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posted by vronsky at 10:45 PM PST - 20 comments

Rethink. The. Shark. [YouTube] The Save Our Seas Foundation [small Flash], a Swiss-based non-profit, joins the growing ranks of a world-wide movement to undo the damage caused by popular reports and gross misrepresentation by Hollywood of sharks as human-savoring sea monsters/killing machines. The fact of the matter is that the opposite is true: Current estimates give between 65 million to 165 million sharks being killed worldwide annually via unregulated catch - including 38 million to 70 million [PDF] for their fin alone, with untold numbers of butchered and bleeding-to-death sharks being cast back into the oceans to die slow and gruesome deaths. [more inside]
posted by humannaire at 10:33 PM PST - 38 comments

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posted by salishsea at 10:31 PM PST - 29 comments

BUTT MAGAZINE, a sexy pocket-size quarterly for and about homosexuals, refreshingly focuses on the allure of the everyday guys. And all their issues are archived online! NSFW.
posted by hermitosis at 8:55 PM PST - 59 comments

0 to 60 mph in less than a second. Drag strip record of 155 mph. And almost totally silent. Meet the battery-powered drag racer KillaCycle.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 6:37 PM PST - 41 comments

Baby snapshots not cute enough for you? Get your kid's photos airbrushed by Pageant Photo Retouching. Some particularly noteworthy examples.
posted by gaspode at 6:29 PM PST - 123 comments

Misheard Lyrics are a minor meme on Youtube. Some of them really suck. Some of them are Informative. Some of them, though, are Pure Comedy Gold. (Previously)
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:28 PM PST - 42 comments

In the winter of 2007, a pair of great horned owls was staying at the top of Bernal Hill. On April 9th, one of these amazing creatures was found dead. And today, July 19th, the body of the other was found as well. The first died of an avian herpes virus. We still don't know what killed the second. These owls were great ambassadors of nature to our hill, and we'll miss them.
posted by subaruwrx at 3:40 PM PST - 38 comments

In 1996, Al Pope from the National Coalition for Advanced Manufacturers announced "Our goal is to change the way schooling is done." And, with the School-to-Work program, corporate and educational interests became further intwined, a trend that now reaches every level and comes in many guises. The ever-present crisis of American education continues, but few ask: does it have to be this way, and just who benefits? [mostly via]
posted by absalom at 1:53 PM PST - 45 comments

Rorschach and Awe. "America's coercive interrogation methods were reverse-engineered by two C.I.A. psychologists who had spent their careers training U.S. soldiers to endure Communist-style torture techniques. The spread of these tactics was fueled by a myth about a critical 'black site' operation."
posted by homunculus at 1:05 PM PST - 57 comments

"It is time to call it what it is: a development emergency which needs emergency action". Gordon Brown speaks to the UN about global poverty. Link goes to full text of speech, video is available from the same page.
posted by teleskiving at 12:50 PM PST - 3 comments

Web Analytics According to Captain Kirk: As the data shows, Captain Kirk "making contact" with alien women has an impact on the crew's survival. The red-shirt death rate is higher when a fight breaks out than when Kirk meets a woman and a fight breaks out.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:25 PM PST - 27 comments

Crash tests. Exactly what it sounds like. Double-Link-YouTube-Filter.
posted by dersins at 9:16 AM PST - 26 comments

Examples of challenges faced: "Negotiating Hyde Park corner by bicycle. Outcome: survival." This and more from Boris Johnson's London Mayoral candidacy application [PDF] to the Conservative Party. thelondonpaper is not impressed that he submitted a handwritten form.
posted by nthdegx at 9:02 AM PST - 28 comments

An inside look at who jumps. Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes has released a study of 10 years of suicide jumps from the Golden Gate Bridge. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 8:59 AM PST - 141 comments

Crush the Screamin' Beans!
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:52 AM PST - 13 comments

Bill Walsh, 11/30/1931-7/30/2007. Walsh, former coach of the San Francisco 49er's (cool tribute up on their site, currently), lost his fight with Leukemia yesterday. His career included an impressive 6 division titles and 3 super bowl wins, and his inventions included many tactics and devices still being used by many teams today, including the West Coast Offense and those laminated play cards you see many coaches using. He was also the creator of the Minority Coaching Fellowship program, helping minority coaches get a foothold in a previously white-dominated profession. RIP, Bill.
posted by allkindsoftime at 8:49 AM PST - 19 comments

In Violation of Federal Law, Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election Records Are Destroyed or Missing. "The extent of the destruction of records is consistent with the covering up of the fraud that we believe occurred in the presidential election."
posted by chunking express at 7:00 AM PST - 218 comments

What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it! Give me those pictures. You can't photograph people like that. Who says I can't? I'm only doing my job. Some people are bullfighters, some people are politicians. I'm a photographer.
Michelangelo Antonioni, 1912 - 2007.
posted by feelinglistless at 6:10 AM PST - 52 comments

Were you psychologically damaged at a petting zoo?. The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation was created in 1982 by a small group that originally came together as an informal support group for problems that were the result of traumatic experiences at petting zoos as children. This group realized that there were many others out there who were afraid to come forward with their horrific stories and wanted to find some way to help as many people as they could. The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation is the result of their dream.
posted by amyms at 11:58 PM PST - 125 comments

Nanoreisen. "A virtual discovery journey into the worlds of micro- and nano-cosmos." [flash] A kind of thematic followup to this.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:43 PM PST - 6 comments

We've discussed scarification previously, but as it's been a couple years, and you can never have too much modern primitivism, here's a new collection of the cutting edge in inkless tattoos, courtesy of the folks at BME. Warning: not for the squeamish.
posted by jonson at 10:35 PM PST - 49 comments

What happens when you put marshmallows, footballs, eggs, gum, Christmas lights, or ketchup packets in the microwave? The results of 21 products cooked to a soggy mess. (Flash, music, Kraft Blue)
posted by daninnj at 9:28 PM PST - 29 comments

Plotbot is a web-based collaborative screenwriting application where you can write a screenplay with as many or as few people as you like. Adopting the wiki approach to screenwriting, each element is editable by any member of a project. You can also comment on, delete or restore any element. For all of the "filmic storytellers" on MeFi.
posted by ColdChef at 8:11 PM PST - 17 comments

After so many obituary threads, you will be happy to know that Yma Sumac, your favorite four-octave-ranged Peruvian diva (YouTube links) is alive and well and supporting universal healthcare at 85 years of age. Photos then and now. Yma is still communicating with fans and making appearances. Long live the Incan Queen!
posted by hermitosis at 8:03 PM PST - 29 comments

Grange Halls are common landmarks in America's rural communities. But what is a "Grange"? The Order of Patrons of Husbandry is a fraternal agricultural organization, but it's not just a social group for farmers; Grange lobbying fought railroad monopolies and led to Rural Free Delivery, the Farm Credit System, and other "progressive legislation that will benefit U.S. agriculture, rural America, and the nation in general". But after 140 years, the Grange is fading away.
posted by litlnemo at 5:45 PM PST - 28 comments

If abortion is outlawed, what should be the penalty for mothers who get abortions? Let's ask some anti-abortion protestors.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:30 PM PST - 339 comments

B I G C O U N T R Y
posted by sgt.serenity at 5:18 PM PST - 49 comments

Looking for a gift for that hard-to-please environmentalist on your Xmas list? How about poop? Not just any poop, panda poop! Interestingly enough despite the relatively low number of, er, available sources this is not the first time that panda manure is being considered for commercial purposes... not even close.
posted by clevershark at 5:06 PM PST - 5 comments

The lengths some people will go to get high. Jenkem or jekem is a drug made from raw human sewage, apparently most prevalent in Africa. (Mildly NSFW.)
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:49 PM PST - 50 comments

Else Marie Pade (b. 1924) is a phenomenon in the history of Danish music. As a child she was often ill and bedridden. She would listen to the sounds around her... on the stairs, from the yard and the room next to hers. This is where her audio universe began. During the Second World War, she was arrested by the Gestapo and placed in solitary confinement. Rather than despair, she began composing music on the bare prison walls, where she scratched the notes with the fasteners on her garters. After the war and her discovery of the concrete music of Pierre Schaeffer and the French avant-garde, she realized that the sounds resembled those she had heard in childhood, and that this was the music she really wanted to compose. Read a long interview with Else Marie Pade here and listen to her collected works here. (Last link in Danish. Left column is production year, middle column is title. Click the bit rates on the right to listen to each work.)
posted by sveskemus at 3:59 PM PST - 8 comments

How to make a secret hollow book.
posted by Sully at 3:35 PM PST - 36 comments

The Internet is for porn. Never before in the history of humanity have men (let's be honest - it's mainly men) had such open access to depictions of attractive body parts in intimate physical interactions. Every taste, every fetish and every perversion is catered to. Some people think there's too much.. Some people think there's still not enough. Others wonder why all this pornography can't be a bit... sexier? And in a few small corners of the Internet, there are communities of people who still remember what the word "erotic" used to mean, before it became a synonym for tasteless trashy rutting and spyware infested digital prostitution. [Almost all links are NSFW. None are pornographic. And I like good porn.]
posted by thparkth at 2:41 PM PST - 209 comments

Comixfilter: Todd Klein discusses lettering choices for Sandman Comics writers and artist get a fair amount of press. But the letterer can make a huge amount of difference to a piece of comic art. Here's a recollection from the (almost) continous letterer of one of comics' major works.
posted by Sparx at 2:22 PM PST - 33 comments

N.C. A&T food scientist develops process for allergen-free peanuts. An agricultural researcher at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University has developed a simple process to make allergen-free peanuts. The new process – believed to be a first for food science – could provide relief to millions of peanut allergy sufferers, and be an enormous boon to the entire peanut industry.The inventor, Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna, is optimizing the process further to remove allergens from other foods.
posted by billysumday at 1:29 PM PST - 34 comments

De Düva: The Dove (1968)
posted by homunculus at 12:45 PM PST - 19 comments

HONK! is a showcase and annual festival for a "new kind of street band": motley, theatrical, activist protest groups working within the marching band tradition. From this central site, link to video and audio from twenty bands currently playing in the "honk" genre, from New York's Rude Mechanical Orchestra to to Atlanta's Seed and Feed Marching Abominables to Portsmouth, NH's Leftist Marching Band. Heavy on the brass and percussion, rousing, raucous, and fun, these bands form part of a worldwide musical phenomenon.
posted by Miko at 12:00 PM PST - 19 comments

Pilot tells of hairy near miss at Las Vegas airport A post on Airliners.net telling, in some detail, of a near miss between an America West Airbus A320 (piloted by the author) and an Air Canada plane at Las Vegas airport. And if that puts you off flying, to calm down, another pilot's account, of a less hair-raising flight.
posted by jontyjago at 11:58 AM PST - 48 comments

Signs in Shinjuku station made with coloured sticky tape.
posted by WPW at 11:42 AM PST - 17 comments

How Ohio lost 800,000 Social Security numbers. The Inspector General identified Jared Ilovar as "a 22-year-old, $10.50-an-hour employee" hired just three months earlier, who received his assignment from…another intern. The intern reported to a $125-an-hour consultant, who reported to another $200-an-hour consultant… too bad for Ohio that Jared decided to speak out.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:34 AM PST - 38 comments

Aneta Florczyk is an extraordinarily strong woman. Here is a video of her twisting a frying pan into a cylinder. She has deadlifted over 500 pounds. And pressed more than 250 pounds overhead.
posted by jason's_planet at 9:46 AM PST - 34 comments

Cracked Pepper by ccc and ill chemist is a mash-up of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and an amazing array of songs you know. While not quite on par with the focus and sheer audacity of DangerMouse's Grey Album, Cracked Pepper is a smart, rich, and rewarding listen. Available track by track or as a torrent. See inside for tracks sampled.
posted by saguaro at 9:24 AM PST - 35 comments

Conversation with Kip Hawley, TSA Administrator (Part 1) Part one of five, Bruce Schneier chats it up with Kip, TSA Administrator. The TSA and airport security have long been hot topics on Metafilter; here is a chance to read some hard questions put to the man himself and his answers.
posted by Bovine Love at 9:04 AM PST - 27 comments

Tom Snyder, host of the Tomorrow Show and the Late Late Show, is dead at 71.
posted by doctor_negative at 9:01 AM PST - 59 comments

The Algorithm March: with Ninja and Everyone Together
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:58 AM PST - 13 comments

You should read these three stories by Amy Hempel. (Oh, and maybe listen to her read, here.) While you're at it, read some of these idiosyncratic but beautifully-written stories by grammarian Gary Lutz.
posted by dersins at 8:44 AM PST - 19 comments

Bringing sexy back...to NASA? Sci-fi fans have witnessed many imaginings of the space suit. The skintight BioSuit is based on the concept of providing a "second skin" to astronauts.
posted by Blue Buddha at 8:43 AM PST - 27 comments

We've previously agreed that Dr. Nina Simone created some amazing music. As a person, she was openly angry and, yes, a smidgen nuts. Big surprise... she was also not the easiest interview. (Big understatement.)
posted by miss lynnster at 8:19 AM PST - 50 comments

An Unsolved Killing. Tom Wales, a 49-year-old Assistant US Attorney, was murdered in Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood on October 11, 2001, and the case is getting cold. Former U.S. attorney John McKay was fired in March 2005 in part for pressing for a more active investigation.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:13 AM PST - 11 comments

I love giraffes. Sure, some people think they're evil (previously on MeFi), but did you know that they have black tongues? Or that their scientific name hints that early viewers thought they resembled a camel/leopard mashup? That their closest living relative is the okapi? Did you know that they come with a special structure to prevent too much blood flow to the brain while drinking, and built-in pressure hose to protect the capillaries in their legs from their massive height and resulting blood pressure? This here giraffe is an amazing critter.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:21 AM PST - 34 comments

Science and Pseudoscience - a 1973 lecture from Imre Lakatos.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:20 AM PST - 16 comments

Bonalu (or Bonam in short, which means Meal in Telegu, the official language of Andhra Pradesh), is the festival celebrated in honour of the Goddess Mahankali, in the month of July/August, by women who carry a series of pots on their heads, filled with offerings of rice and milk, led by the Potharaju (image).
posted by hadjiboy at 3:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Who are you? I am Death. You have come for me? I have been for a long time at your side. I know.
Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007.
posted by mr.marx at 2:24 AM PST - 121 comments

The best times to buy anything. The best places to do everything. The best seasons to eat everything. The best months to go anywhere or to go anywhere cheap. The best times of day to do anything. Also, the worst day to dine in New York, click delete without looking, fly, get arrested, and give birth.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:53 PM PST - 12 comments

MAARVIN ZINDLER, EYEWITNESS NEWS!!!!
posted by fungible at 9:00 PM PST - 34 comments

Ándale! Ándale! Arriba! -- Step aside you rat! Speedy González (no relation to Alberto) debuted in 1953 as a Warner Brothers' cartoon mouse (The Fastest Mouse in Mexico). Originally voiced by the master, Mel Blanc, his time on screen has at times been controversial -- especially when paired with his cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez. Cartoon Network deemed his portrayal of Mexicans/Latinos to be offensive. "There evidently wasn't a problem with the Mexican caricatures at the beginning of Speedy's career. The 1955 animated short 'Speedy Gonzales' won an Academy Award [Best Short Subject (Cartoons)], and two other cartoons, Tabasco Road and The Pied Piper of Guadalupe, were nominated for Oscars in 1957 and 1961."
posted by ericb at 8:21 PM PST - 48 comments

One day someone will write a post worthy of The Wire. In the mean time, here's an article about and an interview with Felicia Pearson. Apparently there are a similarities between her and "Snoop", her character on the show.
posted by Alex404 at 8:11 PM PST - 78 comments

Anybody remember Slow Bob In The Lower Dimensions? Turns out the short video, once a mainstay of early 90s late-night MTV, was created by one Henry Selick, director of, oh, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone, and the forthcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. A lot more on Selick; also, higher quality, alternate format (but slower loading) versions are available here.
posted by kimota at 5:40 PM PST - 13 comments

White! White! White!

Hyperwhite?

White?!
posted by nilihm at 5:01 PM PST - 73 comments

Hillary Clinton as Lisa Simpson!? Not sure if I put my finger on it, but that's my impression reading some excerpts from letters Hillary Clinton wrote to a high school friend whilst in college. I've been entertaining Barack Obama as Lincoln -- an impression he's actively cultivated (so, another Simpsons tie-in :) -- and I welcome uncanned glimpses into candidates' formative years to get a better idea of their 'character' (as if they're running on character and 'bio') so it was great to read her reminisce on her childhood: "I'd play out in the patch of sunlight that broke the density of the elms in front of our house and pretend there were heavenly movie cameras watching my every move."
posted by kliuless at 12:49 PM PST - 42 comments

Tired after wandering the aisles all day? Want to get a head start on all those shoppers the next morning? An IKEA near Oslo has opened a free, 30-bed in-store dorm. The company says it's also equipped with "a bridal suite, a luxury suite, as well as family and tourist rooms". A company spokesman claimed that "guests stayed awake to watch the night workers refill the shelves", then went on to point out that many of them also stayed awake through sunrise, unsure whether the sun would come up otherwise.
posted by mkultra at 12:18 PM PST - 23 comments

Iraq wins! When everything that could go wrong goes wrong, it is awesome to see that something like this happened.
posted by dov3 at 12:09 PM PST - 46 comments

Celebrity Chef Christopher Walken prepares Chicken with Pears.
posted by Dave Faris at 11:09 AM PST - 69 comments

At fourteen years old, Jennifer Lin is a shade better on the piano than most eighth-graders. (video) [via]
posted by Malor at 10:20 AM PST - 53 comments

The 2007 Mercury Music Prize Shortlist: Amy Winehouse - Back to Black; Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare; Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford - Basquiat Strings; Bat For Lashes - Fur And Gold; Dizzee Rascal - Maths And English; Fionn Regan - The End of History; Jamie T - Panic Prevention; Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future; The View - Hats Off To The Buskers; Maps - We Can Create; New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom; The Young Knives - Voices Of Animals And Men [warning: several links auto-play]. Although The View claim that the prize is irrelevant, most British musicians view the award as the highest honour a musican can receive. The Arctic Monkeys were victorious in 2006, winning with their album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. Dizzee Rascal took home the prize in 2003 for his album Boy in Da Corner. While both will be hoping to repeat their success, but no band/artist has ever won the Mercury Prize more than once.
posted by chuckdarwin at 10:13 AM PST - 31 comments

The giant Jesus statue previously discussed here has been immortalized in song by the legendary Heywood Banks.
posted by EarBucket at 10:01 AM PST - 17 comments

Books: The Opaque Market. Eric Flint (the author who set up the Baen Free Library) argues against using DRM in publishing and in favor of pirating yourself. (via Jay Lake)
posted by joannemerriam at 8:24 AM PST - 28 comments

Tina Alberts, a dental assistant, raises pot bellied pigs. Knowing this, her wacky boss Dr. Woo decided to play a practical joke on her. When she was under anesthesia he temporarily gave her two boar teeth, leaving them in just long enough to stage a wacky unconscious photo. Later, he gave her the photo as a fun present. She freaked out. Everybody hired lawyers. Alberts got $250,000. Woo got $1,000,000. Yes, you read that right.
posted by miss lynnster at 7:35 AM PST - 100 comments

Every kid who grew up in the 80's wanted a DeLorean. Well, it seems that that dream may yet come true.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:13 AM PST - 48 comments

"The model of economic development that we are currently pursuing is unsustainable. Our energy consumption per unit of GDP is seven times that of Japan, six times that of America, and even 2.8 times that of India. China’s labour productivity is less than 10 per cent of the world total, and yet our emissions are over 10 times higher than the global average." ~ Pan Yue - deputy director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). Part of a new generation of outspoken Chinese senior officials, Pan has given rise to a tide of environmental debate, attracting enormous attention and controversy. Read his articles here : - China: economic powerhouse, environmentally unsustainable - part one and part two
posted by infini at 2:24 AM PST - 30 comments

As of yesterday, Dr. Mohammed Haneef was released from jail, amidst speculation that his incarceration had been unjust, and is on his way back home. It is believed that once he is ready, there will be a lucrative deal waiting for him if he wishes to tell his story (pdf of his transcript of detention), but for now, his wife, Firdaus Ashriya, is happy to have her husband back home.
posted by hadjiboy at 10:38 PM PST - 44 comments

A mating dance of the waved albatross on The Galapagos Islands. (60 sec. plus some other clips below)
posted by growabrain at 9:38 PM PST - 19 comments

Watch The Guild! Why? Cuz it's the funniest damned thing since Leeeroy Jenkins! (more inside)
posted by ZachsMind at 8:41 PM PST - 59 comments

Mesterinde Karen Larsdatter.
posted by hama7 at 6:53 PM PST - 21 comments

You're the star today! In 1976, ABC's Record and Tape Division came up with the Captain Zoom Personalized Birthday Record. A two-minute song with 8 instances of the birthday boy or girl's name was recorded and mastered for a paper-thin flexible 7" record. It was sent in an envelope along with the lyrics to the song, a mini-coloring book, and an order form. In 1978, the Record and Tape Division was disbanded. Robert Stiller, a sales consultant who was involved with the project at ABC, bought the rights to the project and began distributing the record with his own company. Captain Zoom left a lasting impact on those who heard his little jingle.
And there's a wedding version too. How sweet.
posted by mkb at 5:10 PM PST - 20 comments

Slaughterhouse. A brutally honest look behind the scenes. Loads of blood, dead pigs and people inbetween. Recommended for the whole family for sunday dinner - if you like your sausages! [Google Video, NSFW, Not safe for veggies or PETA]
posted by homodigitalis at 3:39 PM PST - 67 comments

"Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all." CBS News said, let's give Oscar the Grim Reaper Cat 349% more ink than FBI Director Mueller contradicting Attorney General Gonzales's testimony. Media Matters asks, "There are very real and very serious questions about whether the United States is currently a fully functional republic.... Isn't it time news organizations devote more resources to exploring these issues -- even if it means fewer stories about cats and cleavage?" Has Stupor Killed the Fourth Estate? Was James Fallows that the Media Undermine[s] American Democracy?
posted by orthogonality at 2:07 PM PST - 100 comments

Garth Marenghi (previously), horror writer, director, and actor. Star of the popular 80's series Darkplace which chronicles the trials a hospital staff must endure when working on the gates of Hell, now available for your viewing pleasure. Or pain. Gripping. Terrifying. Bloody. With bits of sick. (See more episodes on Google )
posted by kindle at 1:27 PM PST - 25 comments

Big-eyed kitsch art, paintings of waifs and sad eyes, pity kitty and pity puppy. Among this group of painters, Margaret Keane's story is quite interesting. For many years her ex-husband stole the credit for her paintings, she sued and won. Contemporary artists who include the big-eyed theme in their work: the amazing Mark Ryden. The hilarious [nsfw] and dark work of Colin and Sas Christian; Megan Besmirched and her Big Eyed Art Bonanza.
posted by nickyskye at 1:13 PM PST - 21 comments

Beautiful animated music video for Kwoon's "I Lived on the Moon."
posted by justkevin at 1:04 PM PST - 18 comments

The progression of obesity in America (where one's BMI is greater than 30) from 1985 to 2005.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:54 AM PST - 108 comments

bouncing ideas: “an infographically inspired, 1 take, top shot videoclip with professional trampoline gymnasts simulating typical video editing effects.” They had me at the spinning umbrella. (via crabwalk)
posted by whatnot at 11:25 AM PST - 11 comments

The United States and the European Union have agreed to expand a security program that shares personal data about millions of U.S.-bound airline passengers a year. Information that potentially can be used includes "racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership" and data about an individual's health, traveling partners and sexual orientation. "Even a request for a king-size bed at a hotel could be noted in the database." "E.U.'s privacy supervisor expressed 'grave concern' over whether the rules 'will be fully compatible with European fundamental rights,' calling the arrangement 'without legal precedent.'"
posted by ericb at 9:39 AM PST - 71 comments

The Lightning Field in New Mexico was one of the first earth art installations when it was installed back in the 70's. 30 years later it still stands and turns even the time you spend there into art. Here's an account by Pamela Petro of her time spent there.
posted by workinggringa at 9:25 AM PST - 26 comments

According to LA's Fox 11, Anonymous is epic evil and considered harmful.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:13 AM PST - 150 comments

Can't ever find what you are looking for at the bookstore? Tired of seeing pseudoscience or pop psychology books in the science section? Join a grassroots effort to re-shelve books to the appropriate section of the store: Biologists Helping Bookstores.
posted by corpse at 8:02 AM PST - 31 comments

Shorpy, the awesome photoblog of old photos has added a comics section and are now running newspaper comics from the first half of the 20th century. Via.
posted by jonson at 7:20 AM PST - 7 comments

Following this 2005 post, this documentary on Osaka "Host Clubs", "The Great Happiness Space" [Google vid 1:15; misleading preview here] is like nothing I've ever seen. Dark and light and wrenching and weird and funny. And dark. Kafka comes to mind for a lot of viewers, but this would fail as fiction. A midpoint shift forces you to confront a reality that is staggeringly complex. It's a kaleidescope of self-awareness and -delusion; compassion and manipulation; candor and deception. Layered, nuanced, and self-referential. The chief host's blog translated somewhat idiosyncratically by google, gives you another perspective [note: not included in the spirit of "LOL Engrish"]. This insider's account of a hostess club, written by a Duke University sociologist, is a lot more predictable and straightforward.
posted by Phred182 at 7:13 AM PST - 24 comments

F i d d l e.
posted by Mblue at 6:37 AM PST - 17 comments

The New New Journalism with short bios of a range of selected journalists compiled by Robert S. Boynton director of NYU's magazine journalism program. Remember New Journalism ? and now a look forward. Those who don't read much might prefer this.
posted by adamvasco at 6:24 AM PST - 11 comments

Ferris wheels making a comeback. Wheels across the world, past, present, and future, big and small. Graphic comparing various wheels. The London Eye. The Singapore Flyer. A triple Ferris Wheel that closed 10 years ago. And George Washington Gale Ferris's 1893 wheel that started it all.
posted by grouse at 3:21 AM PST - 14 comments

I am going to be a storm-a flame
I need to fight whole armies alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;
I feel too strong to war with mortals-
BRING ME GIANTS!

Lynn Hill's free climb of 'The Nose' route on El Capitan (GoogleVid 19:40). "What stunned the climbing world (although if anyone could do it, Hill could) was her success in freeing The Nose in 1993 over the course of four days, finishing a project no one else had managed in 30 years. To "free" a route you must climb only the rock, and only with your hands and feet. Although Hill could rest at belay stations and had a climbing partner to catch her when she fell, she led every pitch and managed to climb sections that previously had been ascended only with "aid"--that is, by hanging and climbing on equipment placed in the rock. She went back in '94 and did the same route, free, in 23 hours."[from her bio] Always wanted to try climbing? Have Lynn teach you.[image gallery][terminology]
posted by sluglicker at 2:28 AM PST - 21 comments

It's common for pro se prisoners to sue unusual defendants, but never before have I seen a list of defendants [pdf] so awe-inspiring. Francois Rabelais would truly be proud. Unfortunately, this particular prisoner's follow up lawsuit against Atlanta Falcons Quarterback Michael Vick isn't nearly so entertaining.
posted by saslett at 12:22 AM PST - 58 comments

Between 1902 and 1905 representatives of five tribes in the Indian Territory of the southern United States lobbied for statehood. The tribes proposed creating a tribal state called Sequoyah (hi res image here). At the constiutional conference in 1905 a constitution was drafted and later forwarded to the federal Congress and President, but despite a successful ratification campaign, the effort died on the vine. The Indian Territory and Oklahoma were instead admitted to the Union two years later as one state.
posted by salishsea at 7:35 PM PST - 19 comments

The world is one step closer to felix's trickle-charging story-telling bear.
posted by djb at 6:45 PM PST - 13 comments

Dene Nation leaders blindsided at National Assembly by speaker invited to speak about a women's walk to raise awareness about violence against women. She took the podium and criticized local leaders for voicing support of a man convicted of sexual assaultt. The national chief's response? Claim she was an imposter not invited to speak.
posted by surplus at 6:29 PM PST - 16 comments

Chocolate Rain. From Bach to Tupac, you can always expect the unexpected from Tay Zonday. Mr. Zonday has experienced some fame as of late, thanks to shock jocks Opie & Anthony. Tay is quite the original artist and is, shockingly, unsigned. So, if you know any A&R guys that are looking for new talent, please let them know! My personal favorite is his karaoke cover of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". Although, the Darth Vader remix of Chocolate Rain is pretty friggin' sweet, too.
posted by digiFramph at 2:43 PM PST - 58 comments

Two news helicopters met in a deadly midair collision today while covering a police chase on live television (video, tragic but not graphic).
posted by hermitosis at 2:41 PM PST - 102 comments

Imogen Heap at her best, recording Just for Now on the spot using a sampler. Not exactly a recent video, but I couldn't help listening to it over, and over, and over again. single-link youtube post, but it's so worth it.
posted by limon at 2:33 PM PST - 62 comments

"Bill Maher: The Decider" [Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, YouTube]. Maher at the top of his game.
posted by McLir at 2:28 PM PST - 85 comments

No Reservations marks the second foodie inspired movie out in the past couple months, after the charming Ratatouille. Slate pegs the animated movie as getting things right, with help from the well renowned Thomas Keller at the French Laundry. But at home and in professional kitchens, things aren't always so pristine. Is this foodie culture better for us, or just part of a greater problem?
posted by craven_morhead at 1:44 PM PST - 52 comments

Blog gives healthy Fisking to the worst sportswriting around, with a focus on Joe Morgan, perhaps the dumbest baseball analyst ever. (previous oblique MeFi reference.)
posted by klangklangston at 1:25 PM PST - 26 comments

Behold the Uniqlock. (flash, sfw)
posted by boo_radley at 12:38 PM PST - 64 comments

I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people alive. I get to travel the globe catching snakes with my lovely wife. [Warning: Frames Ahead. Also, snake venom LD-50 information.]
posted by dersins at 12:05 PM PST - 6 comments

"Thanks to tremendous progress achieved by the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), the wireless communication protocol, it is now possible for Africans to send articles and images (still and moving) about events taking place in their countries without using a computer and without having internet connection. Under those circumstances, the bigger the number of people expressing their opinions through that technology, the stronger becomes democracy, and the more valuable is the contribution to good governance efforts in Africa" - Voices of Africa, Mobile stories and videos from Africa. Quote above from article Mobile Reporters in Africa.
posted by infini at 11:37 AM PST - 11 comments

Mutatoes is a photographic collection by artist Uli Westphal of non-standard fruits and vegetables found at Berlin groceries and farmers' markets. The distorted, the discolored, the bumpy, the stumpy, the coiled and the conjoined all get star treatment. (Flash site)
posted by hydrophonic at 11:24 AM PST - 21 comments

[Friday Flash Fun] Gravity Pods, a physics-based shooter/puzzle where you use special gravity pods and repellers to alter the course of a projectile and avoid barriers to hit a target.
posted by aerotive at 10:41 AM PST - 25 comments

"Van Lingle Mungo" written in 1969 by the nostalgic, baseball-loving jazz composer David Frishberg [wiki]. [Rhapsody link to the whole song.] Frishberg on meeting the ex-Dodgers hurler after whom he named his tune: “Backstage, Mungo asked me when he would see some remuneration for the song. When he heard my explanation about how there was unlikely to be any remuneration for anyone connected with the song, least of all him, he was genuinely downcast. ‘But it’s my name,’ he said. I told him, ‘The only way you can get even is to go home and write a song called Dave Frishberg.’" Further elaboration: The Baseball Analysts on "Van Lingle Mungo."
posted by kosem at 9:48 AM PST - 11 comments

Fighter jets, overturned tractor trailers, WW II bombers, cars parked on walls, and more of The Strangest Sights in Google Earth
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:08 AM PST - 50 comments

Jumping spiders use their legs to communicate courtship interests to potential mates. The minuscule impacts of spider legs tapping against the ground surface are detected by nearby spiders. This "drumming" cadence signals the spider's reproductive interests. The female detects the low frequency vibrations through her legs. She responds by allowing the male to mount her. Absolutely amazing video here. The sound is the best part, so make sure it's on.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:02 AM PST - 53 comments

Do you prefer to travel light or be prepared for anything? The Flickr pools for what's in your bag? and The Items We Carry reveal all. More prevalent than I would have expected: Burt's Bees, multitools, carabiner keychains.
posted by emmastory at 6:53 AM PST - 49 comments

Three shots to the forehead from an M-16 from 10 yards away. -- New documents surface from the investigation into Pat Tillman's death.
posted by empath at 6:21 AM PST - 166 comments

Google goes to the dark side. Meet Blackle.
posted by nevercalm at 6:04 AM PST - 65 comments

It's Friday, time to relax and look at pretty pictures [maybe nsfw in the banner ads]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:19 AM PST - 20 comments

I don't know what other people’s first thoughts may be on Monday mornings; but mine, as the jabber of my husband’s radio crawls into my dreams, is “Has anyone died today?” So began a week-long diary by The Economist's obituaries editor, Ann Wroe, which she completed today.
posted by Kattullus at 4:34 AM PST - 9 comments

They distort, we reply. Fed up with Fox News? Time to fight back.
posted by grahamwell at 4:10 AM PST - 79 comments

So you finally broke down bought that fancy 60" HDTV. Now, you need a fancy HDMI cable for the finest quality picture. BestBuy (et al) promote Monster almost exclusively. But they can cost up to $250. Meanwhile, Monoprice (and others) can be had for about 1/10th the price.

Gizmodo just finished their detailed three part breakdown (including using test machines at Monster's own HQ) and comes to the conclusion that "The only people who should buy Monster cable are people who light cigars with Benjamins."
posted by revmitcz at 3:04 AM PST - 29 comments

Harptallica began when a music student decided to arrange one Metallica song, "Fade to Black," for two harps. Somehow this turned into 10 Metallica Songs and a CD, titled "Harptallica."
posted by domdom at 1:38 AM PST - 10 comments

From Team Tiger Mountain comes 28 Day Slater, a series where every Febuary Mario Lopez of Saved By The Bell fame turns into his character from the show, A.C. Slater.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 12:37 AM PST - 15 comments

The return of shoe-gazing.
posted by meech at 12:14 AM PST - 34 comments

The Amazing Spider-Man and Planned Parenthood team up to thwart a baby-stealing alien who encourages young people to have unprotected sex. [Via scans_daily]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:27 PM PST - 16 comments

Every number from Alan Parker's "kids as mobsters" 1970's musical, Bugsy Malone.
posted by jonson at 9:20 PM PST - 38 comments

This is a video of a smug-looking guy playing Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" on his hands. And there's more.
posted by nowonmai at 8:09 PM PST - 21 comments

On October 26, 1965, a sixteen-year-old girl named Sylvia Marie Likens was reported dead to Indianapolis police. It was soon discovered that her death was the culmination of weeks of torture at the hands of an adult caretaker and several neighborhood children; when the case went to trial, the prosecutor declared it "the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana." In 2007, not one but two films inspired by the case make their debut: The Girl Next Door (trailer), based on a fictionalized version of the events, and the docudrama An American Crime (trailer). One person, at least, will probably be skipping both -- the victim's sister, who says of the latter film, "No one ever even asked us about it. It's their gain, our pain."
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:32 PM PST - 114 comments

Fifty Years of Space Exploration Professor John Zarnecki gives the The Open University Lecture 2007. You can watch or listen whilst exploring the resources elsewhere on the OU site.
posted by Abiezer at 7:23 PM PST - 2 comments

It's All Because. Have you ever had those days where you're wondering just why everything about your life is feeling like it's going down the toilet bowl? Oded Gross knows, and he will tell you all about it. In a song.
posted by brownpau at 6:54 PM PST - 16 comments

Dying for Lifesaving Drugs: Will desperate patients destroy the pharmaceutical system that produces tomorrow's treatments?Reason Magazine
posted by BrotherCaine at 6:48 PM PST - 43 comments

Art Crimes is a fascinating site about the history of vandalism in the fine arts, recently revived by a Frenchwoman who left a lipstick imprint on a 2 million dollar painting by Cy Twombly. Other examples include a British suffragist attacking a Velazquez with a knife, an installation vandalized by the Israeli ambassador to Sweden, two Chinese performance artists who urinated into Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, and a Canadian art student who vomited blue gelatin on a Mondrian. Oddly enough, the artwork that has weathered the most attacks is Rembrandt's The Night Watch, which has survived two knife attacks (one by an unemployed teacher with a butter knife) and an attack by a mental patient who had a compulsion to fling sulfuric acid at fine artworks. Other art vandalism methods, including glass cutters, hammers, scissors, guns, and ink, are discussed here.
posted by jonp72 at 3:48 PM PST - 38 comments

Knob Creek Gun Range , a former military-munitions test range situated near Fort Knox is home to the "World's Largest Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show". Run by private citizens excercising their second amendment rights (Kentucky has no state-level gun laws) the focus is on Class III firearms - things like assault weapons and anti-tank rifles, but also the occasional high-caliber sniper rifle and cannon. Hold my bourbon and watch this! (more)
posted by phrontist at 3:29 PM PST - 73 comments

Devolution: Nature's U-Turn is a new music video concept by rock band KoRn for their single Evolution. The premise? Mankind isn't evolving, it's devolving... getting dumber by the day. Wait. Haven't we seen this before? We have, and Devo's Gerald V. Casale isn't happy. "We denounce this as impostors playing with fire." he says of Korn on the Club Devo website. He elaborates in a new interview with Rolling Stone, including a possibility of their first new record in 20 years. Devo's also put out a new song, "Watch Us Work It", which appears in a commercial for Dell laptops [youtube link], with a official music video and single release to come.
posted by SansPoint at 2:43 PM PST - 57 comments

The International Disaster Database provides a complete summary of natural and technological disasters from 1900 to 2006. You can see disaster summaries by country or by disaster, such as volcanoes, industrial accidents, transportation accidents, or floods, along with even more detailed data. If this is too much, the tonic is the World Database on Happiness which will allow you to look at happiness trends among countries and happiness maps [prev.].
posted by blahblahblah at 2:38 PM PST - 2 comments

As it builds a presence and invests in virtual worlds, IBM is hoping to avoid potentially embarrassing incidents by establishing official guidelines for its more than 5,000 employees who inhabit "Second Life," Entropia Universe," "Forterra," "There" and other virtual worlds. "IBM, whose 20th century employees were parodied as corporate cogs in matching navy suits, doesn't have an avatar dress code. But guidelines suggest being 'especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona's appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business.'" Other directives: "Don't discuss intellectual property with unauthorized people." "Don't discriminate or harass" and by all means, "Be a good 3D Netizen."
posted by ericb at 2:23 PM PST - 8 comments

An unexpected treasure trove online... The audioguides for Rome's city museums are available as mp3s! Not only can you find guides to one of the oldest public museums in the world, the Capitoline Museums, but you can also hear several commentaries (including video) on the ancient Roman Altar of Augustan Peace, and download the audioguide of both the Barracco Museum of Ancient Sculpture, and that of the Museum of Rome. Download them before you go and save 5 euros at each museum, but they're *invaluable* even if you listen to them from home! Enjoy!!
posted by Misciel at 2:19 PM PST - 7 comments

NASA has a rule requiring that astronauts go at least 12 hours between "bottle and throttle." Reports say not everyone followed it, and they went up anyway.
posted by djlynch at 1:39 PM PST - 39 comments

Burmese artist Htein Lin was imprisoned by his country's military government from 1998 to 2004 on charges of planning opposition protests. In prison he was forced to improvise to continue painting, using paints smuggled in by guards and white cotton prison uniforms as canvases. In place of brushes he used his fingers, cigarette lighters, syringes, pieces of netting, dinner plates, and blocks of soap. Burma Inside Out (PDF), an exhibition of some of his prison work, will be on display at the Asia House Gallery in London from July 27 to October 13.
posted by homunculus at 12:26 PM PST - 10 comments

B. H. May, CBE, as an astronomy student at Imperial College London co-authored two papers, MgI Emission in the Night Sky Spectrum and An Investigation of the Motion of Zodiacal Dust Particles (pdf) and was on the way to completing his doctorate when he dropped out to form a band. After a 36-year break May went back to school to get his PhD. Last year he co-authored Bang! the Complete History of the Universe. This year he is finishing up his thesis-"Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" and this week is in La Palma finishing spectographic observations. Mr May also plays guitar.
posted by MtDewd at 12:22 PM PST - 24 comments

Abandoned places: A satellite facility. A drag strip. A sports arena. A factory. A highway. A school. Another factory. An industrial park. A missile site. A church. A brewery. And much more at Abandoned But Not Forgotten. (Warning: Web 0.2 site with very large photos of variable quality...)
posted by dersins at 12:00 PM PST - 41 comments

Parody is... also a sincere form of flattery, in the advertising biz. Sonic's ad agency, after a couple of dud trys at viral marketing to complement their popular campaign, decides instead to jump on all the parodies that people are posting on YouTube, then recognize some of the better ones, also on YouTube.
posted by dammitjim at 11:26 AM PST - 55 comments

Zeitgeist, the movie [Google Video link embedded] - An interesthing, if bizarre, mix of buffed-up comparative mythology, 9/11 conspiracy theories and New world order rambling about banks, loans, debts and war. Is paranoia the spirit of our times?
posted by Baldons at 11:16 AM PST - 31 comments

Over 1100 cattle have died in South Dakota in the last few days due to high temperatures and humidity. This is certainly not the first or even the worst event of its kind. Some are saying they were caught off guard, but warning signs are common. For the most part, only confinement cattle are being affected despite extremely high temperatures all over cattle range lands in the US and Canada.
posted by limmer at 10:45 AM PST - 17 comments

Formerly 23, now 22 Korean Christian missionaries have been taken hostage in Afghanistan. The group's leader and pastor was killed on his 42nd birthday. Hostages have been taken before in Afghanistan, but a video on YouTube, perhaps connected with the missionaries, has been creating a stir. Here.
posted by suedehead at 10:30 AM PST - 68 comments

Modern shunga by Bob Kessel. What's shunga? Previously. NSFW.
posted by nthdegx at 10:18 AM PST - 16 comments

Four endangered gorillas were found shot dead in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a conservation group announced today. For all the evil bastards that do this, there are many, many more good people fighting the good fight to help keep gorillas healthy. One, even has a blog.
posted by james_cpi at 9:21 AM PST - 41 comments

Vinokourov. Rasmussen. Luke Bream?
Looks like he'll make it! [via]
posted by Chuckles at 9:02 AM PST - 57 comments

Can't Tell Me Nothing: Kanye West's new video features Zach Galifinakis and Will Oldham. "The hilarious clip was shot on Galifianakis' farm in North Carolina and illustrates the many trappings of big pimpin' on the homestead: rollin' tractor-style, hay bailin' and stayin' faithful in a room full of hoes (better known as cows)." Some backstory.
posted by deern the headlice at 8:35 AM PST - 56 comments

Peanuts, by Charles Bukowski. via
posted by xmutex at 8:30 AM PST - 29 comments

Ever wondered what it is like to have your portrait painted? How would you pose ... "sidelong glance, coy grin, gazing into the distance, serious and stylish"? Here's an interesting perspective on the subject, describing the process start to finish, written by a sitter, but published on the website of the painter, together with his added commentary on the process. And how did the subject like his finished portrait? "In a word, the painting makes me uncomfortable. ... It must be a terrific portrait." (via)
posted by woodblock100 at 7:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Zotero is one of several free, open source research tools developed by the previously mentioned Center for History and New Media. It runs within Firefox and allows you to easily capture bibliographic information from a variety of online databases and catalogs, insert in-text citations and generate properly formatted bibliographies... if you're into that. (Also check out CHNM's fantastic projects page.)
posted by cog_nate at 6:55 AM PST - 13 comments

Other Women's Voices: "Below are links that will take you to passages from over 125 women writers. The entries are on women who produced a substantial amount of work before 1700, some or all of which has been translated into modern English. Each entry will tell you about the print sources from which the translated passages are taken; it will also tell you of useful secondary sources and Internet sites, when those are available." An amazing resource. (Via wood s lot.)
posted by languagehat at 6:49 AM PST - 19 comments

What did XTC, The Cramps, Echo and the Bunnymen, Dead Kennedys, Klaus Nomi, The Go Gos, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Alley Cats, Oingo Boingo, Pere Ubu, The Au Pairs, Gang of Four, The Members, UB40, Steel Pulse, DEVO, X, The Fleshtones, The Police, Wall of Voodoo , Gary Numan, Skafish, Joan Jett, Chelsea, John Cooper Clarke, Invisible Sex, and many more have in common? URGH A MUSIC WAR.
posted by mattoxic at 6:37 AM PST - 65 comments

The Reading Experience Database is collecting information about 'what British people read, where and when they read it, and what they thought of it' between 1450 and 1945. You can sample the database by searching for reader responses to (e.g.) Shakespeare or Dickens or Karl Marx, or to newspapers in general. It's a collaborative project, open to everyone, so why not contribute?
posted by verstegan at 6:24 AM PST - 2 comments

FolkStreams:" Remembering The High Lonesome " - Dillard Chandler
Roscoe Holcomb - Little Birdie
Roscoe Holcomb - Graveyard Blues
And from Roscoe Holcomb comes the song which is the soundtrack of the eponymously entitled Moonshiner. Dylan described a certain untamed sense of control in his singing and Ralph Stanley once said 'you could feel the smell of wood smoke in his voice'.
Yes, I watched High Lonesome Sound again, last night...
posted by y2karl at 6:12 AM PST - 12 comments

Charming, informative and interesting range of stories about antiques and collectibles: Antiques Roadshow, Follow the Stories; from Cornucopia of Crate Labels, A Lost Little Picasso, Space "Junk": Buying, Owning, and the Law to What is Catlinite?
posted by nickyskye at 5:51 AM PST - 4 comments

Learn to navigate using the stars in 15 minutes! OK, well maybe not navigate, but you'll know exactly where Orion, Betelgeuse, Polaris (the North Star), Cassiopeia, and Jupiter are.
posted by Mave_80 at 5:51 AM PST - 36 comments

It is just over 10 years since Billy Mackenzie committed suicide. As frontman of The Associates, Mackenzie was, even by rock star standards, an eccentric individual. There is a great fansite with many articles on Mackenzie and his music which gives further info for those who want to know more. A Scottish TV documentary on Mackenzie and the Associates is here: Part 1;Part 2; Part 3; Part 4. For those who want to get straight to the songs and that wonderful voice, many Top of the Pops performances are on youtube: Party Fears Two; Club Country; 18 Carat Love Affair (featuring Alan Rankine playing a chocolate guitar).
posted by ClanvidHorse at 4:36 AM PST - 9 comments

Pjotro - aka The Man With The Musical Suit - is "upset that his [viral ad for Nokia] was leaked".
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:46 AM PST - 18 comments

An excellent example of the consequences of the Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Raich decision: today the United States House of Representatives voted down a bill which would have prohibited the DEA from targeting State-authorized medical marijuana dispensaries. Almost simultaneously, the DEA raided 10 medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles.
posted by mullingitover at 12:53 AM PST - 67 comments

Dudeism, the slowest-growing religion in the world, an "ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness." Duuude, be sure to check out The Tao Of The Dude and Duderonomy, and if everything is copacetic with you, get your instant online ordination, whoa! Via.
posted by amyms at 12:08 AM PST - 40 comments

The Daniel Dennett interview with Bill Moyers [GoogleVid now with free viewing]. Dennett's talks at TED. Dennett with Robert Wright [GVid]. And additional AV at Daniel Dennett Multimedia -- his presentation at the Center for Naturalism (on "Breaking the Spell") is excellent. [Previously 1, 2, 3, 4]
posted by McLir at 11:15 PM PST - 21 comments

Not to be outdone by the appearance of the Octosquid (previously), other cephalopods have undearthed 900-year-old hidden treasures from the Koryo Dynasty and are taking up residence in the Monterey Bay (Bugmenot works for this last link). Squirrels are also getting in on the action.
posted by christopherious at 8:32 PM PST - 11 comments

The author of the excellent (and previously mentioned) 60s/70s soul music blog Funky 16 Corners has put together an awesome compilation album available for free download, called Rubber Souled, featuring soul covers of Beatles classics; the results are intriguing, from Stevie Wonder's funked out version of We Can Work It Out to a nightmare inducing Bill Cosby cover of Sgt Peppers.
posted by jonson at 8:21 PM PST - 31 comments

It puts the lotion in the basket. [nsfw] You know how in that movie, The Silence of the Lambs, the serial killer they're trying to catch is skinning women because he wants to make a suit out of real girls? If this product was around, perhaps we could have saved the lives of a lot of fictional victims.
posted by Sully at 8:09 PM PST - 75 comments

Sports Illustrated's website is running a feature where all of their regular columnists, for all the sports the site covers, writes an essay on "The Best Game I've Ever Seen." Some fine examples of modern sports writing.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:00 PM PST - 6 comments

American Sign Language Flash Video Dictionary is a high quality, free dictionary with a huge number of signs. It includes specialized dictionaries of religious signs, conversational phrases, and ASL for babies. Unfortunately it's not possible to link to specific signs, but if you look inside you'll find words from "Abbreviate" to "Zoom" and phrases such as "I cannot fasten my belt," "has he been neutered?" "I already took a bath," "are you married?" and "I need a better firewall."
posted by alms at 7:11 PM PST - 16 comments

Ward Churchill fired. The Colorado Board of Regents made a point to say that he was not fired for the infamous essay in which he called financial workers killed in the World Trade Center attack to "little Eichmanns" for their role in facilitating US corporate financial interests. They insist that he was fired for "serious, repeated and deliberate research misconduct that falls below the minimum standard of professional integrity, including fabrication, falsification, improper citation and plagiarism," allegations made against Churchill even before his controversial post-9/11 remarks. While others warned that the firing signaled a breach of academic freedom and assault on the idea of tenure itself, Churchill announced he is suing the university. (previously)
posted by inoculatedcities at 5:45 PM PST - 156 comments

OH! DANGO! JAM Incredible little Japanese game, Tamagotchi + Pokemon + awesome music = great happy fun time. Z is attack, X is magic, C is defend, and spacebar is special move. Don't forget to save often using end -> data regist. [via]
posted by knowles at 5:36 PM PST - 13 comments

"Japanese Relocation" - A short propaganda film created by the US government & the "Office of War Information - Bureau of Motion Pictures." The subject has been much discussed previously on MetaFilter. Here and here, among other threads.
posted by The Deej at 4:19 PM PST - 21 comments

A year after a reprimand from the government cost him a weekly writing gig at a local newspaper, popular Singaporean blogger mr brown continues to write and produce humorous podcasts that cover a wide range of topics, including government denials of homelessness, a controversy over selling condoms at a local university bookshop, and a crackdown by neighbouring Malaysia on blogger freedom of speech.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:50 PM PST - 14 comments

Real Life Super Heroes! Perhaps you've heard of Angle Grinder Man, Superbarrio and Terrifica. How about The Eye, Tothian or Mr. Silent? There is, of course, the Wikipedia page for Real Life Super Heroes. A Myspace group chock full of spandex and gadgets. The member list is a great place to start browsing.
posted by loquacious at 3:37 PM PST - 29 comments

As Image Comics prepares to resurrect Golden Age comics under the rubric of public domain, it may be worth revisiting heroes of yore, like Stardust (by Hank Fletcher), Fantomah and Titan. Even more can be found through the Pure Excitement reprint webzine, (unfortunately burdened with clumsy navigation— modify the final segment for all 36 issues).

Of course, a fair number of them do show up on the Stupid Comics page, like Fantomah versus the Weird Gorillas, alongside more modern mockeries of books like Man or Astroman and Superman meets the Quik Bunny.
posted by klangklangston at 3:33 PM PST - 17 comments

"Each day brings new, stressful situations we must deal with in our business lives and our personal lives [sic]" - and let us not forget the bullying. That said, you may either breathe diaphragmatically, enter a deathmatch with your monitor (only applicable for "Computer Rage"), fantasize about starting the countdown on the the edifice/entity of your choice, or simply do yourself in (but for heavens sake, do the job correctly).
posted by ikebowen at 2:59 PM PST - 6 comments

Oscar the cat. Harbinger of death. (more info available behind registration at the NEJM)
posted by revmitcz at 2:55 PM PST - 94 comments

Picnicmob would like to invite you to a picnic and seat you precisely with those most like you.
posted by sudama at 1:37 PM PST - 46 comments

A bunch of natural gas canisters blew up near downtown Dallas today. Eyewitness video!
posted by punkfloyd at 12:53 PM PST - 92 comments

Korla Pandit is considered by many to be the godfather of exotica music. His live show "Adventures in Music" on KTLA in Hollywood was the first all music television show ever broadcast and featured Korla wordlessly sitting behind his Hammond organ, playing and staring wistfully into the camera. His trademark turban and gemstone complimented his exotic image and even up until his death, he maintained that he was raised in New Delhi by his Indian father and French mother. Korla Pandit was actually born John Roland Redd in St. Louis, MO, to Ernest Redd, pastor of the Second Baptist Church, the largest black church in Columbia, MO, and Doshia O'Nina Redd, who was of Creole lineage. You can read all about the transformation of John Redd into Korla Pandit at the great Korla Pandit web site.
posted by Otis at 12:42 PM PST - 9 comments

Something heavy weighing on your heart? Confess. Mom Confessions. Dad Confessions. Office Confessions. Bride Confessions.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:22 PM PST - 34 comments

Robert Fisk on post war Lebanon explains the reality on the ground and critiques US media coverage of the Middle East. via juan cole & icga contains YouTube
posted by adamvasco at 11:59 AM PST - 7 comments

Busting the Merchant of War. "The Bush administration finally nails a notorious supplier to terrorists—after he spent 30 years hiding in plain sight." [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus at 11:58 AM PST - 15 comments

Bored on your summer vacation? Well, the US government has lots of fun stuff for kids to do on line. Learn fascinating facts about cows (and agricultural marketing!) from the Department of Agriculture. Take a ride to Money Central Station with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. If you live in a federally-funded housing project, HUD wants you to learn more about being a good citizen. Want something more action-packed? Help FBI Special Agent Bobby Bureau go undercover, or become one of America's Crypto-Kids at the NSA. Play thrilling puzzle games or visit the world's most secret museum at the CIA. Play more games or become a Disaster Action Kid at FEMA! And no list of government kids' pages would be complete without revisiting the children's art contest from the ATF, which I've linked to before...
posted by dersins at 11:48 AM PST - 5 comments

"A Girl Like Me." 1947. Dr. Kenneth Clark conducts his "Doll Test." Dolls identical except for color were shown to black children at Scott's Branch Elementary School. His findings were published in 1950. According to his testimony during Brown v. Board of Education (1954), "Eleven of these sixteen children chose the brown doll as the doll which looked 'bad.'" 2007. 18-year old Kiri Davis wins CosmoGIRL's Take Action Hollywood film contest with her documentary short from 2006, "A Girl Like Me." (YouTube) In the film (produced with help from Reel Work Teen Filmmaking), she recreates Clark's "Doll Test" and finds: "Fifteen of the twenty-one children preferred the white doll." Sixty years on, and we've still so far to go. (via MyUrbanReport and Drifting Through The Grift)
posted by grabbingsand at 11:14 AM PST - 22 comments

Joey Lawrence. No, not that one.
posted by FunkyHelix at 11:04 AM PST - 26 comments

Hailing from wholesome Riverdale, USA, The Archies were a fresh-faced gang of teens who rocketed to the top of the pops. Listen to their first album on ArchieComics.com now! [Via Comics Should Be Good!]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:11 AM PST - 28 comments

50 best movie robots of all time including D.A.R.Y.L, Eve VII, the Cylons, Daft Punk, Max, Box, but not Daleks, obviously.
posted by tombola at 9:03 AM PST - 76 comments

When you reach for a light switch in North America, what you encounter is probably pretty boring. No doubt you know you could spice it up a little. Maybe you don't know just how many choices you have. The range of styles available is huge. There are some that may not have much of a market. There are others you probably wouldn't put up in the office.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:44 AM PST - 36 comments

It's Wednesday--take a chill pill.
posted by mattbucher at 8:19 AM PST - 26 comments

Because of booming economies in China, India and elsewhere the price of metals, such as copper and aluminum, have reached all time highs. Empty beer kegs for example can be sold for up to $27. Washington DC is experiencing a crime wave of metal thieves who are stripping everything from lamp posts, gutters, catalytic converters and bleacher seats.
posted by stbalbach at 7:58 AM PST - 48 comments

Lindsay Lohan, America's Dream Girl*, has been a potent pop culture event ever since her rise to fame in Disney's 1998 remake of Parent Trap. As the first red haired child ever hired by Ford Modeling Agency at the age of 3, Lohan clearly had her young eye aimed at Hollywood. Her breakout role came with the 2004 release of Mean Girls. Skyrocketed into the public consciousness, Lohan quickly released two pop albums and pumped out classic films such as Herbie: Fully Loaded and Georgia Rule. With Britney Spears's descent into oblivion and Paris Hilton's problems with the law, Lohan appeared ready to supplant Britney as The It Girl. But with her rocky personal life and her love of night clubs, the party scene, strawberry quick, and after problems with her studio, and running low on cash, people wondered, could Lohan turn her life around? Sadly, that appears to be a no. After being charged with a DUI on Thursday for an accident in May, Lohan was charged with another DUI (and cocaine possession) Monday morning after chasing another car. A story is quickly unfolding involving a fired assistant, bad damage control, a bar at a rehab center, prison chic, more bad parenting and a request for privacy / denial of drug possession. Mugshots were also released. Is she the next Pete Doherty?
posted by Stynxno at 7:42 AM PST - 181 comments

Don't speed in Virginia. Want to speed in Virginia? Go ahead if you don't live here. If you're a resident, make sure you know about the new monster fine and additional responsible driver taxes. So, pay attention to the speed limit and know where to look for speed traps. Don't like it? Speak up. Tell Governor Kaine. He defends the fees. Be sure to vote too.
posted by onhazier at 7:01 AM PST - 78 comments

Steadicam operators! Are you tired of simply walking with your camera rig to achieve that special wobble-free shot? Or maybe you're making a movie on the cheap and can't afford all that heavy equipment? Behold! The future of filmmaking has arrived! Presenting: Steadicam on a Segway! (Warning: Obnoxious, awful Flash interface on second link)
posted by 40 Watt at 6:46 AM PST - 28 comments

Don't speed.
posted by dangerousdan at 4:08 AM PST - 56 comments

Universe is the newest project from Jonathan Harris, who was also behind the amazing WeFeelFine, and the Yahoo Time Capsule. Here's a talk he gave about his projects at TED 2007.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:23 AM PST - 20 comments

Anybody out there remember The Left Banke? They were a kinda Beatle-y 60's pop/rock outfit out of New York City. Critics labeled them "baroque-pop", apparently due to the "classical" influences in their music. They're surely best known for their catchy little harmony vocals hit from 1966, Walk Away Renée. And in a reversal of the more common trend of white artists covering Motown hits, a rather unexpected version by The Four Tops turned up. Arguably, the song wasn't exactly a perfect fit for the soul vocal quartet at the time they first recorded it, but more recent performances show that they've grown comfortable with it over the years: maybe it's the slower tempo. Here's the lyrics. And the story behind the song. And what the hell, the Wikipedia page. And Songfacts. They all have something of interest to offer concerning this durable little number, originally written by a 16-year-old!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:39 PM PST - 49 comments

Radio 1.0 meets Web 2.0. TUN3R is a virtual AM/FM radio for the internet, complete with a little dial and a boss key, creating a uniquely satisfying way to search for radio stations. On a related note, also worth perusing is this discussion of the expanding world of social music sites. That list misses quite a few neat sites including the graphically stylish Musicovery; the Hype Machine, which pulls music from blogs; and Goombah, which reads your iTunes library, but there are many more. [some prev]
posted by blahblahblah at 10:22 PM PST - 16 comments

Remember all that talk about the Gulf stream turning south and England entering an new Ice Age?
Well, better take a look at this one: (at the bottom)... Ok, this is the Jet stream, not the Gulf stream, but turbulence is turbulence and chaotic systems have a way of quickly migrating to new attractors, often first displaying a kind of turbulence during the transition phase. Here's a link to a .pdf that may be helpful (or not...)
I tell you - Winnipeg (Canada's Global Warming Success Story) just keeps lookin' better and better! But, hopefully, never this good...
posted by sporb at 10:15 PM PST - 10 comments

Michael Korn has gone missing. According to the Colorado Daily Michael Korn threatened the lives of evolutionary biology professors at CU-Boulder. PZ Meyers has Korn as a guest at his scienceblog. He's a tad concerned. Bug Girl pays attention to these type of threats. Meanwhile, Deb Frisch has her own timeline & a fan club which is clocking its first year anniversary!
posted by filchyboy at 10:13 PM PST - 13 comments

Gawker's Poll for Most Annoying Liberal Arts College.
posted by Esoquo at 10:04 PM PST - 75 comments

Macrohistory. Prehistory to yesterday. This site describes humanity from prehistory to the 21st century - stories about ideas and events. Maps. Timelines index. Country profiles.
posted by nickyskye at 10:01 PM PST - 14 comments

Banjo
posted by Mblue at 8:47 PM PST - 61 comments

Kiiiiiii for any occasion, or just for fun! Kiiiiiii, that's K & 7i's, is a Japanese girl duo whose sound has been described as "Noise Pop" and "Experimental Fun Music." They've made a couple of bizarre music videos, played concerts in Japan and America over the last seven years, and now have an album and a live DVD. Listen to more on their myspace page, grab an .mp3 and read the history, and try to download 5 .mp3s from their site.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 8:10 PM PST - 22 comments

"The [textbook] industry charges outrageous prices for new textbooks while simultaneously doing everything it can to make older versions unusable or obsolete. There is simply no reason that a new calulus textbook should cost $157. The study of calculus, at least the type of calculus that most of us need to study in high school or undergraduate programs, has not changed significantly in decades." - Textbook Revolution.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:00 PM PST - 76 comments

The Sphinx Observatory atop the Jungfraujoch in the Swiss alps is one of the most amazing man-made objects I've ever seen. A UNESCO world-heritage site, it holds the distinction of being the highest (in altitude) structure in all of Europe. Approachable by a train that runs inside the mountain (via a tunnel dug between 1896 & 1926 at the cost of a small fortune, not to mention many lives), the Observatory rests atop a glacier which has been hollowed out to feature a year round gallery of never-melting ice scultptures (glacial ice is spectacularly pretty), and an elevator up to the research station.
posted by jonson at 7:39 PM PST - 30 comments

The maps of the London Underground and the Washington Metro are iconic in their cities and a favorite of experts on information graphics. They share a similar philosophy: sacrifice geographical accuracy in order to clearly illustrate the system. What if the New York Subway map were drawn the same way? What about the Interstate system?
posted by silby at 7:32 PM PST - 85 comments

Kinder Morgan oil pipeline ruptured near Vancouver, British Columbia Thick, black oil dripped from lampposts, splattered across suburban lawns and crept into Burrard Inlet after a geyser of crude spewed from a burst Kinder Morgan pipeline Tuesday. [google news] Work crews ripped into the TransMountain pipeline about 12:30 p.m., causing the oil to "explode," as one witness put it, from the ground and burble up from manholes, pouring down streets toward the ocean, according to witnesses. Kinder Morgan bought the pipeline from a Canadian utility in 2005, and is known as a "poster child for pipeline problems." More Kinder Morgan accidents.
posted by KokuRyu at 5:43 PM PST - 37 comments

Newsfilter: 30,000 customers in the San Francisco area lost power today at about 1:50pm PDT, in a series of power failures which knocked out a major datacenter hub: 365 Main. The hub controls servers for many social media sites, including Technorati, Netflix, Yelp, Craigslist and all Six Apart properties, including TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox. (6A's twitter stream has updates.) More here and here. Amusingly enough, 365 Main tempted fate and released a press release today patting themselves on the back for "two years of 100-percent uptime".
posted by zarq at 5:03 PM PST - 80 comments

The Sergeant at Arms of the US Senate, as chief law enforcement officer of the "greatest deliberative body in the world", wears many hats. Capitol security, IT support and network security, telecommunications, videography and photography, human resources, getter of you out of bed and dragger of your ass to work, and house mother for the occasional slumber party.
posted by litfit at 3:50 PM PST - 26 comments

Faceoff -- the three founders of college social networking site ConnectU have accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their business plan and code. Tomorrow they face-off in a Boston courtroom. "It's a mélange of gossip about upper-crust Silicon Valley, allegations of old-school Ivy League skulduggery and an oddball cast of characters that ranges from precocious dot-com millionaires to aspiring Olympic athletes. In what other intellectual-property lawsuit are two of the plaintiffs a set of Harvard University-educated twins from Greenwich, Conn., with several international rowing championship medals under their belts? ...Despite the backstory's semblance to screenplay fodder, the outcome is anything but scripted, at least for now."
posted by ericb at 2:31 PM PST - 31 comments

Little kids are tough, but I have discovered their weakness.
posted by churl at 2:09 PM PST - 48 comments

DieKus. Haikus made out of pictures of gravestones, being plastered around New York City by a mysterious artist named Nick Beef. (whose name has some mysterious origins of its own)
posted by fungible at 1:56 PM PST - 17 comments

Who Can Sleep With Brows on the Prowl? Larry Blamire, new things maker out of ones we all remember extraordinare, and stiff dialogue dynamo is back in bad form with his latest offering, The Trail of The Screaming Forehead. Coming to festivals in Long Beach and SF this month. (previously!)
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:22 PM PST - 9 comments

Max Dohle's Stapelgedichten is a simple concept. Stack up some books, take a picture: a poem is born. Most are in Dutch, but there are some English ones as well.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:21 AM PST - 32 comments

Quite an entrance. Single link youtube post to a pretty damn amazing performance at the Miss Black America 2001 drag show / pageant.
posted by dersins at 10:08 AM PST - 57 comments

Drew Carey - coming on down. Drew Carey announced on Letterman last night that he will be the next host of The Price Is Right. Begin crafting your "Florida Loves Drew" shirts now.
posted by daedsiluap at 9:35 AM PST - 113 comments

George Galloway suspended from parliament after uk parliamentary inquiry- gives speech prior to being ejected - (nsfw?). "It has come to something," he continued, "When the leading anti-war MP could get a fairer hearing in the Republican Senate than in the British House of Commons."
posted by sgt.serenity at 8:57 AM PST - 63 comments

"The user who submitted the video was speaking innocuously into the camera when the image of “goatse” was flashed for the briefest moment in 1/24th of a second" Live, Nationwide on the CNN/Youtube Democratic Debate.
posted by peewinkle at 8:33 AM PST - 125 comments

"This site brings together just a few of the hundreds and hundreds of new species discovered since the year 2000. Hopefully, it will inspire us to see the world as a place still being explored, and give us the courage to conserve and protect the fragile, shrinking areas of habitat left on Earth... areas which, as we see here, contain creatures we haven't even yet Imagined... " That, of course, makes living in a low impact woodland home even more appealing or scary (you choose). Although I will admit that even the best of intentions can lead to perile, as in the case of Timothy Treadwell (as previously discussed). He too wanted to be 'one with nature'.
posted by NotInTheBox at 7:35 AM PST - 18 comments

The wave equation is v = ƒλ. How does that make you feel?
posted by ikebowen at 6:18 AM PST - 48 comments

A Welsh Black Box to make biofuel whilst capturing car fumes
posted by ItsaMario at 3:29 AM PST - 25 comments

Since Rupes went to great lengths to protect Wendi, see some other examples of newspaper self-censorship
posted by Geezum Crowe at 3:25 AM PST - 14 comments

Sally Cruikshank intends to put all of her animations on YouTube, including her opening credits for Ruthless People, the Seseame Street Feets too Big short, and don't miss the Oingo Boingo assist on Face Like A Frog. She's very active in the comments section of some of her videos, too, answering questions and participating in the discussion of her work.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:56 PM PST - 19 comments

Sumo Volleyball - online competition at its finest. Yep, Friday flash fun on Tuesday. For those of you who used to have ICQ, this game will be very familiar. Four different variates of play are offered. 1 on 1 is by far the favorite and the most fun, IMHO. One tiny downside, activeX based, and thus, pretty much IE only. There are also other games via the home page, of which Kung-fu chess is also very popular.
posted by killThisKid at 10:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Leave Those Kids Alone. The idea that parents should be engaging in play with their children is a modern concept (and not necessarily a good one, according to anthropologist David Lancy). Via.
posted by amyms at 9:52 PM PST - 69 comments

The Man of the Hole
posted by stbalbach at 8:49 PM PST - 23 comments

Are you tired of NOT smelling like characters in Neil Gaiman books?? Well thank Morpheus, just like Alex Burgess in The Wake, your long nightmare is at an end thanks to this collection of Gaiman-inspired perfumes & colognes.
posted by jonson at 7:10 PM PST - 50 comments

The poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym A project at Swansea University puts the works of one of mediaeval (14th century) Europe's literary giants on line in full, including a full concordance, digitalised manuscripts, English translations and recorded readings. Dafydd was a great poet of love, lust and nature and a master of strict form. His work was also hilariously funny.
posted by Abiezer at 6:57 PM PST - 11 comments

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.
posted by chunking express at 5:22 PM PST - 70 comments

E-motional breakdown: The state of e-mail misery. Is email finally at the breaking point? My inbox is so oversaturated I need professional advice to avoid bankrupcy. Or maybe I'll just wait it out -- the kids might know best.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 5:09 PM PST - 32 comments

I'm tired of looking at attractive, fashionable people.. Behold: Ugly Outfits New York.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:37 PM PST - 93 comments

A few weeks ago, the first traditional Vedic temple (or mandir) opened in Europe. Yesterday the first of its kind was inaugrated in Canada. Something of an architectural marvel, each piece of the temple was made in India, the stones all being interlocking and load-bearing, thereby eliminating the need for nails or steel supports. In fact, it's put together entirely using ancient techniques.
posted by stinkycheese at 3:33 PM PST - 10 comments

Baseball (flash) from sandlots to majors. Arguably harder than actual baseball.
posted by klangklangston at 2:26 PM PST - 50 comments

The Theiving Magpie: Jimmy Page's Dubious Recording Legacy [more inside]
posted by anazgnos at 2:01 PM PST - 86 comments

The British Library is posting the Diary of Dr. Saad Eskander, the courageous director of the Iraq National Library and Archive. His entries "detail the daily hurdles of keeping Iraq’s central library open, preserving the surviving archives and, oh yes, staying alive."
posted by Alec at 12:48 PM PST - 11 comments

Cassetteboy "record famous people and make it sound like they're talking about sex or drugs. It's a winning formula" but they also bring anarchic political awareness to an already piratical realm. Harry Potter (not for sensitive Potterphiles), Big Brother, Bill Gates, Jeremy Clarkson, Jamie Oliver and The Streets face the wrath of some adolescent humourists with far too much time on their hands while David Attenborough surveys British wildlife and Frank Sinatra sings about 9/11. And for dessert Martin Luther King Jr plays Deal or No Deal. Most links YT, NSFW, YMMV.
posted by criticalbill at 10:50 AM PST - 19 comments

On executives and their libraries, "C.E.O.’s are starting to collect books on climate change and global warming, not Al Gore’s tomes but books from the 15th century about the weather, Egyptian droughts, even replicas of Sumerian tablets recording extraordinary changes in climate."
posted by geoff. at 10:43 AM PST - 41 comments

Highway 61 Revisited: Like a Rolling Stone (1966); Tombstone Blues (2000); It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (1971); (Rolling Thunder version); From a Buick 6 (NOT DYLAN); Ballad of a Thin Man (1966); Queen Jane Approximately (1998); Highway 61 Revisited (1969); Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (1995); Desolation Row (1998).
posted by OmieWise at 10:12 AM PST - 29 comments

In January 2006, small amounts of genetically engineered rice turned up in a shipment that was tested ... by a French customer of Riceland Foods, a big rice mill based in Stuttgart, Ark. Testing revealed that the genetically modified rice contained a strain of Liberty Link that had not been approved for human consumption. What's more, trace amounts of the Liberty Link had mysteriously made their way into the commercial rice supply in all five of the Southern states where long-grain rice is grown. Aventis Crop Science had contracted with a handful of farmers to grow the rice, which was known as Liberty Link because its genes had been altered to resist a weed killer called Liberty, also made by Aventis. Then, the French pharmaceutical giant that owned Aventis Crop Science decided to sell the U.S. biotech unit and abandon the very emotional business of reengineering the foods we eat. "We didn't want to take any chances," says a former Aventis executive. "We burned and buried enough rice to feed 20 million people." Last November, the USDA retroactively approved the Liberty Link rice for human consumption.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:58 AM PST - 91 comments

A coworker hipped me to this, and I found it quite astonishing that I'd heard nothing about it.

It's a great irony that, while the United States has probably never been less popular among Canadians than in the era of George W Bush, plans to integrate Canada more deeply into the US have been proceeding at a brisk clip. The threat of Canada being absorbed into the US has traditionally provoked strong reactions here, as the pitched electoral battles over the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1980s and '90s attest. But the issue seems to have largely disappeared in recent years, leaving the impression that the push for deeper integration has stopped or that Canadians no longer care about it. Neither is true.

It seems that a goodly number of politically active groups are aware, however, and are organizing protests. How effective will those protests be when they won't be able to get within several kilometers of the site? Has anyone got any thoughts about this? How will they fit 52 stars on the Star-Spangled Banner? Should I don my tinfoil hat? Is the protest even relevant, given that most of the news reports I can find are calling it a fait accompli?
posted by I, Credulous at 8:34 AM PST - 91 comments

Made in China. A look inside the world’s manufacturing center. Flash video slideshow of the port of Shenzhen (7:00 minutes with sound)
posted by srboisvert at 7:49 AM PST - 26 comments

Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks , as brought to us by our very own Lore Sjöberg. English majors, begin your griping now.
posted by SansPoint at 5:21 AM PST - 297 comments

A never-before-seen look inside a hospital in the Middle East. Yemen is a country where women have an average of 7.9 children compared to 2.7 in the rest of the world. This disparity might have something to do with a culture that censures contraception and allows marriages to be consummated when the bride is as young as nine years old. VICE gains exclusive access to a Yemeni hospital maternity unit...
posted by domdom at 3:38 AM PST - 64 comments

Weatherfilter: Widespread flooding in the UK leaves hundreds of thousands of homes without water and power. Extraordinary scenes of the floods command many of the front pages of Monday's newspapers. The Environment Agency has warned water levels are expected to exceed those of the devastating floods of 1947.
posted by chuckdarwin at 2:55 AM PST - 56 comments

"Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values. Because at their core, those values are sound. That is why, even in places where you'll find virulent anti-Americanism, you'll also find enormous affection for things American." An article by Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
posted by A189Nut at 2:41 AM PST - 53 comments

Time Travel, or, the art of causing events after they've already happened. [requires java, more inside]
posted by Avenger at 2:39 AM PST - 34 comments

Bye Bye, Bat Boy! The Weekly World News is suspending publication.
posted by Yakuman at 10:54 PM PST - 80 comments

Wired presents an extraordinary look at "one of the most ambitious search-and-rescue missions in history," after one of Microsoft's researchers, Jim Gray, and his boat, the Tenacious, went missing in the Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco in January 2007. Cartography meets law meets 2.0 technology. "First the Coast Guard scoured 132,000 square miles of ocean. Then a team of scientists and Silicon Valley power players turned the eyes of the global network onto the Pacific." Eventually, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, the US Navy, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium jumped in – "as did astronomers from leading universities." To this day, Jim Gray has never been found, and his disappearance cannot be explained. Read Wired for more.
posted by BLDGBLOG at 10:37 PM PST - 32 comments

No @#&!, Sherlock: This Week in the Very Obvious.
posted by homunculus at 10:25 PM PST - 28 comments

What can I know? What should I do? For what may I hope?
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:45 PM PST - 104 comments

Photographer Martin Klimas specializes in capturing high speed photography, but with a more artistic aesthetic than the usual "bullet through an orange", etc.
posted by jonson at 6:51 PM PST - 26 comments

Sing to us, O Muse, of our Timeless Myths. A site dedicated to Classical, Norse & Celtic mythology and Arthurian legends.
posted by Kattullus at 4:33 PM PST - 11 comments

Maxed out, a great documentary about credit is on Google video.
posted by andywolf at 4:28 PM PST - 43 comments

Before Caligula, Cat People & Star Trek: Generations, even before he played Alex de Large in Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell was dashingly rebellious in Lindsay Anderson's If. (Some background of that cafe scene)
posted by growabrain at 4:02 PM PST - 16 comments

Child Poverty In Chicago -- photographs by Stephen Shames, (c) 1985. Included is Lafeyette (sic) of "There Are No Children Here."
posted by kmennie at 4:02 PM PST - 6 comments

Avatar Shakespeare Lady Macbeth Interpreted by Dame Microsoft Mary
posted by janetplanet at 3:41 PM PST - 7 comments

Watch Stevie Wonder play the talk box and the drums. Don't you regret that you stopped playing that instrument as a child, hmm? [Via]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:15 PM PST - 35 comments

...The U.S. has probably not yet fully woken up to the appalling fact that, after a long period in which the first motto of its military was "no more Vietnams," it faces another Vietnam. There are many important differences, but the basic result is similar: The mightiest military in the world fails to achieve its strategic goals and is, in the end, politically defeated by an economically and technologically inferior adversary. Even if there are no scenes of helicopters evacuating Americans from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, there will surely be some totemic photographic image of national humiliation as the U.S. struggles to extract its troops. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have done terrible damage to the U.S. reputation for being humane; this defeat will convince more people around the world that it is not even that powerful. And Bin Laden, still alive, will claim another victory over the death-fearing weaklings of the West.

Iraq hasn't even begun (more within)
posted by y2karl at 12:02 PM PST - 147 comments

The Hello Experiment
posted by lemonfridge at 11:50 AM PST - 35 comments

India elects the first woman President. Pratibha Patil, most recently Governer of of the western desert state of Rajasthan has just been elected The President of the Republic of India. While outgoing President APJ Abdul Kalam retains popularity he was unwilling to continue for a second term, political considerations led to a considerable struggle for who would be India's next President. Primarily a figurehead, the new head of state, Ms Patil does not have her country's unanimous support or approval diluting the landmark achievement for women in India.
posted by infini at 11:10 AM PST - 9 comments

British actor Jim Dale is greeted as a "star" by children and adults when he appears in public and at readings. He has narrated the U.S. audiobooks for the "Harry Potter" series. For the series he worked six-and-a-half-hour days, recording about 18 to 20 pages. Over eight years he has crafted over 200 distinctive voices for the books' characters. He takes into account the aging of the main characters, who started out as 10 and 11 in “Sorcerer’s Stone” and are now 17 and 18 in “Deathly Hallows.” Like the books, the tapes and CDs have been a publishing phenomenon selling more than 5.7 million copies. For his work on the “Harry Potter” series, Mr. Dale has won a Grammy Award, a record 9 Audie Awards (the Oscars for audiobooks) and holds the record for creating the most voices in an audiobook in the Guinness Book of World Records. Audio clips and video interview.
posted by ericb at 10:27 AM PST - 38 comments

Secular or islamic society? Kemal Atatürk - the Father of modern day Turkey - is watching closely and so is it's secular minded military. Is the country inching closer to Islam or Democracy? A 90% (!) turnout of the 42 million voters is to be expected for this important decision. Al Jazeera has a insightful special covering the event.
posted by homodigitalis at 8:40 AM PST - 44 comments

The French Will Never Forget.
posted by hama7 at 8:25 AM PST - 66 comments

Simplify Media has made my Sunday morning, and if you have pals with good taste in music it will probably make your day, too. It's a small download (4 MB) that allows you to stream the iTunes libraries of up to 30 friends as long as they're online.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 7:32 AM PST - 28 comments

The Once and Future Prince [NYTimes link] Although Prince declined to be interviewed about “Planet Earth,” he has been highly visible lately. His career is heading into its third decade, and he could have long since become a nostalgia act. Instead he figured out early how to do what he wants in a 21st-century music business, and clearly what he wants is to make more music. Here's a YouTube celebration of some of man's hits over the years: Black Sweat, Let's Go Crazy, When Doves Cry, Purple Rain, Little Red Corvette, Nothing Compares 2 U (ok, the Sinead version), and finally, Prince's basketball showdown with Charlie Murphy.
posted by psmealey at 7:14 AM PST - 29 comments

Reintroducing Yvonne Ridley…
posted by hadjiboy at 7:03 AM PST - 19 comments

After 15 years, Schickele Mix is no more - "Dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal" - That's the tag line of Schickele Mix, the best, broadest, funniest, and most interesting music education program ever heard. Created and hosted by Peter Schickele (best known for his other entertaining music education creation - P.D.Q. Bach - a fictional composer son of Johannes) Schickele Mix juxtaposed Bach with the Beatles, Elgar with Duke Ellington and the Everly Brothers, Tuvan throat singing with twanging Texas Swing, or Schubert with Spike Jones in "suites" demonstrating the universality of musical techniques and themes. Checkout the playlists and you'll see what I mean. After 15 years of broadcasts and re-broadcasts, Schickele Mix is no more. This is a shame, since three and a half years of educational weekly programs could be repeated for new audiences, if not continuously, then with a gap of a couple years until something better comes along. These programs have such rich content, it's a shame future audiences can't be created. I've got to wonder whether it's not just the 5 cycles of repeated playings (which, by the way, I've never gotten tired of) that's the whole reason for its disappearance from the airways. The program depends on a wide range of recorded music. Perhaps the new proposed performance royalties, or even merely their threat, have managed to claim Schickele Mix as a victim. As Peter Schickele said at the end of each program, "It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that certain je ne sais quoi. And with the apparent demise of Schickele Mix, we've lost a serious source of that important "je ne sais quoi."
posted by fpatrick at 5:14 AM PST - 33 comments

Miniature Robotic Insect Takes Off Researchers have created a miniature robotic fly that weighs just 60 milligrams and has a wingspan of three centimeters for covert surveillance. Thats progress!
posted by ItsaMario at 4:59 AM PST - 17 comments

This short film begins on a somber note...railing against the dangers of pornographic magazines in the 1960's, but as it progresses, the images it shares with the viewer are more and more tantalizing...from nudity, to promotion on sodomy, to bestiality (really, just a farmgirl pic with a goat in the far background), to hardcore S&M and B&D...all displayed for the soon-not-innocent eyes of the film's target market.
posted by Kickstart70 at 10:38 PM PST - 51 comments

Peter Stafford, psychedelics investigator and author of the Psychedelics Encyclopedia (PDF preview), has died. [Via BB.]
posted by homunculus at 10:15 PM PST - 17 comments

It thinks it's people!
posted by thirteenkiller at 8:56 PM PST - 81 comments

WTF[triple youtube links with more goopy goodness in the related videos section]
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 7:31 PM PST - 41 comments

Tammy Faye Bakker-Messner has passed away. Love her or hate her, she has been a cultural fixture. Televangelist in the midst of a landmark scandal, documentary subject, friend and hero to the gay community, friend of Ron Jeremy.
posted by The Deej at 6:53 PM PST - 224 comments

Pretend it's 1980. Let's also imagine that you are in Rome, and for whatever reason you have decided to go see this musical group called The Talking Heads.
At the concert, these are the songs that the band plays: Psycho Killer; Stay Hungry; Cities; I Zimbra; Drugs; Take Me to the River; Crosseyed and Painless; Life During Wartime; Houses in Motion; Born under Punches; and The Great Curve.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:12 PM PST - 154 comments

Play that funky Wii (MP3), a Vanilla Ice/Nintendo mashup by DJ BC. See also
posted by Mwongozi at 12:57 PM PST - 12 comments

10 (11) interesting/historical recordings. From List Universe. This site uses the term "Top ten" but as with anything when you talk in absolutes people get pretty ornery, so lets just say here are 11 very interesting sound files, from exorcism to castrato.
posted by edgeways at 12:16 PM PST - 29 comments

Amazing 747 landings at in the St. Martins [youtube] YouTube has a great collection of 747 landings at Princess Juliana International Airport in the St. Martin Islands, famous for its short landing strip — only 2,180 meters. Here's the view from the cockpit. Most of the videos seem to have been taken at Maho Beach. Here's an Airbus. Previously.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:00 PM PST - 43 comments

Ravelry is a knit and crochet community that my wife tells me is stirring up a lot of excitement lately. I'm not a knitter but I was impressed by the screenshot tour and the handy "check your place in line" tool.
posted by jragon at 11:23 AM PST - 25 comments

Some of you likely have read, The Mouse and His Child. Some of you may remember the movie. It is not in print. Here it is on YouTube.
posted by Alex404 at 10:58 AM PST - 14 comments

[...] now they’re really interested in this one song– and they still won’t make eye contact, looking through their little lenses, taping this one song for their blogs or for their fucking YouTube [accounts] or whatever, [...] and it just pissed me off.

Band of Horses singer gives San Diego YouTuber the finger, prompting reactions ranging from sympathy with the artist to basically "stop whining, it's part of the job".
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:21 AM PST - 72 comments

Game developer/ perfume critic Theresa Duncan has died, and longtime companion Jeremy Blake is missing. The art world is buzzing about the seeming suicide-by-water of video installation artist Jeremy Blake. The perfume blogs are fizzing with sadness over the death of Theresa Duncan, whose suicide preceded Blake's. The cops are not releasing the notes left by the late, pretty people, but a clue might be found in the paranoiac screed Duncan posted on her blog in May, in which Blake's ex-girlfriend, the CIA, FBI, Church of Scientology, Jeff Gannon, bloated plutocrats and many other bugbears of the psy-ops crowd were put on Duncan's mental merry-go-round and given a real strong spin.
posted by Scram at 9:37 AM PST - 37 comments

Translating poetry is really really hard.
posted by nthdegx at 9:35 AM PST - 31 comments

The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir is a masterpiece of exotic design and workmanship that rises above the grey commuterland of north-west London. Made out of 5,000 tonnes of Italian marble and Bulgarian limestone and hand-carved, Europe's first traditional Hindu temple represents the ancient Indian traditions, arts and philosophies. It may not be the largest traditional temple outside India, but it certainly is the most beautiful. Deities and motifs spring from the walls, ceilings and windows, representing the faith and beliefs of a people that date back over 8,500 years.
posted by chuckdarwin at 5:53 AM PST - 22 comments

Best (or Worst) Pickup Lines Ever. Other useful lists on this site include: Things nobody can like, Why I hate implants, Petite phrases that pack a punch, How to tell if your boyfriend is cheating and everyone's favorite, my favorite sex blogs
posted by psmealey at 5:40 AM PST - 42 comments

A (rather beautiful) subway map of web trends. Similar, previously. Via Strangemaps.
posted by WPW at 5:16 AM PST - 16 comments

The Young Ones [TV-Links. Previously 1, 2] "A mad, helter-skelter, rude, awesomely violent, unpredictable, swaggering, staggering, joyously infantile, exhilarating steamroller of a sitcom, The Young Ones provided the breakthrough for the new generation of aggressive and forthright 'alternative' comedians." (I recommend Summer Holiday and Bambi.) Lots of great and soon-to-be-great guests. Look for Emma Thompson in Bambi as one of "the posh kids."
posted by McLir at 1:38 AM PST - 87 comments

9 Superpowers made real. [Via Digg.]
posted by homunculus at 9:40 PM PST - 31 comments

Apocalypse Oz
posted by darkripper at 4:57 PM PST - 34 comments

"If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record". Ah, for the halcyon days of yore, when obstuctionism was so obviously unconstitutional that it required a nuclear response.
posted by Flunkie at 4:43 PM PST - 22 comments

"Something woke her in the night." Genre fiction is rising from the dead to terrorize serious literature! In response to Michael Chabon’s (previously) new book, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Ruth Franklin wrote a review in Slate beginning with the line “Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it.” Well, that didn’t go over too well with Ursula K. Le Guin, who bent her considerable imagination and skill to the task of envisioning the zombie corpse of genre fiction and wrote an entertaining response, which was then given a suitable cover. The whole thing is also available as a pdf linked to from Le Guin’s website. via
posted by gingerbeer at 3:58 PM PST - 65 comments

"Pimp my rice paddy." Crop art for aliens, instead of by them.
posted by dersins at 2:32 PM PST - 24 comments

The Buckminster Fuller Institute is now accepting submissions for it's new, annual design challenge contest. Submissions must be applicable with real-world technology, solving real-world problems with a minimum of ecological impact. The offered prize is $100,000, on par with some of NASA's challenges. ( Buckminster Fuller on Wikipedia, and E2 )
posted by loquacious at 2:05 PM PST - 9 comments

Why science fiction is hard. Inspired by reports of a creative new, Rube-Goldberg spamming technique in World of Warcraft, MetaFilter's own Charlie Stross imagines trying to explain gold farming to someone from 1977. (Previously: 1, 2, 3)
posted by straight at 1:38 PM PST - 59 comments

Visiting Northern Arizona? Well, of course you should see the canyon. However, you might want to skip that sky walk nonsense. Instead you might want to visit Walpi village on the Hopi Lands. The Hopi have lived out there on three mesas (an island inside another reservation) since the first century A.D. They were never moved to other areas or reservations, and spent a lot of time defending their land in many important ways over the ages. These days you can have a very intimate visit to the oldest, most continually occupied place in North America, if you don't mind a little drive. Don't bring your camera.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 1:37 PM PST - 17 comments

I just returned from the 2007 Venice Biennial Art Exhibition . It's considered one of the most important events in the art world, but frankly, I found it a bit boring - after all, things like this just don't do much for me - and I don't seem to be alone in that opinion. Although to be fair, the VB has a long history of criticism
posted by janetplanet at 1:33 PM PST - 13 comments

FBI's CIPAV nabs first victim: Former Timberline High School student is the first (known) person to be caught by the FBI's secret spyware program, known as CIPAV (Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier). Wired broke the story Wednesday, then received a form letter from the FBI in response to a few key questions. (more inside)
posted by mrgrimm at 12:35 PM PST - 26 comments

Children of God film to premiere September 6 on HBO. Filmmaker Noah Thomson goes in search of the young adults who have made a life for themselves outside of the controversial Christian cult "The Children of God." [previously] Many children of this cult have failed to thrive in the outside world and committed suicide, unable to adjust to life in a society indifferent to their abuse as children. Premieres Thursday September 6 on HBO. Link to trailer (sound is low). Jane Magazine has an article on the group and Noah Thompson in its June/July issue. [link to text and PDF scans].
posted by k8t at 11:55 AM PST - 18 comments

Manuel Noriega will be getting out of jail soon.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:55 AM PST - 22 comments

Bill O'Reilly got word that Jet Blue was sponsoring the YearlyKos convention. He sent a camera crew to confront the CEO of JetBlue, asking why they were supporting radicals. He has spent the week comparing DailyKos to the KKK and Nazi websites. He spent the majority of his radio and TV shows discussing this "hate" site. He said the right-wing equivalent of Kos was Fred Phelps. Jetblue caved and apologized. Has someone ever misunderstood a website this bad?
posted by DougieZero1982 at 11:46 AM PST - 84 comments

Swedish Woman Gets Superfast Internet. She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg's 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said. She's already received one offer of marriage.
posted by three blind mice at 10:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Iranian man stoned to death for adultery after serving 11-year prison sentence. Unsuccessful, unofficial investigation here. Amnesty International pleads for life of his partner.
posted by shivohum at 10:19 AM PST - 44 comments

Chore Wars: Finally, you can claim experience points for housework.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:18 AM PST - 17 comments

So you thought that old cliche about civil servants having only half a brain was just a conservative canard? Well, think again.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:57 AM PST - 45 comments

Do the Coup D'etat. The White House has made the Constitutional Crisis official: the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges against an official invoking executive privilege -- even if it's blatantly illegal.
posted by spiderwire at 8:51 AM PST - 294 comments

200 Bad Comics.
posted by Prospero at 6:44 AM PST - 58 comments

The shortest-splitline algorithm for drawing N congressional districts. You can seee examples of their unbiased district-drawing algorithm in action compared with the gerrymandered districts drawn by politicians.
posted by chunking express at 6:23 AM PST - 38 comments

Use everyone's logic and vocabulary skills to figure out what the secret word is.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:13 AM PST - 27 comments

In the year 1982, Michael Jackson releases Thriller, which according to the Guinness Book of World Records[wikipedia], is the greatest selling album of all time. The 14 minute music video [youtube] was the longest/most expensive at the time, and was directed by filmmaker John Landis.[imdb] Details of the video here[wikipedia] Now onto the show. [all youtube links] Thriller with Legos. At a wedding. The tv show Good Morning America on the wedding version. At walmart. At another wedding. In Final Fantasy. More animatics. Professional dancers. More dancers. And More. Yup, more here. Even more dancers. Sigh. Even more dancers. And it's not just for 2 year olds. College students too. Penn State's Blue Band. The Bollywood Version. They even do it in Prison.
posted by filmgeek at 6:11 AM PST - 28 comments

Jay is Games is holding its 3rd Casual Gameplay Design Competition. I love short games (the kind one can play in the course of a conference call) and there's a couple of goodies in here. My favorite is Gimme Friction Baby and my current high score is 16.
posted by qldaddy at 6:09 AM PST - 15 comments

I'm no toothpick myself, and admire and enjoy the female form in all its sizes, especially ladies with some meat on them. Thus, my idea for collecting art of a bigger-sized WW happened
posted by nuclear_soup at 5:36 AM PST - 23 comments

"Thriller" performed by inmates in the Phillipines
posted by exogenous at 5:32 AM PST - 35 comments

Antbuster: Friday Flash Fun
posted by Rubbstone at 3:55 AM PST - 11 comments

In 1840, the Cuerdale Hoard - the greatest Viking silver treasure trove ever found outside Russia - is found in Lancashire. 2007: a father and son find an amazing Viking hoard while metal detecting in in Harrogate. The most important find of its type in Britain for over 150 years, it reveals a remarkable diversity of cultural contacts in the medieval world, with objects coming from as far apart as Afghanistan in the East and Ireland in the West, as well as Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe.
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:07 AM PST - 20 comments

Despite a sharp national decline in crime, American criminal justice has become crueler and less caring than it has been at any other time in our modern history. Why? Former conservative economist Glenn C. Loury on incarceration in America. [via]
posted by Sonny Jim at 2:55 AM PST - 64 comments

Errol Morris, documentary filmmaker, talking pictures in the N.Y.Times. The comments are not bad either. (previously)
posted by From Bklyn at 2:23 AM PST - 7 comments

Rose and Camellia. Flash Friday. It's in Japanese, so I don't know which girl is Rose and which is Camellia. But I do know this -- they resolve their problems by slapping each other. Instructions are in Japanese as well, but it's pretty simple: Click "attack" and run your mouse over your opponent's face to slap, click "evasion" and run your mouse over yourself to dodge a slap.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:56 AM PST - 14 comments

Shooting the Messenger (PDF). A new report from Free Press "dispels the many myths manufactured by the telecommunications industry to excuse America's poor broadband performance compared to the rest of the world."
posted by homunculus at 9:23 PM PST - 38 comments

Poet Sekou Sundiata died on the 18th. If you aren't familiar with his work, you can listen to him here. Interviews here.
posted by serazin at 8:36 PM PST - 13 comments

Mark Malkoff visits, buys, and consumes something from all 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in one day. (single link non-youtube video post)
posted by alms at 8:12 PM PST - 71 comments

The Climate Engineers. "Efforts to manipulate the climate and weather have a long history of exaggerated claims and beliefs, and a dangerous tendency to become militarized. Even if they succeed, who will control the global thermostat?" Public policy scholar James R. Fleming explores the issues in a Wilson Quarterly article.
posted by amyms at 8:06 PM PST - 11 comments

1812 Shmupfilture. Sure, it could be better, but somehow I think this is the only time I'll see Tchaikovsky mashed up with Ikaruga. @
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:40 PM PST - 8 comments

These days, you don't have to be rich to have all the right stuff, at least for the night. Going deep or flying high, these days you don't have to be rich, to pretend. Just a good credit card, and no thought for the future.
posted by nomisxid at 7:33 PM PST - 8 comments

Hiccups Archive.
posted by hama7 at 7:30 PM PST - 15 comments

For nearly two decades, fifty computers have been running day and night on an extremely complex problem. Today, scientists from the University of Alberta announced the result of all that work - they have solved the game of checkers. Chinook, the computer program they developed, can never be beaten - try for yourself. While checkers is the most complicated game to be solved so far, it is not the only one. You can play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe, of course, but also connect four, and a 6x6 board of the game othello. Chess players are already thinking ahead to when their game is solved, with Advanced Chess being Gary Kasparov's answer. The hardest game to completely solve might be Go, which may not be solved until 2100.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:02 PM PST - 71 comments

Nate Hill is a rogue taxidermist. He collects raw materials from some nasty places, and creates new, better animals from them. Now he has a bigger project. Then there is his TV show, Chop, chop.
posted by nowonmai at 6:17 PM PST - 12 comments

The Shah of Iran talks about torture, his own popularity, and corruption.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 6:10 PM PST - 23 comments

The Mesoamerican Ballgame was central to the culture of pre-Columbian Central America, with Mayan kings using ah pitzlaw (he the ballplayer) as one of their royal titles. It is played with a rubber ball, which sometimes had human skulls for cores. The object of the game was to get the ball through a vertical hoop. Called many names throughout history, pitz, ulama and juego de pelota, this game has been played for 3000 years. Though usually a form of recreation, sometimes it would be played for ritual purposes, with the players of the losing side being sacrificed. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 5:52 PM PST - 21 comments

NFL Superstar implicated in dog fighting ring, has sponsorship suspended. Meet NFL quarterback, Michael Vick. Virginia Tech Alum, Heisman Trophy candidate, Vick has been indicted for taking part in a dog fighting ring. In defense of public relations (if not his employee), here is what his boss had to say on the matter at hand.

What is dog fighting? Why is it bad? Here is an FAQ on What dog fighting from the Humane Society of the US. Also, here's if you need to be further dissuaded, here is an ugly page on the blood sport, with some gruesome pics.
posted by psmealey at 5:07 PM PST - 121 comments

The Green Leap Forward "Environmentalism is China’s fastest-growing citizen movement. Beijing isn’t cracking down on these new activists—it’s empowering them."
posted by delmoi at 3:51 PM PST - 20 comments

The Mystery of Ales :: a new take on the Alger Hiss problem
posted by anastasiav at 2:21 PM PST - 11 comments

Ad juxipositions. Just a very quickie link to oddly placed ads.
posted by edgeways at 12:34 PM PST - 39 comments

Speaking of 'highly virulent earworms,' today's NY Times suggests that searching for this year's 'song of the summer' may lead to "one sad conclusion." Have today's hitmakers failed to live up to the jams of yesteryear? Others have offered their opinions...
posted by whahappen?! at 12:25 PM PST - 35 comments

Buy Sudafed, have a chat with Officer Friendly. Detective Brian Lewis returns to his desk after lunch, scanning e-mails he missed. One catches his eye: It says a suspected member of a methamphetamine ring bought a box of Sudafed at 1:34 p.m. at a CVS pharmacy. Minutes later, Lewis is in his truck, circling the parking lot, searching for the woman.

MethCheck is one of the new computerized tracking systems that will notify police of your decongestant purchases. Buy too much, or buy if you're already a suspect, and you'll be getting a visit from the law. Uncomfortable? Better hold your nose - the next version of the software will match you against everyone on your street to see if your aggregate buying warrants investigation.

We've discussed the Sudafed problem before, but this level of tracking opens up a new can of worms. It seems a small step before you get this tautology:
Why do you care that she bought Sudafed? Because she's a suspected meth ring member.
Why do you think she's in a meth ring? Because she bought Sudafed, silly!
posted by bitmage at 11:27 AM PST - 139 comments

"It seems like a really original and interesting read." It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first line of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" is one of literature's most famous, wittily kicking off one of the most beloved of all classics. And yet, 17 British publishers failed to recognize it and rejected the manuscript when Jane's name and the title were changed. What happens when the gatekeepers of literature are illiterate?
posted by CunningLinguist at 10:35 AM PST - 124 comments

He's a computer tutor for seniors, who also seems to have a giant collection of music that's rare these days. Shortly before leaving to fight in Korea, he was kissed by Celia Cruz in 1951, among other adventures.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 9:42 AM PST - 12 comments

Because everything should taste like bacon.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:48 AM PST - 106 comments

Let the bodies hit the floor. Single-link, YouTube-like post.
posted by c:\awesome at 8:07 AM PST - 105 comments

The Dreaded Half Worcester warning: music is just one of the possible vexing configurations players encounter in candlepin bowling, a regional variation on traditional bowling that's unique to northern New England and maritime Canada. Developed in Worcester, MA, around 1880 (warning: more music), the game is played in gorgeous antique alleys dotted around New England and Nova Scotia, and features a 4 1/2" wooden or rubber ball, three rolls per frame or "box," and 15 and 3/4" narrow, cylinder-shaped pins that are the devil to knock down -- even though you can use the dead wood to knock other pins down, a score over 200 is extremely rare. Find some lanes and play or just take the quiz - like so many regional quirks, this one's undergoing a bit of a revival.
posted by Miko at 7:43 AM PST - 54 comments

The AKARI mission has produced the first infra-red sky map in over 20 years.
posted by nthdegx at 4:15 AM PST - 20 comments

If it's highly virulent earworms you're looking for, you will probably want to check out "Spanish Flea," an irrepressibly cheerful song written by Julius Wechter and recorded by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass. This slight, two-minute instrumental from 1965 (originally with lyrics by Cissy Wechter) has become so popular as 'waiting room music' and 'hold music' that it's become a cliche of the genre, and it's quite likely that you've heard at least a snippet of it at some point in your life. (Perhaps repeatedly, late at night, at your local supermarket?) It's been used for several film soundtracks (American Pie 2, Ocean's Eleven, Striptease, etc.) and, perhaps most famously, as one of the theme songs for the show "The Dating Game." Of course, in the most striking gauge of its cultural ubiquity, The Simpsons has referenced it not one but four times (only two are available on youtube). The song's infectious melody has spawned innumerable homages, ranging from interesting to amusing to thought-provoking to imbecilic to bizarre.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 4:02 AM PST - 49 comments

On a summer afternoon in 2006, New York photographer Gerard Maynard captured his neighborhood from a rooftop at 7th Avenue and 110th Street. The resulting 2,045 photographs, stitched together, comprise a 13-gigapixel panorama of Harlem's skyline. Best viewed with HDView option (MS Internet Explorer only).
posted by LinusMines at 11:12 PM PST - 32 comments

Australian Prime Minister John Howard dipped his toe in the waters of new media this week by releasing his climate change policy via youtube, however which is the real clip? Unfortunately Labor was ready with their own message. Rumours abound (via crikey- login req’d) that the PM’s staffers are censoring comments, or are they?
posted by mattoxic at 10:35 PM PST - 23 comments

Ian Crossland says YouTube has become a zoo. There is no irony or sarcasm in his voice when he says it. Bare witness to the plight of a man who is too busy to finish his webpage and he's too busy to be famous like he believes everyone else wants to be, because Ian Crossland wants to save humanity with YouTube. You heard me. Why does this deserve mention in The Blue? Because of all the responses to him. The YouTube community is not taking his opinion very well, or very lightly. You may find it very amusing, or agravating, or you may think he's got a point; you may wanna join in the fun.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:54 PM PST - 58 comments

Alexyss Tylor was right! Semen is a powerful drug. (Fairly SFW, text-only link.)
posted by Brittanie at 9:39 PM PST - 58 comments

Problem: How to get laid. Solution: Edit Super Mario World. I got the idea from About.com. Baby.
posted by Laugh_track at 7:22 PM PST - 33 comments

Okay, it wasn't exactly banned, but the new Dove ad for their anti-aging products-- featuring tastefully nude older women-- was pre-emptively rejected by broadcast networks. Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty shares reactions, lets you meet the cast, and invites you to discuss. Previously on MetaFilter: Dove's short "Evolution" about how image-manipulation distorts beauty standards.
posted by hermitosis at 7:15 PM PST - 68 comments

Untitled , HTML, 400 x 300 pixels.
posted by 31d1 at 6:04 PM PST - 59 comments

WeNeither. This is a cute idea for a dating site. [via mefi projects]
posted by chunking express at 5:28 PM PST - 39 comments

Angered by the previous 'Assault on Iran', the Union of Islamic Student Societies of Iran hit back yesterday by the official debut of Special Operation: Rescue the Nuke Scientist. [YouTube]
posted by lenny70 at 4:30 PM PST - 13 comments

For the ancient pedants amongst you: Roman Trivia. Part of an excellent website on Roman history.
posted by Eekacat at 4:21 PM PST - 12 comments

The Language of Farting
posted by empath at 3:26 PM PST - 31 comments

So now we can all stop, right? A brief catalog of Bloglish clichés from Gawker.
posted by klangklangston at 3:22 PM PST - 125 comments

Psychiatry in Pictures is a monthly feature of The British Journal of Psychiatry which often demonstrates art created by the psychopathologically afflicted. Other installments include portraits of important figures in the history of psychiatry, paintings drawn during art therapy, and photographs of (quite inhumane) psychiatric treatments.
posted by charmston at 1:54 PM PST - 15 comments

This year, 500 million people will get malaria and about a million of them will die from it. Some scientists believe that one out of every two people who have ever lived have died of malaria. Here are some reports from Sierra Leone on efforts to control this deadly disease.
posted by mattbucher at 12:58 PM PST - 43 comments

Just when you thought virtual reality couldn't get any worse, it's 3D Email! "Immerse yourself in 3-D as you read and write your mail. Hang with your mail poolside, or feed your spam to the sharks! Deleting spam is so much fun, you may wish you had more! ...It's an email metaverse!"
posted by verb at 12:41 PM PST - 46 comments

The son of industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger (creator of the distinct styling of the Apple IIc and subsequent products, as well as founder of frog design) shares memories and photographs (auf Deutsch; Google cache) of Apple's early attempts at an iPhone.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:53 AM PST - 6 comments

WIRED: A cell mobile phone helped police find the body of missing student Kelly Nolan. "The average citizen is not aware that they are carrying a location-tracking device in their pocket..."
posted by chuckdarwin at 10:42 AM PST - 51 comments

The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the president nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways. The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning -- a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes -- but by the consequences of defeat. As President Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America." Tellingly, the Iraq war's intellectual boosters, while insisting the surge is working, are moving to assign the blame for defeat. And they have already picked their target: the American people...

The Iraq War Is Lost by Peter Galbraith July 18, 2007
See also Imperial Overreach: Washington’s Dubious Strategy to Overthrow Saddam Hussein by David Isenberg November 17, 1999 (PDF)
posted by y2karl at 9:12 AM PST - 139 comments

Anyone CAN Cook [NY Times link] 101 incredibly simple 10-minute recipes from Mark Bittman.
posted by dersins at 9:09 AM PST - 70 comments

Presidential candidate Ron Paul (previously) introduced H.R.2755 on June 15, 2007, a bill "To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes." None of the major news sources have thus far reported it (CNN, BBC, Reuters, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, AP) which presumably means it's not newsworthy, perhaps because it doesn't have the slightest chance of passing. Nonetheless, it doesn't mean it's a bad idea. But then, that's the problem with many of his positions such as abolishing the IRS, personal income taxes, and ending the War On Drugs. When asked why he wants to be president, he said, "I want to restore the original intent of the constitution, which maximizes individual liberty and restrains the government from doing the things they shouldn't be doing." And as was said on The Colbert Report, he was one of the few who voted against the Patriot Act and the Iraq war. LOL!
posted by sluglicker at 9:02 AM PST - 224 comments

Researchers have demonstrated what veteran dumpster divers have known for years: contact with a disgusting thing, even without the possibility of contamination, makes us perceive something as disgusting.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:31 AM PST - 57 comments

australianscreen launched today. You can view clips from Australian feature films, documentaries, TV programs, shorts, home movies, newsreels, advertisements, other historical footage, and sponsored films produced over the last 100 years, with curators’ notes and other information about each title. [via Margaret and David]
posted by tellurian at 8:17 AM PST - 8 comments

Kerwin Mathews, 1926-2007. The genre actor may be best remembered as the title character in one of my favorite movies, the classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 8:08 AM PST - 8 comments

OLE Coordinate System is the software that drives Echochrome, an Interactive Optical Illusion. The playable demo lets you play in an Escherian space. [via]
posted by solipsophistocracy at 7:27 AM PST - 15 comments

In 2004 some proposed that "bloggers" be named TIME's Persons of the Year. In 2007 Business Week reveals "How Top Bloggers Earn Money" and how much.
posted by ericb at 7:22 AM PST - 35 comments

LP Cover Lover The world's greatest LP album covers. Groovy, man. [some nudity, some total insanity]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Sean Bonney's translations of Baudelaire are unconventional. Instead of following the form of the French originals they are semi-concrete typewriter poetry. In a review of the book, everyone's cup of tea, onedit magazine says that they are "certainly the best translations of Baudelaire in English ever written." Which might explain why they published 35 of them in their latest issue. You can listen to Bonney read his translations here [mp3]
posted by Kattullus at 4:37 AM PST - 61 comments

Cabinet: The Movie. Starring Australian PM John Howard and a bunch of chickens. [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:06 AM PST - 13 comments

Claybourne was a unique and well produced radio drama set in New Zealand. It was science fiction, a thriller, a soap opera. It aired in 96 five minute episodes, but died mid-storyline when it's creative team- like so many creative teams- couldn't get it together.
posted by jiiota at 2:44 AM PST - 7 comments

Bots've come a long way, baby. So everybody knows about Honda's flashy ASIMO, and the sadly canceled QRIO, but now Wakamaru, Mitsubishi's entry into the field, seems to have been first among semi-autonomous humanoid robots to find a job. I wish it luck, but it might need to grow up a little. Maybe it can learn from Domo, son of Cog, robot of yore.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 11:44 PM PST - 15 comments

Where's an egg? Psuedo-Russian noir wumpus action. Confused? Consider bidding on the only copy of the instructions in existence. Need a break? Check out some other fine titles from completely made up game company Videlectrix.
posted by cortex at 9:37 PM PST - 41 comments

Deleted Images
posted by Falconetti at 8:38 PM PST - 38 comments

"After all, the best part about sitting in an ivory tower is pissing on the people below you." Legendary statistician Bill James, the father of Sabermetrics, is smarter than you.
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:44 PM PST - 27 comments

Mathematicians solve the 75-year-old Möbius mystery.
posted by nevercalm at 6:26 PM PST - 29 comments

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows recently leaked on a few torrent sites... or did it? Security measures taken included pallets of books protected by alarms, baited lawyers, and even delivery trucks with satellite tracking, which seems at odds with this UPS delivery truck stacked with loose boxes 5 days before they are to be delivered. A spokeswoman at Scholastic, the book's US publisher, said "she was aware of at least three different versions of the file 'that look very convincing' with what she described as 'conflicting content.'" So what's real and what's fake? We'll just have to wait and see.
posted by jwells at 6:02 PM PST - 120 comments

Unnatural Disaster: Global Warming and Our National Parks (PDF). A new report from the National Parks Conservation Association explores the impact of global warming on America's national parks. [Via Gristmill.]
posted by homunculus at 5:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Alasdair Gray 0-70 2004 BBC Artworks Scotland film made on the occasion of Glasgow artist and author's (best known for Lanark) seventieth birthday. Also a short clip and another film on his mural work as embedded Youtubery at his site. (Previously.)
posted by Abiezer at 3:54 PM PST - 19 comments

Tim Kreider's editorial cartoons have that sort of vulgarity, puerility, absurdity, topicality, pith, bile, and self-awareness that help me get through the unending despair of reading the news every day. (He also draws great faces.)
posted by klangklangston at 2:27 PM PST - 46 comments

Dear Friend, I am a Swiss Banker currently in possession of over $ 1 Billion in funds stashed away by the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo. Our Swiss Confederation President Micheline Calmy-Rey said her government is holding just $6.6m frozen in accounts. "We discussed the question of Mobutu's funds and my government is prepared to restore the money to the DR Congo as soon as possible," Ms Rey told reporters in the DR Congo capital, Kinshasa, after talks with Mr Kabila. But we can help you get the rest of the 92.4 million dollars if you will just send us your bank account number and call to confirm your ID and pin number.
posted by infini at 1:29 PM PST - 65 comments

Before the 5th film and the upcoming 7th book of the Harry Potter series Rupert Grint was showing off in the epically ridiculous children's film Thunderpants! Rent it Today! One of the finer children's films about harnessing the power of flatus. Sadly not related to Thunderpants Johnson or Thunderpants Clothing c'est la vie.
posted by French Fry at 1:14 PM PST - 17 comments

How to Read 600 RSS Feeds a Day for Pleasure and Profit. Video of Robert Scoble showing how he culls 600 RSS feeds a day for his weblog, Scobleizer, using Google Reader.
posted by shivohum at 1:13 PM PST - 40 comments

Contemporary Japanese bamboo art.
posted by nickyskye at 10:17 AM PST - 13 comments

I am Murloc. Cool World of Warcraft music video. (Note: Impressed me, but I've never played WoW. Might not impress WoW players, I dunno. Won't change your mind if you already hate WoW. Horrible vocals.)
posted by Bugbread at 10:02 AM PST - 51 comments

"I like to think that baseball players are a pretty imaginitive bunch. I mean, these are guys who, when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, said something nuts like 'baseball player' — and then didn’t change their answer." Bunt Cake: a webcomic for those of us who like baseball cards recontextualized and our humor depantsed and set on fire. Or something like that. [via mefi projects]
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 9:35 AM PST - 37 comments

Elizabeth Edwards: the Salon interview. An earnest, candid conversation with one of the most interesting figures in the 2008 candidate cadre.
posted by hermitosis at 8:40 AM PST - 86 comments

Hey look, the Cerne Abbas giant has a buddy. Unamused pagans wish for rain.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:34 AM PST - 44 comments

Profile of Phil Hansen - "Strokes of a Genius" - [Hansen] gives pointillism a modern twist. You might call it "kinetic fragmentism" — pointillism in motion. For instance, Hansen completed an on-camera piece of paint-dipped karate chops to reveal a portrait of martial arts legend Bruce Lee. Preferring to post videos of the process of his work on the internet instead of showing the finished product in galleries, Hansen shows the madness in the method in his amazing art.
posted by spec80 at 8:32 AM PST - 8 comments

Motherland - a photo essay of Russia by Simon Roberts. (via conscientious)
posted by sgt.serenity at 8:23 AM PST - 5 comments

Maddox on iPhone
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:58 AM PST - 91 comments

This web site details how to construct a high performance bicycle lighting system. Also contains information on bells, horns, dynamo powered lights, and other safety devices (Warning! This site contains a small fair amount of nudity!)
posted by furtive at 7:51 AM PST - 19 comments

Sequel to Guy Catches Sunglasses With Face It wasn't too long ago that we had a look at Guy Catches Sunglasses With Face. Here is the sequel, Bobbing For Glasses. Both videos are from artist Ben Kaller, who has worked on most of Spike Jonze' best stuff, among other things. His brother Jeremy Kaller is also a talented director, who recently released a a documentary about the progressive recycling scene in San Francisco.
posted by poppo at 6:49 AM PST - 23 comments

The Athens Affair. An IEEE Spectrum article on the Vodafone Greece phone-tapping case, quite possibly the most elaborate publicized cybercrime ever (previously).
posted by costas at 4:31 AM PST - 28 comments

Ever wondered how gay men signal each other with colored hankies? Ask Meathook. (warning: the photo section is not suitable for anyone, anywhere.)
posted by metasonix at 11:12 PM PST - 81 comments

Get the hell off our Internet.
posted by loquacious at 9:51 PM PST - 73 comments

"And, why," Lucy says, "a lamp post!" The lamp post shines like a monument to industry.

Aslan Shrugged 1 2 3 4 [via a review of Atlas Shrugged in The Valve]
posted by Kattullus at 9:32 PM PST - 53 comments

Crazy 4 Cult is a new exhibit coming to Gallery 1988, the Los Angeles art gallery that hosts the annual (and always great) IAm8Bit exhibit. Just as IAm8Bit uses videogames of the 1980s as the theme for the artists, Crazy 4 Cult is using Cult movies. For fun, the exhbit poster features a huge number of movie references - can you catch them all? Via.
posted by jonson at 9:28 PM PST - 12 comments

43 Road Runner cartoons on YouTube. (And one more.)
posted by Silune at 8:02 PM PST - 54 comments

From the makers of Exit Mundi: The Other Bible. Fun articles on biblical science and scholarship.
posted by absalom at 7:58 PM PST - 12 comments

If you watched a lot of television in the 70's, you'll recognize this ad. An authoritative baritone informs us of a startling new motion picture about psychic phenomena, the Bermuda Triangle, near death experiences (with fittingly, a sequel), Bigfoot, the Shroud of Turin, the Lincoln Assassination, or Noah's Ark. "Showing for one weekend only!" (More beyond the door...)
posted by McLir at 6:00 PM PST - 25 comments

The "same people who attacked us on 9/11"? It may be the very latest talking point from the Administration, but it's actually true--altho it's not Al Qaeda in Iraq, but Saudis. Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia ... A historical note: 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.
posted by amberglow at 4:50 PM PST - 83 comments

Try a Little Tenderness. Otis Redding owns the song, but it's had an interesting history. Ruth Etting, Bing Crosby [mp3], and Ted Lewis [Windows Media] recorded the song (with more lyrics) in the early '30s. An instrumental version was the opening theme for Dr. Strangelove. Tennessee Ernie Ford did the song on his variety show. And then there was Jack Webb's deadpan Dragnet-style version [Amazon sample].
[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:33 PM PST - 19 comments

Do all your friends already own yachts? Perhaps you should consider getting a luxury submarine.
posted by pantsrobot at 3:04 PM PST - 38 comments

"Even the greatest cities have further greatness in them. I will stand for a greater London and for putting the smile back on London's face." Boris Johnson announces his candidacy for Mayor of London, though he is yet to be endorsed by the Conservative Party. Though decidedly right wing in his views (this clip, perhaps more than any other summarises his view on Europe, for example) his very English brand of buffoonery lends him unique appeal (though not universally).
posted by nthdegx at 1:46 PM PST - 44 comments

Imagine a library that collected all the world's information about all the world's books and made it available for everyone to view and update. We're building that library.
posted by chunking express at 1:23 PM PST - 61 comments

Home Made Sex Doll. Enough said, really. NSFW.
posted by parmanparman at 10:54 AM PST - 86 comments

365 Portraits, 365 audio pieces, 365 speculative fiction pieces, 365 plays. All because one a day is good for the soul.
posted by TNLNYC at 9:32 AM PST - 5 comments

"How do the tacos help gumbo?" Hold the tacos, New Orleans says. In yet another pig-ignorant move in Post-Katrina New Orleans, local politicians have decided to destroy the booming taco-truck business that is feeding the workers (and plenty of the locals) who are rebuilding the city. Blame racism, blame taxes, blame immigration politics: A hundred years ago this line of reasoning would have banned the muffulettas and poor-boys that those invading hordes of Sicilians were using to corrupt our youth.
posted by ColdChef at 9:16 AM PST - 91 comments

When Wild Coyotes in San Francisco Attack (previously).
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 8:31 AM PST - 27 comments

The Man Who Could Kill YouTube. Bob Tur is the little guy who is suing one giant (Google) to do what another giant (Viacom) probably never will -- shut YouTube down
posted by srboisvert at 8:13 AM PST - 202 comments

The History Of Dance -- World of Warcraft style.
posted by empath at 7:53 AM PST - 40 comments

Tough talk about impeachment. A public opinion poll from the American Research Group recently reported that more than four in ten Americans — 45% — favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half — 54% — favored impeachment for Vice President Cheney. In the video segment linked to here (available via javascript pop-up window from the main linked page), Bill Moyers gets perspective on the role of impeachment in American political life from Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who wrote the first article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, and THE NATION's John Nichols, author of THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT. Transcript is available here.
posted by psmealey at 7:37 AM PST - 176 comments

Strong earthquake hits Japan, hundreds of homes have been destroyed, bridges have been leveled, tsunamis are forming, and most frightening, the nuclear power plant appears to be leaking radioactive water. The quake registered as a 6.8 on the Richter scale. I hope that our Japanese Mefites are safe and sound and will let us know if there is anything we can do to help.
posted by dejah420 at 7:36 AM PST - 52 comments

Ambiguity of Disability: experience some disability-based utilitarianism courtesy of the hippest of the Cream of Cripples: virtual provocateur Bill Shannon a.k.a. "Crutch".
posted by progosk at 7:30 AM PST - 8 comments

There is a remote part of the Congolese jungle, called the Bili forest, where local legend has long told of a breed of giant apes that eat lions, catch fish and howl at the moon. To his surprise Dutch researcher Cleve Hicks found them. In fact they are large chimps but they appear to have a number of behavioural differences from other groups seen in the wild. (More information from Wikipedia).
posted by rongorongo at 4:39 AM PST - 32 comments

What is the relationship between the optical groove in a record or wax cylinder and sound, and how can we use this to recover analog recordings from the past? Dr. Carl Haber explains IRENE (.pdf; begin at slide 44 for audio samples).
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:29 AM PST - 25 comments

Feed the head [flash]
posted by tellurian at 12:55 AM PST - 18 comments

I contend this house-swaying performace at the Apollo Theater earlier this year, purporting to feature soulful everyman Brad Prowley ("real life homeless man . . . who makes a living singing classic R&B songs on the streets of major cities not just to get by, but out of a true, life-long passion for music"), actually showcases this man in disguise. You be the judge.
posted by azaner at 11:58 PM PST - 71 comments

Battleship Extreme, Operation Tiger, Operation Thunderbolt, Operation Seahawk, Operation Allied Shield, are newly released online games from the Australian Defence Force. But where’s Operation Tank Rage?
posted by mattoxic at 11:22 PM PST - 7 comments

Do You Taste What I Taste? - The first of Slate's 3-part series on the physiology of taste [parts 2, 3]
posted by Gyan at 9:24 PM PST - 12 comments

identity series projects are large scale portraits by Jorge Rodriguez Gerada. (via)
posted by gwint at 7:34 PM PST - 4 comments

Twin Days. Portraits and snapshots from the annual Twin Days in Twinsburg, Ohio. (Other multiples permitted.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:31 PM PST - 15 comments

Wrecked remains are all that's left of the biggest steamship ever to venture onto Lake Yellowstone - a vivid monument to one of Yellowstone Park's most insufferable businessmen. (Park Service Submerged Resources Center Project; Sonar Image.)
posted by The Deej at 7:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Recently on Metafilter, we pondered whether we would kiss ourselves if we could. Kelli Connell's Double Life series (nsfw) takes the idea to its conclusion, and presents snapshots from the ensuing relationship. Readers of the earlier thread will be relieved to find that the results are more poignant than creepy.
posted by Ian A.T. at 7:01 PM PST - 37 comments

Khanate.
posted by hama7 at 6:46 PM PST - 36 comments

This site explains the link, apparently via Mesopotamia, between the ancient Roman and modern Japanese calendrical systems.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:33 PM PST - 8 comments

"'Doc' Lipes Commandeers a Submarine Officers' Wardroom." On the USS Seadragon 120 feet beneath the South China Sea, with Japanese ships patrolling above, submariner Dean Rector was stricken by acute appendicitis. In this Chicago Daily News article that later won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Reporting, George Weller (whose reportage was also discussed here) recounts the story of Wheeler "Johnny" Lipes who, pressed into service, used bent spoons and torpedo alcohol to save a man's life.
posted by John of Michigan at 5:53 PM PST - 14 comments

As advances in DNA testing allow us to discover our genetic origins in ever-greater detail, many people are making surprising discoveries. Especially in the melting-pot that is the USA. Of course there are always those who feel that access to such information about who we are will only lead to bad things
posted by nowonmai at 5:27 PM PST - 46 comments

Disaster at Sea!! A collection of dozens & dozens of photographs of misfortune striking those GIGANTIC shipping vessels, the kind that bring goods from China to Wal Mart. Every kind of affliction imaginable, from shipboard fire to heavy weather to grounding amidst crushing waves to capsizing from ill balanced loads to random explosive cargo to terrorist attack to so much more. Descriptions of the vessels and what brought them down are included in the first link.
posted by jonson at 3:30 PM PST - 56 comments

Mezzowave. super sensory chill out lounge for relaxation and balancing the space. subsonic resonance and morphing visuals. Think Boobah meets SomaFM. [Flash, psychedlica]
posted by gottabefunky at 2:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Roller pigeons also known as Birmingham Rollers are pigeons that are noted for their mid-air somersaults. These acrobatics also make the birds irresistible to hawks, falcons and other birds of prey, and some roller pigeon enthusiasts are fighting back. Investigators are estimating that local enthusiast clubs are responsible for the deaths of 1000-2000 raptors in the Los Angeles area annually. One man bragged about capturing 30 hawks in 45 days. The National Birmingham Rollers Club has issued a press release distancing themselves from the men under investigation but requests Fish and Wildlife Services to provide aid under laws protecting livestock predated by endangered species.
posted by hindmost at 1:06 PM PST - 27 comments

Taylor Mali speaks on what teachers make - Taylor Mali speaks on Education: The importance of proofreading, Like, You know. Taylor Mali's Website.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:00 PM PST - 38 comments

"I'd been a fugitive for too long and it was time to turn myself in." the sicilian misadventures of a Reuters journalist with Agrigento's police department.
posted by darkripper at 6:18 AM PST - 25 comments

Kurt Weill's Opera by and for Beggars. Charlie Haden and Kurt Weill, Teresa Stratas accordions, William S Burroughs, Betty Carter, PJ Harvey, Lou Reed, Stan Ridgeway, The Persuasions, Ghettoriginal Dance Company,Teresa Stratas, David Johansen
posted by hortense at 6:06 AM PST - 19 comments

Steve Ward's Singing Tesla Coil video. Previously.
posted by nthdegx at 4:25 AM PST - 21 comments

"What we have here is a Cabinet of Wonders, a place where things of interest are set out, in possibly bizarre, possibly fetishistic presentation, for perusal by the discerning, who understand that presentation, and scientific interest, are all a form of magic." [via Neil Gaiman]
posted by Kattullus at 10:43 PM PST - 15 comments

Robbery American Style. Robbery French Style. Robbery Italian Style. Classic Soviet animation from Soyuzmultfilm.
posted by TrialByMedia at 10:17 PM PST - 26 comments

You know who else liked Xbox Live?
posted by EarBucket at 8:28 PM PST - 48 comments

Sicilian chef Filippo La Mantia has sworn off garlic. La Mantia says that garlic is a "leftover from when Italians were poor", and feels it is overplayed and unnecessary. Others disagree, like chef Antonello Colonna: "eliminating garlic is like "eliminating violins from an orchestra".
posted by rossination at 8:19 PM PST - 90 comments

Millions of tax dollars melting away... guess Katrina victims didn't need ice after all.
posted by miss lynnster at 7:57 PM PST - 37 comments

The Ayn Rand Institute held their yearly confab in Telluride, CO, near the purported location of the fiction Gault's Gulch of Atlas Shrugged, celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of the most turgid novels of all time. Part of the program included a panel of academics discussing their experiences "as objectivists." The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the state of objectivism in academe. Rand Grants are up, tenure is tendentious, and a for-profit Founders Institute appears to be foundering. (more inside)
posted by beelzbubba at 7:39 PM PST - 111 comments

Elvis Lives.
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:20 PM PST - 32 comments

Is Neo-tribalism [rand.org, PDF, 297 KB] humanity's future? An ideology influenced by the Ishmael series by Daniel Quinn and that predicts the collapse of society and the necessity of ”walking away”, it's growing globally with neo-tribes already established. The Anthropik Tribe's goal is to ultimately form a "functional hunter-gatherer tribe in the future". Anthropik is part of The Appalachian Confederation, a /neo-tribal league/tribe of tribes/rhizome/ with it's own council, annual festival and plans for an army. Also, check out this movie about modern tribalism.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:57 PM PST - 161 comments

The Center for Nursing Advocacy seems like your typical professional advocacy group—the group's mandate is "to increase public understanding of the central, front-line role nurses play in modern health care." While often the group does its work by highlighting serious issues facing the nursing profession, the Center also keeps a watchful eye on portrayals of nurses in popular culture, both good and bad. And then there are the reviews that, frankly, seem to be stretching things just a bit.
posted by chrominance at 4:25 PM PST - 16 comments

This is the best news my moley ears have heard all day!
posted by (bb|[^b]{2}) at 2:55 PM PST - 20 comments

"Idyllopus is J. M. Kearns...a kind of catch-all folder on the side of the desk." A few sub-folders: Art | Cartoons | Hanford
posted by sluglicker at 2:47 PM PST - 2 comments

The Most Curatorial Biennial of the Universe has nearly 450 local, national and international artists and curators (pdf) participating. Individuals place bids on the works of art in increments of $10. Online art auction to benefit the Robin Hood Foundation of NYC.
posted by RMD at 2:40 PM PST - 3 comments

One day while crossing an empty field, fifteen-year-old Tim Masters happened to see a dead body. Twenty years later, he remains in prison, serving time for a crime that he almost certainly did not commit. A haunting, bizarre tale of a murder investigation gone wrong.
posted by william_boot at 2:11 PM PST - 37 comments

How Sassy Changed My Life: The book blog and an essay by the authors.
posted by Anonymous at 2:08 PM PST - 20 comments

How to build a Giant Squid kinetic sculpture out of found materials. Step by step instructions provided.
posted by jonson at 12:43 PM PST - 12 comments

Suicide bomber kills 24 Pakistani soldiers amid fears of holy war Following the storming of the Red Mosque, Islamic militants launched a deadly suicide attack, detonated a roadside bomb and fired rockets in Saturday as thousands of Pakistani troops deployed to the northwestern frontier to thwart the launch of a holy war. A Pakistani blogger writes about the political situation in Pakistan. A timeline of the incidents leading up to the storming of the Red Mosque.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:55 AM PST - 36 comments

Sean Smith spent two months embedded with US troops in Baghdad and Anbar province. His harrowing documentary exposes the exhaustion and disillusionment of the soldiers.
posted by jouke at 1:53 AM PST - 152 comments

So you've gone and made a baby! A father of two provides some helpful advice to friends about what to expect from their newborns.
posted by Ljubljana at 1:41 AM PST - 51 comments

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by Stan Chin at 12:43 AM PST - 111 comments

In honor of the 8th Anniversary of MetaFilter, here are 8 YouTube links to... CAT SCANS
Oh, what heck, here are 8 more... LOL SCANS
posted by wendell at 12:00 AM PST - 23 comments

Mr. Butch, The King of Kenmore Square, was killed in a scooter accident yesterday. An excellent film portrait of the man and icon can be found here. His rich and well-lived life was the embodiement of the only recipe for anarchy I ever saw that worked: Total Freedom + Total Heart.
posted by extrabox at 10:03 PM PST - 28 comments

The Bladder Buddy. You can thank ABC's American Inventor for this.
posted by metasonix at 9:06 PM PST - 29 comments

A story of two young people. (mp3) Two Lovers (pdf) you'll never forget, two amazing secret agents. Two worlds, one love, one gangster, and the most heinous of crimes. via wfmu and previ-ously
posted by geos at 8:33 PM PST - 2 comments

I Infiltrate a Right Wing Protest Group | Cracked columnist Harmon Leon becomes chapter president of the Protest Warrior organization
posted by deern the headlice at 7:53 PM PST - 33 comments

Yucatan Living.
posted by hama7 at 7:16 PM PST - 27 comments

Myostatin is a genetic protein that affects muscle growth in humans and animals. Scientists have learned a lot about this protein from a noticeable myostatin mutation common in the Whippet dog breed. Whippets with one mutant copy of the gene are faster, so these are desirable for racing dog breeders. But selective breeding has caused increased instances of both copies of the myostatin genes mutating, which results in "double muscle" Incredible Hulk dogs!?
posted by p3t3 at 7:02 PM PST - 25 comments

Love on Campus: Why We Should Encourage an Eroticism (of the Mind) Between Professor and Student. Yale English professor William Deresiewicz argues that the newly-emerged stereotype of professors as "pompous, lecherous, alcoholic failures" is in the main due to our culture's fear of and inability to understand the true intimacy between professor and student: that of the mind. Cf. controversial Hindu teacher-student relationships, the same in Christianity, or merely observe Oscar Wilde: "I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself."
posted by shivohum at 6:20 PM PST - 48 comments

Songs You Didn't Know Were Cover Versions: Good Lovin', Mambo No. 5, The City of New Orleans, Fernando, The First Cut Is the Deepest, I Love Rock 'n' Roll, Just A Gigolo, Without You, Don't Turn Around, Let's Live for Today, Dazed and Confused, Seasons in the Sun, Pass the Dutchie, There's Always Something There to Remind Me, Gloria, Respect, Turn Turn Turn, When the Levee Breaks, Do You Wanna Touch Me, Cum on Feel the Noize, Hanging on the Telephone, I Go Blind, I Will Always Love You, Take Me to the River, Louie Louie, The Twist etc. etc.
posted by jonp72 at 6:17 PM PST - 110 comments

Some commuters are nervous about London Underground drivers filming journeys on their camera phones and posting them on YouTube. YouTube links all. BBC Story.
posted by nthdegx at 5:49 PM PST - 22 comments

Gunman bursts into party, tastes cheese and wine, gets hug, then leaves.
posted by Alex404 at 4:53 PM PST - 55 comments

Senate disrupted by jerks. Three members of anti-abortion Operation Save America disrupted the daily opening prayers of the Senate yesterday morning, which were being lead that day Rajan Zed, a Hindu priest. This was the first time a Hindu priest lead the opening prayer. Operation Save America has a small press release. Youtube link.
posted by Snyder at 4:00 PM PST - 80 comments

Do you like baseball? Or do you prefer cricket? Luke Whittaker has designed a browser-game for each.
posted by Kattullus at 3:01 PM PST - 22 comments

Who is Zack Kim anyway? Classical Guitarist? Nope. Composer for Film? Nah. How about viral marketeer! Almost all u-tube and the last one is really impressive. Many more where these came from.
posted by snsranch at 2:56 PM PST - 7 comments

Bulls on Parade: Rage against the runners. Not for the squeamish (especially the first picture).
posted by scblackman at 2:41 PM PST - 46 comments

Flash animations of lectures by Alan Watts, produced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame. (via)
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 1:08 PM PST - 64 comments

Able Seacat Simon was the ship's cat serving with HMS Amethyst during the Yangtze Incident in 1949. Despite the Captain's dislike of Simon (he would often leave "tributes" of dead rats in the Captain's bed and went to sleep in his hat) he served for over a year until the HMS Amethyst was attacked. The ship ran aground and during this time Communist-trained* rats infiltrated the ship. Despite being wounded in action by the shelling, Simon continued to carry out his duties, ridding the ship of all Communist insurgent rodents and boosting morale amongst the wounded sailors. *probably not but it sounded good.
posted by longbaugh at 12:59 PM PST - 20 comments

Feel like you've racked up too many sins to be admitted into Heaven? Fret not, my evil friend... just hire a Sin Eater to gobble them all up for you. Voila! More here.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:44 AM PST - 43 comments

Ca Plane Pour Pigloo [youtube]
posted by Stynxno at 11:12 AM PST - 10 comments

Former media baron Conrad Black has been found guilty of obstruction of justice and three counts of mail fraud.
posted by chunking express at 11:08 AM PST - 45 comments

The GTC (Great Telescope Canaries) sees first light today. Apart from the sheer size (10.4 m) of its mirror and from the science it will deliver, the GTC is remarkable by its location at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory 2426 m high at the rim of the Caldera de Taburiente in the island of La Palma. La Palma is also, for a number of reasons, also interesting for geologists. In that regard, it made headlines a couple of years back due to a paper about the risk of a collapse of the island which could cause a devastating tsunami. Oh, and it's also a really nice place for a holiday.
posted by Skeptic at 10:55 AM PST - 15 comments

"Jim has speculated in past writings as to what creature might be named the official animal of the Great Plains. Here’s a more palatable question: what food might we designate most representative of life on the plains? I nominate the bierock, or as I sometimes call it, the German-Russian answer to the burrito. The bierock is a piece of sweet dough wrapped around a filling of cabbage, onions and beef (or whatever else you want to stuff into it) and baked. The bierock is a characteristic food of Germans from Russia on the southern plains from Texas to Kansas. Germans from Russia in the states from Nebraska north consume the same item, but they call it a runsa." Text excerpted from Plains Folk. II: Romance of the Landscape.
posted by cog_nate at 10:07 AM PST - 30 comments

The mission stencil story is an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story that takes place on the sidewalks of the Mission district in San Francisco. Via
posted by jonson at 9:22 AM PST - 14 comments

Harvard professor Allan Brandt has a book out, The Cigarette Century, detailing the rise of the cigarette in 20th century America and its continuing spread worldwide. Excerpted here, reviewed here. The same title was used on a very similar work in American Heritage magazine in 1992 that is also worth a look.
posted by TedW at 8:34 AM PST - 34 comments

Artag: Augmented reality on your desktop. via Digital Urban, with a HowTo.
posted by signal at 7:40 AM PST - 11 comments

The Capitolist - Web 2.0 meets Capitol Hill The Capitolist is an anonymous BBS for Capitol Hill staffers to post to, and the rest of us to read. Anyone coming from a Hill IP can post anything they want: weird, banal, frustrated, or the occasional full-blown cry in the wilderness. There's even LOLcats here. How long will it last? How far will it go? Hit refresh & find out!
posted by scalefree at 6:59 AM PST - 31 comments

Temple of Zoom. Adding a twist on Flash-based stick figure games and physics-oriented platformers like N-Game, comes Matsushita/Panasonic's followup to Toshiba's "Tobby" line of promotional games. Collect dots Pac-Man (Java) style, in addition to powerups resembling digital viewfinder icons. Jump atop camera lenses which double as elevators, while dodging the occasional Red-Eye sensor. Your "prize", should you choose to accept it, is a bottle of soda pop coupon for the new Lumix camera. via
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:34 AM PST - 17 comments

"Splenda's advertising claims that it is 'Made from Sugar, so it Tastes Like Sugar.' What they don't tell you is that Splenda is not natural, it's a chlorinated artificial sweetener." So states The Truth About Splenda, a site devoted to saving us from this chemical menace. But who are the good samaritans behind this truth-telling campaign? Why, none other than the good people of The Sugar Association, who only want to promote the consumption of sugar as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle. McNeil Nutritionals, the maker of Splenda, fight backs with SplendaTruth.com.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:58 AM PST - 129 comments

The Mini-Penis Scandal.
posted by humblepigeon at 1:50 AM PST - 106 comments

The BBC is certainly having a mensis horribilis. First, they were fined £50,000 for lying to children, then they were exposed for doing a hatchet job on the Queen (something they claim was a mistake). Peter Fincham, the BBC One boss, has apologised for running a trailer (for a documentary) which showed the Queen "walking out in a huff" during a photo session with Annie Liebowitz. Not amusing, apparently. All this has led to a review of all programming aimed at uncovering instances of viewer deception.
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:23 AM PST - 54 comments

On the sidelines of a photography exhibition in Singapore, an collective named "A Dose of Light" was preparing to display the final set of 36 photos (flash, slow-loading), taken by "Wu Xiao Kang", a photographer being treated by schizophrenia before he committed suicide at the age of 26 (text of press release). To add to the tragedy, the photographs were now in the possession of a photographic research institute and would not be released till 2010. Maybe, if people signed a petition, the institute might be persuaded to change it's mind? [more inside]
posted by your mildly obsessive average geek at 1:17 AM PST - 8 comments

"Terry had THC in her system-" THOCK! Some context to the bone-crunching event. Snopes confirms it.
posted by Second Account For Making Jokey Comments at 10:04 PM PST - 63 comments

The Book of Job, as illustrated by William Blake, in high resolution. He was 68 when he finished it in 1826, but died the following year before he could finish giving Dante's "Inferno" the same treatment. (Complete Blake Archive.)
posted by hermitosis at 9:51 PM PST - 25 comments

Completely amazing graph of every NBA player for every season in which he played at least five minutes since 1979. Points Per Game are on the Y-Axis, sum total of every other stat on the X-axis, with the data points colored with RGB depending on the player's statistical tendencies during that season. Full explanation of methodology here. Gigantic monitor recommended. Via the always excellent TrueHoop.
posted by Kwine at 9:28 PM PST - 20 comments

Sports Acrobatics Spellbinding gymnastics feats.
posted by ColdChef at 8:43 PM PST - 24 comments

You got served! ...by taekwondo black belts? The Korean Tigers is a taekwondo demonstration team that also try to have fun. But chereographing with pop stars and dancing? Considering that one of Korea's older traditional martial arts is taekyon, a martial art which reflects some aspects of traditional Korean dance and music, dancing doesn't seem so far-fetched for Korean martial arts.
posted by kkokkodalk at 7:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Listen to the Newmarket Police try to deal with "Outstanding Elephants". Elephants from the circus escape. They wander through Newmarket, Ontario, munching on people's landscaping. Some people out for a late night walk happen upon them and (mp3) call into the York regional police to report the errant elephants. Then the police (mp3) deal with getting them back to their home. "Police said no one was hurt, no property was damaged and that the two well-behaved animals spent their free time snacking on plants and trees as they wandered the quiet downtown streets." Sounds like a good way to spend a summer evening to me!
posted by Salmonberry at 6:38 PM PST - 39 comments

The Story of the Fountain, poem by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), with 42 woodcut illustrations.
posted by stbalbach at 6:33 PM PST - 5 comments

"Henry John Patch would be notable simply by virtue of his 109 years on earth... But Harry Patch is more than a gerontological phenomenon. The man arranging his medals and sitting up straight for a photograph in the conservatory of a nursing home in Wells is the last British man alive to have served in the trenches during the First World War."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:12 PM PST - 26 comments

Toto are marketing the Washlet in America. A nicely designed site without any scatological references. Possibly NSFW intro. [flash]
posted by tellurian at 5:39 PM PST - 50 comments

Fuck Yuo I Am a Robot are offering their album Compensator for the Accelerator for free download from their site. Infectious ass-shakin' Estonian electro-pop. Lyrics to track 2 NSFW, likewise sleeve art jpgs if you opt for the .zip download. You can sample one of the tracks, Hydraulic, on YouTube if you don't know them and would like to check them out first, though personally I can't get enough of Zukunft (direct mp3 link).
posted by nthdegx at 4:33 PM PST - 18 comments

Clones, Robots and Second-Life... Having solved all other crimes, the Australian Federal Police Commissioner gave us a trifecta of the scary earlier this week. I'd have posted it before but I was waiting for some statement that it was all a fake. Boingboing has it so it must be true! (Caution: lolcats).
posted by ninazer0 at 4:07 PM PST - 23 comments

Late Night Shots is an "invitation-only" social networking site for elite GOP youth of Washington, DC that the late Steve Gilliard mockingly described as "the best and whitest." The Wonkette blog has devoted an entire section to the site that documents Late Night Shots' racism, date rape, anti-Islamic prejudice, and incest with second cousins, at least until Wonkette's editor started getting invited to their parties. The founder of Late Night Shots, Reed Landry, plans to take his networking site to other cities, but even though Wonkette has lost interest, the Washington City Paper has attracted scrutiny to the site again with a juicy new exposé.
posted by jonp72 at 4:06 PM PST - 82 comments

The West Side. (episode 1; 7 min.; flash 9 req.)
posted by progosk at 3:13 PM PST - 8 comments

Not long ago, Old Crow Medicine Show shot a video for "I Hear Them All" in New Orleans, LA [quicktime video] Filmed by photographer Danny Clinch.
posted by nola at 3:03 PM PST - 29 comments

The Manual (How To Have a Number One - The Easy Way). Both light-hearted and thorough, the Timelords, aka the KLF, wrote this tongue-in-cheek manual in 1988 following their own novelty pop No. 1 "Doctorin' the Tardis". "If you are already a musician stop playing your instrument. Even better, sell the junk. It will become clearer later on but just take our word for it for the time being." Oh and apparently have lots of tea on hand.
posted by yeti at 2:19 PM PST - 35 comments

Dame Shirley Bassey has sung some brilliant tunes in her 70 years on the planet. Some fans believe that the themes to Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever define "Bond" more than any single actor in the role. She's covered the Doors and performed with dance acts like The Propellerheads. Now she's gone and redone Pink's "Get This Party Started" in glorious style.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 2:08 PM PST - 43 comments

Why Terrorism Does Not Work [pdf] is an article by Max Abrahms that tries to understand why terrorist groups have a success rate of 7% on their stated goals and those terrorists who target civilians have a stunning 0% success rate when it comes to achieving their political objectives. He argues that the answer lies in correspondent inference theory. [via Wired's Bruce Schneier]
posted by Kattullus at 2:05 PM PST - 78 comments

A recording of stand-up comedian Daniel Kitson's Edinburgh show from 2004, about dancing and other things. (4-part audio (click next), can also download from the podcast feed on this page, has rude words so possibly NSFW, funny)
posted by Ira.metafilter at 2:03 PM PST - 8 comments

DIY Food Sci: Mefites have discussed molecular gastronomy techniques such as sous-vide and famous practitioners such as El Bulli (photos) or Alinea (review), but apartment chemists are experimenting both with the chemical and the physical techniques of the pros. An anti-griddle cooktop may run you $1060, but cheaper tools of the trade can be found online or in your neighborhood health food store. Find perfect flavor and odor matches based on similar amines at Khymos.org, inspiration at Hungry in Hogtown, or learn about the common chemicals used, but don't let the Man keep you from your hot ice cream and kumquat caviar again.
posted by artifarce at 1:32 PM PST - 19 comments

In the grand tradition of Killer comes Humans Vs. Zombies, a campus game that's growing in popularity. From its origins at Goucher, it's spread to a reported two dozen colleges. An interview with the game's moderator is here, and you can watch the 45-minute documentary from one of the games on Google Video
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:21 PM PST - 18 comments

Weather shock horror! Survivors live to tell the tale!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:51 PM PST - 11 comments

Crimeboss: Crime Comic Books of the 1940s and 1950s - Galleries: Crime Does Not Pay 1, 2; Crime Reporter; Crimes by Women; Famous Crimes; Teen-Age Dope Slaves; Reform School Girl! (via)
posted by otio at 12:24 PM PST - 3 comments

Ajax your chess experience up with 64squar.es.
posted by boo_radley at 12:09 PM PST - 23 comments

Hey fatass get off the couch and play some videogames.
posted by PostIronyIsNotaMyth at 12:02 PM PST - 50 comments

Arise ye criminals of want... [all youtube]
posted by Stynxno at 10:15 AM PST - 20 comments

In January 2005 , someone using the name "Rahodeb" went online to a Yahoo stock-market forum and posted this opinion: "No company would want to buy Wild Oats Markets Inc., a natural-foods grocer, at its price then of about $8 a share." Who was that random fool? Why, none other than John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods. Whole Foods purchased Wild Oats earlier this year for approximately $18.50 a share, but the FTC has an issue with Whole Foods buying out their competitor. Mackey had responded to the FTC's complaint on his blog, but has not posted since some of his other online comments became publicly attached to his name.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:01 AM PST - 80 comments

Star Trek as you’ve never seen it. In a clever, terribly NSFW voice-over parody of Star Trek, Star Hood Trek takes the crew of the Enterprise to . . . well, it's NSFW. But Spock falls in love, Kirk shows himself to be an insufferable martinet, and Bones, well, Bones just wants the tang. Eight part series: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8. Also, you'd think in the 24th century, they'd have a cure for mono . . . .
posted by John of Michigan at 9:08 AM PST - 38 comments

Dateline Basra: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."
posted by WPW at 8:32 AM PST - 75 comments

the simple language of good.
posted by graymouser at 7:34 AM PST - 86 comments

That's it! I've had enough. I'm going.
posted by tombola at 5:49 AM PST - 52 comments

The debate over Kosovo's Independence is stalled. This could be an extremely dangerous turn of events. Neither side is willing to give any ground. If Kosovo does return to violence, there is one group that might suffer more than most: the oft-abused Roma. Having spent years in contaminated refugee camps, accused of all manner of crimes, and moved after a year of UN foot dragging, many fear they will be once more marginalized.
posted by cal71 at 4:35 AM PST - 11 comments

How do you do: since 1950, Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, Illinois has produced dramatized salvation stories which are now syndicated around the world. 2,950 weekly one hour stories have been produced so far, and the variety of wayward paths these poor sinners have taken is astonishing, running the gamut from "Gambling, Lying, Fear", to "Country Music, Bigamy, Pride" to "Jewish, Seeking, Piano(part 2)." Whatever their false beliefs, all these fortunate folks have one thing in common (well, besides being voiced by the same few people): their hearts and minds and lives have all been UNSHACKLED! With impressive production values and sound effects created onstage during the live taping, it may be the last true radio drama. Sadly, PGM does not evangelize open audio formats; Real or WMP only.
posted by contraption at 2:26 AM PST - 11 comments

Alcoholics Anonymous Comics, circa 1968-74 Via the unspeakably awesome Ectomo.
posted by jonson at 12:22 AM PST - 45 comments

Traffic signals! Yes, an entire page devoted to the myriad varieties of Japanese LED traffic signal. They even have a mapping feature and a traffic signal lingo dictionary. I hereby dare ANYBODY to find a cooler hobby than this.
posted by odasaku at 11:10 PM PST - 31 comments

Anyone for a transvestite remake of the 1987 film The Lost Boys?
posted by metasonix at 10:48 PM PST - 24 comments

Car Bibles: One man's comprehensive guide to oil, brakes, tires, and more.
posted by Upton O'Good at 9:34 PM PST - 21 comments

The racial and sexual history of the American public swimming pool.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:29 PM PST - 50 comments

Banknote art by Justine Smith. Alternating currency: by Marshall Weber, portraits in money by Mark Wagner, a Ganesh out of Rupee notes by CK Wilde (a spectacular previously). Beautiful banknotes at the World Paper Money Image Gallery. Unusual coins. Unique banknotes, like the 100 Million Dinara note from Croatia. U.S. currency and the pictures behind the portraits. Mildenberg's Dream Collection of Greek Coins at the Money Museum.
posted by nickyskye at 6:24 PM PST - 19 comments

Unintentionally Sexual Comics Covers and Panels. Utterly insane.
posted by Tim McDonough at 5:45 PM PST - 61 comments

What's the link between:
1) the quickly-growing number of American homeowners becoming unable to pay their mortgages after their ARM's reset (a trend nicknamed "ARMageddon" -- applicable in the UK too), which is translating into soaring foreclosure rates, and in turn forcing at least 60 US semi-shady mortgage brokers to go belly-up in the past year (i.e. the "subprime meltdown"), and...
2) the recent implosion and impending financial bailout -- which may become the biggest since the Long Term Capital Management fiasco of 1998 -- of two Bear Stearns hedge funds which dealt in mortgage securities? [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl at 5:13 PM PST - 121 comments

Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson passed away today. During her infancy, a nursemaid commented, "She's as pretty as a ladybird", and that nickname virtually replaced her given name for the rest of her life. Perhaps her most important impact was her efforts to protect American wild-flowers and other natural places. She is also the namesake of the Hill family dog.
posted by Flood at 3:49 PM PST - 42 comments

Tony Blair's ex-Master of Spin and closest adviser is on a media whirlwind promoting his diary. Campbell's apparently straight talking nature gives the prospects of some tantalizing insight into the inner workings of number 10 for the majority of Blair's premiership. He's not getting it all his own way, though. BBC Radio 4's John Humphrey's on the Today Programme (Real audio) (MP3) was more interested in the failings of a government and political movement for which he was an architect and key player, and particularly Campbell's legacy of elevating the role of spin in British politics, even in the inner working of government, allegedly sexing up an intelligence dossier in order to make a more compelling case for war in Iraq (See 10 ways to sex up a dossier). The Guardian, in an article titled Did he mean me?, invited some of those named in his diaries to give feedback, or should that be biteback?
posted by nthdegx at 3:24 PM PST - 7 comments

"Why should candidates, or issue groups, spend millions on traditional advertising when they can generate hundreds of thousands of hits from simply uploading a video? Take, for example, the Hillary Clinton campaign's use of a Soprano’s spoof to unveil a campaign theme song....she generated a stunning amount of favorable press and television coverage (not to mention millions of dollars worth of free advertising)."^* A well produced video distributed on the Web can have great impact. For example, in a dispute last year a United Steelworkers union video forced Goodyear back to the bargaining table. A new video produced by the International Association of Firefighters may have impact on Rudy Guiliani's campaign for President. "...[The video's] release on the Internet hints at a broadening effort to spread [the union's] dim assessment of the Mayor and has already drawn comparisons with the campaign by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry in 2004."^*
posted by ericb at 2:40 PM PST - 52 comments

People pictures; Or, Photographs by Mole and Thomas, E.O. Goldbeck, and Others, Taken Between the years 1915 – 1920, and Consisting of Many People Lined Up and Posed in Such a Way that they Resemble Human Heads, the Statue of Liberty, Eagles, and Other Great Patriotic Symbols of This Nation.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:53 PM PST - 16 comments

Erie bomb victim was the dupe in a greedy plan. This story has always freaked me out...and now it freaks me out in brand new ways.
posted by punkfloyd at 12:49 PM PST - 90 comments

It's just a teaser trailer for a monster movie, but people (geeks) are going crazy trying to figure out what it's about. It may or may not have some ambiguous viral marketing associated with it (previously). Some think it's Cthulhu come to destroy New York, some think it's Voltron. Other less sensible people think it's a lion. It is definitely not a lion.
posted by jiiota at 12:36 PM PST - 119 comments

Rob Rummel-Hudson is a likeable smartass, who's been blogging forever. He and Julie have a cute daughter, Schuyler. One day, she was diagnosed with a rare, serious neurological condition: Bilateral Perisylvian Polymicrogyria or, as they have come to call it, Schuyler's Monster. Rob continued his candid, passionate diary - at one point stirring the growing group of loyals to raise more than $10,000 dollars (in less than a month!), endowing Schuyler with a speech device (a.k.a. Big Box of Words). Slated for publication in 2008, as blogs-become-books go, this father/daughter story deserves a closer look.
posted by progosk at 12:18 PM PST - 17 comments

Imagine being the mayor of Los Angeles, and after months (years, really) of rumored infidelity with an unknown woman, you finally decide to go public with news that you and your wife are officially separating. So you might ask yourself, as mayor, "How can I spin this story so as to minimize the damage to my reputation?" And it seems a good start would be to allow only one television network to cover your press conference live - hopefully, a network that is sympathetic to your political causes, and has a strong voice that will speak to your voting base as favorably as possible. So all was good in mid-June, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa asked Telemundo to exclusively air the somewhat disastrous, but fairly well-contained, announcement of separation - which included a request for privacy, and a plea to respect the line that separates personal from political life. And that's when the proverbial shit hits the fan. A month later, Villaraigosa admits that the woman that anchors the 6 o'clock news on Telemundo - and announced the break-up to a national audience - is the woman he's being cheating with. Fox News also reports, and in keeping up with tradition, fucks up the pronunciation of his last name.
posted by phaedon at 12:02 PM PST - 56 comments

Sterling is a kid from Mesquite, Texas with T-cell lymphoma. When the Make-a-Wish Foundation asked him what his dearest wish was, he said he wanted to be the President of the United States for a day. So hundreds of people from 12 government agencies made his wish come true.
posted by ottereroticist at 11:16 AM PST - 66 comments

It's a (Dressed-up) Single Link YouTube Post because you've already had the 13-minute long video of maths songs; you've already had the long newspaper interviews; you've even had the animated version (not to mention a few you shouldn't bother with); but have you, I ask, have you had Tom Lehrer in his heyday, singing "Werner von Braun"?
posted by criticalbill at 10:02 AM PST - 21 comments

Per his wishes, Jeremy Bentham is solemnly wheeled into the Council Room at University College London to take his place at regular meetings of the College Council there. The minutes always record him as "present but not voting." Since 1850, he's only missed a few meetings due to illness.
posted by miss lynnster at 9:18 AM PST - 58 comments

OK X - Radiohead's OK Computer covered by 12 modern artists. Free download.
posted by puddleglum at 9:14 AM PST - 50 comments

"Honest Ed" Mirvish, 1914-2007.
posted by chunking express at 9:09 AM PST - 41 comments

Shelfari. Books go Web 2.0.
posted by humblepigeon at 7:07 AM PST - 75 comments

A team of astronomers needs your help. It's not terribly easy to get computers to distinguish between galaxy shapes, but fortunately humans are not only very good at it, but seem to actually enjoy gazing out in to space. So, go to galaxyzoo.org, look at a few pretty pictures from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey , and help classify millions of galaxies and aid research in to how they form and evolve while you're at it.
posted by edd at 4:46 AM PST - 43 comments

█ Pink Floyd The Wall [more behind]
posted by Poolio at 1:54 AM PST - 66 comments

The Will It Blend? guy reaches geek-apogee. [via]
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 9:49 PM PST - 95 comments

The Indoor Yield-O-Rama is a scientific look at how much marijuana people can expect to grow under certain conditions. No matter you think about marijuana or your country's drug laws, the level of sophistication in this statistical analysis may surprise you.
posted by mistermoore at 7:58 PM PST - 53 comments

Jingle Jugs
posted by Stynxno at 7:21 PM PST - 56 comments

"In 1947 Life Magazine asked some famous comic strip artists to to draw their famous characters while wearing a blindfold. The results are interesting..." Via
posted by jonson at 6:51 PM PST - 38 comments

Charles Lane (1905-2007) , a character actor since 1931, and one of Hollywood's most recognizable "that guys". Over 350 credits from "It's a Wonderful Life" to "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" to "Petticoat Junction" and a half-dozen different characters on "I Love Lucy". Founding member of the Screen Actors guild, and more, but I'll let Mark Evanier tell you some stories. Here's his 100th Birthday party, and one of his few YouTube clips shows him as Ginger Rodger's 'customer' in "Primrose Path".
posted by wendell at 6:05 PM PST - 19 comments

Eyeball Tattoos (nsfw, via)
posted by bardic at 4:48 PM PST - 129 comments

Burroughs
A 1983 documentary by Howard Brookner on William S. Burroughs. 89 mins, G-vid, a bit more inside...
posted by carsonb at 4:47 PM PST - 13 comments

Michael Moore will not be on CNN again for a while
posted by bicyclefish at 4:41 PM PST - 231 comments

Google's Socialstream aims to be a "a system where users can seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks." Possibly worried about being outdone (again), Yahoo! is working on a new social networking site called Mosh. [via mobuzz]
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:57 PM PST - 17 comments

Read a Book. Drink some water. Buy some land (not rims). Brush your teeth. Wear deodorant (it's not expensive). Some say it's a parody, some say it's an important urban social statement set to a phat beat. The artist is Bomanni "D'Mite" Armah and it was originally aired at the NY Comic Con and a few times on BET.
posted by revmitcz at 3:54 PM PST - 46 comments

The Rubinoos recently filed a lawsuit against Avril Lavigne, claiming that her song Girlfriend (Youtube) plagiarized from their song, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend (mp3). An authorized cover version of the Rubinoos song performed by Lush and retitled "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend" has even more similarities to the Lavigne song. Now that the teeming millions on the Internets have gotten into the act, YouTubers are now arguing whether Lavigne is a plagiarist, whether the Rubinoos plagiarized from the Rolling Stones, and whether Ms. Lavigne plagiarized a second time. Now that Web 2.0 has made it easier to uncover musical copycats, I'm hot on the case of Bob Marley vs. The Banana Splits.
posted by jonp72 at 3:36 PM PST - 66 comments

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette died today in car accident in Mississippi.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:20 PM PST - 27 comments

The votes are in. Vermont wins the Springfield Challenge. link works in IE, not in Firefox for me. Now all we have to do is find a big enough theater.
posted by MtDewd at 2:02 PM PST - 43 comments

The American Biographical Institute and the International Biographical Centre have been offering honours for sale for years now. Recipients are offered the chance to purchase space in published "Who's Who" type directories and they can also purchase awards and honours such as "Most admired man of the decade" or "Eisteinian Chair of Science." Academics seem mostly to fall for the allure of prestige (including David Suzuki) but so do some politicians, including Kamala Persad-Bissessar (MP, Trinidad and Tobago), Tõnis Kint (Acting President, Estonia), Adrian Severin (Member of the European Parliament), Jona Baravilala Senilagakali (Minister of Health, Fiji), Benazir Bhutto (President, Pakistan) and Gambian President His Excellency Alhagi Dr. Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh.
posted by salishsea at 1:40 PM PST - 9 comments

The N-word: 1786 - 2007.
posted by desjardins at 1:34 PM PST - 76 comments

The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness. "Investigating the impact of the war on Iraqi civilians, Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by US troops in Iraq--brutal acts that often go unreported and almost always go unpunished." [Via No Quarter.]
posted by homunculus at 1:20 PM PST - 37 comments

Where Are The Joneses? is an interactive sitcom from Steve Coogan's production company. The action centres on Dawn Jones, who, on learning that she is the daughter of a sperm donor, sets out to find her twenty-seven siblings. You can watch episodes on YouTube, follow a Flickr photo-diary, and, inevitably, keep up via Dawn's Twitter account. Don't like the plot, characters or gags? Then rewrite the show on its wiki.
posted by jack_mo at 12:43 PM PST - 9 comments

Known as scholar's rocks or gongshi, viewing stones are rocks of complex shapes that suggest worlds within worlds, microcosms in stone. In Japan they are called Suiseki, from the Japanese characters for water "sui" and stone "seki", placed on a daiza, a carved wood base. They are at once a miniature landscape and a point of imaginative departure…
posted by nickyskye at 12:09 PM PST - 11 comments

So you want to learn Japanese . . . (Also, a more serious look at the question from a 2005 AskMe)
posted by spock at 11:41 AM PST - 48 comments

"I’m going to draw a chart for her with lines and arrows". Diagramming web apps: ajaxSketch, bubbl.us, flowchart.com, mindmeister, gliffy and mindomo.
posted by nthdegx at 11:37 AM PST - 19 comments

You wake up, walk out into the early morning air, kiss your wife goodbye, pet the Chihuahua, and sink into your lawn chair for another breathtaking flight. On Saturday Kent Couch set off to recreate, for the second time, the famous flight of Larry Walters, balloon-lawn-chair-aviator and Darwin Award Honorable Mention. Kent flew some 193 miles using 105 helium balloons, and unlike some previous fliers, his event was not only successful, it was photographed by a chase plane.
posted by Muddler at 11:22 AM PST - 27 comments

Star Trek vs. Batman Christopher Allen brings two icons of Sixties television together in a three-part, 51-minute epic adventure. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 at Google Video. MPEG downloads and audio interviews at RASCO Motion Pictures site.
posted by LinusMines at 10:37 AM PST - 19 comments

Noah Scalin explores different media and techniques to come up with a Skull a Day. Yes, there are pancakes. via Neatorama
posted by hydrophonic at 10:26 AM PST - 12 comments

Bug Powder Dust
Lyrics, by Bomb the Bass
posted by hypersloth at 9:50 AM PST - 36 comments

Sure these book carts look cool, but they probably don't handle very well and are a likely target for thieves.
posted by Challahtronix at 9:30 AM PST - 15 comments

A link between race and breast cancer. The findings of this study by a Philadelphia research team dovetail other recent findings, including those of Chicago researcher Funmi Olopade, a MacArthur winning doctor from Nigeria who is studying the genetic implications of the discovery. A Q & A with Dr. Olopade on her research. Dr. Olopade discussing her work on the Tavis Smiley show in 2003.
posted by The Straightener at 8:48 AM PST - 7 comments

Chinese theme parks - some are strange, and some are oddly familiar. Others are disturbing. Some have unique attractions, or promotions not found elsewhere. At least one is highly functional. Not all are successful, and they may not travel very well.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:40 AM PST - 5 comments

Build bigger boobies from belly blubber! But how do they know to stop growing?
posted by (bb|[^b]{2}) at 8:37 AM PST - 37 comments

Boots Randolph has died. The Nashville saxophonist's signature was the hit Yakety Sax, better known to some as the Benny Hill Theme Song. Boots was one of the A-Team studio musicians who defined the Nashville Sound. He played with Elvis, recorded hundreds of albums both as backup and headliner, and never retired from performing. Listen to his music.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 8:34 AM PST - 13 comments

True Cost to Own. The Edmunds Inc. True Cost to Own pricing system calculates the additional costs you may not have included when considering your next vehicle purchase. These extra costs include: depreciation, interest on your loan, taxes and fees, insurance premiums, fuel costs, maintenance, and repairs. Search below to view the TCO of any vehicle.
posted by srboisvert at 8:25 AM PST - 35 comments

The Censored Eleven [IMDB] is a group of Warner Brothers cartoons that have been withheld from syndication because of their racial stereotypes: Hittin' the Trail to Hallelujah Land (1931; info), Sunday Go to Meetin' Time (1936; info), Clean Pastures (1937; info), Uncle Tom's Bungalow (1937), Jungle Jitters (1938), The Isle of Pingo Pongo (1938), All This and Rabbit Stew (1941; info), Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943; info), Tin Pan Alley Cats (1943; info), Angel Puss (1944), and Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears (1944). [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 7:01 AM PST - 63 comments

The Prime Game is not really much of a game, but it is a neat & little-known fact about the decimal representation of prime numbers.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:34 AM PST - 24 comments

Matthew Parris: wonderful British journalist, who mocks our feeble terrorists, never washes his hair, discreetly married his partner, respects suicide, sounds like a railway nutter, believes America is the new Germany. In 2000, he spent the winter on a desert island in the Indian Ocean, and one of his colleagues accidentally shot another dead. More Matthew here.
posted by tombola at 3:59 AM PST - 44 comments

Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films has a YouTube short outlining the case to impeach Dick Cheney. You can watch the video and sign a petition to be delivered to Congress. If the site is slow, you can watch the video on YouTube here.
posted by commonmedia at 11:29 PM PST - 47 comments

Without Breasts There Is No Paradise NBC wunderkind Ben Silverman's first new series is a Spanish-language soap opera called Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso. It's about Catalina, a teenage prostitute seeking breast implants to win the heart of a cocaine smuggler, whom she hopes will free her from a live of poverty. Can a sweet young thing from a small town find happiness in a fast-paced world of easy money and drug trafficking?
posted by Yakuman at 11:01 PM PST - 48 comments

Time Magazine Top 50 Websites of 2007.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:00 PM PST - 37 comments

The Centennial Project. During the 100th Anniversary of Oklahoma's statehood, MeFi'er Brittanie is serializing two personal first-person accounts of her family's journey into the Sooner State, including both her great-great-grandfather's efforts to make the 1891 Land Run and another relative's meticulous biographical history which extends as far back as the Civil War. [via mefi projects]
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:00 PM PST - 10 comments

Can't sleep? Let Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse treat you to a little Mexican Breakfast. Not spicy enough for you? Gwen'd be happy to Walk It Out instead. (YouTube)
posted by hermitosis at 9:19 PM PST - 38 comments

"The car is constructed on a tubular steel chassis ... the Curtis turbine engine which will produce 300bhp, enough to enough to push the car to 200mph (in theory)." The builders hope to break a land speed record that's stood for 101 years. That is, the land speed record for a steam car.
posted by delmoi at 8:24 PM PST - 21 comments

Cycling for a cause is the project/site of Canadian college student Michal Brichacek. On May 3rd of this year he set out from Alaska on his bike, aiming to ride all 12,000km (7440 miles) by early August. He's riding to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and he's over halfway done, currently riding across a hot Mexico landscape. His blog has his daily adventures (mostly about having to look for tent spots, supplies, and meeting interesting strangers). He's also posting daily photos of the trip.
posted by mathowie at 8:19 PM PST - 9 comments

The roadbag (here in the original language). German engineering meets the Stadium Pal. Harnessing the latest in hydrogel water-storing colloidal matrix, this is clearly a stream dream-come-true for sports fans, long-haul truckers and gold farmers. I bet that David Sedaris would probably much happier with this new and improved version. [via]
posted by scblackman at 7:49 PM PST - 10 comments

single link newsfilter FPP: (hopefully not a DP!) She did it! (cache) Deborah Jean Palfrey (aka the DC Madam) has released the phone records. Get them before they disappear!
posted by krash2fast at 6:40 PM PST - 215 comments

Bill O'Reilly alerts the nation to the roving lesbian gang menace.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:44 PM PST - 99 comments

A Pale Blue Dot - An Unauthorized view. Some time before he died in 1996, Carl Sagan recorded a partial audio version of his 1994 book "Pale Blue Dot". Often described as the "sequel" to Cosmos, the audio version of Pale Blue Dot is, at this moment, regrettably out of print. This video is "episode one" of an unauthorized attempt at producing a series of videos based on Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" audio book combined with a soundtrack and appropriate video and still images intended to recall the feel of the classic documentary series "Ascent of Man" and "Cosmos"
posted by empath at 4:43 PM PST - 8 comments

Iraq's Horror Movie Posters. According to Sky News, insurgent forces are taking up Worth1000 style criticism to hold up a mirror to citizens of the US and their Military-Entertainment complex.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:47 PM PST - 27 comments

In the past, various possible treatments and methods have been suspected of helping combat AIDS, which have later been proven correct. Other, less reputable treatments have also been claimed to work, the likes of which descend towards malpractice, pseudoscience and criminal negligence. But in a turnabout, the olive oil element of South Africa's controversial treatment, deemed to be "Africa's Solution", actually helps as well.
posted by duende at 3:45 PM PST - 7 comments

The Paisley Underground. From about 1982 to 1985, the Los Angeles club scene featured a bunch of guitar bands on the verge of being the next big thing, including The Dream Syndicate, Green on Red, The Long Ryders, The Rain Parade, Game Theory (later known as The Loud Family) and, of course, The Bangles (the only ones who managed to actually become a big thing). Michael Quercio of The Three O'Clock and Salvation Army inadvertently named the scene "Paisley underground" when he made an off handed joke during a radio interview. Most of the bands are now, to borrow a phrase from Game Theory leader Scott Miller, languishing in national obscurity, as opposed to local obscurity.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:28 PM PST - 30 comments

Things Gone By is an antique jewelry dealer specializing in the category of "mourning jewelry"; items worn in memory of the dead, usually involving locks of their hair & other materials. The mourning items are not limited to jewelry, as they also feature a gallery of mourning artwork, again made with the hair of the beloved deceased.
posted by jonson at 3:21 PM PST - 10 comments

Vanity Fair has an interesting write up on the history of the Simpsons. There are quotes from all sorts of people, including: Art Spiegelman, Jay Kogen, Rupert Murdoch, Conan O'Brien, etc.
posted by chunking express at 12:12 PM PST - 70 comments

First there were duct tape wallets. Then plastic bag wallets came along, and now everyone's jumping on board with soy milk wallets, cassette tape wallets and even playing card wallets!
posted by thebigdeadwaltz at 12:08 PM PST - 26 comments

Have More Sex! I'll get less AIDS! University of Rochester professor, Slate columnist and pop-economist du jour Steven Landsburg argues in his newest book, More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, that those among us who take few sexual partners would better serve the greater good by being more promiscuous. So, who's chaste, condom-equipped and free tonight?
posted by jckll at 12:03 PM PST - 46 comments

"Give your children a program that Jesus could join. Why not step beyond a politically correct scouting program in which a Christian might not feel completely comfortable at activities, or with the materials furnished by a central committee? Are you tired of pretending to be neutral?" Keepers at Home and Contenders for the Faith are Bible-based alterntives to traditional youth scouting groups. Keepers at Home features lessons to prepare girls for their future roles as help meets, mothers, and keepers at home," while Contenders for the Faith learn "everything a Christian boy needs to learn to prepare him to be a man." Just like traditional scouting, Keepers offers uniforms, badges, and handbooks. girls. Keepers is just one of many Christian approaches to scouting; others include American Heritage Girls, Awana, and Mpact.
posted by Miko at 11:27 AM PST - 138 comments

On July 4, Funkmaster Flex of New York's Hot '97 played a five hour marathon set of classic 90s hip-hop. Listen to or download the set commercial free in four parts here. XXL mag coverage and video here.
posted by kosem at 10:52 AM PST - 34 comments

You can love him or hate him but Transformers made $250,000,000 last week. To some, Michael Bay is a genius. To others he's a racist hack. Or just a hack. He may even be both a hack and a genius. Is this evidence of an auteur? Or does dude just like really big explosions? Plus: a character driven Bay film?
posted by PostIronyIsNotaMyth at 10:51 AM PST - 111 comments

BookTV.org is one the smartest shows on television. Scraping free content from author interviews at local bookstores and book fairs, its new re-designed website is long overdue, and now all content stays available in a permanent archive in case you miss the 48hr C-SPAN2 weekend marathons. Sample programs: The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, In Depth: Ray Kurzweil,"Blackwater: The Rise Of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army"
posted by stbalbach at 9:25 AM PST - 16 comments

Jessica Dimmock: I was approached by a cocaine dealer who made it clear that he was a dealer. Over the course of the conversation he made it clear that if I wanted to follow him and photograph him I could. He took me to a variety of places - parties, people's apartments, the owner of an escort service. The last place he ever took me was the apartment where the project starts. Jessica Dimmock is the 2006 recipient of the Inge Morath Award to encourage young female photojournalists. Her series, The Ninth Floor is epic in its savage and true depiction of the reality of drugs in New York City. NSFW.
posted by parmanparman at 7:57 AM PST - 158 comments

Big Bottom, performed with every bass player in the known universe - Spinal Tap, the loudest band on earth, reunites for the Live Earth Webley concert.
posted by darkripper at 4:35 AM PST - 53 comments

Harry Potter dies. Harry Potter lives. One thing is becoming clear: Harry Potter is killing the traditional bookseller industry in the UK.
posted by humblepigeon at 3:01 AM PST - 134 comments

Remember the old 8-bit Nintendo glory days, when you'd save your allowances to buy an overpriced cartridge for $49.99 only to discover that it was a piece of crap? If you've been nursing hatred and remorse in your soul all these years, then The Angry Nintendo Nerd has got your back. I find his profanity-laced rants on such turds as Simon's Quest and The Karate Kid to be strangely cathartic. Best of all is his two-part nostalgia trip that sums up what everyone our age thought of the ill-fated original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie trilogy. Part I, Part II.
posted by ELF Radio at 1:03 AM PST - 48 comments

In Yeah, Right! Spike Jonze takes the skateboarding montage to a whole new level. Check out Living Board. Invisible Boards. Slow motion introduction. Owen Wilson.
posted by phaedon at 11:06 PM PST - 22 comments

What's Opera, Doc? (YouTube, approx. 7 mins.) The opera-parodying Merrie Melodies cartoon, which some consider to be Chuck Jones' career masterpiece, turned 50 years old this week. The short is also known as "Kill The Wabbit" in reference to the line sung by Elmer Fudd to the tune of "Ride Of The Valkyries," which is just one of many Wagner references in the piece.
posted by amyms at 9:54 PM PST - 41 comments

Musekeweya ("new dawn") is a phenomenally popular radio drama broadcast out of Kigali, Rwanda. The soap, funded by Dutch NGO La Benevolencija, follows the story of two star-crossed lovers who come from opposing villages involved in an increasingly violent struggle. Thought Rwandan law makes it difficult to discuss the genocide in the media, the show aims to open a dialog using the fictional villages of Bumanzi and Muhumuro as a proxy for Hutus and Tutsis. A soap opera may seem like an unlikely vehicle to tackle a topic of such national importance, but it's actually not uncommon. And, certainly, Rwanda is a country that knows all too well about the power of radio
posted by meta_eli at 8:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Real Dolls and the men who love them - this 46 minute documentary explores the lives of four men and the relationships they have established with alternative partners in life. NSFW - doll nudity alert.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:15 PM PST - 109 comments

Recognizing Pain Management as a Fundamental Human Right. These pieces from the journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society argue that under-treated chronic pain is becoming a public health crisis which must be addressed. But a warning to pain doctors in the U.S. who prescribe opioids in doses that seem high to narcotics agents and prosecutors: “Be afraid.” [Via Hit & Run and TalkLeft.]
posted by homunculus at 8:15 PM PST - 69 comments

The numbers are classified, the dollars are classified, but there's no doubt that the number of "Green Badgers" are catching up to, and sometimes surpassing, that of "Blue Badgers" in some of the US's most sensitive national security positions. Bob Baer is talking about it. Others have been, too. R.J. Hillhouse has been writing a blog for roughly six months now on the phenomenon: The Spy Who Billed Me.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 7:21 PM PST - 17 comments

..."I think I was always misunderstood. People just didn't seem to like me. I got on their nerves. I don't know why. It just the way it was. Maybe I was too intense..." (With a surprising end)
posted by growabrain at 6:58 PM PST - 47 comments

Looking for something to read this summer? Well, if you like crime fiction The Rap Sheet has some recommendations for you.
posted by otio at 5:54 PM PST - 4 comments

Where Are They Now? The Hanson Brothers. Reliving the goon old days with the Hanson Brothers from Slap Shot (and the 2002 sequel).
posted by kirkaracha at 4:40 PM PST - 25 comments

The Levitra Couches
posted by loquacious at 4:34 PM PST - 91 comments

...Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning. The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives. What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries...

Research Links Lead Exposure, Criminal Activity
Research Links Childhood Lead Exposure to Changes in Violent Crime Rates Throughout the 20th Century    (PDF)
posted by y2karl at 3:14 PM PST - 56 comments

Illustrator Apelad has many various projects & flickrsets, including the fairly well known Laugh Out Loud Cats & the Hodgman inspired Hobo Names project, but some of the lesser known ones are awesome as well, including this set of images created for common HTTP Errors, this Alphabet of Monsters, and a personal favorite, Monkey!, wherein users send in a monkey description and receive in return a drawing.
posted by jonson at 1:24 PM PST - 11 comments

There can be. Only. One. [Previously]
posted by ericbop at 1:11 PM PST - 9 comments

Ice tsunami in Antartica (may not contain actual tsunami) via
posted by furtive at 12:22 PM PST - 29 comments

Posters, posters, OMG Posters!
posted by ColdChef at 12:14 PM PST - 12 comments

My Crazy Roommate At the beginning of this year, the new guy at work needed a place to live. I ended up letting him sublet one of the rooms in my house. After only a couple of days it became obvious that he is totally insane. The crazy constantly flows from his mouth and is just way too good to not share with the world. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, but other than that - all of the conversations are damn near verbatim.

Begin reading at Month One.
posted by LinusMines at 12:09 PM PST - 70 comments

High Culture vs. Low Culture. Oh, so you guys make techno? via
posted by fleetmouse at 11:01 AM PST - 33 comments

The Doctor Who Fan's Phrasebook is like looking down a long dark corridor and seeing yourself. Surprisingly flexible too. "The Silent Majority -- A collection of people who don’t exist. I’ve just made them up so that I can claim to speak for them." Note: Big spoilers for the third new series, which has just begun on Sci-Fi in the US, and possibly Torchwood.
posted by feelinglistless at 10:15 AM PST - 36 comments

Wallace Seawell's portraits virtually created the classic Hollywood look.

Obit with small gallery.

More photos via Google Images.
posted by The Deej at 9:55 AM PST - 11 comments