks like to have a Triumph Spitfire engine miraculously re-build and install itself into a Classic sports car through the magic of time lapse, then your day may just get a little bit better.
posted by Brockles at 7:00 AM PST - 44 comments

Nobody does this to men in the industry. Nobody says Cliff Bleszinski is wearing such a tight shirt today, and oooh I'd love to rub my hands all over him. At least not to the point where he's uncomfortable at tradeshows. Likewise nobody sexualizes male characters. Some may argue that Kratos represents an unrealistic image of a male, but there aren't massive forum threads dedicated to whether and how people would like to have sex with him. Kratos, Marcus Fenix, and their ilk, are the object of power fantasies, not sexual fantasies. There is a huge difference there. You want to be as cool and powerful as Kratos. Again, nobody wants to be Lara Croft all the time.

Video games and Male Gaze - are we men or boys?
posted by griphus at 6:53 AM PST - 120 comments

Spiral cut hot dogs. You KNOW you want to do this. (SL 49 second YT that will make your summer SO much better)
posted by HuronBob at 4:53 AM PST - 163 comments

You're Gonna Make It Today: a reassuring message for these troubled times, delivered in the universal language of late 90's synthpop. [slyt]
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:09 AM PST - 23 comments

"It's time for us to drive excessive grunting out of the game [of Tennis] for future generations," WTA chairman and chief executive Stacey Allaster said. Sexist? Or not?
posted by vidur at 9:10 PM PST - 145 comments

Time lapse video of ants consuming a gecko carcass in a few hours
posted by The Whelk at 9:06 PM PST - 45 comments

If you've ever wanted to know the history of each of Toronto's streetcar lines, how to identify different TTC subway trains, the chronology of Toronto's Christmas-painted buses, or really anything else you can think of (and more) about Toronto's transit system: Transit Toronto is an unofficial but fantastically detailed site about the TTC. [more inside]
posted by andrewesque at 8:19 PM PST - 29 comments

The Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a UN World Heritage Site, is home to approximately 5,000 of the estimated 30,000 okapi remaining in the wild. Last week, it was also home to a tragedy. [more inside]
posted by MimeticHaHa at 6:05 PM PST - 39 comments

Signs of cooperation between China and the US on promising new energy technology Beijing-based CAS is a state group overseeing about 100 research institutes. It and the DOE have established what CAS calls the “CAS and DOE Nuclear Energy Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding.” [more inside]
posted by daveeza at 4:38 PM PST - 63 comments

Last year the CEO of Barclays Bank, Bob Diamond, told MPs that “There was a period of remorse and apology for banks. I think that period needs to be over.” Yesterday, Barclays was fined £290M by UK and US regulators for manipulating the key LIBOR lending rate. [more inside]
posted by Jakey at 4:24 PM PST - 127 comments

"I recently came across this video: Mathematically correct breakfast, which shows how a bagel can be neatly sliced into two identical linked halves."
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:21 PM PST - 68 comments

The surreal self-portraits of Kyle Thompson. Kyle Thompson is a 20 yr old self taught photographer from the suburbs of Chicago. Here is his flickr stream, his tumblr.
posted by growabrain at 1:54 PM PST - 66 comments

Beautiful star-trail timelapse photos, taken at Lake Eppalock in Victoria, Australia. [more inside]
posted by malibustacey9999 at 1:19 PM PST - 17 comments

The Star Wars that I Used to Know (SLYT)
posted by astapasta24 at 1:15 PM PST - 116 comments

"Descartes is smaller than you’d think" in this graph of the history of philosophy [more inside]
posted by mc2000 at 1:12 PM PST - 63 comments

Atari, the first successful arcade video game company, would have been 40 years old today. The blog Arcade Heroes takes the opportunity to look back over 40 years of arcade gaming (from Atari and other companies) with flyers and video. Part 1 (1970s & 80s) - Part 2 (1990s to present). (WARNING: huge pages ahead with lots of flash videos.)
posted by JHarris at 12:50 PM PST - 24 comments

The Google I/O Conference, currently streaming live, has highlighted a diverse series of technological achievements: the full launch of Google Music (currently limited to US residents) Yeoman, a client-side web development stack, Chrome (profiled in a charming video) now running on iPhone and iPad, and a demo of Google Glass while skydiving. The conference has also updated this excellent interactive visual deep dive of the history of the web and browser technologies.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:26 PM PST - 123 comments

TED (Transformations, Emotional Deconstruction) is a large, wall-based installation created by Sean Hathaway, consisting of an array of 80 Teddy Ruxpin dolls that speak emotional content gathered from the web via synthetic speech with animated mouths.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:32 AM PST - 31 comments

Back in March, Samuel Smith wondered "Will 2012 be the summer when Colorado finally burns to the ground?" A perfect combination of record high heat, record low snow pack, low humidity and high levels of underbrush made Colorado (and elsewhere) a tinderbox ready to blow. Unfortunately, that is now playing out. The Denver post says the fires are "shaping up as one of the biggest disasters in Colorado history." Some of the best sources for following the fires.. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 11:23 AM PST - 82 comments

Now that summer is here, let's join Rich and Sue and few other people on a bit of fun, shall we?
posted by stormpooper at 10:59 AM PST - 24 comments

"The future of gull cuisine in Totnes is optimistic. We hope to see further exploration in developing exciting and innovative dishes."
posted by Iridic at 10:02 AM PST - 34 comments

Central Park Elmo is not a fan of the Jews, to the extent that he was carried away for psychiatric assessment yesterday. Today the NYT has an interview with Adam Sandler, the man behind anti-Semitic Elmo.
posted by Cosine at 9:30 AM PST - 135 comments

"Legend of Grimrock is a party-based dungeon-crawler RPG made by a crack team of four experienced Finns in just ten months. It is also one of the finest, best thought-out games I’ve played in a long time. Here is a game defined by limitations – small budget, small team, goofy 2D tile-based movement – and yet it is a stunning success because it respects those limits and uses them to do more with less. There is a lesson here for studios both starving and bloated. " An article on how The Legend of Grimrock (released in April of this year, previously on Metafilter) takes a simplified set of rules and turns them in to a finely crafted machine.
posted by codacorolla at 9:11 AM PST - 22 comments

Namibian Fairy Circles "By comparing photos taken over a 4-year period, Walter Tschinkel confirmed something other scientists had suspected: The circles were alive—or at least they were dynamic. A number of circles appeared and disappeared over this time period. Extrapolating from the data, Tschinkel calculated that most smaller circles arise and vanish every 24 years, whereas larger circles last up to 75 years. Overall, the lifespan averaged 41 years."
posted by dhruva at 8:44 AM PST - 16 comments

The Second Second Coming As The Stone Roses prepare to open their series of 3 homecoming concerts tomorrow at Manchester's Heaton Park, a timely look at the band, their influences and their (Tron) legacy. Look out for Metafilter favourite Peter Serafinowicz as Morrissey and Simon Cowell. (slyt)
posted by jontyjago at 8:23 AM PST - 19 comments

America's other Audubon.
posted by latkes at 8:23 AM PST - 17 comments

Kim DotCom Search Warrant Ruled Illegal [more inside]
posted by snaparapans at 8:12 AM PST - 30 comments

Points in Space is a lovely stop-motion timelapse piece done on the streets of Melbourne. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:07 AM PST - 1 comment

Turns out capturing a drone isn't quite as hard as previously thought...
posted by zeoslap at 7:01 AM PST - 25 comments

In less than an hour, the Supreme Court will hand down its final judgment in what has become one of the most crucial legal battles of our time: the constitutionality of President Obama's landmark health care reform law. The product of a strict party line vote following a year century of debate, disinformation, and tense legislative wrangling, the Affordable Care Act would (among other popular reforms) require all Americans to buy insurance coverage by 2014, broadening the risk pool for the benefit of those with pre-existing conditions. The fate of this "individual mandate," bitterly opposed by Republicans despite its similarity to past plans touted by conservatives (including presidential contender Mitt Romney) is the central question facing the justices today. If the conservative majority takes the dramatic step of striking down the mandate, the law will be toothless, and in danger of wholesale reversal, rendering millions uninsured, dealing a crippling blow to the president's re-election hopes, and possibly endangering the federal regulatory state. But despite the pessimism of bettors, some believe the Court will demur, wary of damaging its already-fragile reputation with another partisan 5-4 decision. But those who know don't talk, and those who talk don't know. Watch the SCOTUSblog liveblog for updates, Q&A, and analysis as the truth finally comes out shortly after 10 a.m. EST.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:02 AM PST - 1145 comments

Fundamentalist Christian schools in Louisiana will soon be citing the existence of the Loch Ness monster as proof that evolution is a myth. [more inside]
posted by asnider at 9:45 PM PST - 174 comments

Two Little Girls Describe The Worst Haircut Ever (SLAudio)
posted by gauche at 9:34 PM PST - 29 comments

Trading Places - photographer Steve Bloom's latest book focuses on the business people, shops, and signs of Nairobi. Take a panoramic walk down Kitengela Road in what is arguably the largest panoramic stitched together from hundreds of photos. In another clip, Bloom talks about his experiences taking the photos. (Via About:Blank)
posted by madamjujujive at 8:43 PM PST - 3 comments

“Racist rape-culture Disneyland with Dragons” -- Laurie Penny on the popularity of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire and the critically acclaimed HBO dramatization Game of Thrones. (Hint: Despite the obvious gender-racial-class problems, Miss Penny really likes the show.) [more inside]
posted by bardic at 8:23 PM PST - 317 comments

The latest from former American Idol contestant Todrick Hall, Beauty and the Beat brings together a cast of former Idols, YouTube personalities, and Antoine "hide yo kids, hide yo wife" Dodson.
posted by drlith at 5:10 PM PST - 14 comments

At the 36th St. subway station in Brooklyn, one of the subway stairs is a little bit higher than the others. Filmmaker Dean Peterson set up a camera at the top of the stairs for about an hour, and taped what happens.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:48 PM PST - 114 comments

"Bohemians in Benelux", a culinary travelogue through Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Luxembourg in eleven parts by Chris Onstad
posted by griphus at 3:46 PM PST - 20 comments

Does It Matter If the Heroine of 'Brave' Is Gay? [Contains spoilers for Brave]
posted by Artw at 2:42 PM PST - 213 comments

"The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal: A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust." [more inside]
posted by andoatnp at 2:37 PM PST - 63 comments

Don't taunt the volcano gods
posted by cjorgensen at 2:35 PM PST - 35 comments

Sometimes the choreography of one song's video fits another song perfectly, and the result... well, it just transcends either of its predecessors. [slyt]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:12 PM PST - 34 comments

The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America's Middle Class (via The Billfold) [more inside]
posted by peacheater at 1:58 PM PST - 82 comments

Japanese beatboxer Hikakin collaborates with American dancer Nonstop. [Previously]
posted by gman at 1:42 PM PST - 6 comments

A Conversation With Bill Gates About the Future of Higher Education at the Chronicle of Higher Education. As always, Bill is honest and interesting as he talks about new developments and how they fit into a realistic view of the next 10-20 years of higher ed.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:41 PM PST - 41 comments

Dustin really wanted to jump on the latest fad and have his very own blog. However, he is a man of few words, and even fewer thoughts. In fact, thinking is not something he wastes his time on. But the one thought he did have was that if a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe a couple hundred snapshots of his ugly mug would equal a book deal. Below is a pointless photo of what Dustin is wearing today. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:07 PM PST - 63 comments

Picturing Books: What do we see when we read? (Other than words on a page.) What do we picture in our minds? A consideration by Knopf's senior designer Peter Mendulsund. [more inside]
posted by shakespeherian at 11:19 AM PST - 22 comments

Meet The Pyro. That is all. (Team Fortress 2 previously on MeFi. Also. And this. Also this. And, after meeting the Pyro, if you have not met the Medic, Heavy, Spy, Demoman, Soldier, Sniper, Engineer and Scout, perhaps you would like to meet them as well. And then you can watch them dance a little.)
posted by mightygodking at 11:05 AM PST - 102 comments

A German court has ruled that male circumcision is "bodily harm" and that a child's right to "physical integrity" trumps parental or religious rights. Jews and Muslims have reacted strongly to the decision, with some going as far to allege anti-Semitism. Intactivists are generally pleased.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:19 AM PST - 457 comments

The Royal Society of Chemistry is offering £1000 to the person or team producing the best and most creative explanation of the phenomenon, known today as The Mpemba Effect [more inside]
posted by Kiwi at 9:19 AM PST - 94 comments

“[...] it took more than a dozen calls to work out the details of her zombie contagion. “After about the 17th time,” says McGuire, “I called and said, ‘If I did this, this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?’ And got, ‘Don’t … don’t do that.’ And at that point, I knew I had a viable virus.”
posted by batmonkey at 9:07 AM PST - 70 comments

The Technological Apocalypse is Coming (Straight to DVD) Over the last 15 years a brilliant and charismatic self-made man has been campaigning across the United States, describing a near-future event that will deliver human salvation, immortality, and unlimited creative potential. After this event, he claims, the trappings of earthly life will no longer plague us: we will no longer age or get sick; we will be able to create our own worlds to our exact preferences; and we will no longer be restricted to our current physical forms. This man’s vision has become the center of a growing movement that already has tens of thousands of adherents, dozens of shared texts, and its own non-profit school that aims to “assemble, educate, and inspire a cadre of leaders” to one day “address humanity’s grand challenges.”. Coming soon, the movie! [more inside]
posted by jhandey at 8:54 AM PST - 54 comments

A history of the English monarchy and how listening to "bad" advisors has gotten it in trouble.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:46 AM PST - 20 comments

Showcase of rare movie posters coveted by movie poster collectors. The 10 most expensive movie posters. Browse some posters up for sale right now, or wait for the crown jewel of the poster world which could soon become the first to break the $1m mark.
posted by stbalbach at 8:44 AM PST - 9 comments

Photos of Rhodesian military vehicles taken between 1979 and early 1980 with a Kodak Instamatic.
posted by nthdegx at 8:17 AM PST - 22 comments

Anonymity as a culture, On 4chan and Internet masquerade. [more inside]
posted by latkes at 8:08 AM PST - 33 comments

In May, YouTube announced they would be hosting a lineup of original video channels, in a possible attempt to compete with network and cable television. Among the new offerings was WIGS, the (NSFW) brainchild of director/producer/writers Jon Avnet and Rodrigo Garcia, of original, scripted dramatic series and short films exploring female characters. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:00 AM PST - 14 comments

Following junior Treasury minister Chloe Smith's disastrous performance on Newsnight regarding the Chancellor's u-turn on fuel duty, the New Statesmen presents the top five ten worst political interviews.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:40 AM PST - 40 comments

Fred Armisen wants you to Be Serious for 30 Seconds. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:06 AM PST - 25 comments

スターウルフ, "Star Wolf," was a half-hour sci-fi TV show produced and aired in Japan in 1978. (TV Tropes page -- addiction warning) It had somewhat cheesy special effects, understandable being a TV series made just one year after Star Wars, but it made up for it with style, energy, and ACTION PACKED MUSIC.

American viewers will know it best as the show ripped apart and reassembled into two Fugitive Alien movies by Sandy Frank Productions, then shown on two memorable episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. (Episodes on YouTube: Fugitive Alien, its sequel.) Although the Japanese show got at least two seasons (the second under the title Space Hero Star Wolf), only the first four episodes appear to exist on the internet. Here they are: One - Two - Three - Four. (There are no subtitles, but you should be able to figure out what is going on if you've seen the MST episode.) [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 3:43 AM PST - 24 comments

The Big Picture: Hollywood's creative talent wants to be on cable. 'A decade ago, a host of studios and specialty divisions were making and buying movies, but only a handful of cable and pay TV outlets commissioned original programming. But today there's a huge array of cable TV outlets making shows. In film, many specialty divisions have disappeared, and independents have merged, so the number of studio buyers has shrunk dramatically.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 11:01 PM PST - 50 comments

"The purpose of this study is to develop a janken (rock-paper-scissors) robot system with 100% winning rate as one example of human-machine cooperation systems." [more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:20 PM PST - 34 comments

Nora Ephron, best known for writing the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, has died at 71 from pneumonia as a complication of acute myeloid leukemia. [more inside]
posted by brina at 8:03 PM PST - 154 comments

It is the hottest place in the world, and the driest. It is home to thriving commerce and to desperate, hopeless poverty. It is the Sahara, an eternal source of fascination and terror. Part 2. Part 3. [Hat tip: Longform]
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:37 PM PST - 13 comments

Worried about the widespread use of antibiotics used in the raising of steer, pigs and poultry, and fearing the rise of antibiotic-resistant illness, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began the process of withdrawing its approval for the non-medical use of penicillin and tetracyclines (scribd, posted by Wired magazine's Maryn McKenna in conjunction with one of her posts on this issue). That was in 1977. The FDA stopped pursuing the process, and antibiotics have continued to be given in feed. But a recent court order may allow the FDA to oversee a major change to the system. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:32 PM PST - 30 comments

Sponge-Fraud!: 'Artist Todd White seemingly had it all. With a multi-million-dollar art brand, collectors and clients ranging from Sylvester Stallone to Coca-Cola, and a burgeoning reputation in art-mad Britain, his days as lead character designer of SpongeBob SquarePants were but a distant memory. But, as David Kushner reports, when his confidante and gallerist Peggy Howell reported a burglary of his paintings at the hand of ninjas, things took a turn for the even stranger.' [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:08 PM PST - 23 comments

This past Friday, after a five hour trial in which Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo had less than two hours to mount a defense for, the congress and senate of Paraguay, in a close to unanimous vote, relieved the president of his duties. The election of Lugo, a former priest and a vocal advocate for the poor in Paraguay, a country in which a small handful of elites own close to 80% of the land (much of it given away in the 35 year Stroessner dictatorship) had officially brought an end to the 60 something year rule of the right wing Colorado Party (35 of those under Stroessner). [more inside]
posted by jake1 at 6:46 PM PST - 30 comments

In a light-hearted but genuine response to a number of perception problems in the music industries, Any And All records will sign you or your band to their label. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:18 PM PST - 22 comments

Write Like The Wind (George R.R. Martin) is a tuneful plea by Greg "Storm" DiCostanzo and Paul Sabourin that perhaps it's time for the author to work hard finishing up his Song Of Fire And Ice series.
posted by hippybear at 6:18 PM PST - 60 comments

Rise of Flight is a World War 1 combat flight simulator that focuses on historical accuracy, from realistic engine behavior, impressive damage modeling, and machine gun synchronization to generating historic dogfight scenarios based on the date. But to be honest, crashing is half the fun! Want a closer look? Check out GiantBomb's RoF Gameplay video or the Trailer. [more inside]
posted by rebent at 4:52 PM PST - 67 comments

"So, the Shard: it's expensive. It's off-limits. It's largely owned by people who don't live here. And it is the perfect metaphor for what London is becoming."
posted by Sebmojo at 3:13 PM PST - 111 comments

New report suggests Mars may be full of liquid water - Smithsonianmag.com
posted by The Whelk at 2:54 PM PST - 75 comments

The Art of π, φ and e [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:27 PM PST - 24 comments

In a somewhat unusual move, the staff at Longform.org has chosen as today's Editors' Pick the Wikipedia entry on New Jersey's notorious Action Park. [more inside]
posted by chaff at 2:18 PM PST - 50 comments

"The early death of I-Roy and dozens of other great reggae personalities is first and foremost – directly as well as indirectly – a legacy of the colonial power structures which still dominate the third world and cripple its inhabitants...We who survive due to the same structures must honour those who did not – and incidentally also whose who are still out there – by listening carefully to their music." An entreaty from a Norwegian gal on a an epic journey learn about early reggae music.
posted by Jibuzaemon at 1:16 PM PST - 5 comments

Forty-five years ago yesterday, various countries and networks (coordinated by the BBC) presented the first live, international satellite broadcast - "Our World", which was seen by an estimated 400 million people. The world's most popular band came up with a new song just for the occasion, which they debuted with a live performance. If you missed it at the time, here's exactly how that song was presented. [more inside]
posted by Curious Artificer at 12:36 PM PST - 32 comments

Chooooosan uses acrylics on her body to create funny and unnerving optical illusions. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 12:15 PM PST - 24 comments

ArtHistoryImages: Over 1000 artists organized by movement, from Byzantine to Realist, from Gothic to Pop. Each movement gives you a list of artists, and each artist's page joins images of their works with information from Wikipedia about their lives. [via mefi projects]
posted by ocherdraco at 11:31 AM PST - 2 comments

I Can't Apologize Enough is an ongoing series of small mixed media drawings by David Fullarton. [more inside]
posted by xod at 11:24 AM PST - 10 comments

Popular comedian Louis CK announced yesterday that he plans to sell his upcoming concert tour exclusively direct to the public on his website. [more inside]
posted by Lame_username at 10:08 AM PST - 115 comments

“This documentary is a humble exploration of the world of print, as it scratches the surface of its future. It is built upon interviews with individuals who are active in the Toronto print community and question whether or not they expect to see the disappearance of the physical book within our lifetime. The act of reading a “tangible tome” has devolved from being a popular and common pastime to one that no longer is. I hope for the film to stir thought and elicit discussion about the immersive reading experience and the lost craft of the book arts, from the people who are still passionate about reading on paper.” — Hannah Ryu Chung, the filmaker [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 9:29 AM PST - 20 comments

Fuck Yeah Hotel Hallway TheCoug documents unfortunate hotel carpets from his travels. [via mefi projects]
posted by Thin Lizzy at 9:00 AM PST - 34 comments

Drawing on recent work by anthropologists Elinor Ochs and Carolina Izquierdo (working draft in PDF format of relevant paper here), The New Yorker asks: Are Americans raising the most incompetent and spoiled children in the world? The Wall Street Journal also considers Ochs' and Izquierdo's conclusions...
posted by artemisia at 8:47 AM PST - 110 comments

How to Walk Your Human: by Kodi the Kitten [slyt]
posted by quin at 7:04 AM PST - 27 comments

Brackets - An open source code editor for the web
posted by Artw at 6:32 AM PST - 58 comments

1,143,839,622,748,050,000,000,000,000 Sonnet Anagrams and oodles of other oddities from Mike Keith involving constrained writing, mathematics, music, and the number π.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:27 AM PST - 12 comments

18-year-old French dance music phenom Madeon had his first break with his contest-winning remix of "The Island" by Pendulum and exploded after the viral success of the Ableton-enabled YouTube performance of his sample-fest "Pop Culture".

Apparently, 39 tracks in three and a half minutes just wasn't enough. He's just recorded a 95-tracks-sampling, five minute minimix for Annie Mac's show on Radio 1.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 5:49 AM PST - 29 comments

Build Lego onto a Google Map [more inside]
posted by azarbayejani at 5:41 AM PST - 13 comments

"A pod of orcas, or killer whales, cooperate to wash a Weddell seal off an ice floe. This sequence, filmed for Frozen Planet, marks the first complete filming of killer whale "wave washing" behavior." [more inside]
posted by vidur at 4:45 AM PST - 68 comments

The trailer for Dungeons and Dragons 3: The Book of Vile Darkness has been released onto the Internet. [more inside]
posted by Mezentian at 4:02 AM PST - 119 comments

The Atlantic have published what they feel to be the 23.5 Biggest Ideas of the Year (You can click each idea in the box on the right for an article. Alternatively, you can start on the first one, The Right to Be Forgotten and click Next through each idea. I wish they were all on one huge page, but I couldn't find that).
posted by surenoproblem at 12:36 AM PST - 66 comments

The New York Public Library's exhibit on lunch, profiled in a recent Edible Geography interview.
posted by latkes at 11:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Sorkinisms - A Supercut (previously).
posted by googly at 7:27 PM PST - 127 comments

Due to budget cuts, CBC's Radio Canada International has ceased broadcasting on shortwave; it is now Internet-only and therefore blocked by authoritarian regimes around the world. Mark Montgomery is somewhat emotional about being the last voice on the air
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:12 PM PST - 35 comments

Dave Chappelle, still facing pressure from audiences who want him to do bits from "Chappelle's Show", did not amuse an audience in Austin. Which begs the question: Do we expect too much from entertainers?
posted by reenum at 4:39 PM PST - 104 comments

Here we learn how to properly use a squat toilet. (via BoingBoing) [more inside]
posted by gman at 4:16 PM PST - 96 comments

"The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights." - Jimmy Carter [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 3:46 PM PST - 86 comments

Tycho Brahe, probably best known for his drinking and pill binge of 1997 was the author of a great number of fantasy works, of which the most influential may have been The Story That Is Built One Sentence At a Time By Those That Read It.
posted by 256 at 3:24 PM PST - 51 comments

Voice actress June Foray won her first Emmy award this year at age 94. [more inside]
posted by xingcat at 3:18 PM PST - 24 comments

Sound-Word Index — Emotions and their sound can invade our digital messages. Our words become flexible and vibrate according to the volume of our voices, transforming their written form into an expressive and resonating language. Without the help of body language, words can sometimes fall short in our digital conversations. However, sound, volume and rhythm can influence the spelling of our words, helping to translate our emotions hidden behind our screens.
posted by netbros at 3:12 PM PST - 1 comment

Weathering Spring
posted by OverlappingElvis at 3:04 PM PST - 8 comments

Obama evolved. The NAACP evolved. The NCLR has evolved. How do you get your friends and family to evolve into support for LGBT rights? The Movement Advancement Project's excellent Talking About LGBT Issues series gives research-driven rhetorical and messaging frameworks that work best for meeting reluctant folks where they are. They include warnings about civil rights framings, how to hit emotional marks that emphasize commonality and cover things like adoption, marriage, transgender etiquette and employment protections.
posted by klangklangston at 2:57 PM PST - 16 comments

Last year, Wired reported that 'The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”' (previously) The FBI pledged reform, but the materials appeared to be deeply embedded. After the President ordered a review, the FBI 'purged' the documents from training materials. Earlier this year Wired reported that 'U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam.' [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:51 PM PST - 41 comments

Steven Pinker on the "False Allure of Group Selection", with comments by Daniel Dannett, Stewart Brand, and others. Richard Dawkins's take on group selection. Jerry Coyne's take.
posted by AceRock at 12:57 PM PST - 55 comments

Jay Smooth on why "don't feed the trolls" is not always the best course. [SLVimeo] [more inside]
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 12:36 PM PST - 56 comments

There are fears for the future editorial independence of the BBC after news journalists were ordered to come up with money-generating ideas for the corporation, a leaked email reveals. BBC bosses have told reporters to think of money-making schemes and present them to their line managers at forthcoming job appraisals – raising concerns that the organisation's prized editorial standards will be compromised by commercial imperatives. The 2,400 staff working in the BBC's Global News department, including the BBC World Service, have been told that they must now "exploit new commercial opportunities [and] maximise the value we create with our journalism".
posted by symbioid at 12:35 PM PST - 32 comments

There were 78 episodes of the anthology Science Fiction Theatre aired on TV from 1955 to 1957. The show's plots were much more heavily-weighted to science than others of the time, although some of the premises appear very far-fetched. Many of the episodes are available on YouTube. [more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson at 12:31 PM PST - 9 comments

Minimalist Lego reconstructions of classic moments from sci-fi cinema.
posted by gauche at 12:00 PM PST - 27 comments

There's only 3 types of people in the world. There's Gumbel, there's friends of Gumbel, and there's Tight Dave.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:35 AM PST - 18 comments

Dogs on Roofs: a Flickr pool.
posted by obscurator at 11:07 AM PST - 35 comments

Gayle is a short weekly web-series about the hyper-competitive upper-middle class mom Gaye Waters-Waters and her relentless attempts to dominate the local chapter of Mothers Against Road Head. Episode one with links to the latest ten. NSFW audio.
posted by The Whelk at 10:42 AM PST - 16 comments

Rather than trying to tame wild stallions, fearless Costa Rican fisherman Chito preferred a playful wrestle in the water with his best pal Pocho - a deadly 17ft crocodile. For several years, the 52-year-old daredevil drew gasps of amazement from onlookers by wading chest-deep into the water, then whistling for his 980lb buddy - and giving him an affectionate hug. Crazy Chito said: "Poncho is my best friend. This is a very dangerous routine but we have a good relationship. He will look me in the eye and not attack me. It is too dangerous for anyone else to come in the water. It is only ever the two of us. Sadly Pocho died last October, at the age of 50. But his fame lives on.
posted by unSane at 10:23 AM PST - 36 comments

What Britain used to look like from the air (Audio slideshow) From sprawling factory complexes to newly built suburban streets - by way of some of the UK's top sporting venues and seaside resorts. More than 10,000 images from one of the earliest collections of aerial photography are being made freely available on the web.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:26 AM PST - 10 comments

Today the Supreme Court announced their 5-4 decision for Miller v. Alabama and found that mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles who commit murder are unconstitutional. [more inside]
posted by Talez at 9:10 AM PST - 163 comments

Kensington Secretary Angela McWilliams takes her pet leopard, Michael, on a stroll through 1960s London. (SYTL)
posted by hot soup girl at 8:52 AM PST - 22 comments

Stop data collection by Google: Abine introduces Googlesharing for Firefox [beta].
posted by Rykey at 8:26 AM PST - 33 comments

Alex Niven reviews Martin Amis' new book, Lionel Asbo: State Of England, mostly by examining the concept of "Cool Britannia", which he describes as "comic-book elegant slumming underpinned by cynical self-interest and harsh economic realism."
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:41 AM PST - 25 comments

In November 1966, Isaac Asimov wrote an article for TV Guide lamenting the shaky science of Star Trek. Roddenberry replied, arguing that simply knowing about science, and writing sci-fi novels, was not sufficient qualification to criticize television sci-fi. [more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:30 AM PST - 338 comments

The Manhattan Project is an HD timelapse short showing off different aspects of life in New York City. [via]
posted by quin at 6:12 AM PST - 11 comments

unnamed soundsculpture / stills [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:13 AM PST - 4 comments

Winamp's woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself
posted by Artw at 11:00 PM PST - 213 comments

Tax avoidance isn't a left or right issue, it's a cancer eating our democracy - but why do people cheat in the first place?
posted by Zarkonnen at 10:44 PM PST - 125 comments

The Packer - covering the fresh produce industry since 1893 has various articles of general interest such as pursuing an organic fertilizer fraud case, an industry view on how a Dirty Dozen list harms fresh consumption, possibility of cold plasma for food safety, and just what's happening in the market with any particular produce item (top menu). [more inside]
posted by Listener at 10:28 PM PST - 14 comments

If you revolve the letters of the alphabet around an axis, you get the 3D alphabet.
posted by twoleftfeet at 6:19 PM PST - 69 comments

Drive like Jehu live at the Galaxy Club Dallas TX in 1994. SLYT. Starts with Sinews ends with Luau. Suit up!
posted by safetyfork at 5:00 PM PST - 22 comments

Lonesome George has died. George, the last specimen of the Pinta Island subspecies of the Galapagos Island Tortoise, was estimated to have been around 100 years old. Efforts to mate George with females of related subspecies had failed.
posted by univac at 4:24 PM PST - 87 comments

The prime minister has suggested that people under the age of 25 could lose the right to housing benefit, as part of moves to cut the welfare bill. Scrapping the benefit for that age group would save almost £2bn a year. via BBC News. Comments sortable and worth reading. [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 3:13 PM PST - 125 comments

The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever.
posted by nevercalm at 11:41 AM PST - 48 comments

There is a dating guide for Stanford University (PDF file), and it includes a foreword by Philip Zimbardo.
posted by reenum at 9:46 AM PST - 41 comments

Theme from Harry Potter played with wine glasses. [SLYT] Via: [Geek Tyrant]
posted by Fizz at 9:27 AM PST - 18 comments

Terrell Owens's Darkest Days:

'Since signing with the Allen Wranglers, Terrell Owens hasn't exactly been excited to talk to reporters. Back in his Philadelphia days, in the prime of his career, he used to hold press conferences all the time, sometimes in his own driveway. He couldn't wait to be on camera. He would tell reporters what questions to ask. He never shied away from a microphone: not in a locker room, not in a studio, and certainly not on his own reality show. But now that he's been relegated to the lowest rung of professional football, with no team in the NFL even interested in watching him work out, Owens hasn't been so loquacious.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:09 AM PST - 28 comments

In yet another attempt to bring order and usefulness to the comments section of a high traffic news site, Gawker has implemented a new comment system. They are borrowing the basic concept from Slashdot that most comments will never be seen, and thus the focus is to find the interesting conversations that do occur under the article, and promote them with no regard for chronological order . The system shows some promise, although it clearly has a ways to go as a recent article failed to highlight replies in the comments from the subject of the article. Also of note, the photo of Nick Denton used in the article is by MeFi's own mathowie.
posted by COD at 8:33 AM PST - 55 comments

"Climate change will take on a life of it's own and spiral out of control. Something like half the earth's currently-inhabited land would become too hot to survive on. I don't mean it's difficult to grow beans, or your air-conditioning bills are inconveniently high. I mean, if you go outside you die of hotness. Places that were an average of 80F will now be an average of 170, 180F. Will there still be human civilization under those circumstances?" - a TEDx talk on The Brutal Logic of Climate Change, by David Roberts of grist.org
posted by crayz at 7:17 AM PST - 201 comments

The Madagascar Journals is part one of a charming, thoughtful travelogue by Matt Kresling. Linked from Uke Hunt, purveyors of all fine things ukulele.
posted by condesita at 6:56 AM PST - 8 comments

Why Knight and Day is better than Inception
posted by mippy at 6:05 AM PST - 92 comments

Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast is a series of long live interviews with other comedians, comedy writers and Jonathan Ross - the most recent with his old partner, Stewart Lee. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:54 AM PST - 8 comments

Were you perplexed and mystified by the behavior of the Prometheus crew? Well, it'll all make sense once you watch this helpful training video. [slyt]
posted by cthuljew at 11:20 PM PST - 164 comments

Let the Beat Build. Fantastic single-take video by Nyle. [more inside]
posted by davidjmcgee at 9:13 PM PST - 17 comments

Two Flickr sets of 295 illustrations and 103 illustrations each (plus three more illustrations), by French artist Chéri Herouard who is most famous for his work for "naughty French magazine" La Vie parisienne from 1907 to his death. You can find some high quality scans from La Vie parisienne and more information about the magazine at Darwination Scans. Quite a few of the images are not safe for work. [via Kate Beaton]
posted by Kattullus at 7:45 PM PST - 13 comments

Starry Night - Vincent van Dominogh (slyt)
posted by merelyglib at 5:01 PM PST - 14 comments

"I think my father is a hateful person first. The religious beliefs gave him a forum and permission to be cruel to the world." Nate Phelps, son of Fred Phelps, answers questions about growing up in the Westboro Baptist Church, and his life after leaving it. (Warning: descriptions of domestic violence.) [more inside]
posted by roger ackroyd at 4:55 PM PST - 70 comments

Rohinton Mistry's convocation speech to Ryerson [video - g&m, must wait for short ad) this link is to the text, with no ads, but hearing his reading is nice.
posted by chapps at 4:19 PM PST - 6 comments

Arthur Miller describes New York summers before air-conditioning. (New Yorker Archive)
posted by whimsicalnymph at 3:27 PM PST - 73 comments

Liz Climo's mostly animal cartoon tumblr, Hi, I'm Liz.
posted by Atreides at 2:27 PM PST - 18 comments

The Hunt For The Perfect Mattress. 'Technology in bedding is becoming as advanced as that of running shoes or rockets, with an explosion of gels, foams, latex and assorted materials harvested from organic rubber plantations and rare sheep around the globe, being molded, refined and patented by innovators and entrepreneurs to provide night after night of perfect, deep sleep.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 2:14 PM PST - 69 comments

The changing prominence of the contralto. While female contralto pop and jazz singers can be heard on just about every i-device and radio station in the United States and Europe, their classical counterparts are increasingly rare in today's opera, concert, and radio programming. [more inside]
posted by Currer Belfry at 1:53 PM PST - 12 comments

Essayist and cartoonist Tim Kreider is no stranger to film criticism ( previously) but his thoughtful, surprising, detailed analysis of Lynch's The Straight Story and Spielberg/Kubrick's AI deserve special attention.
posted by The Whelk at 12:54 PM PST - 42 comments

Having trouble with Javascript? An automated solution, the descendant of a long line of DWIM aids to programming, is at hand. (library name NSFW) [more inside]
posted by zippy at 12:18 PM PST - 44 comments

For the past 4 days, up to 12 million NatWest / Royal Bank of Scotland customers have been unable to pay bills, move money or get paid due to a technical problem. Customers have been unable to complete on house purchases and some are stuck because they can't pay hotel bills abroad. The new mobile banking service has also been affected. The bank has called in 7,000 staff to open all weekend as problems persist.
Just three months ago, the State-controlled bank outsourced nearly 300 back-office roles to Hyderabad in India.
posted by Lanark at 10:48 AM PST - 69 comments

Why Is the U.S. Selling Billions in Weapons to Autocrats?
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 10:43 AM PST - 54 comments

The Frog's Bollocks (and Other Assorted Bollocks) NSFW. Not Shown To Scale. Not Narrated by Richard Attenborough. NOT related to this story (I hope). Blame Drawn.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:10 AM PST - 17 comments

Conceptual Juggling using illuminated balls is exceptionally mesmerizing. [slyt]
posted by quin at 10:00 AM PST - 23 comments

Driving down the street in LA, you may notice coffee shops, gas stations or motels with bright primary colors, sweeping lines, bold angles and a retrofuture feel: Googie - Architecture of the Space Age [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:55 AM PST - 16 comments

Clearing the Bar Is the Easy Part: [NYTimes] "Mark Hollis is a pole-vaulter, and while he and his competitors here feel significant pressure as they compete for a place on the Olympic team, the anxiety they experience just trying to get their equipment to meets is sometimes even more excruciating."
posted by Fizz at 8:36 AM PST - 35 comments

The Power of Crowd Sourcing. When Fox News provided a list of ten pranks to help your marriage (as we all know, that junior high locker room horse play was really preparation for a healthy and loving monogamous relationship), the Internet rose as one to say, "These are fantastic, but we need more!" Sorting the comments by Popular/ Best shows you how normal people, people just like you and me, added a little butter and salt to this Paula Deen-esque confection of an article.
posted by yerfatma at 6:51 AM PST - 137 comments

Alison Brie gives a candid interview [YT, 29:41] with film critic David Poland as part of his DP/30 series. Topics covered include her schooling and early career, landing roles on Mad Men [YT, 0:54] and Community [YT, 4:52], developing as a comedy actress, interacting with a cult audience, what it's like to be the internet's favorite subject of titillating animated GIFs, and how to pronounce "GIF" for that matter.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:58 AM PST - 32 comments

Almost sixty years ago, a BBC satirical review created a segment to mark current events in Mississippi. Almost sixty years later, Millicent Martin's song and dance number still has the power to shock. (slyt, nsfw, inflammatory/racist language, etc.)
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:10 AM PST - 32 comments

Increasing evidence suggests that the alarming rise in allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our food and us. [more inside]
posted by j03 at 11:46 PM PST - 84 comments

Happy 100th birthday, Alan Turing! 2012 is the Alan Turing Year, with celebratory academic events around the world all year. BBC News has a set of (brief) appreciations, including one in which two of Turing's colleagues share memories. Google has an interactive Doodle of a Turing Machine today (that article has some explanation and links to a useful video if the doodle's confusing). [more inside]
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:53 PM PST - 27 comments

Gou Miyagi - overground broadcasting skate video
posted by Cloud King at 9:38 PM PST - 13 comments

As a marriage advocate, the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do. I’d like to explain why.

The founder and president of the socially conservative Institute for American Values has changed his mind on same-sex marriage. If not much else.
posted by gracedissolved at 7:04 PM PST - 73 comments

President Obama: Birthday Cake Giver-in-Chief (12-photo slideshow)
posted by beagle at 5:26 PM PST - 56 comments

These Americans is an historical photo narrative with such gems as "Photobooth", "Last Prisoners Leave Alcatraz", Dorothea Lange:"Internment", and the very sexy "Tally Ho". *Nudity and other possibly offensive photos for some*
posted by gman at 5:10 PM PST - 33 comments

Murray Leinster wrote more than fifteen hundred works of speculative fiction. Technovelgy notes the science fiction tropes and devices that he invented, as well as other writers. Chee!
posted by winna at 4:17 PM PST - 18 comments

Kirsty Mitchell's late mother Maureen was an English teacher who spent her life inspiring generations of children with imaginative stories and plays. Following Maureen's death from a brain tumour in 2008, Kirsty channelled her grief into her passion for photography. She retreated behind the lens of her camera and created Wonderland, an ethereal fantasy world.
posted by Arbac at 3:29 PM PST - 13 comments

Child mugshots from the 1800s
posted by hermitosis at 2:20 PM PST - 58 comments

The season finale of The Legend of Korra is upon us - airing in the United States tomorrow on Nickelodeon. Korra creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko answer questions at the Wall Street Journal about the show and the finale (season spoilers) ahead of time. It's not too late to catch up by watching all 10 previous episodes here. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 2:13 PM PST - 125 comments

Poland shaken by case alleging an illicit CIA prison there. 'For years, the idea seemed unthinkable, absurd. A secret U.S. detention center in a remote corner of Poland, where Al Qaeda suspects were brutally interrogated by the CIA? About as likely as "the Loch Ness monster," is how one Pole described it recently. That monster is now rearing its head.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 2:02 PM PST - 81 comments

Where to see Kandinsky in the world's museums. Each museum page links to images, including many early works. Eye candy. [more inside]
posted by Listener at 1:00 PM PST - 20 comments

[SLYT] Two thousand ducks cross the road to get to the field on the other side.
posted by not_on_display at 12:48 PM PST - 80 comments

GDP since Jesus. That headline is a big promise. But here it is: The economic history of the world going back to Year 1 showing the major powers' share of world GDP, from a research letter written by Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy at JP Morgan. everything to the left of 1800 is an approximation of population distribution around the world and everything to the right of 1800 is a demonstration of productivity divergences around the world. [more inside]
posted by Golden Eternity at 11:54 AM PST - 79 comments

Adaptive sports are generally limited to people with disabilities. What if everyone participated in adaptive sports?
posted by chickenmagazine at 11:28 AM PST - 34 comments

Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror is a YouTube video guaranteed to get you excited about NASA again. It shows the elaborate process that will get the Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface on August 5. It involves the largest supersonic parachute ever built, multiple vehicles, 76 explosive devices, and a skycrane.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:13 AM PST - 90 comments

"Book TV's After Words features the author of a recently published hardback non-fiction book interviewed by a guest host with some knowledge, background, or connection to the subject matter of the book." There's also a podcast version (link goes to XML feed), for those who'd rather listen. Many more non-fiction author interviews can be found at Booknotes (transcripts and streaming video). If your tastes run to interviews with authors of fiction, check out the BBC's Modern Writers archive. (BookTV (but not specifically After Words) previously, Booknotes (but before the series ended) previously.)
posted by cog_nate at 11:05 AM PST - 7 comments

The female bandmembers of Chairlift, Au Revoir Simone, Class Actress, and This Frontier Needs Heroes get together with "an essentially revolving cast of indie Brooklyn sirens, twice a year in a living room in Greenpoint to cover a single, classic song that they learn and arrange right before they perform. Calling themselves Girl Crisis, the group covers a classic (mostly a capella) from a male artist each Winter and a female artist each Summer. The performances are are filmed with a Super 8 camera, are not open to the public and exist only online. Their latest: Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me To The End of Love". (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:43 AM PST - 44 comments

on{X} is an automation framework that allows you to program and customize various aspects of your Android Smartphone using JavaScript. The developers at Microsoft have also provided a set of customizable pre-baked recipes for the JavaScriptially-challenged. [more inside]
posted by schmod at 10:26 AM PST - 25 comments

These pictures of Petere Gentenaar's large sculptural paper flowers floating in the Abbey Church of Saint-Riquier are fantastic. [more inside]
posted by julen at 10:24 AM PST - 8 comments

A gamma-ray burst, the most energetic explosions in the universe, converted to music. What does the universe look like at high energies? Thanks to the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), we can extend our sense of sight to "see" the universe in gamma rays. But humans not only have a sense of sight, we also have a sense of sound. If we could listen to the high-energy universe, what would we hear? What does the universe sound like?
posted by netbros at 10:02 AM PST - 21 comments

Seven Kittens is exactly what it says on the tin. (Plus or minus a cat.) [more inside]
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:57 AM PST - 54 comments

Have food pouches become the mainstay of the eating culture of young American children? "Mr. Grimmer believes the pouch’s popularity can be attributed to the emergence of a new way of relating to our children. He calls it “free-range parenting.”Parents, he explained, want to be as flexible as modern life demands. And when it comes to eating, that means doing away with structured mealtimes in favor of a less structured alternative that happens not at set times, but whenever a child is hungry." Some people have concerns about the trend.
posted by Xurando at 9:02 AM PST - 198 comments

'The Hubris and Despair of War Journalism: What Martha Gellhorn teaches us about the morality of contemporary war reportage.' [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:37 AM PST - 10 comments

Tim Anderson creates pulp novel covers for well-loved movies. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:32 AM PST - 30 comments

glitch + gifs = glitchgifs (SLTumblr, blinky)
posted by griphus at 6:59 AM PST - 58 comments

Payhole.me. The Rules: Feed me money. Put in an address. Get something in the mail. [via mefi projects]
posted by davidjmcgee at 6:31 AM PST - 71 comments

Wellcome Image Awards 2012 "Wellcome Images is the world's leading source of images of medicine and its history, from ancient civilisation and social history to contemporary healthcare, biomedical science and clinical medicine. More than 180 000 images ranging from manuscripts, rare books, archives and paintings to X-rays, clinical photography and scanning electron micrographs are available on the Wellcome Images website." (Previously & Previously) [cortex, is that you?]
posted by OmieWise at 5:46 AM PST - 2 comments

In Praise of Leisure - "Imagine a world in which most people worked only 15 hours a week. They would be paid as much as, or even more than, they now are, because the fruits of their labor would be distributed more evenly across society. Leisure would occupy far more of their waking hours than work. It was exactly this prospect that John Maynard Keynes conjured up in a little essay published in 1930 called 'Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.' Its thesis was simple. As technological progress made possible an increase in the output of goods per hour worked, people would have to work less and less to satisfy their needs, until in the end they would have to work hardly at all... He thought this condition might be reached in about 100 years — that is, by 2030." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:43 AM PST - 117 comments

An EU campaign called Science: It's a Girl Thing! has released a promotional video that has not gone over well. [more inside]
posted by alby at 5:43 AM PST - 101 comments

Femfresh is a product designed for making one's ladygarden more fragrant. Yet despite the success of their TV ad campaign, which took euphemisms for one's velvet glove and spun them into a fifties song (previously), their Facebook page is seeing a backlash from users who believe that vaginal deodorants are unhealthy, unnecessary and sexist and that euphemisms for the sticky bun are infantile. [NSFW content in links, Facebook page may require login to view]
posted by mippy at 5:00 AM PST - 139 comments

The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia is Matt Taibbi's take on the recent convictions in the municipal bond bid-rigging case of United States v. Dominick P. Carollo, Steven E. Goldberg, and Peter S. Grimm. These three fraudsters are among the fifteen convicted so far with regard to the federal government's investigation into nationwide municipal bond bid-rigging schemes. [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:18 AM PST - 45 comments

Kame Chan is a cockatiel that likes to sing. The Chocobo theme! Zelda! Victory!
posted by The Whelk at 2:32 AM PST - 10 comments

A gay-straight marriage story from a member of the LDS church. "About a year after my divorce, I was chatting with my new bishop, who I had known for several years prior to that. He asked me, "So, Ashley, why did you and Matt get divorced?" I replied, "Matt is a homosexual." I just looked him in the eye after I said this and waited a few seconds while he absorbed it. Then he asked, "Well, was there another problem as well? Like drinking? Or gambling?" I looked him in the eye a second time and replied, "Nope. Just that." He was genuinely confused."
posted by Dynex at 10:11 PM PST - 58 comments

"Dwarfing even the $2 trillion borrowed for the Railway Ministry’s high-speed networks since 2008, and the thousands of kilometres of 4–6 lane toll roads with barely a vehicle on them, China’s building binge is the most striking example of what Prime Minister Wen Jiabao famously, but impotently, denounced in 2007 as the country’s “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated and unsustainable” model of economic development. Now, with house prices and sales sagging in response to government restrictions aimed at deflating history’s biggest ever property bubble, and with local governments as deep in bad debt as the developers, I asked the businessman what was to prevent the bubble actually bursting, in a spectacular financial explosion? "
posted by vidur at 9:19 PM PST - 43 comments

Fjögur Píanó [NSFW, nudity] is the first released video from an upcoming project titled "Mystery Film Experiment," which is a collection of music videos for Sigur Rós' latest album, Valtari. Each video is being made by different filmmakers. "With the films, we have literally no idea what the directors are going to come back with. None of them know what the others are doing, so it could be interesting." [more inside]
posted by lubujackson at 8:13 PM PST - 24 comments

For those of you having a crummy day, a kitten and a bunny rabbit sparring. (SLYT)
posted by joannemerriam at 6:44 PM PST - 67 comments

Frank Zappa - Peefeeyatko Documentary covers Frank Zappa's later Synclavier computer compositions. Features Boulez, Xenakis, and a guy who knows Bigfoot personally. Previously
posted by Dr. Fetish at 5:14 PM PST - 13 comments

After an inquisitive prison inmate challenged his notions of poverty and its solutions, Earl Shorris embarked on a project to share the humanities with poor students in New York City. In this article for Harper's Magazine, he remembers his struggles and triumphs with funding, material, and the students. As income inequality in the US continues to rise, other well known figures have different ideas. Shorris died recently this year, and obituaries appeared in The New York Times, The Daily News and The Nation. A full archive of his articles for Harper's can be found here.
posted by sophist at 5:07 PM PST - 10 comments

The Royal Household is hiring. Apply online now! [more inside]
posted by DarlingBri at 4:21 PM PST - 79 comments

ACTA's final E.U. committee meeting has some amusing anecdotes. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 3:18 PM PST - 6 comments

Shooting 2001 [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:33 PM PST - 15 comments

Veteran astronaut Tom Jones thinks NASA should nab an asteroid.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:01 PM PST - 27 comments

This workplace safety video teaches us that the most important way to prevent injury is to always think about what could happen (nsfw).
posted by gman at 1:57 PM PST - 49 comments

Here's Stevie Wonder playing some drums.
posted by empath at 1:46 PM PST - 25 comments

Uruguay looking to sell marijuana to combat cocaine. 'The unusual idea, announced Wednesday by Uruguayan officials, would be one of the boldest steps yet among Latin American leaders to alter a war on drugs driven solely by prohibition, which increasingly is resisted in the Americas as a failed strategy.' 'Under the plan backed by President Jose Mujica’s leftist administration, only the government would be allowed to sell marijuana and only to adults who register on a government database, letting officials keep track of their purchases over time. Profits would reportedly go toward rehabilitating drug addicts.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 1:21 PM PST - 45 comments

Author and broadcaster Clive James is facing terminal leukemia. James, who has lived in London for 50-years but kept his Australian passport smoked 80 cigarettes a day and was a hard drinker before giving up both.
posted by parmanparman at 12:55 PM PST - 37 comments

After exploring a world populated by “anthropomorphic rabbits and a pair of gay lovers” for over 30 years, “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening is putting down his pen and ending his highly acclaimed comic strip, “Life in Hell.”
posted by chavenet at 12:47 PM PST - 77 comments

I AM THE LAW!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:15 PM PST - 102 comments

Funniest Movie Ever - Or Nail-Biting Drama? (SLYT, 4:09 min) [more inside]
posted by davidmsc at 11:32 AM PST - 70 comments

"I had always assumed that if I could get a foreign-policy job in the State Department or the White House while my party was in power, I would stay the course as long as I had the opportunity to do work I loved. But in January 2011, when my two-year public-service leave from Princeton University was up, I hurried home as fast as I could." Anne Marie Slaughter, the former policy director for the State Department and professor at Princeton University, has written a nuanced essay for this month's Atlantic Monthly, about the feminist generation gap and work-life balance at the top levels of government and academia: Why Women Still Can't Have It All. [more inside]
posted by lunasol at 9:49 AM PST - 117 comments

What is Cyndi Lauper doing to follow up her brilliant, well-received (and award winning) 2010 album Memphis Blues? Why, she's writing a musical! A stage adaptation of the charming UK film Kinky Boots which will be opening in Chicago later this year, with an anticipated move to Broadway in 2013. Eager for a preview? EW is hosting a sneak peek of the track The Sex Is In The Heel (scroll down for player), and the track will be available for free download at the musical's website starting tomorrow. Lauper will also be performing the track live at the NYC Pride Parade this weekend, where she will be Grand Marshall.
posted by hippybear at 8:58 AM PST - 31 comments

Reading Rainbow is back (includes video interview with LeVar Burton, ~4.5 min.) - "rebooted as an app for tablet computers" (Android? yes, soon); reviews from Gizmodo & Engadget. Here's a recent convention Q&A with Burton where he announces the app (video, relevant part starts at 3:30). But if this announcement is simply making you nostalgic for the television show, all 155 episodes of Reading Rainbow are available here on YouTube (neatly sorted into playlists by season, or you can just start here for every single episode in order). (previously: LeVar Burton goes behind the scenes of Star Trek: The Next Generation in a Reading Rainbow episode - Reading Rainbow ends its 26-year run)
posted by flex at 8:30 AM PST - 53 comments

Summarized on Storify: "A shocking video of middle schoolers verbally abusing a poorly-paid, hearing-impaired grandmother of eight hired to keep them safe on the school bus went viral on Wednesday. " Sympathy and donations have come in from around the world, and Reddit users have complained to the school district and started a thread that's helped to raise $150,000+ so far.
posted by deern the headlice at 8:03 AM PST - 257 comments

Being Chased by a Baby Duck [SLYT] [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:29 AM PST - 66 comments

'Often, we try to repair broken things in such a way as to conceal the repair and make it “good as new.” But the alternative “better than new” aesthetic—that a conspicuous, artful repair actually adds value' - on kintsugi, the art of beautiful repair. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:28 AM PST - 30 comments

On June 17, a Chinese investigative journalism program called Xi'an Up Close aired a report detailing a "mystery mushroom" discovered by villagers in a rural part of Xi'an city. "I've done my own research on the internet," says one villager. "It's a type of lingzhi mushroom, called the taisui."

Residents of the Liucunbu village on the outskirts of the capital of the Shaanxi province say they came across a strange fungi-like object as they hit bedrock while drilling a new well. The perplexed villagers decided to call up their local TV station for help, which sent intrepid reporter Ye Yunfeng to their sleepy little hamlet to get down to the bottom of things. Reporter Ye then begins to describe the curious object as the camera pans in on it. "As we can all see, this looks like a type of fungus, on both ends of which you'll find mushroom heads." "On this side, you can see what looks like a pair of lips," she adds. "And on that side, there is a tiny hole which extends all the way back to this side. The object looks very shiny, and it feels really fleshy and meaty too."

posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:17 AM PST - 56 comments

Rush, done acrapella style. (slyyz)
posted by ericbop at 7:17 AM PST - 35 comments

A taxi driver reacts to the most important news of the day. [NSFW language]
posted by unSane at 7:06 AM PST - 28 comments

Costumes grotesques et métiers de Nicolas de Larmessin. (Coralized)
posted by griphus at 6:57 AM PST - 14 comments

Caroline John who played Liz Shaw, the Third Doctor's companion in the Earth-bound 1970 season of Doctor Who has died. Hers was the first of the Doctor's companions who could be seen as anything like an equal and inspired many of us to follow her into the science profession.
posted by feelinglistless at 5:47 AM PST - 40 comments

Bill Murray's Baseball Hall of Fame Speech (and Hideous Sports Coat) (via Open Culture)
posted by nosila at 5:42 AM PST - 23 comments

Teach With Portals. Last summer, a New York Times review of Portal 2 made the following prediction: "Somewhere out there an innovative, dynamic high school physics teacher will use Portal 2 as the linchpin of an entire series of lessons and will immediately become the most important science teacher those lucky students have ever had." With Teach With Portals, Valve's new education initiative, this just might be possible. [more inside]
posted by grabbingsand at 4:00 AM PST - 44 comments

On Bronies - With all the discussions about gender it's good to see something that doesn't point at guys doing 'non-guy' things and use the word 'freak'. Even if there are plenty of people out there doing exactly that [more inside]
posted by lith at 2:16 AM PST - 174 comments

Air New Zealand latest in-flight safety video (SLYT). Cameo sketch-appearances by a variety of well-known people, including President Obama, Queen Elizabeth, and Snoop Dogg. Spot the others (mostly well-known New Zealanders). Presented by Ed O'Neil from Modern Family and New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey from Two and a Half Men. Previously and previously.
posted by vac2003 at 12:13 AM PST - 27 comments

'At Angola Prison in Louisiana, model inmates or "trustees" are encouraged to participate in "hobby craft" as a part of their rehabilitation. Hobby craft is an arts program that involves painting, wood & leather working, taxidermy, furniture building, and many other disciplines.In many cases, they are given special workshops, tools and even private studios to work in.The goods are sold to the public at the prison’s annual rodeo and art fair. The money raised is then split mainly between inmates' families and prison administration, with the inmates themselves receiving only a small amount to buy more materials for the next fair. A sad irony is that this rehabilitation will rarely benefit the prisoners in the outside world because 90% of them have life sentences, and will end up being laid to rest at "The Farm."' A photographic essay.
posted by I love to count at 11:56 PM PST - 33 comments

A team of Georgia Inst of Technology engineers has published a study of the rolling action of Mexican jumping beans. "The researchers developed an algorithm of the beans’ behavior, which they then used to program rolling robots to move in a controlled direction." Abstract here. Interesting video of bean races included.
posted by Isadorady at 10:56 PM PST - 10 comments

"McPhee describes two things: how Switzerland requires military service from every able-bodied male Swiss citizen—a model later emulated and expanded by Israel—and how the Swiss military has, in effect, wired the entire country to blow in the event of foreign invasion. To keep enemy armies out, bridges will be dynamited and, whenever possible, deliberately collapsed onto other roads and bridges below; hills have been weaponized to be activated as valley-sweeping artificial landslides; mountain tunnels will be sealed from within to act as nuclear-proof air raid shelters; and much more." (via)
posted by vidur at 9:00 PM PST - 98 comments

In the year and a half since the earthquake and tsunami caused an industry-wide Japanese nuclear shutdown , Japanese consumers and businesses have been urged to conserve energy whenever possible. Although a few reactors are being brought back online temporarily, the Japanese government has pledged to move away from nuclear power sources. Yesterday the Japanese government announced what may be the world's highest solar photovolatic feed-in tariff at 53 cents per kWh generated. [more inside]
posted by thewalrus at 8:38 PM PST - 47 comments

Larry Ellison is buying 98% of Lanai , one of the Hawaiian Islands. Best way to protect the island and the commons? or bad precedent and an example of the tyranny of small decisions?
posted by specialk420 at 6:48 PM PST - 67 comments

As hopes for the future of multilateral action on the environment are fading, the draft negotiating text of "The future we want", the Rio+20 declaration was leaked, showing where the US delegation was seeking to remove any and all references to equity.
posted by wilful at 6:13 PM PST - 29 comments

Flavorwire "asked both men and women of various sexual orientations to share the books that they think render their devotees totally undateable". [more inside]
posted by cybertaur1 at 4:24 PM PST - 297 comments

The knitosphere is in an uproar after being needled by a US Olympic Committee law clerk who thought it would be a good idea to tell Ravelry to cease using the word "Ravelympics" to describe their summer 2012 knitting marathon for trademark infringement, and because it "tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games". (Last link requires a Ravelry account, but the full text of the letter is here.)
posted by jjray at 3:49 PM PST - 82 comments

David Chan has eaten at 6,090 Chinese restaurants. He's eaten at more than 300 Chinese restaurants in New York alone and visited every state. Here's his list of the top ten Chinese restaurants in America, all of which are in California, most in Los Angeles. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 3:25 PM PST - 113 comments

"What facts about the United States do foreigners not believe until they come to America? In the episode "True Urban Legends" [originally aired 4.23.2010] of This American Life, Mary Wiltenburg asks refugees to share the rumors they'd heard about America but didn't think were true, only to discover on arrival that they were. Examples include homelessness and Christmas lights." Quora members weigh in. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 3:05 PM PST - 451 comments

RIP Andrew Sarris, the legendary film critic who popularized the auteur theory in the United States, sparred with arch-rival Pauline Kael, and helped define American film criticism. [more inside]
posted by alexoscar at 2:52 PM PST - 17 comments

That is the structure of scientific revolutions: normal science with a paradigm and a dedication to solving puzzles; followed by serious anomalies, which lead to a crisis; and finally resolution of the crisis by a new paradigm. Another famous word does not occur in the section titles: incommensurability. This is the idea that, in the course of a revolution and paradigm shift, the new ideas and assertions cannot be strictly compared to the old ones. Even if the same words are in use, their very meaning has changed. That in turn led to the idea that a new theory was not chosen to replace an old one, because it was true but more because of a change in world view. The book ends with the disconcerting thought that progress in science is not a simple line leading to the truth. It is more progress away from less adequate conceptions of, and interactions with, the world. via 3quarksdaily
posted by cgc373 at 2:02 PM PST - 37 comments

Why Do Online Scammers Say They Are From Nigeria? A research paper from Microsoft argues it's a method of weeding out the savvy [via Slate]. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 1:57 PM PST - 35 comments

"A Case So Cold It Was Blue" is about Sherri Rasmussen's unsolved murder. [more inside]
posted by Avenger50 at 1:54 PM PST - 17 comments

"The only thing that makes my abortion decision different from anyone else’s abortion decision is that some people who are against abortion will think that my abortion is acceptable." Boing Boing's Maggie Koerth-Baker on what she's dubbed "The World's Shittiest Secret Society."
posted by Kitty Stardust at 1:54 PM PST - 20 comments

Incredible time-lapse video of the Little Bear fire near Ruidoso, New Mexico. [more inside]
posted by PapaLobo at 1:44 PM PST - 4 comments

In the Studio: The Process of a Painting. Mark Schoening gives New American Paintings a look into his months-long process on a new painting. More on Shoening's Tumblr and Vimeo.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:43 PM PST - 1 comment

4 years later, Matt Harding has a new Dance Video. Here are his older records of Travel around the World: 2008, 2006 and the original from 2004-5. What a life! [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 11:47 AM PST - 87 comments

Spider-Man 1969 fan film - "The first ever documented Spider-Man fan film, and the first (unofficial) live action appearance of Spider-Man from 1969! This was produced by Donald F. Glut and was his last amateur film (he had produced many other Marvel fan films before this) before moving on to write for classic cartoons like Transformers and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends." (via)
posted by mrgrimm at 11:27 AM PST - 12 comments

The 2012 Tour Divide kicked off on the 8th of June. This grand tour takes self-supported cyclists from Banff, AB CA to Antelope Wells, NM, USA along the North American Continental Divide. Riders must endure 4418 km (2745 miles) of dirt and gravel, with over 60,000 meters (200,000 ft) of climbing. If you want to win - plan on riding 16+ hours a day. Participants are now spread across the route, with the leader approaching the Colorado border.
posted by aganders3 at 11:18 AM PST - 13 comments

Julian Assange has breached his bail conditions in London and is currently petitioning for asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy. It is uncertain whether asylum will be granted, though Assange has a personal friendship with Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador. If his asylum bid is successful however, it is unclear how he would get from the safe haven of the six room embassy office to Ecuador without being arrested by British authorities. Such stalemates have happened before. Cardinal József Mindszenty was unable to leave the US Embassy building in Budapest for fifteen years after being granted asylum. The Siberian Seven were a group of seven political refugees who lived in a twelve foot by twenty foot room in the basement of the US embassy in Moscow for five years after being granted asylum in 1978. And in 1989, Chinese scientist and political activist Fang Lizhi was granted asylum at the US embassy in Beijing following the Tiananmen Square Massacre. He lived in the office for thirteen months before being allowed safe passage to Britain. [more inside]
posted by 256 at 11:05 AM PST - 392 comments

In the late 1970s the UK's Anglia Television ran a respected weekly documentary series: Science Report. But when the show was cancelled in 1977, the producers decided to channel Orson Welles in their final episode. The result was Alternative 3. Over the course of the hour, the audience would learn that a Science Report investigation into the UK "brain drain" had uncovered shocking revelations: man-made pollution had resulted in catastrophic climate change, the Earth would soon be rendered uninhabitable, and a secret American / Soviet joint plan was in place to establish colonies on the Moon and Mars. The show ended with footage of a US/Soviet Mars landing from May 22, 1962. After Alternative 3 aired, thousands of panicked viewers phoned the production company and demanded to know how long they had left to change planets. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:28 AM PST - 21 comments

Jimmy Page is often considered the first electric guitarist to play with violin bow. These days, Jonsí (of Sigur Ros) is the leading proponent of six-string bowing. The E-Bow, a modern-day magnetic invention has even attempted to replicate that sound of horsehair on steel, with popular success. But who did it first? Eddie Phillips. [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 9:47 AM PST - 25 comments

'Caught in the act: the first record of copulating fossil vertebrates.' [BBC.co.uk] "The remains of the 47-million-year old animals were unearthed in the famous Messel Pit near Darmstadt, Germany. They were found as male-female pairs. In two cases, the males even had their tails tucked under their partners' as would be expected from the coital position. Details are carried in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters."
posted by Fizz at 9:34 AM PST - 38 comments

The 2012 Foreign Policy/Fund for Peace list of Failed States has been published. Included in the report is the visually arresting Postcards from Hell. The complete issue on failed states is here. (Warning, slide shows and articles broken into far too many pages). (2010 Failed States Index on Mefi. 2009) [more inside]
posted by Hactar at 9:17 AM PST - 11 comments

In October 2011, Jeff Ragsdale went around New York City posting flyers that read "If anyone wants to talk about anything, call me (347) 469-3173. Jeff, One Lonely Guy." So far, he's received more than 70,000 calls, text messages, and photos. [more inside]
posted by davidjmcgee at 9:06 AM PST - 16 comments

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest Live! On Stage! One Entire Day Only!
posted by puddleglum at 8:55 AM PST - 16 comments

The Afterlife of Cheap Clothes is an excerpt from Elizabeth Cline's book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. 10 facts from Overdressed. An interview with Cline on Salon. Cheap clothing's high cost (infographic). Previously: stuff we don't want. [more inside]
posted by flex at 8:28 AM PST - 62 comments

Rotobooth is a rotary phone photobooth - dial in your phone number and it takes your picture, uploads it to Flickr, and sends you a link via SMS. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:26 AM PST - 13 comments

My mother became my daughter when I was nine years old. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:15 AM PST - 61 comments

Brian Vander Lee remains on life support, after being hit in the head at a restaurant on Sunday, by Minneapoiis police sergeant David Clifford. Although Vander Lee is expected to live, many do not. One punch homicides are more common than you might think. "At 9 a.m. the next day, Tuomisto called police and turned himself in."When will I get to tell my story?" he asked from the back of the squad car. "Fucking one punch," he said. "I don't know how this happened."
posted by Xurando at 6:37 AM PST - 126 comments

UNZ.org, a free website for periodicals, books, and videos. Search. [more inside]
posted by steef at 6:01 AM PST - 9 comments

Louder Than Love: The Grande Ballroom Story. While not as famous as Bill Graham's Fillmore Theaters, from 1966 to 1970, Detroit's Grande Ballroom hosted national acts such as Cream, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, and Pink Floyd. The brainchild of Russ Gibb, with help from activist John Sinclair, the Grande provided a stage for local bands like The MC5, SRC, The Rationals, The Amboy Dukes, The Frost and the The Stooges. The Grande had it's own psychedelic poster artists Gary Grimshaw and Carl Lundgren. Leni Sinclair took pictures. Local boys from the Grande that went on to national prominence included The Bob Seger System, Alice Cooper, and Grand Funk Railroad. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 5:33 AM PST - 8 comments

Horacio Coppola has died aged 105.
He was the great master of Argentine photography of the twentieth century, and of Buenos Aires in the thirties.
Here is a video of his work, and some stills and some more.
posted by adamvasco at 5:30 AM PST - 5 comments

"The world of entertainment still, all too often, values women only as objects of beauty to be placed on screen and ogled. [...] [T]he world is full of other women who have profound, intelligent, often hilarious things to say, and Dunham is very quietly making a space for those voices on TV, in a way that’s revolutionary both in terms of the show’s gender politics and in terms of its presentation. - AVClub critic TodVanDerWerff on "how [the HBO show] Girls challenges the masculine expectations of 'good TV.'" [more inside]
posted by coraline at 12:51 AM PST - 153 comments

Luis von Ahn has spoken about the idea of Human Computation in the past, he's the guy who created ReCAPTCHA's, using those anti-spam tests to help decipher digitized books. Now he has a new idea, Duolingo - learn a language for free while helping to translate text from the web.
posted by stbalbach at 12:23 AM PST - 19 comments

Fatman on Batman, Kevin Smith's new podcast on all things Batman, so far featuring excellent interviews with Batman: The Animated Series alumni Paul Dini and Mark Hamill. (WARNING: Contains Kevin Smith. But he is knowlegable about the subject, asks goods questions and shuts up and listens to the answers. Yes I am as suprised as you are. Also you probably want to mash forwards hard for the ads at the begining. Also maybe some stuff at the end of his conversation with Paul Dini... shudder. And dear god! That picture! What the hell? Is he... is he? I don't want to think about it. But seriously, very good.)
posted by Artw at 11:35 PM PST - 30 comments

As you walk through today's urban environment, observe public benches, walls, handrails, and any constructed inclines. You may notice various bolted on elements, extraneous steel installations, etc. One analysis deems this "defensive architecture," in a thoughtful piece that touches on thinkers, such as Michel de Certeau, Foucault, and the works of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. [more inside]
posted by taro sato at 10:51 PM PST - 89 comments

Game of Thrones: The Rom-com (SLYT trailer, NSFW) Game of Thrones: The Rom-com. Because winter isn't coming soon enough.
posted by fuse theorem at 9:38 PM PST - 22 comments

LEGO Turing Machine... Previously and Previously
posted by mattoxic at 8:02 PM PST - 11 comments

CSS iPhone
posted by boo_radley at 6:48 PM PST - 26 comments

A few months after he buried his son, Francisco Reynoso began getting notices in the mail. Then the debt collectors came calling. Now, he's suffering a Kafkaesque ordeal in which he's hounded to repay loans that funded an education his son will never get to use — loans that he has little hope of ever paying off. Despite the help of a lawyer, Reynoso has not been able to determine exactly how much he owes, or even what company holds his loans.
posted by unSane at 6:31 PM PST - 59 comments

Not only are OB tampons back in stores but OB would like to apologize to everyone for their temporary absence. Personally. Link to video, does not autoplay. [more inside]
posted by insectosaurus at 5:18 PM PST - 89 comments

Jonah Lehrer repeats himself in his articles for popular publications. Laura Hazard Owen argues that, unlike in public speeches, where writers often recycle material, the expectations of writing for paid publication are different.
posted by BibiRose at 4:21 PM PST - 44 comments

Behind the scenes at a McDonald's photo shoot . via
posted by fremen at 3:54 PM PST - 126 comments

Modeling a Falling Slinky [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:52 PM PST - 20 comments

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority has released MBTA See Say [iTunes link], a free iPhone/Android app that allows riders to "send the MBTA Transit Police pictures, text messages, and locations of unattended packages or suspicious activity" [link to MBTA apps page]. The camera's flash is disabled when a photograph is taken within the app. According to ELERTS, who built the app for the MBTA, "the opportunity to crowdsource information from riders who witness suspicious or criminal activities has not been realized by transit systems." The MBTA, which is the fifth largest transit system in the United States, is the first system to adopt this technology.
posted by catlet at 3:03 PM PST - 61 comments

Rumored to be the son of a former warlord as well as gay, Chang Cheh was definatly one of the undisputed masters and architects of modern martial arts cinema. He began his career in film as a writer and eventually began directing for the iconic Shaw Brothers Studio. Heavily influenced by the technically superior samurai movies coming out of Japan at the time, he had his first international blockbuster in 1969 with The One Armed Swordsman starring former swimming champion Jimmy Wang Yu. From there, he would go on to direct literally dozens of classic (and some not so classic) kung fu flicks with a signature style that even the most casual fan of martial arts would recognize. [more inside]
posted by jake1 at 2:35 PM PST - 16 comments

Modest Mouse: The Lonesome Crowded West. A documentary about the recording of Modest Mouse's masterpiece. [more inside]
posted by eyeballkid at 11:28 AM PST - 90 comments

A 7 minute timelapse video showing how graphic designer Alexander Koshelkov put together this image of a plane crash using photos from other sources. (Action starts around 40 seconds in. via)
posted by jontyjago at 10:53 AM PST - 46 comments

Blockly is a visual programming editor from Google. [more inside]
posted by alby at 10:49 AM PST - 93 comments

Adam Sandler's House of Cruelty Now in his forties, Sandler is still remaking the same undemanding goofball comedies he's been churning out since he was in his twenties, about crude, infantile characters who behave like crude, infantile characters who are much younger -- which is the essence of the have-it-both-ways regression that has been his career hallmark.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 10:43 AM PST - 171 comments

Drunk texts from famous authors. (More good ones in the comments)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:38 AM PST - 39 comments

Night Light: "a short animated film about a girl painting living fish" (via reddit).
posted by Memo at 10:29 AM PST - 4 comments

Sodastream will ignore a cease-and-desist letter from Coca-Cola regarding a marketing campaign in South Africa (and ~20 other locations) referred to as "The Cage."
posted by mrgrimm at 9:16 AM PST - 193 comments

"The Big Train" and other classic 1950s and 60s publicity reels from the New York Central Railroad. Lots of footage of trains, railroad infrastructure, well-dressed office minions, teletypes, punchcard machines, men in white lab coats, bubbling beakers, and even an "atomic signal light." [more inside]
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:51 AM PST - 10 comments

Cosmo's 44 most ridiculous sex tips: Ben Reininga, who writes "Ridiculous Tips for a Miserable Sex Life" (a monthly round-up of bad advice from Men's Health, Maxim, etc. - previously) focuses this month on Cosmopolitan magazine. Can you tell real Cosmo sex advice from fake? More from The Frisky (here & here); Cracked (here & here); Persephone (here & here); the Pervocracy's Cosmocking; and Glossed Over's posts tagged "Cosmopolitan". All links probably NSFWish. (previously: working as a fact checker for Cosmopolitan - link here)
posted by flex at 8:06 AM PST - 135 comments

Linus Torvalds on working with NVIDIA. via
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:04 AM PST - 57 comments

In the Flash game Zombotron, zombos got tronned. In Zombotron II, Zombotron gets Zombotronner amidst new enemies and predicaments.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:55 AM PST - 7 comments

Silent World is a neat photography-video project in which a neutral density filter is used to remove most of the people from some of the busiest cities in the world. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:21 AM PST - 27 comments

Evolution of music by public choice. Results are out from the DarwinTunes experiment (previously) - a Darwinian music engine working with mutating short audio loops that underwent evolutionary selection for 2,513 generations under the influence of thousands of listeners. Article in the Proc. Nat'l Acad. Sci. You can participate at the DarwinTunes web site.
posted by exogenous at 7:15 AM PST - 41 comments

Al Jazeera: 'US admits ops in Yemen and Somalia: White House formally acknowledges "direct action", believed to mean drone strikes, against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.' [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:00 AM PST - 93 comments

Professional writers may scoff, / But limericks? Never enough! / Let crummy-dot-com / Fill your needs with aplomb / (The meter's occasionally off) [more inside]
posted by wanderingmind at 1:42 AM PST - 78 comments

"A single pair of these gleaming mollusks sold at a Puget Sound dock could pay for an upscale Seattle dinner for two. A half-dozen sold in a Hong Kong grocery could fetch nearly enough cash to make a four-figure mortgage payment. Three milk crates of these shellfish purchased at a Shanghai restaurant could pay for a year of undergraduate tuition at the University of Washington." The Seattle Times investigates undocumented clams, and Business Week explores the impact on Native Americans. [more inside]
posted by HMSSM at 12:11 AM PST - 41 comments

Online articles often change after publication, except there is no history tab and sometimes those revisions are controversial, for example this Politico story on General Stanley McChrystal. Enter NewsDiff: Tracking Online News Articles Over Time. It allows you to compare evolving versions of online news articles after they are published, starting with The New York Times and CNN. Here are some example diffs - see anything controversial? Last year, Times executive editor Jill Abramson called the idea "unrealistic" in response to an OpEd calling for diffs. (via)
posted by stbalbach at 11:24 PM PST - 11 comments

Rapid Increase of Worldwide Laziness as Global Physical Activity Levels Decline. According to this study, most of the world just sits around getting fat now.
posted by twoleftfeet at 10:58 PM PST - 79 comments

Borrowing a name from another product, Microsoft today announced it's first ever hardware products running a mainstream version of Windows, and the first designed for Windows 8: The Microsoft Surface, in ARM and Intel flaovours. Hands on. Video highlighting the stand and covers.
posted by Artw at 7:51 PM PST - 383 comments

MetaFilter faves/VGM legends/Jim Steinman incarnates The Protomen have taken a sabbatical from their epic concept album trilogy-in-works based on the MegaMan canon to record a tribute to Queen. [more inside]
posted by mediocre at 7:41 PM PST - 14 comments

You’re So Not Almost Ready for a Baby, Even If You Think You Are
posted by chela at 6:58 PM PST - 140 comments

Falsehoods programmers believe about names and time shows how difficult it can be to represent basic concepts in code.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:23 PM PST - 161 comments

Elyse, one of the bloggers at Skepchick (previously, an incident involving another member of Skepchick), is propositioned at a conference and writes about it. Marty Klein, a writer for Psychology Today (previously: 1 2 3) doesn't like it. Elyse responds. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 3:23 PM PST - 543 comments

My Son’s Zelda Nursery: "This is what has been keeping me busy for the past 3 months. As soon as I found out we were having a boy I knew I wanted his room to inspire adventure, creativity, and exploration. Having a place to like that to grow up in would be amazing!" [via] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:05 PM PST - 55 comments

"[N]early all Japanese people have figurines, anime or cartoon characters hanging from their mobile phones — for the most part without realizing they are in their mass-produced, contemporary way keeping alive the nation's netsuke tradition. In contrast, those netsuke on Kuroiwa's phone are the real deal — small, delicate, uniquely crafted sculptures in ivory and an assortment of woods." Julian Littler searches for traditional ivory netsuke carvers (print view; standard web view), and interviews Akira Kuroiwa, a member of the Japan Ivory Sculptors Association (Google auto-translation). [via MetaChat] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:12 PM PST - 30 comments

19-year-old Kelly Hofer grew up in a Hutterite colony in Manitoba, and his photography captures his life as a Hutterite. Recently, Kelly left the community to start a new life in Calgary.
posted by Catseye at 1:11 PM PST - 51 comments

Nearly unrecognizable to today's MotoGP contests, with top speeds upwards of 215mph (346kph), early days of modern-day American motorcycle racing still reached speeds of 95mph (152kph) on dangerous wooden 45° banked tracks that earned the nickname Murderdromes by the end of the 1920's. Riders often raced with no brakes and leather helmets. But mostly, just a sweater and a smile. [more inside]
posted by furnace.heart at 12:34 PM PST - 11 comments

Blade Runner: Aquarelle Edition
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:56 AM PST - 34 comments

The Comedy Carpet is an enormous public typographic artwork in Blackpool, England, for decades a waystation for every stand-up comedian and comedy troupe in the country. This giant expanse of typography – like a football field of flat concrete you can read and walk on – displays every punchline and catchphrase of 20th-century British comedy, up to and including the entire Monty Python “Parrot Sketch.” Designer Andy Altmann gives a talk (direct Vimeo version) describing the immense design, computation, and construction work that went into fitting all those letters together. [more inside]
posted by joeclark at 11:54 AM PST - 11 comments

NPR Intern Emily White wrote that out of a library of 11,000 songs, she had only purchased 15 CDs. Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker's David Lowery responds: "Why do you pay real money for this other stuff but not music?"
posted by troika at 11:47 AM PST - 699 comments

Silent march by thousands protest NYPD's stop-and-frisk tactics. 'Nearly 300 civil rights groups were represented in the 30-block walk, from elected officials and labor union members to New York residents angry about how they're being treated when they walk the streets. Critics say the NYPD's practice of stopping, questioning and searching people who police consider suspicious is illegal and humiliating to hundreds of thousands of law-abiding blacks and Hispanics. Last year, the NYPD stopped close to 700,000 people, up from more than 90,000 a decade ago.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 11:31 AM PST - 54 comments

Uproar over forced resignation of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan enters second week. [more inside]
posted by Partial Law at 10:29 AM PST - 369 comments

"Sometimes students are good for a big surprise - as in this case. Having read one of my shorter posts (actually this one: www.hs-augsburg.de/~mstoll/?p=411 ) on a website about retro-futurism, Dennis Bille one day came around with a quite large set of folders and unpacked these wonderfull illustrations. Obviously they once were give-a-ways from "United States Steel International" to show, how the future might look like - from a early 60s perspective."
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:42 AM PST - 40 comments

Nissan's Batmobilelike DeltaWing in collaboration with Dan Gurney's All American Racers and others is car initially made to be the new IndyCar but ultimately made to contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans and possibly American Le Mans using half the amount of tyres and fuel as any car. It managed to run for 6 of the 24 hours before being taken out in the race.
posted by juiceCake at 9:11 AM PST - 36 comments

To raise awareness of the hazards of Haboobs, the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) ran a “Haboob Haiku” challenge last week, soliciting the 5-7-5 syllable poems from residents via social media. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:43 AM PST - 54 comments

Government requests to censor content ‘alarming,’ Google says Google has received more than 1,000 requests from authorities to take down content from its search results or YouTube video in the last six months of 2011. In its twice-yearly Transparency Report, the world’s largest web search engine said the requests were aimed at having some 12,000 items overall removed, about a quarter more than during the first half of last year. [previously]
posted by KokuRyu at 8:15 AM PST - 20 comments

Connect yourself to Kevin Bacon through film and you earn a Bacon Number, connect yourself to mathematician Paul Erdos through published papers and you earn an Erdos Number, connect yourself to Black Sabbath through recorded, published music and you earn a Sabbath Number. Want to know which 3 people have an Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath Number?
posted by Cosine at 7:55 AM PST - 171 comments

The wonderful, and fairly rare, 13-part documentary series from 1980 - Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film - is narrated by James Mason for Thames Television. Episode One - The Pioneers - [52 mins] [the rest are linked inside] shows:-

"the evolution of film from penny arcade curiosity to art form, from what was considered the first plot driven film, The Great Train Robbery, through to The Birth of a Nation, films showing the power of the medium. Early Technicolor footage, along with other color technologies, are also featured. Interviews include Lillian Gish, Jackie Coogan and King Vidor.*"

[more inside]
posted by peacay at 6:34 AM PST - 19 comments

Breaking records at 16.32 petaflops, Blue Gene/Q is the world's new fastest supercomputer. [more inside]
posted by tracert at 6:27 AM PST - 40 comments

One Minute Vacation is a short video of a two month trip to Asia cut together from one-second-per-day segments which creates a fantastic context-free moving snapshot of the locations and people. [slyt] [via]
posted by quin at 6:16 AM PST - 13 comments

[Denis Wood wrote] a crazy dissertation. It’s about maps, mental maps, getting kicked off a bus, psychogeography, single element veridicality analysis, Europe, cartography, Kevin Lynch, passed-out subjects, Peter Gould, psychogeomorphology, the Shirelles, and the invention of “Environmental a” – a language for mapping. Among other things. It is driving the wrong way down the one-way-street of academia.
posted by barnacles at 5:51 AM PST - 20 comments

TorChat is an instant messaging protocol based upon Tor hidden services, making it perhaps the only instant messaging protocol with any substantive resistance to traffic analysis. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 5:32 AM PST - 19 comments

Painter of Light: Two Letters Worth $15mil, or more, Under Dispute (previously) [more inside]
posted by snaparapans at 6:46 PM PST - 97 comments

Friendship bracelets! A photo tutorial for chevrons and another photo tutorial for basic stripes, chevrons, & diamonds. More basics with simple patterns & advanced. The BeyondBracelets thorough video tutorials (& on her blog is a bracelets 101 to gradually progress your skills). For complicated patterns check out these, and also these (with alphabet patterns & instructions), and also this crowdsourced free pattern-sharing site (patterns & tutorials), and finally this dollar-a-pattern pay site. If you're not interested in bracelets you can use the same idea for tangle-free headphones or wrapping tech cords & cables. (previously: lanyards)
posted by flex at 6:01 PM PST - 32 comments

Raising the Dead:'At the bottom of the biggest underwater cave in the world, diving deeper than almost anyone had ever gone, Dave Shaw found the body of a young man who had disappeared ten years earlier. What happened after Shaw promised to go back is nearly unbelievable—unless you believe in ghosts.'
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:47 PM PST - 68 comments

Racialicious Crush Of The Week: Bolaji Badejo, aka the Alien.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:54 PM PST - 34 comments

When divorced mother Jean Hilliker was discovered murdered under lurid circumstances in 1958, it came as no surprise that her young son James grew up a bit disturbed. Sent to live with his alcoholic accountant father, a man with "a 12 (to 16) inch schvantz " who had purportedly once "poured the pork to Rita Hayworth", James Ellroy became obsessed with his mother's murder. Some of this obsession was transferred to police procedure, detective novels and especially the spectacularly grisly murder case of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia. [more inside]
posted by jake1 at 3:24 PM PST - 82 comments

Upgrade Your Nintendo 3DS’s Sound. [SLYT] "Of the variety of things one might find to complain about in regards to the Nintendo 3DS, the sound doesn’t immediately come to mind. It’s not great sound, mind, but there are a litany of things that are more obvious. Thanks to one intrepid inventor, however, you are now just a series of tubes, clips and metal funnels away from awesome sound. Now, in order to figure out the exact combination of these things you’ll need to translate the instructions from Japanese." [Via].
posted by Fizz at 2:59 PM PST - 13 comments

How to kill a rational peasant: America's dangerous love affair with counterinsurgency. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 2:00 PM PST - 65 comments

The German bank Sparkasse Chemnitz recently launched a Karl Marx credit card. It needs a tagline.
posted by vidur at 1:26 PM PST - 52 comments

Before and after photographs of children who have had teeth removed. Part of a exhibition showcasing behind the scenes observations of The Children's Hospital, Sheffield
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:50 PM PST - 23 comments

Consider everything here potentially NSFW, even if not marked. Lots of background and sidebar images that may offend.

Kayden Kross (NSFW) and Stoya (previously) aren't stereotypical porn stars. For the release of Adam Levin's Hot Pink, Kross interviewed Levin on the McSweeney's website. Stoya was featured (along with Paul Dano) in the book trailer for Adam Wilson's Flatscreen. And together Kross and Stoya discussed Chad Kultgen’s Men, Women & Children — a novel that mentions Stoya by name. Kross digs David Foster Wallace; Stoya digs some good stuff, too. Both keep (very NSFW) blogs (Kayden 1, 2; Stoya 1, 2) where they write about all kinds of stuff. Last November on Fleshbot (NSFW) Stoya did a five-part series on sex in Japan. And check out Stoya's guest post on Warren Ellis's blog. [more inside]
posted by skilar at 12:20 PM PST - 52 comments

Pretty Eight Machine - an 8-Bit rendition of the Nine Inch Nails album.
posted by Artw at 12:02 PM PST - 29 comments

Happyism: The Creepy New Economics of Pleasure. Economist Dierdre McCloskey, in the New Republic, digs into the mathematical underpinnings of the scientific study of happiness. Executive summary: she doesn't like what she finds.
posted by escabeche at 11:44 AM PST - 26 comments

My Old Man - The Spirits of Rhythm [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 11:33 AM PST - 10 comments

The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains -- A two-part essay about (part I) how perception of colors affects our naming of colors which (part II) affects our perception of colors. Guest celebrities include Darwin's children, xkcd, a mantis shrimp, and Benjamin Whorf.
posted by ardgedee at 11:08 AM PST - 44 comments

Snowdrifter (single link Vimeo).
posted by Dipsomaniac at 10:56 AM PST - 5 comments

Rodney King, victim of a 1991 police brutality incident that became the catalyst for civil unrest and rioting a year later, was found dead by his fiancee at the bottom of his swimming pool. He was 47. [more inside]
posted by radwolf76 at 10:04 AM PST - 130 comments

Action Half-Life is a multiplayer modification that focused on cinematic gun-play. The game featured maps by Hondo, who was famous for incorporating massive puzzles in to his levels. These sprawling mysteries are explored by YouTube user bobandalot through narrative walkthroughs uploaded to his channel. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:28 AM PST - 17 comments

Stanley Kubrick didn’t like giving long interviews, but he loved playing chess. So when the physicist and writer Jeremy Bernstein paid him a visit to gather material for a piece for The New Yorker about a new film project he was writing with Arthur C. Clarke, Kubrick was intrigued to learn that Bernstein was a fairly serious chess player. The result was an unusually long and candid recorded interview for the New Yorker. (77 min)
posted by The Whelk at 6:57 AM PST - 8 comments

The philosophers have only sought to impregnate the world in different positions; the point is to pleasure it. "What is it to Philosophise Fatherlessly?" The inaugural post of the (slightly NSFW) #nodads Tumblr, which celebrates the #nodads Twitter hashtag. #NoDads Is Our Principal Of Solidarity. Happy Father's Day!
posted by gerryblog at 5:01 AM PST - 60 comments

"Thanks largely to smartphones, this is probably the best time ever to live in a packed city... Steve Jobs was a lifelong suburbanite, but it turns out he perfected the city." [google cache for those getting a log-in page.]
posted by nickrussell at 4:25 AM PST - 82 comments

Isle of Spagg... On the other side of the Vertic Sea where things are distinctly fishier, lives the proud fisherman Inger and his half-mermaid (but not the half you'd expect) daughter Herring. When the least respected old character on the island dies, conflict ensues and a favorite garment is ruined. Meanwhile two haberdashers with a checkered past deal with their own loss. Can Dr. Beez or one of the Oracles help? Can the Isle's 15 minstrels make music to make things better? And what about little Claude? It all happens in a 30 minute cartoon from the Brothers McLeod, Greg and Myles, who have also animated (scroll down for video clips) Fuggy Fuggy for MTV, Pablo and Frankensheep and Quiff and Boot for the BBC, Billy for the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Existential Pleading of the Inner Heart for anybody who wants it and other very random stuff.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:02 AM PST - 4 comments

Benula Bensam, not having landed a summer job, decided to attend the Rajat Gupta trial. She felt that some of the judge's evidentiary rulings were incorrect, and so sent him three letters. The judge, Jed Rakoff, was not amused.
posted by reenum at 8:28 PM PST - 114 comments

Kelly Beatty of Sky & Telescope magazine has introduced the first entirely new Moon globe in 40 years using high-resolution data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). You may know LROC as the satellite that showed us the remains of the Apollo missions (previously). One nice detail is that they got the Moon's asphalt-like color correct.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:24 PM PST - 16 comments

A study in the Journal of Parisitology tells of a woman who complained of pain in her cheek after eating parboiled squid. Turns out that some forms of squid can still inseminate, even after cooking.
posted by Isadorady at 6:56 PM PST - 74 comments

The U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane came back to Earth today (June 16) after 15 months in orbit on a mystery mission. [more inside]
posted by Bonzai at 6:46 PM PST - 36 comments

10 bets that you will always win is a video collection of clever tricks (& science) from Richard Wiseman's Quirkology YouTube channel; see also top 10 quirky science tricks for parties, 10 more science stunts for parties, another 10 quirky science stunts, and 5 amazing mind tricks (previously: 10 practical jokes). Wiseman is a psychologist, magician, and author who created LaughLab: the scientific search for the world's funniest joke; the final report & top jokes* are available here (PDF) and over 1000 LaughLab jokes (all clean!) here (also PDF). Previously: his research on luck. (via voices + gizmodo)
posted by flex at 5:57 PM PST - 16 comments

"You are in a spooky cave. Lying on the floor you can see a skull covered with cobwebs and there are rats scurrying through the shadows bent on who knows what acts of unhygiene. You shudder and clutch your terrapin to you for comfort. You review the poor life choices that led you to this unwholesome spot. On a walking holiday in the hinterlands, you foolishly walked off the designated walking path and struck out on your own. In a deep scary forest you saw the cave entrance and in a moment of rash curiosity ventured in. Little did you suspect what was about to befall... Now in your dismal predicament you deplore the neglect and slovenliness around you and prepare to leave. But just then there comes the faint sound of singing drifting out of the depths of the cavern. It seems... somehow familiar... Curiously, you venture in that direction, descending deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth as sinister stalactites drip around you and evil bats wheel overhead and shriek like your ex-wife when you had suggested playing certain harmless dressing-up games with her. At the end of the tunnel you come to a rotting oak door with rusty iron hinges. The handle is in the shape of a skull! From behind it you hear a vaulting tenor voice singing forlornly...

The Roy Orbison in Clingfilm Adventure Game, by Ulrich Haarbürste [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 5:47 PM PST - 22 comments

The Graphics Interchange Format is 25 years old. Originally released by CompuServe to replace RLE - a file format which was limited to black and white only, the GIF (which you're probably pronouncing incorrectly) evolved over the next 25 years - first gaining color, then better color, then the ability to repeat itself, and finally an adoring audience willing to take GIFs to the next level.
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:39 PM PST - 83 comments

Shards of Equestria is a set of 270 fan-made Magic: The Gathering cards based off of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. (made by MeFi's own XQUZYPHYR, via Projects)
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony (PDF version recommended, requires Savage Worlds game system books) is a roleplaying game based on the show, using Pinnacle Games' Savage Worlds system. Notable for its tenent against violence, which punishes characters who pursue violent solutions to problems.
MLP: Roleplaying is Magic (PDF) is another roleplaying game using a custom system.
MLP: Clash of Realities is a miniatures combat game played on computer. Game system plugin for Lackeyccg. Setup instructions
MLP: Fighting is Magic is a slick-looking, upcoming fan-made fighting game. Demo videos: Applejack test, general demonstration, Fluttershy is not OP
Ponykart is an upcoming, fan-made Mario Kart-style driving game. Demo video.
My Little Investigations is an upcoming, fan-made Phoenix Wright-style investigation adventure game. Playable demo.
Cutie Mark Crusade is also a work in progress, and a more traditional adventure game. Playable demo. Demo video.
[more inside]
posted by JHarris at 4:20 PM PST - 38 comments

A Remade Tabloid Image of Houston’s Last Meal [NYTimes.com] That gruesome photograph of Whitney Houston’s last supper, first posted on TMZ shortly after her death, stuck in the visual memory of the German photographer Thomas Demand. “The proliferation of that kind of image at the time when she was not even in the coffin amazed me,” Mr. Demand said. “It amazed me that it would ever have been released.” So he decided to recreate it.
posted by Fizz at 1:42 PM PST - 33 comments

21 Years Later, Aung San Suu Kyi Receives Her Nobel Peace Prize. After two decades spent mostly under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi has finally delivered her acceptance speech in Oslo for the Nobel peace prize she was awarded in 1991.
posted by homunculus at 1:04 PM PST - 11 comments

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., repeatedly lobbied Tony Blair to invade Iraq. In the days leading up to the invasion, Tony Blair's Director of Communications wrote that "(Blair) took a call from Murdoch who was pressing on timings, saying how News International would support us, etc. Both TB and I felt it was prompted by Washington, and another example of their over-crude diplomacy. Murdoch was pushing all the Republican buttons, how the longer we waited the harder it got." The phone call in question took place just days before a crucial vote on Iraq, and was one of three personal calls from Murdoch that Blair received in that week alone. Blair recently testified, admitting an "unhealthy" level of closeness with Murdoch, oftentimes communicating more with him than with his own ministers. In the first 19 days following the invasion of Iraq, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News averaged 3.3 million viewers, a 236% increase from the weeks preceding the war. Huge increases in newspaper sales were seen throughout his global media empire, with advertising revenue soaring to record levels. That empire now faces serious calls for it to be broken up.
posted by markkraft at 12:34 PM PST - 60 comments

One VisaFacebookCard to rule them all: Forget selling ad space. Facebook should be selling credit, argues The Daily Beast's Steven Weiss.
posted by Diablevert at 12:25 PM PST - 17 comments

Use Thomas Pynchon's fictional postal service for gnostic communication. Find the muted horn.
posted by chavenet at 12:24 PM PST - 11 comments

In the wake of their grunge-y breakout hit "Creep" and the success of sophomore record The Bends, Thom Yorke and the rest of Radiohead were under pressure to deliver once more. So they shut themselves away inside the echoing halls of a secluded 16th century manor and got to work. What emerged from that crumbling Elizabethan castle fifteen years ago today was a shockingly ambitious masterpiece of progressive rock, a visionary concept album that explored the "fridge buzz" of modernity -- alienation, social disconnection, existential dread, the impersonal hum of technology -- through a mosaic of challenging, innovative, eerily beautiful music unlike anything else at the time. Tentatively called Ones and Zeroes, then Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments, the band finally settled on OK Computer, an appropriately enigmatic title for this acclaimed harbinger of millennial angst. For more, you can watch the retrospective OK Computer: A Classic Album Under Review for a track-by-track rundown, or the unsettling documentary Meeting People is Easy for a look at how the album's whirlwind tour nearly gave Yorke a nervous breakdown. Or look inside for more details and cool interpretations of all the tracks -- including an upcoming MeFi Music Challenge! [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 12:06 PM PST - 65 comments

Ralph "Soul" Jackson is celebrating the release of his first full-length LP, The Alabama Love Man. He's been making the record with some help from friends and admirers for more than three years. But Jackson has been recording his brand of soul music with little success for more than forty years. [more inside]
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:19 AM PST - 5 comments

The U.S. National Institute of Heath has urged steps to curb growth in "training" positions in biomedical research (report). [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 10:19 AM PST - 38 comments

Westlife singer Shane Filan has been declared bankrupt after owing €5.5m due to the collapse of the Irish property bubble. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:12 AM PST - 3 comments

STEADYo - a motion tracked yo-yo provides a different look at some amazing tricks. [via]
posted by quin at 9:23 AM PST - 8 comments

It's queen Elizabeth II's official birthday today and she celebrated by making Grant Morrison, writer of St Swithins Day, in which the protagonist sets out to kill Maggie Thatcher, as well as The New Adventures of Hitler, depicting Hitlers adventures in Liverpool being serenaded by Morrisey, a member of the Order of the British Empire. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 7:34 AM PST - 101 comments

Happy Bloomsday! [more inside]
posted by Catchfire at 7:05 AM PST - 38 comments

Ditching School to Whistle is a delightful 15-minute look at some absolutely amazing whistlers who converge yearly on the little town of Louisburg, North Carolina. To whistle. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:56 AM PST - 19 comments

What happens when a fireworks factory catches on fire? This happened recently in Russia, but it's happened before in Germany and England and the Netherlands and Thailand and Dubai and Denmark. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 11:38 PM PST - 32 comments

In 1989 the Japanese Government passed the Media Betterment Act, permitting censorship of any media deemed to be harmful to society. On the basis of the imperative for libraries to resist any attempts at suppression of free speech, local governments created an armed resistance force to combat censorship. The conflict between the government and library forces continues to 2019, where the story of Library War begins. [more inside]
posted by 23 at 11:07 PM PST - 12 comments

Voyager I is now leaving the heliosphere, and is entering interstellar space. "With absolutely no attempt at hyperbole at all, it is fair to say that this is one of - if not the - biggest achievement of the human race. For, as we speak, an object conceived in the human mind, and built by our tools, and launched from our planet, is sailing out of the further depths of our solar system - and will be the first object made by man to sail out into interstellar space."
posted by Dipsomaniac at 9:38 PM PST - 112 comments

WE VS. THE NIGHT(Vimeo): 'Three longboarders flex down a winding mountain face in the cold of the night, equipped with nothing but a couple headlamps to tear through the darkness. As they battle their way through each turn, they fall deeper into an un-explored realm of stoke.' [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:08 PM PST - 12 comments

A rare photograph of a honeybee stinging a man, with its abdominal tissue trailing behind, was more than 100 years in the making.
posted by Evilspork at 6:33 PM PST - 74 comments

Nearly five years after creating their Internet- and Mefi-favorite essay describing 40 terrible drawings by 90s-defining comic artist Rob Liefeld, Progressive Boink goes once more unto the breach and publishes "40 MORE Of The Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:12 PM PST - 102 comments

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe... redrawn by independant comics artists.
posted by Artw at 6:03 PM PST - 32 comments

Rosemary Mosco is a field naturalist who draws bird & nature comics: "bird and moon" (previously), "ghosts of the northeast woods", "bird sound mnemonics", "birds are gross", "evolution sucks". Her bi-weekly comic strip Wild Toronto ("It cleverly observed and taught us about the animals and plants that live in our city") ran on Torontoist for some months in 2008; she has an illustrated collection of 55-word stories as well (previously mentioned). Her website, flickr, & tumblr.
posted by flex at 5:51 PM PST - 12 comments

Today's I09 has a guest column by John Clements titled "Swordfighting: Not What You Think It Is." And it isn't. [more inside]
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 5:16 PM PST - 72 comments

Conan O'Brian, at the end of 4 days of broadcasting from Chicago, sends "the nicest, most polite person we know"--Jack McBrayer, who plays the rube Kenneth on 30 Rock--to The Wiener's Circle, notorious as much for the vulgar insults served up by its hostile staff as for its hot dogs. When things don't go so well for meek Jack, he calls in some backup.
posted by drlith at 4:58 PM PST - 74 comments

China has announced it will launch Shenzhou-9 on Saturday morning at 6:37am EDT. The space mission will feature the country's first manned docking with Tiangong 1, a mini space station; the first Chinese woman to go into space, Liu Yang, and Jing Haipeng, the first taikonaut to venture into space twice.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:39 PM PST - 33 comments

"Designed to be understood easily, these training videos are meant for new players and for those who want to see what's new in Final Showdown." As part of their promotion for Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, released June 5/6 for PSN and XBLA, SEGA created surprisingly good tutorial videos to ease new players into the gameplay system of the latest iteration of AM2's Virtua Fighter series. [more inside]
posted by Bangaioh at 4:14 PM PST - 9 comments

"STOP! This is NOT a DVD! STOP! This is NOT a DVD! STOP! This is NOT a DVD!"
posted by zardoz at 3:56 PM PST - 54 comments

The British Columbia Supreme Court has struck down a ban on physician-assisted suicide, in a whopping 1415-paragraph decision. [more inside]
posted by Lemurrhea at 2:42 PM PST - 57 comments

Revolutionary new web technology detects cat's faces in any picture.(Does not support IE)
posted by Ad hominem at 11:51 AM PST - 79 comments

Award winning campaign saved the Troy, Michigan Library. The library needed to pass a .7% tax increase to stay open. Anti-tax crusaders (*cough* Tea Partiers *cough*) took over the conversation to get it voted down. So, faced with dwindling prospects a group supporting the library worked with an advertising agency to develop a provocative campaign to get the tax increase passed. [more inside]
posted by Salmonberry at 11:39 AM PST - 134 comments

The harsh reality of being a skateboarder (hypnotic slyt)
posted by jontyjago at 10:54 AM PST - 75 comments

Gino Bartali achieved fame by winning the 1938 Tour de France, but what he did on his bike during the war is what made him a real hero. [more inside]
posted by IanMorr at 9:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Underground New York Public Library, a photo tumblr of NYC Subway riders and the books they read.
posted by zamboni at 9:25 AM PST - 97 comments

Isle Royale is a 206 square mile island in Lake Superior, over 15 miles from the mainland. Most years, it is isolated from the mainland. The moose and wolf populations of Isle Royale are isolated, and wholly interconnected with each other. In the last decade there has been a decline in the wolf population on Isle Royale. Recent evidence shows that the wolf population has collapsed. [more inside]
posted by Elly Vortex at 8:37 AM PST - 33 comments

"The fight for same-sex marriage rights in Illinois took an unprecedented turn Thursday as Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez conceded that the state's ban on gay marriage violates the Illinois Constitution, essentially agreeing with a pair of lawsuits her office was expected to oppose. It marks the first time a state has refused to contest a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of a gay marriage ban. The Illinois attorney general's office, which would be next in line to defend the state's constitution, already had announced plans to file a brief in support of the lawsuits brought by Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois."
posted by nooneyouknow at 8:14 AM PST - 79 comments

New York finally starting to reveal her secrets to me as I walk around, thanks to past and present contrasting pictures at Manhattan Unlocked and a collective block by block history.
posted by J-Do at 7:59 AM PST - 4 comments

Why our food is making us fat (Guardian article by Jacques Peretti): [more inside]
posted by peacheater at 7:45 AM PST - 139 comments

President Barack Obama's administration will reportedly announce Friday that it will stop deporting and grant work permits to nearly 1 million immigrants who entered or remained in the United States. The policy change, described to The Associated Press by two senior administration officials, will affect as many as 800,000 immigrants who have lived in fear of deportation. It also bypasses Congress and partially achieves the goals of the so-called DREAM Act, a long-sought but never enacted plan to establish a path toward citizenship for young people who came to the United States illegally but who have attended college or served in the military.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:44 AM PST - 188 comments

"Adrian Owen still gets animated when he talks about patient 23. The patient was only 24 years old when his life was devastated by a car accident. Alive but unresponsive, he had been languishing in what neurologists refer to as a vegetative state for five years, when Owen, a neuro-scientist then at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues at the University of Liège in Belgium, put him into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and started asking him questions. Incredibly, he provided answers."
posted by jquinby at 7:33 AM PST - 31 comments

Ghosst(s) is a disturbing and intriguing animated video short by French artistic collective Lorn. [via]
posted by quin at 7:23 AM PST - 7 comments

Forging a Sashimi Knife. The bladesmith is Murray Carter. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 7:14 AM PST - 23 comments

On Thursday 26-year-old Michael Vipperman walked up to the podium during University of Toronto's Convocation Hall ceremonies, held up his 'no' sign and said, "I hereby renounce this degree." [more inside]
posted by onwords at 6:29 AM PST - 118 comments

Please RT
posted by latkes at 5:49 AM PST - 65 comments

Der Spiegel has two interesting recent articles about America. The President of Disappointments - How Obama Has Failed to Deliver (single page)
Barack Obama entered the White House as a savior. But he hasn't delivered. The ideological chasms in the US are as deep as they have ever been, with Republicans blocking the president at every turn. Who is responsible for his failure?
'Our Political System Is Basically Dysfunctional' an interview with David Gergen who was Ronald Reagan's PR Director
posted by adamvasco at 3:12 AM PST - 115 comments

"Amazon’s markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000%" - author Andrew Hyde reviews the take for the most popular digital publishing platforms
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:31 AM PST - 47 comments

“I’m the president of a videogame company (www.valvesoftware.com).” I thought to myself: Oh, not another “business proposal” from a crackpot… However, something in my head stopped my finger from pressing DEL while my eyes pondered the next line: “We are running into a bunch of problems as we scale up our virtual economies, and as we link economies together. Would you be interested in consulting with us?”

Valve has hired economist Yanis Varoufakis to work on their virtual economies. Valve Economics is Varoufakis's recently launched blog where he explains his background and how he came to work at Valve. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:23 PM PST - 55 comments

The Mommy-Fight Site. What does it mean to raise a child in "America’s highest-income, best-educated Census area? D.C. Urban Moms and Dads might be as close as it gets to a field guide to parentis Washingtonianis" [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:55 PM PST - 79 comments

How Jean Borotra won 19 Grand Slams, escaped a Nazi prison, and stole a Davis Cup.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:01 PM PST - 3 comments

Our Man in Great Neck: 'In June 1982, my grandparents, Murray and Helene Cohen, traveled to the Soviet Union as part of a secret mission headed by the Great Neck chapter of the long island Committee for Soviet Jewry in order to pass information and contraband goods to Jews attempting to leave Russia.'
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:55 PM PST - 1 comment

"And finally, Mr. Speaker, I'm flattered that you're all so interested my vagina, but 'no' means 'no.'" After this pointed observation, Michigan Representative Lisa Brown (D) was subsequently barred from speaking on a bill about the retirement of school employees. Twitter responds. Meanwhile, many remember a similar kerfuffle over the word "uterus" in Florida last May.
posted by emjaybee at 7:35 PM PST - 236 comments

This week's riots (WaPo) in Tunisia started last Saturday, when a mob of hardline Salafists, after trying to disrupt an art exhibition deemed offensive to Islam, were booed off ("dégage!") by the crowd. They came back a few hours later to destroy the works: here are the artworks, before and after the attack at the Abdellia Palace in La Marsa, Tunis.
posted by elgilito at 4:54 PM PST - 27 comments

Jack Foley was the first Foley Artist. A Foley Artist's job is to physically create the subtler sound effects for most of the action in a film — usually, everything but the dialogue. Sometimes that involves smearing peanut butter on someone's face and recording the sound of a cow licking it off. • Here's the split-screen classic short, Track Stars: The Unseen Heroes of Movie Sound, and its Doppleganger, plus a similar tribute, replacing the sounds on a 1962 public domain film. • A couple of Porn Foley parodies [NSFW of course] and a murder-filled parody • Here's the process in detail for marking, recording, and editing Foley for 35mm film: Part 1 (excerpted), Part 2 • Technically, Foley only covers sounds you can tailor-make in the recording studio; other sounds (engines, explosions, etc) are the domain of the Sound FX person. If you don't have your own means, though, Sounddogs.com has an extensive collection of samples.
posted by not_on_display at 3:54 PM PST - 47 comments

Benji Schwimmer, the winner of So You Think You Can Dance's second season, is a West Coast Swing choreographer and dancer, serves as artistic director for LeAnn Rimes and Paula Abdul, and co-choreographed US figure skater Jeremy Abbott's short routine. Raised in an observant Latter-Day Saints household, Benji served a two-year mission in Mexico. On May 30, Benji recorded an interview lasting nearly 5 1/2 hours in which he described his attempts to reconcile his sexual identity with his faith and, for the first time, stated publicly that he is gay. [more inside]
posted by catlet at 3:01 PM PST - 28 comments

An op-ed in today's New York Times promotes replacing public loans for university students with private equity contracts, wherein funding firms would receive a percentage of graduates' earnings. [more inside]
posted by junco at 2:45 PM PST - 260 comments

It is still June 13 for the Parliament of Canada , where voting has continued overnight on the "omnibus budget bill" (previously), due to 159 separate amendment votes that have been forced by the opposition. None are likely to pass, but the arduous process is meant to function as a protest against legislation which many critics have argued goes far beyond the scope of a traditional budget. [more inside]
posted by mek at 2:06 PM PST - 76 comments

Matt Stroud, Wrote an amazing article on The Verge: Wasteland: the 50-year battle to entomb our toxic nuclear remains
posted by NotSoSiniSter at 1:39 PM PST - 21 comments

90,000 of NYC's Parking Meters (and revenue) on sale for $11billion +. [more inside]
posted by snaparapans at 1:25 PM PST - 116 comments

Dirt is good, according to artist JOOheng Tan
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:03 PM PST - 4 comments

Alex Pappademas and Sean Witzke over at Grantland have a long, detailed, super geeky film-nerd discussion of the Alien franchise. "It's important to note here that this is a nuke-it-from-space kind of conversation in which just about every aspect of the original "Alien Quadrilogy" is spoiled, as are some fairly crucial plot points from Prometheus. The Alien vs. Predator movies are neither spoiled nor discussed, because that would mean acknowledging their existence. Some people will undoubtedly view this as curatorial negligence on our part, but we welcome their scorn. "
posted by The Whelk at 12:47 PM PST - 109 comments

Kogan will be imposing a tax on IE 7.
posted by idiopath at 12:23 PM PST - 97 comments

Bessie Stringfield rode across the US alone, 8 times. In the 20's, 30's and 40's, women didn't ride motorcycles and black women didn't travel alone, especially in the South. But Bessie rode until she died, for the US Army, based on a penny toss, wherever she wished.
posted by QIbHom at 12:02 PM PST - 26 comments

The Computer Tree from Electronic Computers Within the Ordnance Corps. More computer chronology, including this list of fictional computers at Wikipedia.
posted by OmieWise at 11:37 AM PST - 7 comments

In addition to removing the duty to retreat when outside the home, Florida's 2005 "Stand Your Ground" law removed the civil liability to offenders who had acted within the law and added a presumption of reasonable belief of imminent harm necessitating a lethal response. These three elements were present in over 20 other state laws similar to Florida's. The following NBER working paper by two Texas A&M economists provides new statistical evidence that these laws caused a 7 to 9 percent increase in homicides and non-negligent manslaughter. Consider this post a companion to this previously, as well as this previously. [more inside]
posted by scunning at 11:29 AM PST - 40 comments

Behind-the-scenes Makeup Photos from Prometheus [mildly NSFW]
posted by Cloud King at 11:13 AM PST - 28 comments

Why are tomatoes red? The answer will amaze you...
posted by Renoroc at 10:20 AM PST - 75 comments

Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit relayed some information about photographic techniques used to achieve the images: “My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes. However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image. To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.”
posted by xod at 10:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Venue sound guys are also DJs. And yes, they take requests. Approach them at your leisure, but it’s best to do it when the band is sound checking because that’s when sound guys have nothing to do.

Oh My Rockness give us some Show Etiquette Tips (Part 2.)
posted by griphus at 9:54 AM PST - 88 comments

The American Diet in One Chart: "American eaters have gotten a windfall from the the era of cheap meat that dawned in the early '80s. Meat prices tumbled as small farms shuttered, to be replaced by massive factory-scale farms that stuffed animals with cheap, subsidized corn and soy and kept them alive and growing to slaughter weight with daily doses of antibiotics. ... Consumers put some of the savings into eating more meat, and shifted some out of the savings out of food purchases altogether ... But what what they mostly did was shift cash that once went to meat into processed food."
posted by mrgrimm at 9:25 AM PST - 93 comments

"If your science gives you a result you don't like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved." [more inside]
posted by jhandey at 8:57 AM PST - 67 comments

Internet Hall of Fame member Phil Zimmerman (previously), creator of PGP, has announced a new venture providing secure communications. [more inside]
posted by Runes at 8:48 AM PST - 18 comments

Radio Free Gunslinger is a music podcast by the blog If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats (previously)

A guided tour through the chthonic regions of 20th century Western culture and the society it reflected. At least that's what it says on the wrapper.

posted by zamboni at 8:31 AM PST - 6 comments

Why 99p is sometimes worth more than £1
posted by mippy at 8:21 AM PST - 40 comments

Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos is an 8 minute video by Derek Muller that offers some skepticism as to the usefulness of science videos that only teach the facts without investigating existing misconceptions. TL;DW? Here's a 1 minute 29 second version. Too brief? Here's his PhD thesis.
posted by gwint at 8:16 AM PST - 32 comments

Sin Titulo (to page 1) is a webcomic by Cameron Stewart. Mentioned and recommended previously on Metafilter a few times in the comments, it is now being updated regularly after a long hiatus, which makes right now a promising time to start following the story. It is a mystery thriller and it contains occasional depictions of violence, so it is not suitable for all audiences. [more inside]
posted by tykky at 8:01 AM PST - 10 comments

A Brief History of Video Games - A music video made using the audio from games. [slyt]
posted by quin at 7:22 AM PST - 11 comments

Thursday Flash Fun: Action Turnip From the same guy as You Only Live Once.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:18 AM PST - 4 comments

Goodbye, Thursday productivity. Hello, 10 wonderful short films based on famous short stories.
posted by jbickers at 6:34 AM PST - 7 comments

If you see anything that looks like those, don't touch them. This PSA, featuring the Say Hey Kid warning American youth of the dangers of blasting caps, made a huge impression on pretty much everyone I know that was born in the mid-to-late 50s. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 6:33 AM PST - 27 comments

Game of Thrones creators issue semi-apology for depicting George W. Bush's head on a spike SPOILERS AHEAD Do not watch the embedded video on the linked page if you haven't seen Season 1. Needless to say, HBO are not amused. They have issued a rather strongly worded rebuke/apology. [more inside]
posted by Optamystic at 6:30 AM PST - 143 comments

I talked with Chomsky about his upbringing in a Jewish home in Philadelphia by Cultural Zionist parents who devoted their lives to the revival of Hebrew language and culture, and about some of the strange bedfellows that he has acquired in five decades of impassioned crusading. I left his office with a sense of a specifically Jewish Chomsky that in three decades of engagement with his political writing, his academic work, and a few dozen of his radio appearances had never really struck me before, and now seems obvious and unavoidable.
posted by latkes at 11:51 PM PST - 31 comments

San Francisco Giants' Matt Cain has pitched a particularly fine perfect game.
posted by anigbrowl at 11:48 PM PST - 63 comments

Dear Sir, Regarding Your Affection for A Compacted Catwoman - Andrew Wheeler responds to the response to the response to the cover for Catwoman #0.
posted by Artw at 11:37 PM PST - 120 comments

Brad Pitt's Zombie Nightmare: Inside the Troubled 'World War Z' Production The Hollywood Reporter sorts through the problems causing the release of the film version of Max Brooks' post-apocalyptic UN report to be delayed until next June. Via the A.V. Club, which adds links to previous stories about the filming.
posted by mediareport at 9:26 PM PST - 111 comments

Gene Map of Body's Microbes Is New Health Tool
posted by noaccident at 8:49 PM PST - 11 comments

Last month, JP Morgan Chase announced it had lost $2 billion dollars in a 'hedging' maneuver. Today, Jamie Dimon, Morgan's chairman and CEO, testified before the Senate banking committee. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:46 PM PST - 69 comments

Stars of the Edwardian Stage is a compendium of the beauties that have graced English theatres. [more inside]
posted by unliteral at 7:27 PM PST - 8 comments

Some great retro images of George Best during his time with the L.A. Aztecs in 1976. Includes this wonderful image of Best and Pele - whats not to like about it? As the article writer says: "George Best. The NASL. adidas retro kit. Pelé in a coral suit.......To be honest, you could probably shoot us now..."
posted by marienbad at 7:13 PM PST - 10 comments

From UCSF's Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, "How an Agency Builds a Brand--The Virginia Slims Story." [more inside]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 5:32 PM PST - 30 comments

The Swedish government has been handing over their @sweden Twitter account to a different citizen each week since December, so they could ostensibly talk about themselves and perhaps what they love about their homeland. It's Democracy in Action! But this week's "Twede": Sonja Abrahamsson, decided to take things in a... different and controversial direction. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 4:35 PM PST - 127 comments

Old-timey ads. Sexist vintage ads. Some other, different old advertisements.
posted by curious nu at 4:26 PM PST - 32 comments

What happened to Dudley Heinsbergen? Stephen Lea Sheppard gained a cult following playing geek mentor Harris Trinksy on Freaks and Geeks. He followed that with his role as Dudley Heinsbergen in the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. He never acted again.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 3:52 PM PST - 44 comments

Cowbird.com is a simple tool for telling stories, and a public library of human experience, incorporating text, photos, sound, subtitles, roles, relationships, maps, tags, timelines, dedications, and characters. These are the Sagas so far.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:19 PM PST - 8 comments

English Russia often chooses odd subjects but the ladies in this article have lived sadly sweet lives through some of the most intense and difficult years in an intense and difficult place. It was originally published in Russian Esquire if you prefer the Russian language version
posted by Isadorady at 2:49 PM PST - 19 comments

First YouTube had David After the Dentist [website]. Now there's Chad After Getting His Wisdom Teeth Out.
posted by ericb at 2:34 PM PST - 54 comments

Talking Covers: authors and designers talk about the ideas behind their book covers. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher at 2:09 PM PST - 9 comments

USADA charges Lance Armstrong with doping. He could be forced to forfeit his seven Tour de France titles. 'The charges from USADA come just months after federal prosecutors closed a two-year criminal investigation of Armstrong without indicting him. USADA said in the letter it collected blood samples from Armstrong in 2009 and 2010 that were "fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions," the Washington Post reported. Armstrong, who has never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, denied the latest charges.'
posted by VikingSword at 2:07 PM PST - 120 comments

Predator is twenty-five years old. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:13 PM PST - 90 comments

How We Talk About A Bacon Sundae (from Mefi's Own Linda_Holmes)
posted by box at 1:05 PM PST - 76 comments

Copywriter vs. Art Director
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:57 PM PST - 41 comments

Kicksaver: Find and save Kickstarter projects ending soon. Pick your budget and find out what you can fund. Like right now you could save a Fire Breathing Dragon Boat for $87! Has a corresponding twitter feed that tweets endangered projects. Kicksaver is open source too. By mefite ecmendenhall. [via mefi projects]
posted by cjorgensen at 12:20 PM PST - 45 comments

5 Pillars of the Abandoned World is a tour through lost landscapes and shrugged off citadels. From the Gothic, Disney villainness ominousness of Miranda Castle to the distant splendor (photo by Cédric Mayence) of the abandoned Luxembourg Stock Exchange. Don't feel left out, North Americans: the US has plenty of holy, holey structures to sweep you off your feet. Fan favorite for urbane decrepitude, Detroit has lots to see. The St. Agnes Catholic Church is the place to be for the religiously inclined ramshackle rambler. Need a place to put up your feet? The Book-Cadillac offers a cozy spot to spread out your tour guide and relax. When you're ready to move on, just head over to Michigan Central Station and hop on the last train to forever. The world's an awfully big stage. There's a lot to take in, but don't worry about a thing. Just enjoy the show. There's no hurry; what's already gone isn't going anywhere. [more inside]
posted by byanyothername at 12:06 PM PST - 6 comments

RetroWebMatic provides real-time vintage photo effects for websites, with five presets: toasted, lo-brow, tool shed, parchment and vinaigrette. If you'd like to stick with filtering photos, Pixlr's O-Matic does just that, with tons of preset filters, photo "aging" effects, and frames. If you have Photoshop handy, here are 16 tutorials, two tutorial videos, 14 vintage/grunge texture packs, and 16 action packs.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:03 PM PST - 11 comments

In May of 2012 the owners of the Times-Picayune, the daily newspaper of New Orleans, announced that they would be cutting its physical publication down to three days a week and shifting their focus to online content. The decision was criticized by many, Warren Buffett among them. Yesterday the Times-Picayune upper management held meetings with their employees to find out who would be let go and who would be allowed to stay on. By the end of the day more than 200 employees were dismissed, almost a full third of the overall staff. [more inside]
posted by komara at 11:56 AM PST - 93 comments

"Euphoria", which won the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest (previously), is a #1 in several countries, including Ireland, Austria, and Switzerland Of course, it's not the only song charting internationally that you might never hear on US radio. It should come as no surprise that one can readily find international hits online. For instance - Sweden, #4: Panetoz - Dansa Pausa Sweden, #9: Mange Makers - Drick Den This doesn't purport to be an exhaustive list, but rather a jumping-off point. [more inside]
posted by LSK at 11:14 AM PST - 25 comments

George Watsky ("Pale Kid Raps Fast") has released a new free 16-track mixtape. First single: Rich Girl, based on the Hall and Oates song of the same name.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:48 AM PST - 14 comments

Well-stamped passport leave you feeling jaded? Think Lagos, NIGERIA: Flash Violence, 3rd largest city by 2025, Paul McCartney? Do you relish in telling tales of travel to hellish places? Maybe there's a place you havent been, so choked with people, pollution and poverty you will feel ashamed to discuss it. Paul McCartney couldn't hack it. It sent his band On The Run. Ok still not dissuaded? Know before you Go
posted by Colonel Panic at 9:39 AM PST - 22 comments

The Los Angeles Kings won the Stanley Cup on Monday night. This morning, a local radio station (KSPN 710 AM) had on the team's hall-of-fame announcer Bob Miller to be interviewed and take calls. A certain special caller turned out to be another hall-of-famer -- long-time Los Angeles Dodgers baseball announcer, Vin Scully, who has been with his team for over 60 years. The audio is special. [more inside]
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:38 AM PST - 23 comments

The Aristocrats! A Tiny Revolution translates David Brooks into vaudeville.
posted by sensate at 9:17 AM PST - 30 comments

Dear The Internet, This Is Why You Can't Have Anything Nice [more inside]
posted by Tevin at 8:52 AM PST - 372 comments

In November "The Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act", will be on the California ballot. [more inside]
posted by snaparapans at 8:47 AM PST - 79 comments

Teach.com's Summer Reading Flowchart.
posted by Think_Long at 8:26 AM PST - 57 comments

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has narrowed the target for its most advanced Mars rover, Curiosity, which will land on the Red Planet in August. The car-sized rover will arrive closer to its ultimate destination for science operations, but also closer to the foot of a mountain slope that poses a landing hazard. "We're trimming the distance we'll have to drive after landing by almost half," said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "That could get us to the mountain months earlier." It was possible to adjust landing plans because of increased confidence in precision landing technology aboard the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, which is carrying the Curiosity rover.
posted by mhoye at 8:16 AM PST - 33 comments

Isaac Chotiner reviews Jonah Lehrer's Imagine: How Creativity Works. Imagine is really a pop-science book, which these days usually means that it is an exercise in laboratory-approved self-help. Like Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks, Lehrer writes self-help for people who would be embarrassed to be seen reading it. For this reason, their chestnuts must be roasted in “studies” and given a scientific gloss. The surrender to brain science is particularly zeitgeisty.
posted by shivohum at 7:38 AM PST - 29 comments

Hey, Pass Me a Beer [slyt] [via]
posted by quin at 7:16 AM PST - 26 comments

In 2011, Max Page starred in an infamous Super Bowl ad. Today, Max will be checking into Children's Hospital LA to fight another battle. [more inside]
posted by snapped at 6:48 AM PST - 30 comments

Here's a list of new top-level domains that will soon compete with .com and other TLDs (previously).
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:00 AM PST - 104 comments

BitCoin appears to be gaining a measure of stability, at least temporarily, through anger at banks, paypal, visa, etc., the activities of currency traders, and increased activity, as well as the promise of multi-signature transactions. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 5:29 AM PST - 42 comments

Cats: fluffy balls of love or evil manipulative bastards? Science says yes! The purring of a happy cat is one of nature's simple pleasures, but science has discovered a disturbing signal buried within the purr.
posted by Mezentian at 4:39 AM PST - 91 comments

Star Wars Relativity V2 created by 16-year-old Paul Vermeesch, is a 1 foot cube Lego model of M.C. Escher's print Relativity, that also re-enacts the original Star Wars trilogy.
posted by roofus at 3:18 AM PST - 19 comments

Factum Arte in Madrid has made an animation film based on Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Carceri d'Invenzione prints; and have also built many of his pieces which shows the workings of his imagination, merging his architectural ambitions with his obsessive interest in antiquity. Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a source of inspiration for, among others, Goya, Poe, Escher, Max Ernst, De Chirico. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 1:37 AM PST - 4 comments

Alice Cooper covers Lady Gaga's Born This Way at Bonnaroo 2012. [SLYT]
posted by hippybear at 11:40 PM PST - 47 comments

An archive of 80s celebrity interviews from Fiona Russell Powell. Via Dangerous Minds.
posted by latkes at 10:59 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Informant, former wiseguy and goodfella Henry Hill (website, Wikipedia) has been made dead by illness. He was not a schnook.
posted by Artw at 10:47 PM PST - 33 comments

"For the last 20 years, the huge rock has lain in the museum's interior courtyard , its many petroglyphs slowly disappearing under a layer of moss and lichen. Next week, it will be repatriated to Stswecem'c Xgat'tem First Nations and taken back home to the Fraser River at Churn Creek Protected Area, about two hours east of Clinton." [more inside]
posted by chapps at 10:37 PM PST - 30 comments

"Of the many pieces of advice proffered, four of the most common are: eat with your fingers (sometimes), arrive on time (always), don't drink and drive (they take it seriously here!), and be careful about talking politics (unless you've got some time to spare)." Advice from the tourism guidebooks for foreign visitors to the United States.
posted by hypotheticole at 9:51 PM PST - 228 comments

Why Elites Fail. Christopher Hayes writes in The Nation about how meritocracy and democracy become compromised by Robert Michels' Iron Law of Oligarchy.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:26 PM PST - 30 comments

From 1968 to 1975, Rochdale College existed as co-op housing and as an experimental college, affiliated with the University of Toronto. Before it closed, it was the largest free university in North America. [more inside]
posted by frimble at 9:01 PM PST - 13 comments

Native Appropriations: A Tribe Called Red: Powwow Step and social commentary for the masses - Based in Ottawa, Ontario, "DJs NDN (Nipissing First Nation), Bear Witness (Cayuga), and Shub (Cayuga) are A Tribe Called Red. ATCR creates an eclectic sound made up of a wide variety of musical styles ranging from hip-hop, dancehall, electronic, and their own mash-up of club and pow wow music, known as pow wow step." music videos: Red Skin Girl - Electric Pow Wow Drum - Native Puppy Love - NDNs From All Directions - Pow Wow Riddim streaming audio @ CBC: Pow Wow Step & Powwowzers [more inside]
posted by flex at 8:36 PM PST - 10 comments

"I analyzed the chords of 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found."
posted by stroke_count at 8:33 PM PST - 91 comments

"Robert Browning Sosman, a physical chemist who died in 1967 at the age of 86, packed many careers into one lifetime. He wrote the definitive book on the chemical compound silica; was the seventh person to hike the entire Appalachian Trail; and, at home in New Jersey, kept a 3,500-strong map collection. He also made a 'significant contribution to the New York dining scene:" his Gustavademecum [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:28 PM PST - 3 comments

Since the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended against screening for prostate cancer, the debate has been furious. In fact, screening rates are likely to remain high, because most urologists disagree with the recommendations. One argued, "If you don’t do it, it’s negligent." (The debate is not new. Previously on Metafilter.) [more inside]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:37 PM PST - 38 comments

When her boyfriend tried to kill the woman with a hammer, her fearless Great Dane jumped in the way, laying over her body and taking most of the blows until the man threw both of them out of a second story window. The dog suffered multiple broken bones in the attack, sparing his owner’s life in the process. [more inside]
posted by Lou Stuells at 7:19 PM PST - 57 comments

How Southwest Airlines turns a profit 39 years in a row
posted by Renoroc at 5:42 PM PST - 64 comments

While not as famous as its photogenic neighbor, Boon Island six miles off the town of York, Maine has quite the history of cannibalism, ghosts and shipwrecks. Would you like to own the tallest lighthouse in New England?
posted by D_I at 4:31 PM PST - 12 comments

How the World Was Imagined: Early Maps and Atlases — Depictions of the world from the Iron Age to the Age of Discovery and the emergence of modern geography. From Socks Studio, who have been producing great feature after feature.
posted by netbros at 3:34 PM PST - 19 comments

Gin and Tonic, A Love Story It's summertime, and the sipping is easy. Time for an ode to the magical, malarial-fighting mixture of mother's ruin and tonic. "The final product looked like a box of Crayolas: thin curls of lemon and lime peel, floating pebbles of pink peppercorns, a wedge of star anise, and a few fresh mint leaves, lightly crushed between Andrés’ fingers at the last second. It was everything a gin and tonic hadn’t been before: complex, bracing, a world of sweets and sours and bitters to be discovered in every sip." Bonus: Recipes for making your own tonic water.
posted by cyndigo at 3:25 PM PST - 77 comments

Strange and Unproductive Thinking, off David Lynch's fantastically weird album Crazy Clown Time, is a humorous, rambling, insightful essay disguised as a song in which the legendary director gives his thoughts on the purpose of evolution, the process that leads us to knowledge, and "the remarkable idea of a world free of tooth-decay".
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:45 PM PST - 5 comments

With a little bit of help from Aperture Laboratories, these guys created a real Portal gun.
posted by disillusioned at 2:39 PM PST - 40 comments

With "limp and waxy" needles giving the tree the appearance of a "a glow-in-the-dark star you might find in a kid's bedroom", Albino Redwoods lack chlorophyll and grow as a parasite grafted onto another tree. These rarities still manage to grow up to 80 feet tall, and are of interest to those studying the redwood genome.
posted by Talkie Toaster at 2:08 PM PST - 16 comments

Why Smart People Are Stupid (The New Yorker.) A new study suggests that the smarter people are, the more susceptible they are to cognitive bias.
posted by naju at 12:40 PM PST - 171 comments

"Niggas" in Practice Jay-Z, Gwyneth Paltrow, and when white people can say the word. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 12:31 PM PST - 268 comments

Elinor Ostrom, 1st woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, dies at 78
posted by jhandey at 11:36 AM PST - 30 comments

Salon writer, Erik Nelson, compares The Outlaw Josey Wales and John Carter, as well the forces behind them. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 11:25 AM PST - 68 comments

the dingo took the baby [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 10:25 AM PST - 109 comments

With the 2012 NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder starting tonight, it's a great time to see where the Heat and Thunder hit their shots
posted by Cloud King at 9:36 AM PST - 48 comments

[This] "is a pre release version of david byrnes first solo album, which was given me by david, when i stayed at his place in alfabet city, in 1981 [...] anyway, the final release differed a lot from this tape, because he used quotes from the quoran in this version, which he had to replace later. i dont know if this version was ever released in any way, shape or form." My Life in the Bush Of Ghosts, David Byrne and Brian Eno
posted by xod at 8:48 AM PST - 81 comments

When we got to the gym , there was this balcony [overlooking] the gym, so we didn't walk right in. It was almost, like, suspenseful. We look down and we see Barkley dunking. We see Michael stealing from somebody and doing one of his things where he takes off from outside the lane and double-pumps under the rim. We're like, "Wow, they do this in practice, too?" Some great insights to the original Dream Team in '92. [more inside]
posted by chitown at 7:30 AM PST - 45 comments

Dubstep Class - An Animated Guide [slyt] [via]
posted by quin at 7:15 AM PST - 47 comments

"This beautiful, educational, erudite, and thoroughly appreciated publication is the heretofore unrecognized instrument of doom..." MetaFilter loves National Geographic magazine; the beloved publication is mentioned in over 100 front-page posts. You may not know that in 1974, science humor magazine The Journal of Irreproducible Results printed an article warning of the threat posed by National Geographic magazine; because no one throws the magazine away, the combined weight of millions of back issues would eventually trigger earthquakes and other disasters. Readers of the magazine gleefully joined the "controversy" and submitted tongue-in-cheek rebuttals and letters to the editor. JIR's website has the collection of articles related to the joke.
posted by DWRoelands at 6:41 AM PST - 22 comments

I've been playing the same game of Civilization II for almost 10 years. This is the result. (reddit link)
posted by zoo at 5:57 AM PST - 163 comments

How a song at the Norwegian Developers Conference came to joke with the phrase "The words ‘micro’ and ‘soft’ don’t refer to my penis (or vagina)".
posted by dabitch at 12:46 AM PST - 59 comments

Wil Wheaton celebrates the LA Kings first ever Stanley Cup victory (SLYT). There is kazoo.
posted by dirigibleman at 12:28 AM PST - 45 comments

Gillian James charts the connections in the Stephen King universe* Meanwhile The Guardian is rereading King begining with Carrie and Salems Lot, CNN has discovered The Gospel of Stephen King, and in further Castle Rock news a new movie version of It is being made.
* Not including The Dark Tower
posted by Artw at 10:45 PM PST - 69 comments

A group of Kenyan students re-enact Bill Buckner's error leading to the Mets winning run in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Here's the original play. Previously
posted by exogenous at 10:05 PM PST - 40 comments

At 522 feet, the USS Vandenberg is the largest artificial reef in the Florida Keys. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:13 PM PST - 12 comments

vintage children's books my kid loves (a blog) & scans of vintage Little Golden Books (scroll down a bit) & The Children's Object Book (1880s) & if you want to read and look at even more vintage children's books online, you could start with browsing the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature with almost 6000 classic books (some may be unsuitable for modern sensibilities) [more inside]
posted by flex at 7:31 PM PST - 11 comments

Celebrity Photos of the Week [more inside]
posted by latkes at 7:13 PM PST - 37 comments

Underground Supermodels: no cancer, ever, no pain, resistant to poisons, super long lives, young forever! OK, OK, it's just the naked mole-rats. But 'what can a twentysomething naked mole-rat tell us about fighting pain, cancer, and aging?' Naked mole rats don't get cancer, ever. They don't experience pain from many sources, are highly resistant to pollution from heavy metals, carbon dioxide, plant poisons and a wide variety of chemicals. Yet, they live an astonishing 30-some year lifespans, and are physiologically young for most of that time. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 6:21 PM PST - 45 comments

6 Things I Learned about Myself through 100 Hours of Meditation
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:54 PM PST - 79 comments

Slicing through steel in extreme slow motion.
posted by kmz at 5:32 PM PST - 62 comments

Remember Infinite Summer? New challenge: Join Lee Konstantinou and the LA Review of Books in reading Gaddis’s classic 1975 novel J R this summer. They're calling it #OccupyGaddis. [more inside]
posted by skilar at 3:56 PM PST - 19 comments

Last year, TheOatmeal and FunnyJunk got into it over rehosted comics. Now FunnyJunk's lawyer wants TheOatMeal to pay FunnyJunk $20,000. In response TheOatmeal has instead decided to ask for $20,000 in donations to the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Association to augment the picture of FunnyJunk's lawyer seducing a kodiak bear. That goal was passed within minutes.
posted by waraw at 3:01 PM PST - 233 comments

Annie Oakley's 12 gauge shotgun sold for $143,000 at a western memorabilia auction yesterday. Oakley grew up a poor farm girl in Ohio, far from the romanticized west she came to represent. Her prowess with a gun came from shooting for food to feed her poor family. Her nickname "Little Sure Shot" was given to her by Sitting Bull, a man she revered.
posted by Isadorady at 12:56 PM PST - 30 comments

He's a film critic. He's a sports fan. He's a family man. He is Pittsburgh Dad. [warning: occasional laughtrack]
posted by specialagentwebb at 12:25 PM PST - 14 comments

Dogs in cars in California. Previously: Dogs in cars.
posted by HuronBob at 11:55 AM PST - 20 comments

"Look mom. I can tell from the way you haven’t looked me in the eye since fetching me from my crib well before dawn that you’re upset about last night. Waking up every 45 minutes to 1.5 hours isn’t easy for me either. In my defense, my blanket really did keep coming off, I was thirsty, and…I can’t remember the other reasons, but I’m sure they were equally valid." The Honest Toddler is blogging about his experiences as a child, from helping mommy get potty trained to his view of one-year-olds to organizing the 34th Annual Toddler Unification Conference. His "The Truth About Car Sleep" is particularly brilliant. He also dispenses his wisdom via twitter.
posted by jbickers at 11:09 AM PST - 37 comments

Is breastfeeding while using marijuana child abuse? The (warning: graphic) audio recording of Daisy Bram's pleas to police taking her (15-month- and 4-week-old) children away from her likely affected Butte County, California (Chico) voters' decision to soundly reject Measure A, a proposed new law to restrict marijuana cultivation. Today, Bram faces charges of felony child abuse and misdemeanor child endangerment for breastfeeding while using cannabis.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:47 AM PST - 92 comments

pointer
posted by ND¢ at 10:44 AM PST - 54 comments

Some female athletes competing in the Olympics this year will be required to undergo medical treatment to make them less masculine. [more inside]
posted by Dipsomaniac at 10:41 AM PST - 375 comments

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:03 AM PST - 72 comments

Open Culture presents a list of over 500 movies, free to stream in their entirety. Previously (Tarkovsky films), (John Wayne films)
posted by Atreides at 9:46 AM PST - 23 comments

"As an entrepreneur who’s looking at Kickstarter as a potential source of funding, I’m very interested in these numbers and the insights they provide. Insights that can only be gleaned by comparing projects that were successfully funded and those that failed to meet their funding goal." [via]
posted by griphus at 9:35 AM PST - 28 comments

The Ax Murderer Who Got Away - Shortly after midnight on June 10, 1912—one hundred years ago this week—a stranger hefting an ax lifted the latch on the back door of a two-story timber house in the little Iowa town of Villisca. [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 9:34 AM PST - 14 comments

Want to see what a billion stars look like from the comfort of your chair? [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 8:34 AM PST - 29 comments

On Saturday night in Las Vegas, Manny Pacquiao, widely acknowledged as one of the top two pound-for-pound fighters in professional boxing, was defeated by Timothy Bradley in a controversial split-decision. HBO's long-time unofficial ringside scorer, Harold Lederman, called the outcome "a crime." [more inside]
posted by BobbyVan at 8:19 AM PST - 82 comments

Photographer Cara Phillips uses ultraviolet light to bring out the beautiful imperfections in people's skin. [via]
posted by quin at 7:13 AM PST - 21 comments

Poor potato crop leaves processors short of spuds Canada is facing a potato shortage, mainly because of poor growing conditions last summer. That has sent wholesale prices for some spuds soaring and forced processors such as Toronto-based McCain Foods Ltd. to temporarily close some plants.
posted by Blake at 6:51 AM PST - 23 comments

"Seeing women for money, made me a little less sad. It was a brief respite from loneliness, from my skin being hungry for human touch the way a drowning person is starving for oxygen." Paying to Play: Interview with a John
posted by desjardins at 6:40 AM PST - 152 comments

Exxon mobil has signed a development agreement with the Kremlin-majority-owned Rosneft to develop the Bazhenov oil shale reserves in Siberia (PDF), which are estimated to hold 2 million million barrels of oil equivalent -- that's about 64 years of current consumption.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:18 AM PST - 38 comments

Fifty years ago today Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin escaped from Alcatraz and were never seen again. U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke is still on the case and thinks at least two of the men successfully escaped. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 5:09 AM PST - 18 comments

"Blood and Fire" is an episode written by David Gerrold for possible use on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The script was commissioned and written, but never actually filmed because certain studio executives had a negative reaction to its positive depiction of an openly gay couple. It was eventually adapted by Gerrold into a standalone novel. With Gerrold's permission, Carlos Pedraza rewrote Blood and Fire for the fan series Star Trek: New Voyages. Gerrold did a final draft polish and also directed the episode. The entire two part episode is available on You Tube: Part 1, Part 2 [more inside]
posted by wittgenstein at 3:52 AM PST - 10 comments

Can We Please Move Past Silly, Faux-Real UIs?
posted by Evilspork at 1:58 AM PST - 153 comments

In 1999, 23-year-old singer-songwriter Bree Sharp recorded "David Duchovny," a fangirl ode to the male star of The X-Files. After the demo tape proved popular in Duchovny's trailer, two X-Files assistants created a celebrity-filled music video as a gag for the show Christmas party. A grainy bootleg of the video quickly went pre-Youtube-viral among X-Philes. Twelve years later, a high-definition version of the "David Duchovny" video sees daylight for the first time. [more inside]
posted by nicebookrack at 10:20 PM PST - 66 comments

"A History of the World in 100 Objects" was a joint project between BBC Radio 4 and the British Museum that aired in the first part of 2010 (covered here previously). The show takes on the history of human civilization through 100 objects collected by the British Museum. [more inside]
posted by montag2k at 9:52 PM PST - 18 comments

Iconic photos uncropped: Tank Man, Tiananmen Square. Che Guevara. The Loch Ness Monster. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band including sidelined Hitler. The Million Dollar Quartet
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:49 PM PST - 32 comments

Prometheus: what was that about? Ten key questions (SLGrauniad)
posted by panaceanot at 7:43 PM PST - 449 comments

I've lost track of the many reasons that have been given for the [Apple OS X] switch to Intel, but this I know for sure: no one has ever reported that, for 18 months, Project Marklar existed only because a self-demoted engineer wanted his son Max to be able to live closer to Max's grandparents.
posted by unSane at 6:51 PM PST - 27 comments

The Last Days of Pompeii, written by the infamous Edward Bulwer-Lytton, was a Titanic size blockbuster novel back in the 1830s--- but it has not aged well. It is most well known for its many film versions-- there was the silent landmark film from 1913, an adaptation in 1935 and a spaghetti peplum with Steve Reeves from 1959-- but perhaps the most memorable (and exhaustive) version was the colossal star-studded miniseries made in 1984. [more inside]
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 6:06 PM PST - 24 comments

How to care for a baby mouse.
posted by that's how you get ants at 5:25 PM PST - 26 comments

A Short History of the Campsite
posted by BlooPen at 4:30 PM PST - 50 comments

"There is a mountain towering over us, the engulfing light at its peak drawing closer with each step. But this mountain need not be a spectre. It can instead be a warden — a lighthouse guiding us home, waiting patiently for our return. We soar up its slopes, our hearts glad. We are tiny, we are empty, we know nothing — and how very beautiful that ultimate truth is." Over the Precipice - an essay on Playstation 3 game Journey.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:26 PM PST - 19 comments

Snakes on a Cartesian Plane is a collection of delightful variants on the classic Snake game. "The Viper is the Derek Zoolander of snakes." (SLFlashGame)
posted by spitefulcrow at 1:41 PM PST - 21 comments

How to fake your way through Hegel. Favorite quote: "If you bought a volume or two of Hegel in German, never open it or take it off your shelf. No one actually pretends to read Hegel in German." (via Adam Kotsko)
posted by shenderson at 12:03 PM PST - 53 comments

Remember when misheard/alternate lyrics to Carmina Burana was a thing? Here's a new version with different lyrics, animation, ragefaces, and an obsession with chicken.
posted by The Whelk at 12:02 PM PST - 23 comments

The Les Paul Estate is up for auction Browse through the Les Paul Estate auction catalog and see the historic collection of guitars, recording equipment, and personal memorabilia owned by Les Paul. Sorry, you cannot bid on these items, the auction finished yesterday. News of the auction results are just coming in now. The auction brought in a total of $5 Million, with the proceeds going to the Les Paul Foundation in support of music education and medical research. [more inside]
posted by charlie don't surf at 10:57 AM PST - 34 comments

Slavoj Žižek on Europe and the Greeks
posted by Cloud King at 9:35 AM PST - 95 comments

Driving a modern Formula 1 car poses a bit of a paradox. If you can’t drive it very fast you can barely drive it at all. The first F1 race of the current season to be televised for a general American audience is the Canadian GP. It’s run on the Ile Notre-Dam in the St. Lawrence River, and will be on Fox at 1PM Eastern time today. An interesting street circuit over The Palisades area in New Jersey, with the NYC skyline as a backdrop is in the offing for next year and, in a project that has been rife with controversy, the F1 circus is slated to return to the US in November of this year on a new track near Austin Texas. [more inside]
posted by Huplescat at 9:02 AM PST - 119 comments

My father-in-law Jerry is great at word puzzles. Over the holidays, I showed him SpellTower on my iPad. By the time I took my iPad back at the end of the trip, he had already broken the SpellTower “Puzzle Mode” record on the Game Center leader board by almost 100,000 points. So I asked Jerry if he would share his strategy
posted by growabrain at 7:28 AM PST - 17 comments

Does HTTP need a status code for censorship? Perhaps [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 3:50 AM PST - 99 comments

In the early 19th century, a man named Charles Fanaye and his lover Marie-Hélène sought to wed in Southern France. He was a former Napoleonic soldier, back from the Campaign in Egypt. She was an Ethiopian woman who had rescued him from the Mameluks and followed him to France. Like many other interracial couples, Charles and Marie-Hélène begged for an exception to the 1803 decree that banned marriage between blacks and whites. It was only after 16 years, when the ban was silently lifted in 1819, that they could finally marry. A (long) paper by Jennifer Heuer on the arbitrary definitions of race in post-Revolutionary France and on "the persistence of certain couples in legitimizing their bonds".
posted by elgilito at 2:59 AM PST - 22 comments

Fifty two minutes of deleted scenes from David Lynch's 1986 film, Blue Velvet. [NSFW]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:06 AM PST - 52 comments

Building the Hofner Violin Beatles Bass
posted by Confess, Fletch at 7:07 PM PST - 58 comments

Malört Förlag are a small Swedish record label/publishing house with a couple of interesting releases, like a soundtrack to Mikael Häll's doctoral dissertation about sexual intercourse with demons and nature spirits; a CD of folk songs about werewolves featuring artists like Faun Fables and Fursaxa, and a beautiful first translation of the 1772 novel Le Diable Amoureux, with its original soundtrack featuring artists like Keiji Haino and The Coffinshakers. [more inside]
posted by Tarumba at 7:02 PM PST - 3 comments

Sakanaction is a band from Sapporo with a very stylish web site and some pretty unique music videos, especially but by no means limited to: [more inside]
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:14 PM PST - 12 comments

Fly. [more inside]
posted by Talez at 5:06 PM PST - 7 comments

"Blizzards and freezing cold were one thing. Penguin perversion was another. Worse was to come, however. Levick spent the Antarctic summer of 1911-12 observing the colony of Adélies at Cape Adare, making him the only scientist to this day to have studied an entire breeding cycle there. " Penguin sex habits study rediscovered at Museum. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:55 PM PST - 21 comments

Tails of the Unexpected: "Normality has been an accepted wisdom in economics and finance for a century or more. Yet in real-world systems, nothing could be less normal than normality. Tails should not be unexpected, for they are the rule." An eminently human-readable explanation of why normal models fail to describe the uncertainties of our abnormal world. [more inside]
posted by ecmendenhall at 3:06 PM PST - 19 comments

But the reason I do this is because I love you, whoever you are, and I want to share my situation so that you can know further truth: I am gay. I am Mormon. I am married to a woman. I am happy every single day. My life is filled with joy. I have a wonderful sex life. And I’ve been married for ten years, and plan to be married for decades more to come to the woman of my dreams.
posted by fancyoats at 2:09 PM PST - 299 comments

The Difference Between Boston's Big 3 And Miami's Big 3 (SLYT).
posted by ericb at 12:54 PM PST - 44 comments

Tumblr of Photos from the Detroit News archives.
posted by klangklangston at 12:33 PM PST - 22 comments

A solution to a problem you didn't know you had: The Self-Stirring Pot.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:13 PM PST - 53 comments

Tomorrow at Roland Garros, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal will play in their fourth consecutive grand slam final, making them the first pair of men to dominate the majors for an entire year. [more inside]
posted by pjenks at 12:10 PM PST - 15 comments

How to drink whisky: "Master Blender Richard Paterson shows David Hayman how to drink blends". Paterson is the master blender who managed to replicate the lost (and then found) 114-year-old Whyte & Mackay whisky from the Shackleton South Pole expedition; also see Shackleton’s Whisky – Mackinlay’s Reborn for a review (previously on MeFi). At his blog, he's currently discussing whisky & food pairings. [more inside]
posted by flex at 12:09 PM PST - 18 comments

401(k) fees could reduce average nest egg by 30%, study says. 'The average U.S. couple could pay nearly $155,000 in fees for their 401(k) plans over their careers, according to the analysis by Demos, a nonpartisan research organization. Rather than the hypothetical $510,000 that a dual-earner couple could have at retirement with no fees, they would be left with only $355,000. The fees include explicit charges and indirect expenses, such as the cost that mutual funds incur to trade stocks.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:00 PM PST - 85 comments

A Collection of Scenes In Which Leonardo DiCaprio Freaks Out (NSFW audio, some butt)
posted by The Whelk at 11:50 AM PST - 31 comments

Lewis Bennett wants to "make a short film about something going on in the province of British Columbia - a person, a place, or a subject". [more inside]
posted by what's her name at 10:23 AM PST - 6 comments

Ten years ago Sam Jordison created a magazine/website column and later notorious series of books entitled Crap Towns. After resurging interest in the books he revisits the town that first inspired him, Morecambe. (Previous)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:46 AM PST - 11 comments

Stubbs is a Good Dog. [slyt]
posted by quin at 9:35 AM PST - 38 comments

A Book Lover's Guide to Reading and Walking at the Same Time by Lev Grossman [Time.com]
posted by Fizz at 8:00 AM PST - 53 comments

Minitel bows out It was France's first glimpse of an online future. But now, 30 years after it was invented, the wired experiment that foreshadowed the World Wide Web is about to lose its connection once and for all.
posted by Wolof at 6:53 AM PST - 42 comments

The need for speed This article contrasts two very different timeframes in the 'social life' of the plant stimulant miraa--known elsewhere as khat--in Kenya and beyond. One, the heritage and cultural associations around the age of the trees themselves and the other, the impact of the perishability of the product even as demand for it grows on continents halfway around the world, thus the "need for speed". (Previously) (Previously)
posted by infini at 5:35 AM PST - 6 comments

Stephen Colbert reading 'The Veldt' by Ray Bradbury
posted by Knigel at 2:54 AM PST - 24 comments

Days of music and ambient audio served up with no searching, little setup, and no subscription:

• PartyCloud (Flash) auto-syncs millions of musical tracks to create your own mixes.
• 75 minutes of thunder and rain; a half-hour audio recording in the Amazon rainforest; 24 hours of the engines of the starship Enterprise at idle (previously).
• Sonos Terra mixes musical tracks with ambient background sounds (jungle, stream, ocean, and more).

[more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 1:57 AM PST - 16 comments

This letter from Patti Smith to Robert Mapplethorpe written 22 years after they met and when he was dying from AIDS , was never delivered. The link to her reading it last fall is heartwrenching and filled with the love of old friends.
posted by Isadorady at 12:17 AM PST - 9 comments

"For the real function of "Groupies" is to display fantastic personality — in its foul-mouthed, clever, patient, anxious, ugly, beautiful, self-aware girls. Everybody is always on camera; everybody has a story (anything from last night's conquest to total life history) that she tells almost compulsively — and from this eager collaboration between medium and messenger grows a vitality that is its own sufficient reward." Groupies, the 1970 documentary of female (and a few male) groupies and the bands they follow, is up on DailyMotion. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:54 PM PST - 21 comments

David Graeber: Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:46 PM PST - 82 comments

A game of hide & seek from a toddler's eye view. [more inside]
posted by empath at 2:12 PM PST - 40 comments

Chaos Theory: A Unified Theory of Muppet types. Dahlia Lithwick poses a taxonomy of muppets based on chaos vs. order.
posted by Verdant at 1:49 PM PST - 67 comments

Jimmy Fallon, Carly Rae Jepsen, and The Roots Sing Call Me Maybe with toy/classroom instruments. previously
posted by nadawi at 1:00 PM PST - 63 comments

The Flame Challenge: The Center For Communicating Science asked scientists to answer the question, "What is a flame?," in a way that 11-year-olds would understand. Ben Ames won. In addition to his winning video, you can see the runners-up.
posted by OmieWise at 12:23 PM PST - 56 comments

"There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls. It’s been many years since any child was taken. But still, on nights like these, when the wind comes cold from Tsibeya, mothers hold their daughters tight and warn them not to stray too far from home. “Be back before dark,” they whisper. “The trees are hungry tonight.” Tor.com brings us some short horror/fairy tale fiction from Leigh Bardugo, "The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale."
posted by The Whelk at 11:39 AM PST - 29 comments

The Las Vegas Sands Corporation, headed by multibillionaire and notorious supporter of right-wing causes Sheldon Adelson, is considering building an enormous gambling resort in crisis-stricken Spain: Euro Vegas [more inside]
posted by Skeptic at 11:21 AM PST - 22 comments

Malcolm Gladwell says that he got into journalism by accident, that his real dream was to work for an ad agency. “I decided I wanted to be in advertising. I applied to eighteen advertising agencies in the city of Toronto and received eighteen rejection letters, which I taped in a row on my wall,” he wrote in his What the Dog Saw. If true, then Gladwell didn’t fail at all. Rather, he has achieved his dream of becoming an ad man beyond all expectation.

The hidden histories of Malcolm Gladwell. [Previously.]
posted by Sonny Jim at 11:18 AM PST - 92 comments

"Flame" is the name of a newly-identified malware program which utilizes a previously unknown MD5 collision attack to successfully spoof Microsoft Terminal Services, and install itself as a trusted program using Windows Update, Microsoft has confirmed. The program appears to have targeted computers in the Middle East, and specifically Iran; analysts have alleged it is likely created by the same entity that designed Stuxnet. Flame has been live and actively spying since 2010, but went undetected until recently, due to sophisticated anti-detection measures. [more inside]
posted by mek at 11:13 AM PST - 52 comments

One man's quest to craft big wooden balls.
posted by secretdark at 10:34 AM PST - 48 comments

Apparently, the USHOR Appropriations Committee feels uncomfortable about permitting convenient bulk access to THOMAS database of bills.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:42 AM PST - 31 comments

In 2005, Florida passed controversial "Stand Your Ground" legislation, allowing homeowners to defend their property with lethal force. While the Trayvon Martin case focused national attention on the law, roughly two hundred cases have used it as a key part of the defense. In a new investigative report, The Tampa Bay Times catalogs the past six years of "Stand your Ground" cases and highlights the law's troubling and unexpected results.
posted by verb at 9:19 AM PST - 151 comments

After 25 years, thousands of car problems solved, and possibly millions of minutes spent laughing helplessly at themselves, Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers, are hanging up their microphones. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 9:08 AM PST - 231 comments

Calls are growing for a special counsel to investigate leaks of classified information by the Obama administration. Concerns have been raised over leaks involving classified information on cyberwarfare, infiltration of an Al Qaeda cell in Yemen, and drone warfare procedures. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 8:54 AM PST - 113 comments

While Indonesians continues to protest Lady Gaga's upcoming shows, the Muslim nation has its own racy concerts [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 8:51 AM PST - 16 comments

"In 1943, four newspapers published a "NYC Market Analysis" with photos, maps, data, and a profile of each NY neighborhood. Largely forgotten since, it offers a unique window into New York from another era. The CUNY graduate center has republished the profiles via this map." The Center for Urban Research has also provided a comparison of a number of characteristics between 1940 and today. (Links via Sociological Images: 1943 Map of New York City; photos of 1940s NYC previously on MeFi here and here.)
posted by flex at 8:41 AM PST - 9 comments

A chance of a lifetime for aspiring filmmakers: Kevin Spacey stars in three scripts from the Jameson-sponsored First Shot contest. In the phenomenal The Ventriloquist a ventriloquist and his dummy are having a hard time relating to each other and humanity; in The Envelope, a Russian man's hobby fulfills his purpose; and in Spirit of a Denture a mild-mannered dentist faces off with a difficult patient.
posted by jocelmeow at 7:50 AM PST - 17 comments

Adam Savage talks about his 13 year quest to build an exact replica of the Zorg ZF-1 from The Fifth Element. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:12 AM PST - 66 comments

Barry Unsworth, Booker prizewinner, dies at 81. [guardian.co.uk] Writer of historical fiction, who won Britain's highest literary honour in 1992 for Sacred Hunger, has died.
posted by Fizz at 7:00 AM PST - 11 comments

22 Pixar rules for storytelling
posted by Artw at 6:38 AM PST - 136 comments

An English teacher delivers a better than average commencement address.

Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you... you’re nothing special.

posted by COD at 6:14 AM PST - 189 comments

Jeff Broz and his teenage friends filmed this seven and a half minute Sand-O-Vision "documentary" on the set of Return Of The Jedi, in 1982.
posted by gman at 4:33 AM PST - 10 comments

Vice magazine was curious as to why people in London are sleeping rough to get a pair of Kanye West's trainers for Nike. Ironically, this comes in a week where jobseekers were expected to work for free and without accommodation on the Jubilee celebrations being told they should sleep under London Bridge (previously).
posted by mippy at 4:27 AM PST - 64 comments

Thank You Hater!
posted by minifigs at 1:49 AM PST - 37 comments

For decades the Golpa-Nord open-pit mine was scoured by gigantic machines day and night. When the coal ran out, the enormous steel constructs - with names like Mad Max, Big Wheel, and Medusa - were left in place. Today, the abandoned machines form the remarkable city of Ferropolis. Much more at Urban Ghosts.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 1:07 AM PST - 16 comments

Bork is Back. He is currently writing a book titled "1973." Now he will devote his time to Romney's “Justice Advisory Committee.” The move is a clear signal as to who Romney will nominate to the Supreme Court if he is elected. This will be a key issue in the 2012 elections. Any or all of the four current Justices up for retirement: Ginsburg, 79: Scalia, 76; Kennedy, 75; Breyer 73, would swing the court depending on who is elected.
posted by snaparapans at 9:22 PM PST - 54 comments

"A Giant Among Giants[FP]: Glencore -- founded by famous fugitive Marc Rich [Salon] -- has cornered the market on just about everything. Now that it's going public, will its ties to dictators and spies stand up to scrutiny?" [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:52 PM PST - 19 comments

Justin Bieber is holding a contest to find the best "Girlfriend" version of his hit "Boyfriend". This girl has clearly already won—both the contest and our hearts. [more inside]
posted by juliplease at 8:24 PM PST - 57 comments

America's Last Prisoner of War by Michael Hastings (single page) - In the early-morning hours of June 30th, according to soldiers in the unit, Bowe approached his team leader not long after he got off guard duty and asked his superior a simple question: If I were to leave the base, would it cause problems if I took my sensitive equipment? [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 7:36 PM PST - 27 comments

In a few weeks, Peter Molyneux (Fable, Black & White) will launch the first of 22 gaming/social media experiments. Curiosity will have one winner, with DLC available for up to £50,000.
posted by yellowbinder at 7:27 PM PST - 25 comments

Bob Welch former member of Fleetwood Mac, founder of power trio Paris, and the solo artist behind the 70's hits "Ebony Eyes" and "Sentimental Lady" has taken his own life in Nashville, aged 66.
posted by jonmc at 6:43 PM PST - 58 comments

WHY WE DON’T BELIEVE IN SCIENCE
posted by jjray at 6:41 PM PST - 47 comments

In 1971, "decades before any state had seriously considered legalizing gay marriage, long before anyone had thought of creating—never mind repealing—a policy called “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” before Reagan, before AIDS, before the American Psychiatric Association determined that homosexuality was not a mental illness, and before half the people currently living in America were even born, a man named John Singer stepped into the King County marriage license office in Seattle." Meet Faygele ben Miriam, the radical activist who pioneered the fight for same-sex marriage in Washington State, 41 years ago. Via.
posted by zarq at 6:30 PM PST - 16 comments

Need to wish someone a really special happy birthday or congratulations or even a simple, heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving? Why not send them a singing telegram from India?
posted by shivohum at 6:17 PM PST - 12 comments

How do managers decide who to lay off?
posted by reenum at 5:53 PM PST - 50 comments

Natasha Trethewey has been named the 19th US Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Library of Congress. The NY Times has published a selection of her poems. Meanwhile, the NY Daily News wonders: Do we still need a U.S. Poet Laureate? More freely available poems here.
posted by GnomeChompsky at 5:51 PM PST - 23 comments

Running for Congress? Better be a straight shooter. It's not enough for Joe Manchin to shoot up the cap and trade bill (previously), or for Ron Gould to shoot up the health care bill...for all we know, an actor made the shot. Fear not, let's change the angle a bit so it's over your sholder...how about Rob Wallace shooting up some Texas water?
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 2:18 PM PST - 25 comments

Mushroom production line (Youtube) [more inside]
posted by Listener at 2:11 PM PST - 53 comments

Blue trees are to be seen in cities around the world, a colorful plea to save the trees. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 2:02 PM PST - 23 comments

Papa Don't Leave: A Paternity Leave Infographic. The allowances for paid paternity leave differ greatly depending on which country you're in. This infographic (flash version; raw image) offers an interesting comparison of the number of days of paid leave offered by country. [via blurbomat]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:46 PM PST - 33 comments

The tagline is simple: "Danceable melancholia for the depressed," though on its face, the tracklist might challenge indie rock fans. "Post-millennial indie rock faves [updated] with 1993 hip hop production"? Downcast remixes of Andrew Bird and Deerhoof by a hip-hop producer? But it works. Joe(y) Beats, who collaborated with Sage Francis as Non-Prophets, shows his love for The Black Heart Procession and Neutral Milk Hotel by finely dicing their tunes and re-arranging them so they flow together, but don't lose their original beauty. Behold: Indie Rock Blues. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:17 PM PST - 16 comments

I wouldn't touch those rocks with a ten foot pole. Yet these folks do it every spring. After winters of ice and snow, the trails of New York's gorge parks are perilous, and these brave souls work to keep the loose rock from landing on you. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 11:31 AM PST - 18 comments

Not content with having re-imagined the Justice League, Cartoonist Dresden Codak reboots the X-Men with stranger mutations and more sci-fi backstory.
posted by The Whelk at 11:30 AM PST - 99 comments

The Bionimetric Millisystems Lab at UC Berkeley has made a new discovery in cockroach stealth behavior, or rapid inversion. The acrobatic jumping maneuver retains 75% of running energy and is being ported to a robotic prototype, the Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod (DASH). That is all.
posted by obscurator at 11:27 AM PST - 21 comments

Learning and Unlearning Math explores topic in mathematics from the perspective of a teacher. The author has developed series of articles on such varied topics as Multiplication, Quantity, Central Tendency, Math in Comics, and things not taught in schools. More recently, the blog has focused on the conventions for Mathematical Notation.
posted by borges at 11:20 AM PST - 20 comments

"Despite the challenges it faces, the Digital Public Library of America has an enthusiastic corps of volunteers and some generous contributors. It seems likely that by this time next year, it will have reached its first milestone and begun operating a metadata exchange of some sort. But what happens after that? Will the library be able to extend the scope of its collection beyond the early years of the last century? Will it be able to offer services that spark the interest of the public? If the DPLA is nothing more than plumbing, the project will have failed to live up to its grand name and its even grander promise."
posted by davidjmcgee at 10:42 AM PST - 10 comments

With a platform that includes legalization of pot, withdrawal of military support for Israel, forgiveness of all student loan debt and ballot access in all 50 states, Roseanne Barr is seeking the Green Party nomination for the presidency.
posted by jbickers at 10:14 AM PST - 211 comments

Brother Brain is an artist who makes colorful, vibrant, seamlessly looping animations from classic video games. Click on an image for a larger version, and an annotation of the game that the image comes from.
posted by codacorolla at 8:43 AM PST - 17 comments

Garden of Your Mind: Mister Rogers Remixed
posted by jacquilynne at 7:55 AM PST - 52 comments

A Patient with Asthma Seeks Medical Advice in 1828, 1928, and 2012. As part of the New England Journal of Medicine's 200th Anniversary Articles, it has provided three snapshots of diagnosis and treatments of asthma throughout relatively recent history. [more inside]
posted by whitneyarner at 7:31 AM PST - 48 comments

5 possible scientific explanations for Westeros' variable seasons in Game of Thrones. [via]
posted by quin at 7:10 AM PST - 91 comments

Introducing Nap Time!, the latest, most effective tool for child tantrum prevention! (SLYT)
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:54 AM PST - 57 comments

Kindly enjoy these and look at your world differently. We live in a beautiful country people. Enjoy that.

Mutua Matheka is a Kenyan photographer out to change perceptions of Nairobi and Kenya, for Kenyans and foreigners alike. (via)
posted by ChuraChura at 6:48 AM PST - 20 comments

Sam the Banana Man - Samuel Zemurray - saw opportunity in a pile of discarded bananas. As his empire grew he moved up the supply chain and eventually installed friendly governments to protect his interests. His former home at 2 Audubon Place, New Orleans, is now the residence for the President of Tulane University.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:16 AM PST - 16 comments