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The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals has held that recording police officers performing their duties in public is a "clearly established first amendment right". [more inside]
posted by epsilon at 10:02 PM PST - 131 comments

Post'it War
posted by Trurl at 8:58 PM PST - 20 comments

The headless body of Australian folk hero Ned Kelly has been found in a mass grave. Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger (outlaw) best known for the suit of homemade armor he wore during his last stand at Glenrowan. Since then Ned Kelly has been an Australian icon, celebrated in films (including one starring Mick Jagger) and song.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:44 PM PST - 86 comments

Face it cats, sometimes playing in a box can be dangerous.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 6:10 PM PST - 59 comments

Wikileaks has alleged that Guardian editor David Leigh negligently leaked the encryption passphrase to the unredacted 'Cablegate' archive in an upcoming book. The Guardian denies the charges, but states that "[a] Twitter user has now published a link to the full, unredacted database of embassy cables", potentially putting informants at risk.
posted by p3on at 5:21 PM PST - 202 comments

After receiving a $20,000 grant from the Australia Council, Denis Beaubois set about creating his artwork, Currency, 2011, by withdrawing $20,000 from a teller at the Reserve Bank of Australia and writing down the serial numbers. The artwork sold at auction yesterday for $17,500. [more inside]
posted by robcorr at 3:57 PM PST - 75 comments

Darth Vader yells 'Noooo." From the Blu-Ray leak of Return of the Jedi. Why, George? SLYT.
posted by footballrabi at 3:36 PM PST - 235 comments

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown (warning: spoilers in all links) reviews the first four books of A Song of Ice and Fire and declares that "George R. R. Martin is creepy. He is creepy because he writes racist shit. He is creepy because he writes sexist shit." Alyssa Rosenberg of Think Progress responds, as does Delphine on GeekMom.
posted by never used baby shoes at 2:03 PM PST - 435 comments

How Old is Your Globe? [more inside]
posted by turbodog at 2:01 PM PST - 69 comments

Q: Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU? A: It might be harder than you expect.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 1:55 PM PST - 364 comments

The holy grail of minecraft has been achieved.
posted by empath at 1:31 PM PST - 64 comments

Belushi! No! That Yeezy's for real! Kanye plus Comics combines the lyrics of Kanye West with frames from superhero comic books. [more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest at 1:17 PM PST - 9 comments

Public Image Limited, Live on American Bandstand in 1980, that is all.
posted by sgt.serenity at 12:46 PM PST - 47 comments

Start a home business, get rich quick, win financial freedom! If you watch late-night TV, you've heard it all before. But what's the story behind these slick pitchmen and their dubious schemes? Enter The Salty Droid, your ornery metal guide to the corrupt underworld of scam-marketing scum. This charmingly acerbic bot (owned and operated by mild-mannered Chicago dog-lover Jason Michael Jones [inter-view, long talk + transcript]) is a valiant crusader against the vile con-men who bankrupt the elderly and the desperate with beautiful lies. Exposed so far: A shadowy "Syndicate" of frauduct-pushing personality cults polluting the media with blogspam and woo-woo talking points. Boiler rooms in the Utah desert where telemarketers farm credit from easy targets with cunning, probing scripts [PDF]. Powerful politicians bought wholesale. Believers left to die in fraudulent new-age vision quests. It's a soul-crushing beat, enough to make one feel like a regular catcher-bot in the digital rye. But somebody's got to do it -- preferably someone with plasma nunchucks and titanium skin.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:12 AM PST - 46 comments

Linux - The Desktop Summit 2011, interview with Aaron Seigo. 'This year at The Desktop Summit 2011, for the second time, both' the KDE and GNOME 'communities have decided to organise a single, joint conference.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 10:29 AM PST - 81 comments

Laura Dern Is Our Only Hope For Bringing David Lynch Back.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:17 AM PST - 117 comments

"World War II has immesurably magnified the Negro's awareness of the disparity between the American profession and practice of democracy." During WWII, the armed forces were still marked by segregation of troops, with black troops often led solely by white officers, there were many instances of violence against African-American troops as well as general discrimination. While many African-American troops were serving with honor and some with particular levels of distinction, a stateside newspaper - the Pittsburgh Courier - began the "Double V" campaign: "Democracy: Victory at Home, Victory Abroad" after printing a letter from a reader asking "Should I Sacrifice To Live ‘Half American?’". The response from the community was overwhelming. Many people, not just activists, latched onto the campaign and made it a huge success for the community, helping to lay the ground work for the beginnings of the post-war Civil Rights movement.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:55 AM PST - 23 comments

Invisible, Inc. Inside the evolving science of concealment.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:15 AM PST - 20 comments

Paul Scheer of NTSF:SD:SUV and Human Giant addresses the most pressing question of our modern era: How Did This Get Made?
posted by Kitty Stardust at 9:08 AM PST - 19 comments

Jack White has worked with everyone from Alicia Keys to Loretta Lynn to Brendan Benson to Alison Mossheart. His new single, "Leck Mich Im Arsch," utilizes a 230-year-old Mozart melody. Oh yeah, his co-conspirators on this one? MeFi favorites Insane Clown Posse.
posted by jbickers at 8:46 AM PST - 94 comments

Trauma is an escape-the-room -dream game with a hauntingly beautiful aesthetic that tells the story of a young woman recovering from an accident. It is a cross-platform download or can be played in its entirety for free in Flash. [more inside]
posted by Thomas Tallis is my Homeboy at 8:44 AM PST - 9 comments

Modest Mouse play a 25 minute set in September 2001 in front of Criminal Records in Atlanta. The songs they play are Paper Thin Walls, Third Planet, Trailer Trash, Lives, Diggin' Holes (later released as an Ugly Casanova track) and I Came as a Rat.
posted by Kattullus at 8:38 AM PST - 14 comments

Justice Department (apparently) blocks the merger of AT+T and T-Mobile. The Associated Press is reporting that Justice will block the deal because "would reduce competition and raise prices." [more inside]
posted by andreaazure at 8:36 AM PST - 122 comments

We've talked about throat singing on the Blue before, but Mongolia and Siberia aren't the only places where throat singing is practiced. In Tibet, an ancient collection of traditions called Bön keeps throat singing alive and well. [more inside]
posted by WidgetAlley at 8:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Human foot washes up on beach near Vancouver for 11th time in four years Previously - The DNA matchup - previously again
posted by The Whelk at 8:27 AM PST - 116 comments

Coming this fall, it's Jeff and Casey Time! (via)
posted by rebent at 7:43 AM PST - 6 comments

Weight-gain. "LOL!" "Teens love text messages--and those texts may help them lose weight, if they're done right. A study tested out various types of weight management-themed text messages on overweight teens to see what they liked, finding that they favored positive messages but disliked thoughtful questions." [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:27 AM PST - 31 comments

Products with unintentionally vulgar sticker placements. That is all.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:44 AM PST - 74 comments

JS Mill vs. Thomas Carlyle Economics may deserve its reputation for being hardnosed and calculating, not warm and fuzzy. But sometimes it is its critics who are lacking in the spirit of humanity. [more inside]
posted by Philosopher's Beard at 6:27 AM PST - 48 comments

Statistical analysis of OKCupid profiles exposes some sexually fascinating revelations:

- Herbivores like giving oral more than omnivores
- Twitter users are more likely to masturbate today
- Christians and Atheists are just as likely to claim they have never masturbated
- The correlation between men who prefer gentle sex & use of the word 'boating'

I f**king love statistics [more inside]
posted by 0bvious at 5:05 AM PST - 73 comments

Deadly detention: Deaths in custody amid popular protest in Syria “These deaths behind bars are reaching massive proportions, and appear to be an extension of the same brutal disdain for life that we are seeing daily on the streets of Syria,” said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International’s researcher on Syria. “The accounts of torture we have received are horrific. We believe the Syrian government to be systematically persecuting its own people on a vast scale.”
posted by joannemullen at 3:48 AM PST - 65 comments

Australia's High Court has handed down a 6-1 judgement against (PDF) the Commonwealth Government's deal with the Malaysian Government, to replace the so-called Pacific Solution, under which the two countries would have "swapped" asylum seekers.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 12:12 AM PST - 56 comments

Massive Biometric Project Gives Crores of Indians an ID: Aadhaar faces titanic physical and technical challenges: reaching millions of illiterate Indians who have never seen a computer, persuading them to have their irises scanned, ensuring that their information is accurate, and safeguarding the resulting ocean of data. This is India, after all—a country notorious for corruption and for failing to complete major public projects. And the whole idea horrifies civil libertarians. But if Aadhaar’s organizers pull it off, the initiative could boost the fortunes of India’s poorest citizens and turbocharge the already booming national economy. [more inside]
posted by infini at 9:52 PM PST - 30 comments

Why caterpillars molt. The lifecycle of the lepidopteran, from egg to caterpillar to winged butterfly or moth has long been a basic lesson plan of "hands on" biology in grade school classes. If one focuses on a single lifestage of this grand cycle, however, one sees that the caterpillar, after emerging from embryogenesis quite small, goes through several stages, or instars, becoming more grand at each shedding of the skin, until at last the massive beast pupates. So what triggers these transitions within the caterpillar? Recent research suggests a process triggered by suffocation by bulk. [more inside]
posted by Cold Lurkey at 8:53 PM PST - 21 comments

Seismic waves propagating across the US --- "Phil Plait showed the spectacular animation of seismic waves propagating across the US from the 5.8 Virginia earthquake last week, but left out part of the story. A commenter, davenquinn, picked up some details." [more inside]
posted by hank at 8:37 PM PST - 19 comments

Hidden away in vaults and out of distribution for over forty years, Herostratus was in its own time largely misunderstood. After only a handful of initial screenings it virtually disappeared from public view altogether, remaining all but forgotten to this day. Yet while admittedly flawed, the film does offer a compelling critique of the failure of 1960s postwar idealism in Britain, an ideal portrayed as having degenerated into neurotic self-gratification. It is also of note as Dame Commander Helen Mirren's first credited screen role. (not safe for those sexually aroused by Helen Mirren) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:27 PM PST - 18 comments

SLYT The Brandt, Braur, Frick ensemble and Emika performing her song "Pretend". [more inside]
posted by titus-g at 6:31 PM PST - 10 comments

Compressed "I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism. " (via)
posted by dhruva at 6:07 PM PST - 20 comments

A video was posted of Adam Savage's talk on inspiration at the May 2011 San Francisco Bay Area Maker Faire featuring readings from Emerson, Pirsig, and Chandler. [more inside]
posted by morganw at 6:05 PM PST - 24 comments

Who was the worst defender in the history of baseball? A commenter in a baseball-fever thread compiles a list of the bottom 100 career dWAR figures of all time -- in other words, the 100 players who cost their teams the most wins with the glove. (Joe Posnanski on the WAR metric, for those unfamiliar with it.) The list is an interesting mix of players whose bats allowed them to stay in the game for years despite terrible glovework (Bernie Williams, Manny Ramirez, Dave Winfield) and players who were so bad in the field that they managed to rack up a lot of negative dWAR in shorter careers (Chris Gomez, Dean Palmer.) Toby "Stone Fingers" Harrah is #14 with a -10.9 dWAR. Dick "Dr. Strangeglove" Stuart just misses at -6.1. Some active players have a chance to finish high on the list: Ty Wigginton is only 33 and has already bumbled away enough balls in 2011 to "improve" his ranking from 24th to 15th. Worst of all time? No, it's not the Captain -- Derek Jeter is #2 on the all time list with -13.4 dWAR. Can you guess the "winner"?
posted by escabeche at 5:53 PM PST - 85 comments

Hey Oscar Wilde! — A spot to archive nerd images of interest from out of print/hard to find art books, magazines, comics and other assorted ephemera laying about as well as detours into other things found about the web. Some of the pieces from the 'Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!!!' literary art collection (previously on MeFi) may make it on here from time to time as well.
posted by netbros at 5:40 PM PST - 2 comments

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is working to make many of their digital archives accessible online: These include everything from the distress call of a young howler monkey to courting poison dart frogs, to the sound of morning amongst the mangroves - not to mention more than 40,000 photographs and 1500 documents all related to STRI's work in Panama and across the tropics.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:36 PM PST - 3 comments

Hey, remember the ISS, that space station the Space Shuttle helped build before the shuttle was retired? Turns out humans might have to vacate that nifty space station for a bit. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:00 PM PST - 89 comments

His vows: "We come here today in defiance of biological reality. We know that mammals are not monogamous (except for a few species of meadow vole with abnormally high levels of endogenous oxytocin) ..."
Her vows: "Your vows make it clear why I love you: your intellectual rigour, and your honesty, and your eloquence, and the way you leaven these with profanity – they’re the very things that I fell for, even before you made an x-rated cephalopod reference on a rooftop patio ..." [more inside]
posted by memebake at 4:57 PM PST - 13 comments

"Attention, industrial farmers. Willie Nelson wants you to stop drugging your pigs and smashing them into compact, easily shippable pork cubes. So does Chipotle." Farm Aid organizer Willie Nelson covers Coldplay's "The Scientist" for a pseudo PSA for burrito chain Chipotle's foundation to support sustainable agriculture, family farming, and culinary education.
posted by Frank Grimes at 4:08 PM PST - 58 comments

Enclyclopedia Brown is a children's fiction series written by Donald J. Sobol since 1963 and still very popular today. These are the 10 most ridiculously difficult mysteries in the series and baffling as to how a child is supposed to be able to solve them.
posted by rozomon at 3:44 PM PST - 136 comments

These Americans is a diverse collection of public archive photographs: 1980s Wrestling, Warhol Polaroids, 1970s NYC gangs, Jayne Mansfield, polygamists, Al Capone, the KKK, FSA photographer Russell Lee, civil rights photographer Jim Peppler, early 20th century Mexican border town photographer, Gertrude Fitzgerald, &tc. It is a project from American Suburb X. Many links are NSFW.
posted by xod at 3:36 PM PST - 5 comments

Scottish Comedian, Limmy, tries to lose 1,000 of 11,000 Followers in 24 hours. Hilarity, Inanity, Profanity ensues. (Via the always great cookdandbombd). Nsfw text, about as nsfw as you can get for work without getting into some seriously illegal prose.
posted by Gratishades at 3:19 PM PST - 24 comments

Two days ago a user asked Google about a strange warning he was getting when trying to access Gmail from Iran. Turns out he was getting a fraudulent SSL certificate that was issued incorrectly for *.google.com by DigiNotar, a Dutch certificate authority. It seems likely this was a deliberate man-in-the-middle attack to snoop email in Iran. This attack is the second SSL certificate compromise in a year (previously), pointing to a fundamental design flaw in Internet security. [more inside]
posted by Nelson at 3:14 PM PST - 45 comments

Carrying on the tradition of Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily and Steve Oedekerk's Kung Pow, Dub of the North St*r takes a well-known, and frequently violent, anime and turns into a comical parody of itself.
posted by lemuring at 3:00 PM PST - 15 comments

The Shrine of Apple--a (sill in progress) archive of photos and specs for Apple's complete product history.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 2:04 PM PST - 64 comments

The Fleishhacker Pool, formerly located in San Francisco, California, was once the United States' largest swimming pool, as well as the world' largest heated saltwater pool. The pool closed in 1971 and was eventually acquired by the adjacent SF Zoo, which filled in the giant pool to make its present parking lot. The Pool's Bath House, however, is still standing, albeit derelict.
posted by MattMangels at 1:41 PM PST - 45 comments

William Brown was a man who recorded a handful of blues on Sadie Beck's Plantation on July 16, 1942 for Alan Lomax. Once thought to be the same man as the Willie Brown who played with Son House and Charley Patton--and was immortalized in Robert Johnson's Crossroad Blues--the consensus now is that William Brown was a different man, about whom we know next to nothing. Certainly, the handful of recordings we have that feature him supports this. The Willie Brown who recorded Future Blues and M & O Blues was an archetypal Delta bluesman, with both songs being stripped down versions of Charley Patton's Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues, among others, and Pony Blues, respectively. The William Brown who recorded Mississippi Blues, Ragged and Dirty and Make Me a Pallet on the Floor plays and sings nothing like that Willie Brown. That we know nothing about him and never heard any more of his music is one of the many tragedies of recorded blues. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:56 PM PST - 13 comments

The Parable of the Tribes. A classic essay by Andrew Schmookler on the Hobbesian struggle for power, and its inevitability. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 12:33 PM PST - 24 comments

Location and pictures of the NC 12 breaks, in Google Maps Hurricane Irene did less damage than expected -- unless you experienced any of that damage yourself. NC 12, the lone road connecting the towns on Hatteras Island and the rest of the barrier islands of the Outer Banks, or OBX, in eastern North Carolina, was cut in two places and overwashed in another spot. Ocracoke Island, accessible only by ferry, was overwashed, as well. The state vows to repair, even if it's inevitable that it will happen again.
posted by legweak at 12:26 PM PST - 30 comments

100 years of fashion (SLYT). [via]
posted by Phire at 11:56 AM PST - 24 comments

When Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was released from government custody it was with several conditions. Ai was slapped with a travel ban, was not to speak to the media about his detention and was banned from using social media. Since his release he has returned to Twitter, joined Google+, given an interview to a Party-run newspaper and on August 28 he published a piece in Newsweek that calls Beijing "a constant nightmare". [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 11:50 AM PST - 17 comments

National Guard troops in Manville, NJ, discover their Light Medium Tactical Vehicles can't drive underwater.
posted by Fister Roboto at 10:48 AM PST - 96 comments

Are you a constituent of Paul Ryan and want to tell him what you think? Better pay up. Or maybe not.
posted by griphus at 9:41 AM PST - 83 comments

The Williams Institute at UCLA has recently completed an analysis of same-sex couples' distribution, as reported by the U.S. Census. The Big Find: over 900,000 self-identified couples, 22% of whom are raising children. Profiles for individual states, plus D.C. (72% male) and Puerto Rico (70% female). via MetroWeekly. Previously, Queering the Census.
posted by psoas at 8:04 AM PST - 59 comments

A (Video) Letter to the Aliens
posted by litnerd at 7:02 AM PST - 28 comments

If the News Media was a Person You Were Dating, a comic by Winston Rowntree of VirusComix. Also recently author of the Rock Timeline.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:40 AM PST - 35 comments

Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the Western world? Whose monopolistic practices makes WalMart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch look like a socialist? You won’t guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers. Theirs might sound like a fusty and insignificant sector. It is anything but. Of all corporate scams, the racket they run is most urgently in need of referral to the competition authorities.
posted by veedubya at 5:00 AM PST - 132 comments

O Sister, What Art Thou - Kathryn Lofton on the Religion of Oprah.
posted by joannemullen at 3:43 AM PST - 21 comments

How language affects our perception of colour...(SYTL) more on the 'linguistic relativity hypothesis' here and here
posted by Rufus T. Firefly at 3:31 AM PST - 52 comments

I'm so sorry, Metafilter, really I am. I don't know what's come over me, but I am posting one of the dopiest, most embarrassing celebrity novelty tunes ever recorded. It's by the fellow who played Batman in the 60s TV series, Adam West, in a breathtakingly stupid recording of an utterly ridiculous song called Miranda. I pray that you'll forgive me for my indiscretion, and I promise I will post some inspiring and worthwhile music next time around.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:50 AM PST - 40 comments

Pretty Colors This is a tumblr to which people can submit colors they find pretty. Why do they find them pretty? Who picks them? Is there some deeper sociological/anthropological message behind which colors get picked and which don't? I can't say. I don't even know if my computer screen is properly calibrated, maybe I'm not even seeing the same colors. Still, the presentation is good and it does do what it says on the tin. Which is commendable.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:36 AM PST - 39 comments

Playboy: The Curse of Reality TV (url/ads may be NSFW)
posted by zarq at 10:12 PM PST - 56 comments

Town Of Cats is a new story by cult Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:27 PM PST - 48 comments

In 1931, Irma Rombauer, a Missouri homemaker struggling to support her family after the suicide of her husband, self-published The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat. The New York Public Library later named it one of the 150 most influential books of the century. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:23 PM PST - 61 comments

Tao Te Ching - Peter A. Merel's Interpolation
posted by MetaMonkey at 7:54 PM PST - 41 comments

This is what happens when you play the game Telephone with YouTube auto-captioning.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:49 PM PST - 23 comments

"When I go to heaven, they're going to tell me where I really finished in the world." Ted McClelland suggests that women's track and field records be abolished to "give today's runners realistic times to chase." An As It Happens (CBC) interview with McClelland begins around 11:40 of this link.
posted by kneecapped at 6:15 PM PST - 37 comments

The CRPG Addict is playing every PC role-playing came in chronological order. Currently, he's playing Ultima V. [more inside]
posted by kittensofthenight at 6:12 PM PST - 58 comments

My Brief OkCupid Affair With a World Champion Magic: The Gathering Player. Jon Finkel's winnings topped $300,000 from 1997-2008, during his most active Magic: The Gathering years. These days, jonnymagic00 heads out on the professional poker circuit instead. But loyal Magic fans still have his back.
posted by misha at 5:31 PM PST - 343 comments

Officially canceled: Former Baywatch star and 1995 Playmate Donna D'errico's quest for Noah's Ark (video).
posted by hermitosis at 5:12 PM PST - 52 comments

It was a beautiful day in Ponyville. The sun was shining; the birds were singing. Ponies big and small cantered throughout the town, whickering and neighing merrily as they went about their business.
Suddenly, there was a huge explosion!
“Oh my god, that was a huge explosion!” yelled Twilight Sparkle, staring in shock and horror at the massive fireball rising from the center of town. Hundreds of ponies ran screaming from the burning wreckage of the Town Hall. Some were covered in soot, and limped as they streamed past her, desperate to escape the burning hell behind them.
“Yo Twi’, you see dat shiz?” said Spike, her jive-talking baby dragon sidekick. He stood on her back, one claw wrapped in her mane while the other casually removed a set of shutter-style plastic sunglasses. You know, like the ones Kanye West is always wearing.
Michael Bay presents My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. (It's fanfiction, but readable without knowledge of the show or fondness for pastel-colored horses.) [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 5:05 PM PST - 37 comments

Do you lack self confidence? Not sure what you should do after high school? Having trouble finding a nice young man? Are your friends interested in nothing but scotch, girlie magazines and gin? Ask Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about it. He's got Advice for Living. [more inside]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 4:24 PM PST - 28 comments

Portraits of married couples from the Victorian era. [more inside]
posted by gman at 3:37 PM PST - 77 comments

“Honeyboy” Edwards, the last of the original American delta bluesmen, died last night. [more inside]
posted by magstheaxe at 2:46 PM PST - 27 comments

Biomedical Ephemera, or, a Frog for your Boils is "A blog for all biological and medical ephemera, from the age of Abraham through the era of medical quackery and cure-all nostrums. Sometimes featuring illustrations of diseases and conditions of the times, sometimes fascinating ephemeral medical equipment, and sometimes clippings and information about the theories themselves." The archive page is also a useful starting point. via Things Magazine.
posted by Rumple at 2:14 PM PST - 8 comments

Creepy vulture art [SLVimeo] [previously]
posted by stonepharisee at 1:36 PM PST - 25 comments

The Ultimate Binky Video [more inside]
posted by joannemerriam at 12:45 PM PST - 35 comments

Cleverbot vs. Cleverbot. [more inside]
posted by atomicmedia at 12:40 PM PST - 49 comments

Saturday August 27 Bill Nye dedicated a solar noon clock he designed. The clock is embedded in the facade of Rhodes Hall. At Solar Noon, when the Sun culminates, that is, reaches its highest point in the sky, the sun-shaped feature will light up. It is the marrying of mechanical and electrical engineering with astronomy. What could be better?
posted by IvoShandor at 11:47 AM PST - 26 comments

Crazy Axe Wielding Love Bird Attacks! [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:39 AM PST - 30 comments

Superherodom after 40. A series of paintings by Andreas Englund. Coral cache here.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:51 AM PST - 56 comments

MST3kdbx: Six Degrees of Peter Graves. Did you know Coleen Gray was in The Leech Woman and The Phantom Planet? Like the IMDB obsessive cinephile friend you never friend MST3Kdbx indexes and connects together every actor in every movie shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000 [via mefi projects]
posted by The Whelk at 9:12 AM PST - 84 comments

"For goodness sakes, Hedy ... who is Jack Kirby?" "You goop! He's the one who draws the covers for Love Romances!!" [more inside]
posted by griphus at 7:12 AM PST - 41 comments

Tennis player and coach Bob Hewitt is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame who has held all the men's doubles and mixed doubles Grand Slam titles. Hewitt, who was born in Australia but became a South African citizen by marriage, also captained the 1974 South African Davis Cup champion team. The Boston Globe reports that Hewitt's lengthy coaching career in the US and South Africa has long been accompanied by allegations that Hewitt sexually abused his female students, mostly adolescents but one as young as 10. Hewitt denies the charges.
posted by catlet at 5:51 AM PST - 13 comments

Ever wonder where the Windows XP default wallpaper came from? The man behind the camera is American photographer Charles O’Rear. Don’t let his name fool you into thinking that the photo was in fact taken in Ireland. Bliss, as it turns out, is in.....
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 5:50 AM PST - 79 comments

White House economic policy largely originates with The Council of Economic Advisers, CEA, who directly advise the President of the United States. CEA research and publish the annual Economic Report of the President[ .pdf ], which details the state of the nation's economic health. Today President Barack Obama is expected to nominate Princeton Economist Alan Krueger as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Krueger, who previously held the post of Assistant Treasury Secretary for Economic Policy, has written on a wide range of topics, from the economics of rock music [ .pdf ], the causes of terrorism [ .pdf ] and American's changing work / life balance. But Krueger is best known as a labor economist who has extensively researched long term unemployment. [more inside]
posted by Mutant at 5:46 AM PST - 69 comments

Journalist and Detroit techno historian, Dan Sicko passed away Sunday, August 28th from a rare form of eye cancer. [more inside]
posted by p3t3 at 5:38 AM PST - 14 comments

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela wants to bring his country's gold back home. Eleven billion dollars worth of Venezuelan gold (211 tonnes ) is currently deposited among a number of US and European banks, at least some of which will have difficulties meeting the call. Transporting the gold will be expensive and complicated - not because of the physical volume but because of its immense value. (via) [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:16 AM PST - 81 comments

People are thinking about immortality these days. Or at least living a long, long time. (There's a jellyfish that's already made it. [prev])
posted by rikschell at 5:07 AM PST - 93 comments

gif.tv is just what you might expect. It made me giggle a bit. [more inside]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:23 AM PST - 35 comments

"The most varied and fervorous literature of spanish speaking America is the Argentinian. The most sui generis (like the country itself) is the Chilean." Carlos Fuentes lists the novels of the 20th and, probably a little bit prematurely, 21st centuries which constitute the Latin American Canon (google translation). [more inside]
posted by lucia__is__dada at 2:55 AM PST - 28 comments

"At 7 a.m. Saturday morning the reports from the lineup were mixed. Big sets in the 20-foot plus range, some bigger ones and all on the verge of unsurfable. Tow-in crews who'd flown in from all over the world were sitting in the lineup watching the waves hit the reef and timing the sets. Meanwhile photographers and video crew were stuck on land arguing with government officials who had declared a "Code Red Alert" and shut down the channel leading to Teahupo'o."
posted by Ahab at 12:49 AM PST - 24 comments

Every generation gets the self-help guru that it deserves
posted by vidur at 10:59 PM PST - 141 comments

Oscar Pistorius -- known as "the blade runner" -- has qualified for the second round of the world 400 meter championship. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:44 PM PST - 63 comments

What People in 1910 Thought the Year 2000 Would Be Like?
posted by VikingSword at 7:58 PM PST - 111 comments

The FEI winner (Electron Microscopy) is 'Microcanyon - microcrack after bending test'. The other images are just as amazing.
posted by unliteral at 7:21 PM PST - 10 comments

The Tunnel is a surprisingly well-made horror movie with a novel distribution strategy: basically, to offer the film in every way possible, from television to movie theaters to DVDs. The filmmakers have even made the movie available for free online as a legal bit torrent file. Is preemptively making the file available as a torrent actually a good distribution model? Surprisingly, a major film studio seems to think so.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 6:34 PM PST - 33 comments

Generative Typografie - experimental programmatic type and infographics (demos and text auf Deutsch)
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:20 PM PST - 6 comments

How Games Saved My Life
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 5:37 PM PST - 67 comments

My favorite response to questions about how to eat clean is, “Wash your food.” On the always-changing understanding of ‘good’ food and how some of the bodybuilding community’s dogma doesn’t hold up to research.
posted by the mad poster! at 3:14 PM PST - 52 comments

"The Art of Clean Up" is where OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Design. (More examples in the "bildergalerie" here) From neat-freak Ursus Wehrli who previously gave us "Tidying Up Art".
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:52 PM PST - 17 comments

After decades of breeding, the complexity of cat color genetics is quite well understood. Genes which control pigmentation, hair length, color dilution, banding (agouti), white fur (dominant, spotting, or albino, sometimes linked with deafness), tabby patterns, and more combine to create a wide spectrum of possibilities. Specific traits such as white gloving among Birman cats and the amber color found only in Norwegian Forest Cats (which comes from a single female born in 1981!) have also been isolated and studied, and can be affordably tested for. On top of all that, fur color is epigenetic as well as genetic, and sometimes responds to the cat's environment. If you clone a calico cat, you get a kitten which doesn't have a similar coat due to X-inactivation, and pointed cats (such as Burmese, Siamese, and Tonkinese) have temperature-sensitive coloration. [more inside]
posted by vorfeed at 12:45 PM PST - 89 comments

Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America.
posted by homunculus at 12:14 PM PST - 85 comments

The web series Often Awesome documents the life of Tim LaFollette, who was living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gherig's disease. On August 23, Tim died at the age of 31. [more inside]
posted by craichead at 11:59 AM PST - 14 comments

Ana Lee's fashion blog is in Russian but with its insane number of HQ photographs [don't forget to click the "далее"], you won't care. For example, her two posts about Carol Alt almost certainly comprise the greatest documentation of that model's career to be found anywhere in the world.
posted by Trurl at 11:51 AM PST - 6 comments

Lid Cat Needs All Lids To Be Closed, a cat video with a surprising twist!!
posted by The Devil Tesla at 10:53 AM PST - 30 comments

Stetson Kennedy died yesterday at 94. The folklorist and writer was best known for infiltrating and exposing the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, increasing public resistance to the organization and helping lead to the revocation of their national charter. Kennedy revealed details of the KKK to writers of the popular radio show "Superman," giving the Man of Steel a new postwar enemy through 16 episodes of the series "Superman vs. the Klan". [more inside]
posted by Miko at 10:10 AM PST - 29 comments

If you want to take a relation of violent extortion, sheer power, and turn it into something moral, and most of all, make it seem like the victims are to blame, you turn it into a relation of debt. Naked Capitalism talks to David Graeber about his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Previously. And more generally. Bonus Graeber classic: "Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!" [more inside]
posted by gerryblog at 7:01 AM PST - 163 comments

As is well known, having six legs is the only possible defence against Dutchmen but, in unrelated news, Brad DeLong comments on the tendency of economists to blame prediction failures on irrational people failing to model the theories rather than the theory failing to model the people. He also highlights how this applies to waltzing with Darwin on starships. Or something like that. [more inside]
posted by DRMacIver at 2:43 AM PST - 54 comments

Fuck Yeah Canton Everett Delaware the Third! Warning: Dr Who, series 5, season 6, episode 1 & 2, "Day of the Moon" spoiler. [more inside]
posted by Mike Mongo at 12:00 AM PST - 342 comments

Hurricane Irene is the worst hurricane to hit the northeastern US in 50 years. President Obama has signed Emergency Declarations for North Carolina, New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maryland. At least 8 people are known dead, and 2 million are without power. [more inside]
posted by booksherpa at 8:12 PM PST - 337 comments

This month Penguin launches a redesigned series of six classic titles, called Penguin Ink. But the ‘ink’ is not printers ink, but that of a more visceral kind.
posted by infini at 7:19 PM PST - 54 comments

A self-styled "ninja" is patrolling the streets of Yeovil in a bid to make the town a safer place. 'Martial arts expert and father-of-two Ken Andre, 33, also known as Shadow, has been monitoring the streets of the Somerset town for the past six years.'
posted by VikingSword at 7:00 PM PST - 47 comments

Before it was a website, Ask A Mathematician / Ask A Physicist was two guys sitting in the desert at Burning Man, presuming to answer (almost) any question that happened to occur to whomever happened to appear at our stand. [more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:10 PM PST - 42 comments

"But there is a broader disquiet in the community which is surely correlated with the current impasse in our politics and media. It is, I believe, a real sense of a loss of legitimacy, a loss of belief in the validity of the institutions that control our nation and over which ordinary citizens have little influence and zero control."

A naughty boy's weakening grip on power could spark a constitutional crisis in Australian federal politics. Here's a good time line. There are many Australian's who can remember the scandalous constitutional crisis of 1975 when Queen Elizabeth's representative sacked the Prime Minister – which unbelievably included a comedian interviewing all the major players on the steps of Parliament House as the drama unfolded. It later turned out that the CIA masterminded the whole thing.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 5:43 PM PST - 61 comments

Doraemon - the Hurricane Child (Japanese with English subtitles) Perhaps Japan's greatest pop icon, Doraemon is an earless robotic cat who travels back in time from the 22nd century to aid a schoolboy, Nobita. Originally a Japanese manga series created by Fujiko F. Fujio (a nom de plume of a manga writing duo formed by two Japanese manga artists) Doraemon would become probably the most popular anime series in Japanese history. A Daily Motion user has uploaded dozens of older Doraemon episodes, many with English subtitles).
posted by KokuRyu at 5:35 PM PST - 8 comments

500 people holding more than 1,500 (!!!) developed pictures all around Israel, creating a smooth music video within their hands. (Best viewed not on full screen). Stop motion inside stop motion.
posted by MechEng at 5:22 PM PST - 18 comments

When @Irene Met Hurricane Irene A mild mannered 28 year old social media strategist in New York has a Twitter handle that's being mistaken for Hurricane Irene's.
posted by sweetkid at 3:04 PM PST - 52 comments

Inside Iranian Cinema (23 mins.) on VBS.tv
posted by lemuring at 2:55 PM PST - 3 comments

In 2005, Manuel Bravo, 35, walked to a stairwell of the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Center carrying a bedsheet. He hung himself. The note he left indicated that he had done it so that his son, Antonio Bravo, 13, could remain in the United Kingdom to be educated. The pair were to be deported back to war-torn Angola the next day, where they alleged that they had been victims of abuse by the ruling party. Now, Antonio is 19, training to be an electrician, speaking in Yorkshire dialect, no longer speaks his native Porteguese, and will be deported back to Angola if his humanitarian visa is not extended. "My family, they're English," he said, referring to the Beaumonts (his adoptive family). "Britain, that's my culture." [more inside]
posted by guster4lovers at 2:06 PM PST - 32 comments

Sure a baby has a swimming reflex but that doesn't mean watching them swim isn't absolutely terrifying.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:41 PM PST - 58 comments

Want to view weather fullscreen? Check out Weather Underground's Full Screen Weather Map. found via /r/boston [more inside]
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 1:12 PM PST - 20 comments

TolkienLibrary.com interviews Benjamin Harff about his hand-illuminated edition of The Silmarillion. Complete with click-to-see-larger pictures of his work.
posted by hippybear at 12:19 PM PST - 22 comments

Old S.F. Browse the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection by time and location.
posted by roll truck roll at 12:06 PM PST - 13 comments

About one person is murdered every 35 minutes in Mexico. Statistics are bland, so the WSJ decided to track down the 25 murders on July 29th, an ordinary day of death.
posted by stbalbach at 11:45 AM PST - 56 comments

Metafilter has previously seen Cat Ladders, a picture gallery and tribute to cat ladders around the world - approximately 967 of them, in 22 countries including Turkey, the Netherlands, Brazil, and various United States. But have we watched them? (via.) [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 11:01 AM PST - 15 comments

For those kept off the links -- particularly those with windmills -- by Irene, a flash alternative (via Kottke). Needs ice cream, but otherwise oojah-cum-spiff (via Wodehouse).
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 10:01 AM PST - 16 comments

Kiwi The Cockatoo Vs The Laser Pointer [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 9:35 AM PST - 49 comments

How many video games can you identify by their sound effects? How many can you guess from their music? (part 2, part 3) Can you name video game consoles by their start-up sounds?
posted by flex at 8:58 AM PST - 27 comments

Need something to distract you from the howling winds outside? Here's two hours of gorgeous house, techno, disco and garage from Mercury-winner Jamie XX from the XX. (The actual mix starts at around 3:30) Download link here.
posted by empath at 8:23 AM PST - 22 comments

Orthodox Jewish newssite Voz Iz Neias provides some Rulings Regarding Shabbos Observance And The Impending Hurricane. FrumSatire provides a counterpoint.
posted by griphus at 7:53 AM PST - 94 comments

Illustrator Andrew Kolb asks Have you ever listened to a song and your mind's eye is immediately filled with visuals? David Bowie's Space oddity as a childrens book. [more inside]
posted by Sailormom at 6:45 AM PST - 61 comments

Bioluminescent Mushrooms. Glow-in-the-dark mushroom [Neonothopanus gardneri.] rediscovered after 170 years: Spotted once in 1840 and then never seen again, one of the world's most bioluminescent mushrooms has been rediscovered deep in the Brazilian wilderness.
posted by Fizz at 6:18 AM PST - 36 comments

A look inside HMV's flagship store on London's Oxford Street. 1960s. 1970s. After a troubled year for the record chain, here's how the same building looks today.
posted by mippy at 2:58 AM PST - 42 comments

Glamour photography of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, etc. [NSFdialup]
posted by Trurl at 7:48 PM PST - 55 comments

Vance Gilbert is, in his own words, "big in the music business like a barnacle is big in shipping". Performing solo with acoustic guitar, his original music (including songs about Old White Men, Gilligan and the planet Pluto) and some well-chosen covers, as well as his on-stage banter, have charmed audiences all over* for umpteen years. He has made a reply to CeeLo's infamous song, performed alongside Arlo Guthrie while having an attack of gout and in his spare time, he makes free-flying models of antique airplanes. But sadly, he has just gotten the most publicity of his career... as an unwilling participant in one airline's Security Theater. (Story picked up by The Consumerist, the Economist, and James Fallows at the Atlantic.) [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:52 PM PST - 55 comments

The woven photographs of Seung Hoon Park New works from South Korean photographer Seung Hoon Park. Park uses a process to overlay or weave together film strips, however this appears to be a single print.
posted by the noob at 6:31 PM PST - 7 comments

A unique (to say the least) musical voice from the past emerges, with a timely tune to those along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Yes, friends, it's Nervous Norvus, with Evil Hurricane. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:14 PM PST - 19 comments

So you come across the free IamOmni album, and you'll probably think one of two things: hey, it's a new direction from underground L.A. MC, Omni; or wow, it's an album produced by UK musician Tricky. Both are true! Omni tells his story of connecting with Tricky in a few minutes, and Rap Reviews ties Omni and Tricky together through other routes, going back to the 2002 album, Sunch Punch, by Gershwin B.L.X. (Bassline Xcursionists). Lo and behold, that album is also free on Bandcamp.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:46 PM PST - 11 comments

A short history of New York City's sirens. In the first years of the twenty-first century, New York City police officers had six different siren noises at their fingertips to alternate and overdub as they attempted to bore through stagnant traffic. The “Yelp” is a high-pitched, rapidly oscillating, jumpy sound that suggests a small dog with large teeth has hold of your thigh and is not about to let go ..... . From Cabinet Magazine.
posted by Rumple at 4:23 PM PST - 28 comments

Between 1967 and 1973, a program called The Foundation Years brought fifteen young African-American men from Chicago's West Side to Dartmouth College. The students were gang members, most of them Vice Lords.
posted by catlet at 3:29 PM PST - 18 comments

Tired of the D&D Stereotypes of what constitutes armor for women? Tumblr is (of course) to the rescue! Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:11 PM PST - 155 comments

Fishy Fishy, Shrimpy Shrimpy, Taco Ensenada
Basic fish aint that delish so I don't even bother [more inside]
posted by finite at 12:11 PM PST - 31 comments

The "nymwars" rage on. Despite a passionate post on their own public policy blog earlier this year, outlining all of the reasons that Google is a strong supporter of the use of pseudonyms on the internet, Google is continuing to take an uncharacteristically draconian approach to the use of pseudonyms on Google+. Google+ users with pseudonyms not only risk losing access to Google+, but also access to other Google services including Picasa and Google Reader as well. Naturally, this is a significant inconvenience for users who are known primarily by their pseudonyms, and a more significant inconvenience to users who use pseudonyms to protect the physical safety of themselves and their families. [previously] [more inside]
posted by luvcraft at 11:17 AM PST - 149 comments

Jezebel's venomous coverage of the show Dance Moms is a thing to behold, but one detail that all parties involved seem to have missed: the song featured in the problematic "LaQuifa" dance number is based on a character ("the post modern pimp-ho") that Shangela Laquifa Wadley unveiled for the stand-up comedy episode of RuPaul's Drag Race. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 11:11 AM PST - 53 comments

Walking Wall of Words is the new website from Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum. Mangum has been staging a comeback recently, first with the Tall Dwarves cover Sign The Dotted Line, and later by announcing a string of northeast tour dates (previously). Walking Wall of Words promises that more tour dates around the world will be announced. Hear Mangum's new podcast, where he curates obscure and unique music. You can also listen to previously unreleased recordings of live NMH staples "Oh Sister" and "Ferris Wheel on Fire." Read about the new NMH vinyl boxset, filled with rare material. [more inside]
posted by JimBennett at 11:04 AM PST - 32 comments

The Third Wheel. Australian photographer Jackson Eaton offers a series of photographs about the awkwardness of being the third person that alternate between hilarious and creepy. (Via)
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:59 AM PST - 34 comments

This is how it will happen. Let’s pick a day: June 22, 2012. It’s a gorgeous Friday afternoon in the Pacific Northwest, 75 degrees and sunny. It’s been raining for weeks, and in Seattle the freeways are jammed with people fleeing the city to ­enjoy the rare sunshine. Same story in Portland. Out on the coast, the beach towns are thrumming with tourists. How a monster earthquake and resulting tsunami would affect the coast and cities of the Pacific NW.
posted by jontyjago at 9:27 AM PST - 149 comments

Several commentators are advocating the deregulation of the practice of law.
posted by reenum at 8:09 AM PST - 117 comments

Why Shutting Down Cell Service Is Not Just Against The Law, It's a Really Bad Idea (previously)
posted by j03 at 7:51 AM PST - 161 comments

The last horse fishermen of Belgium. [more inside]
posted by kuujjuarapik at 7:46 AM PST - 13 comments

"I finally said, you know what, I'm going to tell my story. The first American injured in the Iraq war is a gay Marine. He wanted to give his life to this country." ~Eric Alva, 40, former Marine and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom

Tell: An Intimate History of Gay Men in the Military [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:22 AM PST - 27 comments

'It was an instant success,' Stan says. 'It's not surprising, because it meets all the criteria of a good gag. It's very cheap to make, so you could make a decent profit on it. It sells for a very cheap price, so it's easy to sell. And people just went after it. The numbers we hear tend to vary, but the story is it initially sold about 100,000 units a year, which, at the time, was a lot. Fishlove did very well with it.' The Inside Scoop on the Fake Barf Industry.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:55 AM PST - 29 comments

Tim Hardin : underrated singer-songwriter of the '60s and '70s, or the most underrated singer-songwriter of the '60s and '70s? Known mostly for more famous singers covering his work, his songs were sung by a plethora of people, from Bobby Darin, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Rod Stewart to Astrud Gilberto, Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Echo & the Bunnymen, while he remained a very little-known but widely loved figure in folk music. He music could be painfully honest (Reason to Believe, Don't Make Promises), or slow and hypnotizing (Misty Roses). Sadly, 6 days after his 39th birthday, he died from a heroin overdose in 1980. [more inside]
posted by Drainage! at 6:31 AM PST - 18 comments

A History of Ireland in 100 Objects is an interesting series by the Irish Times, with many of the objects taken from the National Museum of Ireland: it's clearly inspired by the BBC/British Museum History of the World in 100 Objects, and is now about a quarter of the way through its run.
posted by Segundus at 6:08 AM PST - 15 comments

How to be black in America was the challenge for spirited young men of colour who found their way to Harlem in the troubled years of the 1940s, when music, poetry, dance and art were giving way to drink, drugs, street crime and sex for money. Malcolm Little’s first impulse was to cut loose in the big city where he found himself soon after his 17th birthday in 1942.
posted by veedubya at 5:45 AM PST - 13 comments

Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Courage' rally in Jerusalem (24.8) only brought together a few hundred supporters, according to +972 Magazine, an independent web zine from Israel. The low numbers could mean a lethal blow for Beck.
posted by alon at 5:05 AM PST - 74 comments

The Crimes of Col. Qaddafi An original essay by Christopher Hitchens, that starts: In George Orwell's 1939 novel, Coming Up for Air, his narrator, George Bowling, broods on the special horrors of the new totalitarianism and notices "the colored shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons," but also, less obviously perhaps, "the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke."
posted by growabrain at 3:11 AM PST - 57 comments

While Hulk Hogan may have been professional wrestling's biggest box office star of the past generation, from a critical standpoint, Ric Flair is widely regarded as the most talented wrestler of the modern era in terms of actual in-ring ability, as well as being known as one of the best promo men (the ability to give entertaining interviews promoting upcoming matches) in the history of the business. In recent years, however, Flair's legacy has been tarnished, with his name more likely to be making news for any number of embarrassing out of the ring incidents and dire financial situation as for his in-ring exploits, to the point where comparisons to Randy “The Ram” Robinson are not out of place. Grantland explores Ric Flair's fall from grace in "The Wrestler in Real Life".
posted by The Gooch at 12:50 AM PST - 38 comments

Color Scheme Designer 3 allows a user to create harmonious color schemes using their choice of one of six customizable combinations from the color wheel. There is an option to show what a given scheme would look like to users with various types of colorblindness. The resulting scheme can be exported in several formats including HTML+CSS and Photoshop ACO, and a given scheme can even be shared as a link.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:13 AM PST - 18 comments

Max Cooper makes beautiful and twitchy minimal techno with mathematical videos. [more inside]
posted by empath at 11:43 PM PST - 19 comments

David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve. A TED talk.
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:37 PM PST - 24 comments

Is this the answer? We've had our share of photo montages of Detroit... What to do with those empty houses? Mitch might have a viable idea here.
posted by tomswift at 8:01 PM PST - 51 comments

John Hammond Jr. has been keeping classic blues alive through nearly 5 decades of expressive performing and recording. He was named to the Blues Hall of Fame this year - here's a sampling why: Walking Blues performed in Paris, 2004; Come Into My Kitchen performed at at Fur Peace Ranch, 2009. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 7:29 PM PST - 11 comments

The Atlantic's Ta-nehisi Coates sparks months of debate with his contention that The Civil War Isn't Tragic. "The Civil War is our revolution. It ended slavery, and birthed both modern America, and modern black America. That can never be tragic to me." [more inside]
posted by Danila at 4:07 PM PST - 114 comments

Nearly seventy years ago, 10,000 Japanse Americans were forcibly relocated to Heart Mountain, just outside Cody, Wyoming; they were part of a larger group of more than 120,000 men, women, and children incarcerated in War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps due solely to their ancestry. This past weekend, about 100 survivors of the camp -- led by the delightfully named Bacon Sakatini -- returned to this remote corner of Wyoming to celebrate the grand opening of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center. Of the ten WRA camps, Heart Mountain had the only organized resisters movement, which was started in 1944 by seven men who formed the Fair Play Committee to protest the drafting of Japanse American men while their families remained imprisoned -- leading to the largest draft resistance trial in U.S. history.
posted by scody at 3:53 PM PST - 42 comments

Nerds Triumphant? The one-liner judged as the Funniest Joke of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is about computer passwords (also SPOILER a classic Disney cartoon). Runners-up and the joke judged WORST also listed. Warning: jokes contain drugs, sex, food (including broccoli and McDonald's), voicemail, crime, time, The Cure and a British chain store you Americans may never have heard of. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:19 PM PST - 139 comments

What is up with Noises? A fascinating explanation of why we hear sounds and music the way we do. It's a long video, but it's worth it!
posted by fzx101 at 2:51 PM PST - 36 comments

From the days of Thor Aackerlund and his historic victory at the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, right up to the present and Harry Hong's perfect "Max-Out" score this documentary expertly chronicles over two decades of Tetris Mastery. The film is Ecstasy of Order by director, and holder of 18th highest score on the game, Adam Cornelius. Folks in Texas can see its World Premiere screening at the Austin Film Festival in October.
posted by klausman at 1:25 PM PST - 16 comments

The Better Business Bureau (and some familiar faces) present the Top Online Scams of 2010.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:25 PM PST - 38 comments

Jeff Bridges digs this app, ..man. What might be a whole new way of studying music in general. “What I like about the app,” says Jackson Browne, “is that it is very much like a book in that you can open it whenever you want, it will keep your place, and you can come back to it whenever you want. It kind of defeats the constraints of time and space, all the barriers of getting together with a teacher at a particular time.” Reviews are varied, and the lessons aren't cheap.
posted by thisisdrew at 1:20 PM PST - 29 comments

Birthweight link to lifespan and lifelong health. 'Why does one person die younger and another survive to old age? Lifestyle and genetic factors play a role, but' 'a better predictor of future health is our birthweight and what it tells us about our development in the womb.' 'The birthweight of a baby reflects how well it was nourished in the womb and the risk of chronic disease in later life. It is better to be 7lb (3.2kg) at birth than 6lb - better to be 8lb than 7lb. This implies that variations in the supply of food from normal healthy mothers to normal healthy babies have huge implications for the long-term health of the baby.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 1:05 PM PST - 53 comments

Escape from City 17, Part 2 is a live action fan film set in the Half-Life universe (previously, related?).
posted by OverlappingElvis at 12:35 PM PST - 20 comments

"My dear guests, I am Mr. Thiel, your host. Welcome to Libertarian Island."
posted by griphus at 12:08 PM PST - 246 comments

Categories as fundamental as fact and fiction, news and entertainment, gender and sexuality, have eroded away. In literature and architecture, in cuisine, in music, in fashion and furnishings, everywhere, everything—it’s fusion and mix. Barack Obama emerged as a literal embodiment of this age. To educated people, especially younger people with generally progressive views, other candidates suddenly looked parochial by comparison—or simply outdated. In his ethnicity and biography and in his personality and politics, Obama, the conciliator, was above all a combiner. Because he was from virtually everywhere—Kenya, Indonesia, Honolulu, Harvard, Chicago’s South Side—he was also from nowhere. The pastiche of his persona made him “his own man” in a new sense of the term.

On the Politics of Pastiche and Depthless Intensities: The Case of Barack Obama
posted by Rumple at 11:52 AM PST - 22 comments

"If it hadn't been for you guys, I might not be here..." On November 14, 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges walked by a mob surrounding William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, becoming the first African-American child to integrate a white elementary school in the South. [more inside]
posted by longdaysjourney at 11:46 AM PST - 15 comments

What if Michael Vick were white? The cover of the September issue of ESPN The Magazine features an image of the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, but another picture might end up getting more attention. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 11:32 AM PST - 171 comments

"What would you like to see most in minix?" 20 years ago today, Linus Torvalds told the world about a small pet project he was working on. (Full thread.) An unnamed OS based in part on Minix, it would later become Linux, the operating system behind a huge swath of modern computing. Interestingly, the creator of Minix, Andrew Tanenbaum, was not very impressed by Linux, and publicly debated Linus and others in a very long Usenet argument. (Google Groups version.)
posted by kmz at 11:09 AM PST - 60 comments

The experiment behind a previous post has been written up in Scientific American. The authors conclusion "At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it's a very important first step..." [more inside]
posted by TheProudAardvark at 10:34 AM PST - 1 comment

The Misconception: You celebrate diversity and respect others’ points of view. The Truth: You are driven to create and form groups and then believe others are wrong just because they are others. Related. Previously.
posted by dave78981 at 10:17 AM PST - 52 comments

Their universe-wide reboot only weeks away, DC Comics has released 52 new logos for their books; they've been met with some praise and much griping. But what makes a good superhero logo? Maybe the design history of Daredevil (parts 2, 3, 4), The Hulk (parts 2, 3, 4), The Atom, (parts 2, 3), World's Finest (parts 2, 3, 4, 5, ), The Legion of Superheroes (parts 2, 3, 4, 5, Batman (previously) or Superman can shed a clue. [more inside]
posted by Toby Dammit X at 9:58 AM PST - 29 comments

Hundreds of people in the Vantaa river drinking beer on cheap rubber boats. It's kaljakellunta (youtube), 'the beer floating'
posted by Anything at 9:37 AM PST - 25 comments

The Tiny Fuppets in: Internet Follies, A Bad Cough, Party Pals,and A Modest Wish. Meet the Tiny Fuppets! [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 9:16 AM PST - 7 comments

The influential American fiction magazine, Weird Tales has a new editor, and a new direction. It's hard to overstate the importance the magazine has played as a platform for genre fiction. Founded in 1923, it has featured authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, C. M. Eddy, Jr., Clark Ashton Smith, and Seabury Quinn. [more inside]
posted by Stagger Lee at 8:08 AM PST - 40 comments

Modern-day, horse-drawn travellers. And Kate Moss (both links to photo sets that get sort of NSFW). By some fellow whose resume kind of makes it sound like I ought to have heard of him. [more inside]
posted by willpie at 7:21 AM PST - 66 comments

After 14 years, Rob Malda is walking away from Slashdot.
posted by schmod at 6:38 AM PST - 139 comments

Tangier Island, Virginia, is mere inches above the Bay around it. There isn't much dry land. Kids play on the airstrip. The people have a unique accent (which is becoming hard to find). With the land mostly marsh, folks bury their dead in their yards. It's a watery place, but charming. If Irene delivers even a glancing backhand blow, the entire island will be underwater. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 5:49 AM PST - 51 comments

"There's just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them... But we don't underestimate kids around here." [Via.]
posted by chavenet at 4:43 AM PST - 10 comments

Australian scientists have successfully trialled a method for controlling Dengue fever that involves infecting populations of mosquitoes with an endosymbiotic bacteria. The bacteria kills non-infected mosquitoes that mate with an infected individual, is passed to offspring of an infected individual, and confers resistance to Dengue upon infected individuals. [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 4:15 AM PST - 56 comments

Buried in the last paragraph of an article about the new .xxx porn domain is PETA's intention to "launch peta.xxx as a pornography site that draws attention to the plight of animals". Reactions have not been positive.
posted by vidur at 12:19 AM PST - 106 comments

"I have been inspired to write a post about, what seems to be, the number one thing on every pregnant woman’s mind…POOP!". On Jezebel: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Pooping During Childbirth. The Poop Report (Your #1 Source for #2, previously) weighs in.
posted by Deathalicious at 9:44 PM PST - 102 comments

As Wikipedia expanded to lesser known languages it ran into a problem: What is knowledge for Wikipedia purposes? Traditionally knowledge has been defined by citations, but many languages don't have a lot of written material, greatly limiting what could be created on Wikipedia. The solution (NYT) may be that People are Knowledge (45min), a project funded by a Wikimedia Foundation grant.
posted by stbalbach at 9:32 PM PST - 9 comments

“Before me as I write lies an inch-square bit of brown leather --- not, you would think, an inspiring subject for a tale. But perpend. This fragment of human skin, for such it is, has been since 1829 in the possession of three persons only: The original owner, my grandfather, and myself. Inconsiderable in size and unimpressive of aspect, it was nevertheless potent to influence the direction of my future studies… While yet a small boy, my grandfather would often show me by request this singular relic and I never wearied of hearing how he came by it. As a matter of history, its first proprietor, the late Mr. William Burke of Edinburgh, in the circumstances hereafter to be related, was publicly anatomized, his carcass thereafter flayed, his hide tanned, and his skeleton by order of Court preserved in the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh University, where it remains as a memorial of his infamy even unto this day. Mr. Burke’s integument being cut up into sortable parcels to suit buyer’s tastes and exposed for sale by private bargain, my grandfather, who was then but a young man, invested a modest shilling’s worth. Wealthier purchasers bought larger lots --- I have heard that the late Professor Chiene had a tobacco pouch made of this unique material. Personally, despite my predilection for crime, I prefer India-rubber.” --- "The Wolves of the West Port" [more inside]
posted by Diablevert at 9:14 PM PST - 12 comments

"The Justices all sit in high-backed leather swivel chairs, and Thomas has set his so that he can recline so far that he appears almost to be lying down. He stares at the ceiling. He rubs his face. He does not appear to be listening. He closes his eyes and sometimes appears to be asleep. The over-all effect is rude, if not contemptuous." The New Yorker profiles Justice Clarence Thomas, his wife Ginni's Tea Party connections and what they might mean for the inevitable SCOTUS ruling on Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and looks back on his confirmation hearings. Previously, Justice Thomas and Ginni; Obama and healthcare; SCOTUS.
posted by reductiondesign at 8:52 PM PST - 123 comments

The annotated scores for [*and Filmtracks.com's reviews of] Howard Shore's soundtracks to The Fellowship of the Ring*, The Two Towers*, and The Return of the King*
posted by Trurl at 8:42 PM PST - 21 comments

Fighting Trousers [SLYT ChapHop]
posted by quin at 7:38 PM PST - 39 comments

Songs by Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Katy Perry are among those newly banned by China's culture ministry. Chinese Internet sites must remove them by 15 September in the interests of "national cultural security". Last May China banned a Mongolian protest song and arrested the student who made it, while Tibetan singer Tashi Dhondup was sentanced to one year and seven months’ imprisonment for producing a music album with “subversive songs”. Funnily enough, they also banned 'Guns'n'Roses' long awaited Chinese Democracy. No word yet on China Crisis.
posted by joannemullen at 6:40 PM PST - 34 comments

The Daily Dot delivers news about social media communities such as Reddit, Facebook and Youtube the way a local newspaper might deliver news about a city.
posted by reenum at 6:25 PM PST - 10 comments

New Wave Time Warp is a tumblr featuring video of songs exactly thirty years after their release. Thirty years ago today: Pete Shelley, Homosapien.
posted by escabeche at 5:57 PM PST - 28 comments

The hidden meaning of pronouns. I particularly liked the counterintuitive bit about men's and women's use of pronouns. Also fascinating about the declining use of the 1st person as status increased: "When undergraduates wrote me, their emails were littered with I, me, and my. My response, although quite friendly, was remarkably detached -- hardly an I-word graced the page. And then I analyzed my emails to the dean of my college. My emails looked like an I-word salad; his emails back to me were practically I-word free."
posted by anothermug at 4:58 PM PST - 66 comments

Realtors in Cars is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these agencies got their realtors wedged into their cars, or why.
posted by mek at 4:28 PM PST - 34 comments

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has resigned.
posted by lohmannn at 3:44 PM PST - 442 comments

Facepaint in Motion (dozens of flickr videos of facepaint artist James Kuhn.)
posted by crunchland at 3:20 PM PST - 7 comments

Jerry's Map: a short film about the fictional world of Jerry Gretzinger, which he has been building for decades through a process of procedural cartography. His website.
posted by avocet at 2:16 PM PST - 20 comments

Is that review a fake? A new paper from Cornell researchers proposes an algorithm for sussing out fake reviews from websites. Here's a summary of tell-tale signs.
posted by empath at 1:37 PM PST - 71 comments

What's it like to have your film flop at the box office? "When you work "above the line" on a movie (writer, director, actor, producer, etc.) watching it flop at the box office is devastating. I had such an experience during the opening weekend of Conan the Barbarian 3D."
posted by Fizz at 1:27 PM PST - 133 comments

See history roll over the world. Today, the Internet Archive has released to the world an archive of all news programs on nearly every major television channel from 9/11/2001 to 9/16/2001. This exhibit, called Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive provides a grid navigation system of these many hours of footage from dozens of worldwide news programs and gives us a comprehensive overview of television's reaction to 9/11, on 9/11.
posted by jscott at 12:28 PM PST - 59 comments

As Khoi Vinh describes them, "Dan Hipp’s extraordinarily lively illustrations are borne of some mash-up universe in which comics, sci-fi and action-adventure fiction have both been flipped over on their backs, only to reveal their shockingly adorable undersides." via Subtraction [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 11:48 AM PST - 17 comments

Fukushima Robot Operator Writes Tell-All Blog. "An anonymous worker at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has written dozens of blog posts describing his experience as a lead robot operator at the crippled facility." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 11:11 AM PST - 19 comments

Some news about the return of Chumley's. Chumley's in New York's West Village has been closed since 2007, when a chimney collapse shut it down "temporarily." The building began life around 1830 as a blacksmith's shop, and during the Civil War may have been used to shelter runaway slaves. In the 1920s, Leland "Lee" Chumley, a "Soldier, Artist, Writer and Covered Wagon Driver," [paid NYT archive link] established it as a speakeasy, with two unmarked entrances – one on Barrow Street, and one at 86 Bedford Street [Google map]. [more inside]
posted by precipice at 11:08 AM PST - 8 comments

NPR reports about The Evangelicals Engaged In Spiritual Warfare who orchestrated Rick Perry's recent prayer rally; as previously exposed by Rachel Maddow.
According to The New Apostolic Reformation "a chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was 'The Prophet State. Both Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have deep ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians should rule the world. Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions.
Rachel Tabachnick has been reporting on the religious right who among other things want to kill public education. (Previously 1; 2 ).
posted by adamvasco at 10:53 AM PST - 265 comments

This week marks the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a long awaited and fairly well received prequel to the PC classic Deus Ex. Included in retail PC copes is a free redemption code for the OnLive version of the game. Unless you happen to buy the game from GameStop (no stranger to shenanigans), which ordered its employees to open the boxes and remove the code coupons. Perhaps of note, GameStop acquired Spawn Labs in April to develop a potential OnLive rival.
posted by kmz at 10:50 AM PST - 93 comments

In a widely discussed tweet last week, Jon Huntsman broke with the stated opinion of every other major Republican presidential candidate†:

@JonHuntsman "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."

Is Huntsman's announcement a shrewd move to establish his campaign as "the only moderate" candidacy in the crowded G.O.P. field, or is it evidence of a man sticking by his principles and "having a little fun" in a primary he knows he cannot win? [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:31 AM PST - 106 comments

Comic Syrup. A Blog About Canadian Comic Books.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 9:40 AM PST - 4 comments

"Japanese Jazz Opera" begins with "Now's The Time," by Charlie Parker. An old peasant couple sings along with the standard, in Japanese. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 8:50 AM PST - 9 comments

We talk about Lego a lot here on the blue. We also talk about Arrested Development. Now we can do both... at the same time.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:41 AM PST - 37 comments

"Call me nuts, but I find extraordinarily endearing the improbable blend of country music traditionalism and tastefully restrained space-age guitar pyrotechnics that can be heard in these tunes." Yes, friends, the fine folks at WFMU are back with the long-awaited 2nd installment of the tasty and wonderful Country Fuzz Spectacular! [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:20 AM PST - 8 comments

Lynda Barry, cartoonist and author of One! Hundred! Demons! has a lovely art tumblr.
posted by The Whelk at 7:35 AM PST - 44 comments

Cartoonist and teacher James Sturm takes a crack at The New Yorker. Via [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:33 AM PST - 45 comments

Tabletop: Analog Game Design - A commons licenced book containing a series of essays about digital and non-digital games from some esteemed boardgame veterans: "Much has been written about the videogame revolution, [...] In a scant thirty some-odd years, we’ve grown from nothing to one of the world’s largest entertainment forms, grossing tens of billions annually [...] Works that discuss the evolution of the game industry from an historical perspective generally talk about the connection between the pre-digital arcade and the earliest digital games; I’ve even heard some claim that “without the arcade, videogames would not exist.” This is, of course, bosh..." [more inside]
posted by Cogentesque at 7:16 AM PST - 36 comments

Print out your own home with WikiHouse. [more inside]
posted by honey-barbara at 8:50 PM PST - 57 comments

[Harold] Brodkey produced fiction that was epic too, but chiefly in its elaboration of human intimacy. To read his prose is to be incarcerated in the situations of his characters; indeed, it is to be very nearly overwhelmed by them. ... Brodkey moved forward with new forms for rendering human consciousness. His protagonist was, almost always, "a mind shaped like a person." The action consisted of that mind discovering its thoughts. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:34 PM PST - 11 comments

16 of France's mega-rich signed a petition urging the goverment to raise their taxes. Despite relatively high taxes and a wealth tax signatories such as the L'Oreal heir and the head of a major oil company, Total, are asking the government to raise their taxes to help solve the country's financial issues. Original petition (French).
posted by stp123 at 7:41 PM PST - 93 comments

Case History Of A Wikipedia Page: Nabokov’s 'Lolita' Since 2001, the Wikipedia entry on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita has been edited 2,303 times. It's a popular entry, too: of approximately 750,000 Wiki articles out there, it ranks at 2,075 in traffic. In the past ten years, the entry has grown to the detailed, 6,000-plus-word monolith of today. The two Lolita films now have their own pages, while the entry on the novel has expanded to include sections on such subjects as Lolita's Russian translation and its literary allusions. An edit is made, on average, about every other day.
posted by sweetkid at 6:50 PM PST - 35 comments

Portal: No Escape (SLYT, via)
posted by zarq at 6:46 PM PST - 40 comments

Lewin was Parrish's constant companion for 55 years.

"He and Lewin must have had a magical life together out in the country. When Parrish was 90 years old and Lewin was 71, Parrish's wife finally died, leaving him free to marry Lewin. However, he declined so she packed her bags, left the estate and went back to her village where she married someone else."

Part one in an occasional series on artists and their love life. [some NSFW] [more inside]
posted by unliteral at 6:39 PM PST - 21 comments

Facebook is phasing out its Places feature as part of a sweeping new privacy-centric redesign.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:07 PM PST - 60 comments

Seoul mayor issues ultimatum in bid to limit free school lunches. 'Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon wants to limit free school lunches to poor children and take students from wealthy families out of the gratis cafeteria line. And he warns that if voters don't back his agenda in a Wednesday referendum, he's going to quit his post.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 5:31 PM PST - 55 comments

As everyone knows there was an earthquake in central VA today that could be felt from South Carolina to Maine and points west. Stunning pictures of the carnage are beginning to appear. This is also time to consider nuclear power plant vulnerability in the USA (interactive map). North Anna Power Station was very close to the epicenter and shut down automatically.
posted by stbalbach at 5:28 PM PST - 138 comments

University of Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in NCAA basketball history (men or women) has been diagnosed with early onset dementia. Regardless, she plans to continue coaching the Lady Vols for the 2011-12 season.
posted by The Gooch at 5:17 PM PST - 16 comments

Why Arabic is Terrific
posted by wpenman at 4:27 PM PST - 66 comments

This comic isn't in English, but you'll get the gist of it. NOT for the easily unnerved. Scroll down slowly! Hat tip: Scott McCloud.
posted by Shepherd at 4:22 PM PST - 153 comments

"So What", by Miles Davis, as animated sheet music
posted by rollick at 4:11 PM PST - 17 comments

In 1985, just a few months before its lamentedly-unsuccessful-yet-enduringly-wonderful big screen cousin was released, the Clue VCR Mystery Game was released on an unsuspecting (and largely unwilling [some might say clueless]) public. The hugely-quotable and charmingly goofy VHS film included as part of the game is viewable in its entirety online in seven parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. (If you must see the butler, Didit, explaining the rules, please use these links in place of 1 and 2 above.) [Total video time: under one hour] Before you view [more inside] play a round of personal facts, followed by a round of cards. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:58 PM PST - 22 comments

Megatrends That Weren't "From "the rise of the rest" to the resource wars, pontificating on the big trends that will shape the future of global politics and economics has become a big business. But history can be awfully unkind to pundits wielding crystal balls." Many people, events, organisations and Guardian political pundits have erred in the past, but perhaps their record will be better in the future.
posted by joannemullen at 3:52 PM PST - 32 comments

HERO'S ADVENTURE!!
posted by The Devil Tesla at 2:38 PM PST - 44 comments

Can't wait for Star Wars: The Old Republic? You'd better be Jedi fast! EA wants you to pre-order its game real bad. [more inside]
posted by _paegan_ at 2:32 PM PST - 72 comments

Probably the worst video game ever made. Part two. (DLYT, probably NSFW)
posted by Toby Dammit X at 12:52 PM PST - 78 comments

"Uncle Frank" of late night TV's Jimmy Kimmel Live has died at 77
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 11:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Matthew James, born without a left hand, contacted Ross Brawn at Mercedes GP to sponsor a prosthetic hand (with the Mercedes logo). Brawn was contacted because he is a former student of Matthew's school, Reading. The result, Mercedes GP has worked with Touch Bionics and Matthew has a new prosthetic hand.
posted by juiceCake at 9:25 AM PST - 38 comments

Tom Waits' Private Listening Party The whole thing's gonna to have to be rethought. [SLYT]
posted by misterG at 9:06 AM PST - 36 comments

It's that time of year. Freshmen are confusedly wandering campuses around the nation in packs, searching for free food, and some good folks in Wisconsin want the kids off their lawn. [more inside]
posted by madcaptenor at 8:26 AM PST - 140 comments

Songwriter Nick Ashford died yesterday. Nickolas 'Nick' Ashford, along with his songwriting and marriage partner Valerie Simpson, wrote dozens of songs performed, covered and interpreted by artists like Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, Chaka Khan, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake and Amy Winehouse. [more inside]
posted by box at 8:10 AM PST - 37 comments

The Atlantic collects responses from readers on both sides of the current employment market:
part 1 - the unemployed
part 2 - the employers
part 3 - the jobless

posted by casarkos at 8:10 AM PST - 118 comments

Welcome to Exam Village, a neighborhood in Seoul where people live while studying for various professional entrance exams.
posted by reenum at 8:00 AM PST - 22 comments

Researchers at Northwestern confirm that Male Bisexuals exist ( NYT )
posted by The Whelk at 7:28 AM PST - 120 comments

It's fun! There are Muppets everywhere! I really do like the Muppets. I saw them on Top Chef the other night too!
posted by h00py at 6:49 AM PST - 30 comments

In 1989, invited to an open air theatre, late at night, I first experienced the 6 hour long screening of Peter Brook's Mahabharata, a much revered Hindu epic which includes the complete Bhagavad Gita as a central part of its narrative. Brook's multiracial casting and innovative treatment received criticism yet its impact has been acknowledged anyone who sat through the 9 hour play, the 6 hour TV serialization or only the 3 hour DVD. [more inside]
posted by infini at 3:34 AM PST - 27 comments

For those of you pining for the good ol' days of demented Chris Cunningham videos set to the music of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, I give you Tony Truand's clip for Skrillex's First Of The Year (Equinox). most likely NSFW
posted by mannequito at 9:37 PM PST - 111 comments

This was a triumph. A very special, very custom Portal 2 mod serves as Gary Hudston's proposal to his girlfriend Stephanie. He commissioned Douglas “TopHATTwaffle” Hoogland and Rachel “Miss Stabby” van der Meer and a the talents of a special guest as the icing on the cake. Via RPS.
posted by Verdant at 6:52 PM PST - 80 comments

Best known as the butt of jokes among sports bloggers and for their ever-present slideshows, Bleacher Report is slowly taking steps to offer better content. [more inside]
posted by gladly at 5:52 PM PST - 10 comments

Chaos Cinema (Part 1 , Part 2). The decline of extreme action in movies and the rise of overindulgent chaos. [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 5:41 PM PST - 92 comments

Four days ago Smithsonian Magazine published an in-depth examination of the Finnish education system (and what the U.S. can learn from the Finns). Here's a quote: "Schools provide food, medical care, counseling and taxi service if needed. Stu­dent health care is free... Besides Finnish, math and science, the first graders take music, art, sports, religion and textile handcrafts. English begins in third grade, Swedish in fourth. By fifth grade the children have added biology, geography, history, physics and chemistry." [more inside]
posted by bguest at 5:23 PM PST - 125 comments

The Doggie Diner was the name of a Bay Area chain of burger joints that had its heyday in the '60s and '70s. The last remaining restaurant in the Chain was located at the corner of 46th and Sloat in San Francisco, CA. Even after the place became a restaurant with a new name ("Carousel") the giant Fiberglass dachshund head remained as a piece of nostalgia until a storm toppled it on April 1st, 2001. The head was relocated in January 2005 to the median of Sloat Boulevard and became San Francisco city landmark #254. Now the restaurant itself is slated for demolition. [more inside]
posted by MattMangels at 4:37 PM PST - 32 comments

Europe's 'unitary patent' could impose software patents warns RMS. German courts have recently moved towards software patents upholding a patent on the automatic generation of structured documents in a client-server setting, i.e. XML, HTML, etc. (recently : the U.S. patent war)
posted by jeffburdges at 4:23 PM PST - 31 comments

Jerry Leiber, one of the greatest rock and roll songwriters to ever ply the trade, has died aged 78. Along with songwriting partner Mike Stoller, he was responsible for so many hits, including but not limited to: Love Potion No. 9 by The Coasters, Stand By Me by Ben E. King, Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton, later popularised by Elvis Presley, and, solo, in conjunction with Phil Spector, Spanish Harlem, as sung by Aretha Franklin.
posted by Len at 3:45 PM PST - 63 comments

Microsoft released Age of Empires Online last week -- a free-to-play realtime strategy game, and it's getting some pretty good press. [more inside]
posted by crunchland at 3:37 PM PST - 39 comments

in salt lake city utah these cats brought out a race car track
and we had a BB/roots/john spencer blues explosion friggin battle royal.
we did midnight racing til 2am go karts.

More ?uestlove celebrity stories.
posted by swift at 3:36 PM PST - 38 comments

Terrorists for the FBI: Inside the Bureau's secret network that surveils and entraps Americans.
posted by homunculus at 2:40 PM PST - 34 comments

You've been rickrolled on the blue. And you've seen nyan cat on the blue. But not in this righteously metal way. These are youtube posts to 331Erock's page for his metal covers of crazy, pop culture stuff.
posted by TheBones at 2:39 PM PST - 19 comments

Famous Lives in Minimalist Pictogram Flowcharts: From Darth Vader to Jesus by Maria Popova.
posted by nickyskye at 2:15 PM PST - 24 comments

London Metropolitan Police formulated policy of refusing bail to all arrested in London riots which might have influenced high remand in custody rate.
posted by maiamaia at 2:05 PM PST - 30 comments

Phillip Howard argues here that rather than protecting our freedoms, the U.S. legal system has actually begun to restrict our liberties and paralyze society. Life as a working professional has increasingly become what Howard describes as "a legal minefield". In this talk from the TED 2010 conference, Howard suggests 4 ways of helping to fix what he deems "a broken legal system." [more inside]
posted by Vibrissae at 1:46 PM PST - 68 comments

Stories of bad dates in 140 characters . More stories. (Via.)
posted by slogger at 1:13 PM PST - 93 comments

"A sort of PC": how Windows 8 will invade tablets (and why it might work). 'For the first time in fifteen or more years, Redmond faces a genuine challenge to its Windows desktop monopoly.''The decision to call, or not to call, a tablet a "PC" goes beyond mere branding. It influences the entire approach that Microsoft takes. It colors the user interface design, the sales model, the hardware requirements, the options available to system integrators.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:55 PM PST - 174 comments

"Revenge" - A Minecraft Parody of Usher's DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love (SLYT). Surprisingly catchy.
posted by cp311 at 11:53 AM PST - 12 comments

The Washington Mall welcomes another hero. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is unveiled. Sitting directly between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, "the composition of the [King] memorial utilizes landscape elements to powerfully convey four fundamental and recurring themes throughout Dr. King's message: justice, democracy, hope and love." [more inside]
posted by darkstar at 11:50 AM PST - 68 comments

Your Data depends on a game of JACKPOT and other classic vir(ii/uses). Brought to you by danooct1 and a Compaq Portable.
posted by griphus at 10:48 AM PST - 4 comments

" ... there is a depth of field technique with a controllable aspect called 'bokeh,' which describes a certain quality of blur that we often notice in the more luminous parts of a film’s background and that varies considerably with lens and camera type. Bokeh is a photography term derived from the Japanese boké- blur, haze ... When implemented in games the technique encapsulates a certain kind of second-order removal from reality. We are simulating not the way things look, but how they look after they have been filtered through the eye of a camera." Independent game developer Mathew Burns takes a look at how video games reflect reality in his account of the 2011 Game Developer's Conference. Burns also writes the blog Magical Wasteland. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 10:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Panic inside a Mexican soccer stadium. In live footage that could be seen all over Mexico and some other parts of the world, audiences who were peacefully enjoying a soccer match between Torreón's "Santos" and Morelia's "Monarcas" watched as the sound of gunshots made players run out of the field and into the cover of their locker rooms, while spectators crouched in their seats and later, panicked, ran toward the exits. (SLYT, comments in spanish, but images are self explanatory.) [more inside]
posted by CrazyLemonade at 9:54 AM PST - 68 comments

The Decemberists recreate Eschaton from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. The new video for "Calamity Song," from The King Is Dead, takes us into the dystopian world of the novel, Infinite Jest. [more inside]
posted by otherwordlyglow at 9:04 AM PST - 68 comments

Why Amazon Can't Make A Kindle In the USA. Does It Really Matter That Amazon Can't Manufacture A Kindle In the USA? Amazon & Kindle Part 3: It's Not Just Manufacturing! A cogent look at why today's prevailing approach to cost and manufacturing is wrongheaded.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 8:57 AM PST - 64 comments

Illusion or blockhead act? You be the judge. Caution: this performance is not for the squeamish. Tony Star presents iSight. (SLYT)
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:55 AM PST - 32 comments

From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine bridged the gap between print & radio news reporting and the new visual medium of film, with March of Time: award-winning newsreel reports that were a combination of objective documentary, dramatized fiction and pro-American, anti-totalitarian propaganda. They “often tackled subjects and themes that audiences weren’t used to seeing — foreign affairs, social trends, public-health issues — and did so with a combination of panache and subterfuge that today seems either absurd or visionary.” (Previous two links have autoplaying video.) By 1937, the short films were being seen by as many as 26 million people every month and may have helped steer public opinion on numerous issues, including (eventually) America’s entry to WWII. Video samples are available at Time.com, the March of Time Facebook page and the entire collection is available online, (free registration required) at HBO Archives. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:33 AM PST - 8 comments

Skincare company Nivea withdraws a controversial magazine ad after accusations of racism. The ad shows a black man in the act of throwing out a full-face mask which has a beard and an afro. The image is juxtaposed with the slogan "Re-Civilize Yourself." [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:28 AM PST - 255 comments

Happy birthday John Lee Hooker! Let's celebrate by listening to some of your older tunes! "Gonna take you down by the riverside, gonna tie your hands, gonna tie your feet, got the mad man blues" ... "Now the war is over, and I'm broke and I ain't got a dime" ... "You know I'm a crawling king snake, baby, and I rule my nest" ... "Gonna get up in the mornin', goin' down highway 51" ... "Well I rolled and I tumbled, babe, I cried the whole night long" ... "I feel so good, let me do the boogaloo"
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:06 AM PST - 19 comments

Jack Layton has passed away after a long battle with cancer. [more inside]
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:04 AM PST - 387 comments

Slap some retro on those photos with vintageJS. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:26 AM PST - 34 comments

Post A Letter Social Activity Club: "Imagine a day when every personal e-mail you receive is in the form of a piece of mail, in envelopes of different sizes, papers of different colours and textures, handwriting of varying degrees of legibility. Wouldn’t that be pretty nice for a change?" [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:17 AM PST - 18 comments

Black Dynamite is COMING SOON to Adult Swim (who the PTC accuse of corrupting children - what part of the word ADULT don't they get? - but I digress). It's based on the blaxploitation parody movie and comic book of the same name, and the pilot posted online has a special treat for anyone who thinks MetaFilter loves the Muppets too much... the villain is That Frog Kurtis, leader of a familiar looking gang of puppets turned evil. Felt will fly, stuffing will be torn out and puppet ass will get kicked. Enjoy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:42 AM PST - 23 comments

Fixing Films is a new blog that fixes classic films by a heavy application of mash-ups and MSPaint.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 12:18 AM PST - 19 comments

Congressional Republicans favor letting the payroll tax increase at year's end. Jeb Hensarling claims this is because "not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again." However, his logic may be backward[s].
posted by Wyatt at 9:20 PM PST - 93 comments

The Wire as Toy Story. The Wire as The Lion King. The Wire as Harry Potter. The Wire as a bunch of movie posters. The Wire as Trailer Park Boys (previously). The Wire as a British appliance store.
posted by Apropos of Something at 9:11 PM PST - 9 comments

Cozy Flash Sunday: Follow the journey of Raven Locks Smith in The Book of Living Magic, an illustrated romp through Oddness Standing and its bordering lands, by husband-wife team Jonas and Verena Kyratzes.
posted by stance at 8:58 PM PST - 4 comments

Stanislaw Lem on Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans. (Science Fiction Studies # 5 = Volume 2, Part 1 = March 1975; Translated from the Polish by Robert Abernathy)
posted by gen at 8:55 PM PST - 19 comments

Our intrepid reporter spends a week trying to write, browse the Web, edit photos, and even (shudder) tweet on IBM's first PC. PC World takes on the IBM 5150. Watch the original marketing video (CNET) or a modern homage to the 30 year old PC. Happy belated birthday, 5150! Wait, one of your inventors doesn't even use PCs anymore?
posted by desjardins at 7:43 PM PST - 39 comments

Though it is by far Peter Greenaway’s most well known film and, for all of the visceral and intellectual challenges it proposes, probably his most approachable, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover remains a difficult film to apprehend. (the beginning and the end, both NSFW)
posted by Trurl at 7:34 PM PST - 37 comments

Luthier Keith Medley plays his custom 27-string guitar. [more inside]
posted by specialagentwebb at 7:26 PM PST - 29 comments

“When it came to hard liquor .  .  . Americans preferred bourbon whiskey. Vodka was still mysterious, a drink yet to be discovered.” The story of how a colorless, odorless, tasteless spirit became a billion-dollar business in less than fifty years. (SLWeeklyStandard)
posted by spitefulcrow at 6:50 PM PST - 126 comments

First Air flight 6560 crashed yesterday in Canada's High Arctic. Fifteen passengers were on board, including four crew and eleven passengers. All the crew members were killed in the crash, while three pasengers survived. The plane crashed five miles from the airport in Resolute. Rescue efforts began immediately, as hundreds of military personnel were in Resolute participating in the annual Arctic military exercise Operation Nanook, an operation which includes an exercise in which military personnel respond to a mock air disaster. As a result, military helicopters, medical personnel, Canadian Coast Guard, and local fire and medical crews were on site and ready to respond immediately.
posted by smitt at 5:03 PM PST - 24 comments

Kristian Bezuidenhout introduces Mozart's fortepiano [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:49 PM PST - 17 comments

People really like to hate James Taylor, but he's doing some excellent guitar lessons on his website. Well, there's one guitar lesson and one lesson on fingernail care.
posted by jwhite1979 at 4:36 PM PST - 136 comments

Was Child's Infected? (Part1) (Part 2) An in depth analysis of John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing, focusing on the alien assimilation timeline, and, perhaps more intriguingly, an ending that may be less ambiguous than you would initially believe.
posted by I Havent Killed Anybody Since 1984 at 2:13 PM PST - 122 comments

Taking the Boris Bikes to Paris. One of London mayor Boris Johnson's initiatives has been the installation of a bike hire service across the capital controversially sponsored by a well known bank. Stretching the hire terms and conditions to their limit, local bloggers Ian and Tom decide to take them across the channel briefly to meet their continental cousins at the Parisian Vélib.
posted by feelinglistless at 1:31 PM PST - 41 comments

Robert Earl Keen is a country songwriter and storyteller, with an unusually good guitarist named Rich Brotherton. [more inside]
posted by Devils Rancher at 1:22 PM PST - 36 comments

The Cold War resulted in a rather large number of interesting military research programs. One of these with which I'm familiar is the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program, which ran from 1946 to 1961. The basic idea? Modify a bomber (such as a B-36 bomber), creating an aircraft that could theoretically remain aloft for weeks at a time without refueling, much like ballistic submarines? The challenge? Shielding. Shielding the reactor alone would make the aircraft prohibitively heavy, so the idea was to primarily shield the crew compartment instead of the reactor. However, to study the concept, and evaluate various lightweight shielding concepts, two very novel and unique nuclear reactors were built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory: the Bulk Shielding Reactor, a novel "swimming pool reactor", and the Tower Shielding Reactor, an unshielded reactor that was hung 200' in the air dangling between 310' steel towers. While the program successfully demonstrated several of the concepts (including a nuclear-powered gas turbine engine running in Idaho, and a modified B-36 that carried a nuclear reactor but wasn't propelled by it (mentioned above), the program was canceled in 1961 due to feasibility and budget concerns.
posted by kaszeta at 12:44 PM PST - 26 comments

Google's Latin America blog reports that millions of websites are blocked because an Argentinean court ordered ISPs to block leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com, which many ISPs implemented by blocking the IP address 216.239.32.2 rather than tweaking their DNS responses.

OpenLeaks' Daniel Domscheit-Berg has claimed he destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files held by WikiLeaks to protect sources, when he felt WikiLeaks could no longer protect them. Among the files destroyed was supposedly the U.S. government's no-fly list.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:20 PM PST - 101 comments

Army vet with PTSD sought the treatment he needed by taking hostages – but got jail instead. "Fifteen months of carnage in Iraq had left the 29-year-old debilitated by post-traumatic stress disorder. But despite his doctor’s urgent recommendation, the Army failed to send him to a Warrior Transition Unit for help. The best the Department of Veterans Affairs could offer was 10-minute therapy sessions — via videoconference. So, early on Labor Day morning last year, after topping off a night of drinking with a handful of sleeping pills, Quinones barged into Fort Stewart’s hospital, forced his way to the third-floor psychiatric ward and held three soldiers hostage, demanding better mental health treatment." [Via] [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 11:15 AM PST - 34 comments

Researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute say they've uncovered a pattern that triggers riots wherever it's found. What is that pattern? The price of food. When it rises to a certain level, social unrest & violence are soon to follow. According to their calculations the food price index is due to peak in August of 2013, assuming no corrective action is taken. The original paper is here.
posted by scalefree at 11:06 AM PST - 48 comments

Montreal Street Art: The Flickr Pool [more inside]
posted by jason's_planet at 10:35 AM PST - 4 comments

From 1999 to 2003, the largely-female UK comedy trope Smack The Pony had a series of short skits based on video dating ads. Youtube user myLastTears has edited them together into a supercut: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 9:40 AM PST - 18 comments

A husband and wife ambassador team leave soon for Armenia. The UK has found a solution to the challenge of "trailing" foreign service spouses. [more inside]
posted by k8t at 8:55 AM PST - 14 comments

Phaser Inc., a trading company in space-based MMO EVE online, have absconded with a record-breaking 1 trillion ISK and revealed themselves as a giant ponzi scheme in a remarkably frank open letter. Their haul of the in-game currency translates to just over $50,000, or 242 years-worth, of PLEX (traded for playing time). [via RockPaperShotgun] [more inside]
posted by Drexen at 8:21 AM PST - 81 comments

Requiem for a Mermaid. Requiem for a Lion King. Requiem for Pocahontas. Requiem for a Hunchback. (Previously: Requiem for Ferris Bueller, Toy Story Requiem.)
posted by hermitosis at 8:02 AM PST - 9 comments

The perfect location for the perfect crime. Due to a loophole in the US Constitution there is an area of Yellowstone Park where you may be able to get away with a major crime. U Michigan Prof Brian C Kalt looks into this loophole and gauges your chance at success. Someone has tried. [more inside]
posted by stp123 at 7:53 AM PST - 35 comments

Three years later, 'The Girl in the Window' learns to connect. An update on the progress of Danielle Lierow, a so-called "feral child" who was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning special report in the St. Petersburg Times. Unlike another famously neglected young girl, Dani has not been the subject of intense scientific scrutiny, and appears to be living a normal family life as a well-loved special needs child--albeit one in a family in a rural area where resources, and access to services via Medicaid, are sometimes limited. [more inside]
posted by availablelight at 7:31 AM PST - 29 comments

This is just amazing. (SLYT)
posted by Huplescat at 5:04 AM PST - 100 comments

Why Africa is leaving Europe behind: Africans are relishing something of a reversal in roles. The former colonial powers in Europe are wrestling with debt crises, austerity budgets, rising unemployment and social turmoil. By contrast much of sub-Saharan Africa can point to robust growth, better balanced books and rising capital inflows. There is an opportunity in this novel scenario: for Africa to assert itself on the global stage, and for European countries to take advantage of their historic footprint in Africa by stimulating commercial expansion to their south. But it is far from clear either side will grasp it. Recently.
posted by infini at 2:45 AM PST - 27 comments

Ben Venom makes heavy metal quilts. [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 10:19 PM PST - 33 comments

DINOSOAP archaeological soap lets you easily experience the fun of archaeological work! Body itself as a special soap made of double-modulation soap: scrub in the process each time, easier to dissolve the outer layer of the "loess" will gradually erode, slowly revealing more difficult to dissolve the inner layer buried in the "dinosaur fossil." Just few weeks, a mini ancient dinosaur fossils can be excavated Hello! [more inside]
posted by Gator at 8:58 PM PST - 17 comments

Orbán's concept of moral renewal and economic rehabilitation for Hungary has several tenets: Those without work are to be given work; those who are already working should work more in the future, but without being paid more; in the interest of the country's "stability," those who hold political power today should be allowed to remain in office for as long as possible; and those who once had power and did not use it for the benefit of the people should now be punished.

"Supporters of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán say he has a strict leadership style, while critics warn of the threat of forced political conformity, Jew-baiting and labor camps. Meanwhile, the European Union is saying nothing, apparently accepting the fact that a member state is getting out of control." [previously]
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 8:33 PM PST - 17 comments

Bon Iver has released a video for the second single from their new eponymous album: Holocene (Vimeo / Youtube.) Background. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:01 PM PST - 25 comments

Social Issues are Not Going to Win the Whitehouse by Gary Johnson.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:39 PM PST - 72 comments

Marcus Chown's top 10 bonkers things about the universe.
posted by anothermug at 6:38 PM PST - 35 comments

The Battle For Tripoli Begins: In the last few hours, news outlets and Twitter have been abuzz with reports of fighting around Tripoli. The Libyan rebel council is claiming that “zero hour” has started and a major offensive to take the city is beginning. [more inside]
posted by metaplectic at 5:51 PM PST - 402 comments

Rock Scene magazine - scans of every page of all 54 issues from 1973-1982, featuring artists like Bowie, Queen Lou Reed, the Ramones, The New York Dolls, Blondie, Talking Heads, Willy DeVille, and more. (via Dangerous Minds)
posted by madamjujujive at 5:20 PM PST - 10 comments

In the late Sixties and early Seventies several experiments were begun to test whether or not a non-human primate could construct a sentence. Several species were involved in these various experiments including the chimpanzees Washoe and Nim, a gorilla named Koko, and later in the Eighties work began with a bonobo named Kanzi. While great progress was made in teaching these primates a vocabulary, it would be difficult to see any of these experiments as a success. And all of these projects raised important questions about the ethics of such experiments. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 2:30 PM PST - 35 comments

A massive argument about comic books that don't exist. The condensed version.
posted by Toby Dammit X at 12:44 PM PST - 40 comments

How A Condom Is Made (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by griphus at 12:38 PM PST - 43 comments

1923 aka Heaven or 1925 aka Hell [dlv] via.
posted by ennui.bz at 11:48 AM PST - 21 comments

"With the help of Chris Herron Design, the Hell Office of Travel & Tourism has created a friendly and welcoming voice for destination Hell, and in so doing, has reaffirmed its mission to create an environment in which local businesses can succeed and flourish." Hell presents their new identity: Simply Heavenly ™ . Take a look at the brand new website. See Chris Herron's breakdown of the redesign process, along with dozens of logo explorations. Related: Logos for the moon. (via Brand New)
posted by JimBennett at 11:45 AM PST - 16 comments

Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life finished today. Promises of new projects and a print version by December have been made. [more inside]
posted by jeffamaphone at 11:00 AM PST - 12 comments

Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue? "The very act of making decisions depletes our ability to make them well. So how do we navigate a world of endless choice?"
posted by homunculus at 10:50 AM PST - 71 comments

People with antisocial personality traits are more likely to have utilitarian ethics [PDF] [more inside]
posted by DRMacIver at 10:03 AM PST - 66 comments

Mesmerized by Stuffed Animal | Fluffy likes it rough | slap a cat, stereo | unrequited | cabbage cat | nyan Bollywood style | Yakety Cat white on white | In Soviet Russia... Cat Pet YOU | kitten catatonic | smart. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:31 AM PST - 28 comments

"I am fascinated with the science of optical illusions. What happens in our brain when we view an optical illusion? The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to create an idea or image that does not match with a physical measurement of the stimulus source. On this channel you will find a variety of videos that will spark that scientific corner of your brain." [more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix at 8:53 AM PST - 2 comments

The Berglas Effect aka The Holy Grail of Card Magic or Any Card at Any Number (ACAAN) and named after its inventor David Berglas is a very simple magic card trick that Berglas claims only two people know. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 8:07 AM PST - 106 comments

Neutral Milk Hotel: The RPG "The band's second album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, released in 1998 and also produced by Schneider, is notable as a critically acclaimed and widely popular album. [more inside]
posted by dubold at 7:58 AM PST - 34 comments

The fall of Groupon: Groupon must spend to grow, but must continue growing to cover its operational expenditures.

"As of June 30, Groupon had $680 million in current liabilities -- bills the company has to pay," Business Insider's Henry Blodget pointed out earlier this week. "Meanwhile, Groupon only had $376 million of current assets with which to pay them."
posted by Gordafarin at 6:22 AM PST - 89 comments

The Best Save The Date Card, Ever [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:06 AM PST - 39 comments

I Won't Photograph Ugly People. A young photographer, building her business in Pennsylvania, does a little FB research on the high school kids she's been commissioned to photograph for their senior portraits. She makes a tough decision: she won't photograph the ugly ones..
posted by thinkpiece at 4:23 AM PST - 209 comments

The search is on for Yvonne the Cow, who has been on the loose in the Bavarian woods, mocking her captors, since May. Attempts to capture her have included employing a behavioural scientist, Yvonne's "best friend" Waltraud, a calf named Waldi and an unnamed bull. [more inside]
posted by Omnomnom at 1:17 AM PST - 45 comments

In 1900, Lionel Mapleson - librarian at the Metropolitan Opera - acquired a Bettini cylinder recorder. Equipped with the machine and a giant recording horn, Mapleson began to make covert recordings of Met performances from the flies of the stage. Over the next few years, he made some of the earliest live recordings (and in some cases the only recordings) of many of the most popular voices of the late 19th and early 20th century. (Sometimes he also recorded his family). [more inside]
posted by bubukaba at 11:30 PM PST - 13 comments

Will a slightly pared down version of the My Keepon, a fuzzy yellow dancing robot, be this year's holiday hit? (For extra added schmoopy, a portion of the proceeds will go to autism research.) Pretty fly for an AI.
posted by Soliloquy at 10:42 PM PST - 20 comments

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer’s alchemical creative processes and renders as a film journey the personal universe he has built at his hill studio estate in the South of France. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:43 PM PST - 8 comments

Recent research on whether dogs can smell lung cancer supports prior research on the subject, which concluded that dogs can smell both lung cancer and breast cancer. [more inside]
posted by johnofjack at 7:26 PM PST - 34 comments

Dutch Artist Bio-Engineers Spider Silk into Skin, Making It "Bulletproof". Following on the work of Randy Lewis, a scientist studying how ultra-resilient artificial spider-silk can be used for body armor and other military products, Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi has integrated this engineered silk into a patch of human skin. Experiments with a rifle necessarily followed. Video and her explanation here.
posted by darth_tedious at 6:52 PM PST - 30 comments

The Woodward Dream Cruise is an annual event, bringing out nearly every classic and not-so-classic car in southeast Michigan. Bumper to bumper, a blessing or a curse, depending on who you are and how badly it screws up your trip to the grocery store or the emergency room. But, if nothing else, it is Pure Michigan.
posted by tomswift at 6:52 PM PST - 12 comments

Single-link-1-hour-Brazilian-music-mix-filter: DJ Bronco's Brasilian Soul Mix. No playlist, but does contain awesomely solid Brazilian tunage... enjoy!
posted by Tom-B at 4:43 PM PST - 22 comments

64 slices of American Cheese and other foods from the Simpsons attempted in real life
Not included: Gummi Venus De Milo, Homer's Patented Space-Age Out of This World Moon Waffles, Skittlebrau, Floor Pie, the Flaming Moe [more inside]
posted by Alison at 4:40 PM PST - 103 comments

Muppets: The Green Album (previously) is now available to listen to in its entirety as an NPR "First Listen".
posted by hippybear at 4:40 PM PST - 21 comments

China debate over US envoy's coffee run. 'The low-key actions of two top US officials have sparked heated debate among China's netizens about the nature of public servants. A photograph of new US Ambassador to China Gary Locke ordering coffee and carrying his own backpack generated thousands of online comments. A visit by Vice-President Joe Biden to a small Beijing eatery fuelled debate. Many praised the informality of the two men's actions, contrasting them with status-conscious Chinese officials.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 4:35 PM PST - 99 comments

Tacit is a wearable sonar system for the vision-impaired that communicates the distance of nearby objects using variable pressure on the wrist of the user. Part list, circuit diagram, and detailed instructions for building the ~$100 device included.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:24 PM PST - 9 comments

AM: Do you have a favorite kanji character? HD: I like this one: 峠 because it reminds me of a poem by Christina Rossetti:

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men

(what I mean is, it’s terribly nice to have the radicals for mountain, up and down form the character). I’m very fond of 競 because it makes me think of two men skating with their arms behind their backs in a Dutch painting, wearing black frock coats and breeches. 明 is not very exotic, of course, but it’s nice to have the word for ‘bright’ represented by the sun and moon – this is a bit like certain German words, where the elements of a phenomenon are put together for the word: there’s Morgengrauen (morning grey) for the sky lightening to grey just before dawn, and Morgenröte (morning red) for the sky when it first turns red, similar sort of thing. An interview with Helen DeWitt, author of The Last Samurai, Your Name Here, a novel written with Ilya Gridneff, and the forthcoming Lightning Rods. DeWitt will be in New York September 8 - 11.
posted by xod at 4:20 PM PST - 48 comments

Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990 - 87 min)
Warhol's Cinema - A Mirror for the Sixties (1989 - 64 min)
From The Factory: 1963-1968
Excellent photo slide show
posted by madamjujujive at 4:02 PM PST - 7 comments

"Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis" A scholarly paper (33-page pdf) summarized by the Guarniad with its most attention-getting scenario semi-explained by DiscoveryNews: "[the aliens may] want to exterminate us for the greater good of the Milky Way." (for the record, it was NOT written for NASA though one of the authors is a "NASA dude")
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:50 PM PST - 72 comments

The Memorial. "People talk a lot about the "healing process." Well, this is New York. In the aftermath of a tragedy of monumental proportions, the healing process has been noisy and rude, with elbows out, redolent of greed, power, and the darker forces that drive human existence. And most of the shouting has been about how to make a fitting monument to what happened here. But in a hundred years, all the shouting and all the politics will be forgotten. What will be remembered is what is built here, now, on these sixteen acres." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:41 PM PST - 37 comments

"It’s a mistake to rarify reading and put books out of reach."
posted by burnfirewalls at 1:34 PM PST - 63 comments

Secret Spy Photos from East Germany Revealed! All kinds of awesome from the time that the Berlin Wall fell. [coral cache]
posted by Eekacat at 11:34 AM PST - 14 comments

Boeing's new Dreamliner plant in South Carolina was found to be retaliation for union strikes by the National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency (On Point radio show). That's prompted Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to launch an all-out war on the NRLB according to Dahlia Lithwick. (Previously.)
posted by klangklangston at 10:25 AM PST - 78 comments

Is There a Shortage of Skilled Foreign Workers? What is never mentioned is that “the best and the brightest” are already here. This argument is an old one. [more inside]
posted by BuffaloChickenWing at 8:38 AM PST - 42 comments

The job market is saturated and graduates are unable to get hired anywhere to get proper training. Law professors Richard Rhee and Bradley Borden have a solution: law schools should open their own law firms.
posted by reenum at 8:29 AM PST - 91 comments

Phil Noto illustrates the hell out of comics, TV, pulp fiction, music, and being a six year old artist at his blog, Your Nice New Outfit. Oh shit it's the Master Blaster!
posted by cortex at 8:12 AM PST - 17 comments

13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence After studying how trees branch in a very specific way, Aidan Dwyer created a solar cell tree that produces 20-50% more power than a uniform array of photovoltaic panels. [more inside]
posted by jillithd at 8:02 AM PST - 103 comments

In a case that is rocking the international adoption world, a Guatemalan judge has ordered the return of a six year old girl to her biological family. [more inside]
posted by zizzle at 7:09 AM PST - 219 comments

Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War [reviews, excerpt] discusses Iraqi intellectualism, war and food, ancient Iraqi cooking, the Middle East's dependence on imported wheat, and the link between bread and civilian uprisings. [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 5:39 AM PST - 7 comments

On August 12th, pioneering experimental animator Robert Breer passed away at the age of 84. [more inside]
posted by louche mustachio at 2:52 AM PST - 5 comments

"Today is our independence day from Britain. They recognised our independence 92 years ago; today's attack was marking that day" - 12 dead confirmed thus far as a result of suicide attack on British Council building in Kabul.
posted by numberstation at 1:24 AM PST - 88 comments

The Exile's Ramon Glazov reports on the blitz debut of Australia's own Tea-Party-esque political demonstrations. [more inside]
posted by clarknova at 8:51 PM PST - 71 comments

Church forgives abortion during Pope's visit to Spain Special powers have been given to all priests in Madrid to absolve women who confess to abortion in the sacrament of penance during Pope Benedict's four-day visit to the church's World Youth Day event. [more inside]
posted by Vibrissae at 8:44 PM PST - 263 comments

Handheld Games Museum
posted by Trurl at 8:41 PM PST - 13 comments

Where's Wall-E? [more inside]
posted by Mike Mongo at 8:36 PM PST - 166 comments

Ridley Scott, now finishing post-production on Prometheus, the not-exactly prequel to Alien (previously) is now planning "a prequel or a sequel" to Blade Runner. [more inside]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:50 PM PST - 143 comments

Corey Adams and Alex Craig are a tag-team of independent filmmakers probably best known for their feature film, Machotaildrop, the fruit of having won a million dollars in a filmmaking contest held by Fuel TV. That win was on the strength of their very cool short, Harvey Spannos. Their most recent project features the dread "Manwolf" gang from Machotaildrop and appears to be an ad for an eponymous skate shoe model that is being released by éS. Mammas don't let your babies grow up to be Manwolfs (sic, so sic, dude.)
posted by Roachbeard at 6:06 PM PST - 4 comments

Scandybars is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their Snickers wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by quiet coyote at 5:32 PM PST - 68 comments

Robert Rodriguez, acclaimed film director of the Mariachi trilogy, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City, one half of Grindhouse (Planet Terror), and Machete [amongst others] will release the 4th installment of his charming Spy Kids movie series, Spy Kids 4: All The Time In The World in "4D". Otherwise known as Aroma-Scope, directly inspired by Polyester's Odorama release. In doing so, Rodriguez joins a long line of movie directors who have attempted to integrate smell into the moviegoing experience.
posted by hippybear at 4:29 PM PST - 54 comments

Maybe It’s Time for Plan C - since the dawn of the Great Recession, more Americans have started businesses (565,000 of them a month in 2010) than at any period in the last decade and a half. 'The lures are obvious: freedom, fulfillment. The highs can be high. But career switchers have found that going solo comes with its own pitfalls: a steep learning curve, no security, physical exhaustion and emotional meltdowns. The dream job is a “job” as much as it is a “dream.”' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 4:13 PM PST - 87 comments

Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr - the West Memphis 3 - will admit to the killing of 3 boys in West Memphis, Arkansas tomorrow during a recently scheduled surprise hearing. In exchange Echols, currently on death row, and either Baldwin or Misskelley are expected be released with time served.
posted by PenDevil at 4:12 PM PST - 314 comments

The Outer Limits episode, The Architects of Fear is built around faking an alien invasion in order to stop nuclear armageddon. In a recent interview, Paul Krugman of the New York Times proposed a fake alien invasion to stimulate the economy.
posted by Xurando at 3:22 PM PST - 45 comments

Know who's more fun at parties than you? This guy. [slyt]
posted by phunniemee at 3:08 PM PST - 32 comments

"These giant monsters of the past are seen to breathe, to live again, to move and battle as they did at the dawn of life!" The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1918), by Willis O'Brien. Previously.
posted by brundlefly at 3:05 PM PST - 4 comments

Ben Maleson, a second-generation mycoforager, plays the trumpet mushroom.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 2:15 PM PST - 14 comments

Cramming for College at Beijing's Second High.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:34 PM PST - 32 comments

Photographer Simon Harsent's beautiful landscape shots.
posted by Phire at 1:29 PM PST - 10 comments

The Aeronautical Pentathlon Has Six Events—and Flying Doesn't Count. Aeronautical pentathlon—which inexplicably has six events—is a riff on the modern pentathlon at the Olympics. Created 63 years ago, the military pilots' version has pretty much flown under the radar. And though the sport is based on flying, the nonflying parts of the competition determine the winner. While it is exclusively practiced by air forces, it was always excluded from the military Olympics—called the World Military Games—until last month's event in Rio de Janeiro. ... and the home team wins. [more inside]
posted by caddis at 12:59 PM PST - 8 comments

HP killing WebOS and getting out of the computer business. [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 12:48 PM PST - 146 comments

Stéphane Missier alias Charles le Brigand (and/or Carlito Brigante) is a Brooklyn-based urban photographer and filmmaker. "From the Bronx to Brooklyn, I capture the real New York, the one I like to call 'RottenbutBeautiful'." Flickr Sets. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:45 PM PST - 6 comments

Slacktory: Flickr is dying; here is the graph. Thomas Hawk: Flickr is dead. (via)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:09 PM PST - 89 comments

Researchers Find That Alligator Fat Could Be a New Source of Biodiesel. Alligator farming is alive and well in the United States and elsewhere but traditionally it's all about the animals' skin and meat. Now it seems that there may also be a use for the 15 million pounds of alligator fat that are currently being deposited in land fills every year: bio diesel.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:38 AM PST - 55 comments

Where the sidewalk ends: A new walking code of conduct, 10 proposed rules for New York City sidewalks.
posted by Fizz at 11:28 AM PST - 138 comments

Postmodernism is dead.
posted by spiderskull at 11:22 AM PST - 132 comments

Fan art, bootleg or both? Fan art, bootleg or both? Tom Papalardo sounds off on the ubiquitous "Minimalist Revisionist Poster" trend [more inside]
posted by Senor Cardgage at 10:51 AM PST - 49 comments

Would You Please Fucking Stop?: an article by Ursula K. Le Guin
posted by rollick at 10:13 AM PST - 181 comments

In 1972, Washington, DC opened the doors to the HD Woodson Senior High School. It was the city's first new school in twelve years, and the first to be constructed after riots devastated the city in 1968. Like its sister school across town, it had been built to withstand another riot, and protect its students within its fortress-like walls. For a time, it stood as the pride and joy of the city's school system, featuring a diverse range of academic and vocational programs in a state of the art 8-story building complete with escalators, science labs, and a six-lane pool; a symbol of hope for a downtrodden community. By 2008, however, things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. The building was literally crumbling, many of its original facilities had closed due to neglect, only 13% of sophomores were proficient in reading or mathematics, and violence was a daily concern. Facing no other choice, the city closed the school in 2008, and demolished the brutalist structure shortly thereafter.

After a three year series of delays, next week, students will begin classes in the newly reconstructed HD Woodson High School; a 3-story state of the art building complete with elevators, science labs, and an eight-lane pool; a symbol of hope for a downtrodden community -- leading many to question: Will it work this time? The correlation between architecture and academic performance is not well-studied, and previous efforts have been inconclusive at best.
posted by schmod at 9:56 AM PST - 43 comments

Keep on Walking, a supercut.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 8:53 AM PST - 21 comments

Obama calls on Assad to step down. The US and EU announce sanctions on Assad's regime. The New York Times looks at the resistence in Homs. Al Jazeera has an ongoing Syrian Live blog. Enduring America continues to cover the Arab Spring.
posted by empath at 8:40 AM PST - 63 comments

How do you build a mouse Utopia? In 1972, John B. Calhoun detailed the specifications of his Mortality-Inhibiting Environment for Mice: a practical utopia built in the laboratory. . . . To its members, the mouse civilization of Universe 25 must have seemed prosperous indeed. But its downfall was already certain—not just stagnation, but total and inevitable destruction.
posted by saladin at 8:39 AM PST - 27 comments

Squirrog, anyone? How about a bullguin? No, you're not hallucinating, Montrealers and visitors, that is in fact a "foxtuan" you're seeing around town. Courtesy of marketing agency Sid Lee, Montreal's tourism board has dropped $6 million for the interesting campaign. They're even on YouTube. Creative? Unforgettable? Or just plain weird?
posted by Kitteh at 8:06 AM PST - 17 comments

Gymkhana FOUR [more inside]
posted by dubold at 7:54 AM PST - 38 comments

Thursday Flash Fun: Cyclomaniacs 2! Several characters from the first game have created a cycling megapark. The First Cyclomaniacs post.
posted by schyler523 at 7:41 AM PST - 11 comments

A new book claims that recently declassified French intelligence material indicates that Coco Chanel was a Nazi agent during World War II. The House of Chanel suggests that people read other, "more serious" books about Gabrielle Chanel. However, this is not the first time that Chanel's wartime activities have been questioned.
posted by catlet at 7:24 AM PST - 25 comments

Everyone knows those Successories-style motivational posters, and almost every mefite knows The Wire. Thanks to the internet, we now know what happens when the two are combined.
posted by namewithoutwords at 5:59 AM PST - 78 comments

Graffiti Tag Letter Taxonomy (Paris)
posted by OmieWise at 5:50 AM PST - 14 comments

A 1964 Stretch Lincoln Continental rebuilt and customized by Lehmann Petersen (clippings and history) for Pope Paul VI's visit to New York in 1965 (more history, pics); transported to Colombia and used by the Pope during his 1968 visit to Bogota; ridden in by astronauts from Apollo 8, 11, 13, and 15; and once owned by Jay Leno is to be auctioned (cat. listing, history, pics) at Bonham's Quail Lodge Sale in Carmel, California, today. Via The Register
posted by Ahab at 5:30 AM PST - 11 comments

I’d like to defend the practice of publishing pictures of athlete’s dicks. (no dick pics contained therein)
posted by desjardins at 4:40 AM PST - 49 comments

Sex-crimes cop by day, improv artist by night. Kyle Kizzier works as a detective in the Sexual Assault & Child Abuse Unit and is also one of Seattle's best improvisational comedians. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:19 AM PST - 7 comments

Watched by Vladimir Putin, the Sukhoi T-50, Russia's answer to the Raptor stealth fighter, has made its maiden public appearance at the MAKS 2011 air show near Moscow, after first flying in January 2010. Bearing a striking resemblance to the F-22, the Sukhoi T-50 has been developed in co-operation with India and is slated to become the backbone of Russia's airforce. While the F-22 first flew in 7 September 1997 and ceased production with just 187 aircraft ordered, Sukhoi director Mikhail Pogosyan hopes to build 1,000 T-50s for Russia's airforce and export. Despite its ageing engines, it is rumoured to have a range of a range of almost 3,500 miles, twice that of the F-22. What is believed to be China's 5th generation fighter, the J-20, is also under development.
posted by joannemullen at 1:18 AM PST - 66 comments

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes? "A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals."
posted by homunculus at 12:24 AM PST - 45 comments

Richard Fischer's floral sculptures are photos of extraordinary detail and beauty. Experts believe many of the flowers he has photographed will become extinct within our lifetime.
(warning: opens with sound) [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 11:48 PM PST - 12 comments

Aspic and other delights showcases the absolute horrors of good, old-fashioned home cooking. Or, at least the advertisements for it. Aspic, in case you were wondering, is food, often meat or seafood encased in gelatin or cooled meat stock.
posted by converge at 8:35 PM PST - 82 comments

The Thief of Baghdad as re-imagined by Shadoe Stevens and the Electric Light Orchestra :: Fairy tales for Grownups :: Superhero Marathon :: Werner Herzog's Bokassa Coronation :: Peer Raben tribute :: Alakazam The Great and much much more at Cinefamily's vimeo page.
posted by puny human at 8:34 PM PST - 8 comments

Timelapse - The City Limits . A time lapse video montage with the aim of showing "the duality between city and nature." Try fullscreen HD.
posted by exogenous at 8:24 PM PST - 14 comments

Sciweavers' free online productivity tools include an international virtual keyboard, OCR, image format conversion, and just about every manner of PDF manipulation imaginable.
posted by Trurl at 7:40 PM PST - 16 comments

Although the sculptor Hiram Powers (1805-73) enjoyed considerable success with his portraits and more allegorical works, he is now almost entirely remembered for one of nineteenth-century America's most hotly-debated sculptures: The Greek Slave. Powers was a little vague about the inspiration for the statue--longstanding dream, or response to the Greek War of Independence (see previously)? Understood at the time as a major leap forward in establishing America as a serious force in the art world, the statue was an international hit (appearing at the Great Exhibition of 1851), and was endlessly copied and daguerrotyped. (Some of the copies turn the statue into a much more ambiguous bust, or hark back to one of its major influences, the Venus de Milo.) However, some observers, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning and, much more pointedly, the illustrator and caricaturist John Tenniel, suggested that an American sculptor might wish to think about other slaves.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:33 PM PST - 9 comments

"Certainly, Uncle Sam, disowned by Pakistanis, has found innumerable devoted nephews in India. Indian and Pakistani perceptions of America now wildly diverge: A 2005 Pew poll conducted in 16 countries found the United States in the highest regard among Indians (71 percent having a favorable opinion) and nearly the lowest among Pakistanis (23 percent)." Why do India and Pakistan see America in such opposite ways?
posted by vidur at 6:28 PM PST - 43 comments

Movie Line Rhymes by Jordan Laws (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by ShutterBun at 5:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Secret Papers Reveal Truth Behind Soviet Collapse - the Gorbachev files. 'During a research visit to the Gorbachev Foundation, the young Russian historian Pavel Stroilov, who lives in London today, secretly copied about 30,000 pages of the material archived there and made them available to SPIEGEL.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 3:55 PM PST - 64 comments

Monet - the web experience.
posted by Miko at 3:41 PM PST - 21 comments

The Episode - "the complete, annotated, unabridged story of I how I went bat fucking crazy for three months"
posted by MetaMonkey at 3:17 PM PST - 105 comments

Why David Starkey is a racist
posted by nam3d at 2:24 PM PST - 156 comments

Yahoo! sports strikes again. Charles Robinson (@charlesrobinson on twitter) , just revealed a nuclear bombshell of a scandal in the football program at the University of Miami, featuring drinks, cash, gambling, yachts, bounties on players, prostitutes, and an abortion. [more inside]
posted by norm at 1:24 PM PST - 83 comments

Amanda Fucking Palmer on Twitter and the new biz.
posted by Ardiril at 1:03 PM PST - 62 comments

Split Family Faces. "How much do you and members of your family really look alike? Quebec, Canada-based graphic designer and photographer Ulric Collette has created a shockingly cool project where he's exploring the genetic similarities between different members of the same family. By splitting their faces in half and then melding them together, he creates interesting new people that are sometimes quite normal looking and other times far from it. He calls this series Genetic Portraits."
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 12:05 PM PST - 42 comments

Stratocumulus Pareidolus (SLYT)
posted by griphus at 10:59 AM PST - 28 comments

CookieWaits is a Tom Waits/Cookie Monster mashup that is so obvious you'll wonder why you never thought of it before. Not the best Sesame Street lip-sync I've seen but still satisfyingly amusing.
posted by mathowie at 10:58 AM PST - 58 comments

Juggalo Like Me: Dropping In on the Demented Utopia of the Gathering of the Juggaloes. A young woman's firsthand experience of trying to fit in with the Insane Clown Posse enthusiasts annual meetup.
posted by rodmandirect at 10:38 AM PST - 85 comments

Yonge Street: Toronto Rock & Roll Stories. This documentary series by Bravo tells the story of Toronto's early rock scene, when "the Devil's music" stormed Toronto and Yonge Street became an essential destination for musicians, singers and music fans not only in Toronto but across Canada and beyond. [more inside]
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:00 AM PST - 13 comments

Breathtaking first-person-view wingsuit flights in the Swiss Alps and around Europe. Jetman (with a turbine-powered strap-on wing) flies the Grand Canyon. Meanwhile, NASA continues work on the Puffin: an electric VTOL "personal air vehicle". [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:41 AM PST - 17 comments

A week ago, Markus "Notch" Persson (creator of Minecraft) received a letter from Bethesda (makers of the Elder Scrolls games) warning him that Scrolls (prev) was infringing on their trademark. Today, in a new twist on an old idea, Notch has challenged Bethesda to settle matters without lawyers: Quake 3 Team Deathmatch.
posted by kmz at 9:36 AM PST - 67 comments

The 69th Worldcon (world science fiction convention) starts today ! Worldcon is the yearly convention at which the Hugo awards are voted upon by the membership. [more inside]
posted by Poet_Lariat at 9:07 AM PST - 37 comments

Four songs shot (and three directed by) Dylan Wiehahn, featuring Australian and New Zealand scenery, and (mostly) music from Australia: Jordie Lane - 'Not From Round Here' | Seagull - 'Company' and 'Tea' | Bon Iver - 'Holocene' (abridged) || Scenery from Tea Tree Lakes, Great Ocean Road (AUS), Queenstown (NZ)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:25 AM PST - 2 comments

Andy Denzler is an artist some of whose paintings resemble paused VHS tapes.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:59 AM PST - 56 comments

The coldest of cases . . . though not yet dead. New theories about Australia's case of "The Unknown Man" (previous and previouser).
posted by yerfatma at 7:53 AM PST - 29 comments

Diner for Schmucks. GQ's restaurant reviewer Alan Richman had heard "nothing but great things about M. Wells, one of New York City's hottest restaurants—the food was amazing, the setting sublime, the ambience charming. And, in fact, everything was going quite well. Until..." More at Eater. (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 6:36 AM PST - 236 comments

Silence of Love from Thai Life Insurance. An advertisement designed to break your heart. And it does. (Possible triggers, via The Browser) [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 5:26 AM PST - 61 comments

The Magic of Truth and Lies - SLYT TED by Marco Tempest [more inside]
posted by hypersloth at 3:15 AM PST - 17 comments

Suck on it Applesoft. "Everyone was baffled when Google made those crazy bids for the Nortel patents last month. Remember? They bid things like the distance from the earth to the sun, the number pi, and some other wacky numbers from mathematics." [more inside]
posted by three blind mice at 2:56 AM PST - 207 comments

The Phantom Menace of Sleep Deprived Doctors: Young doctors are no longer working long, stupor-inducing hours. So why aren’t hospitals any safer?
posted by homunculus at 11:31 PM PST - 68 comments

What's in a Name? Canada gets (back) a Navy, Army and Air Force [more inside]
posted by Dreadnought at 11:15 PM PST - 92 comments

'"People say 'It's all about the story,'"' Walt Disney Animation Studios chief technical officer Andy Hendrickson, said in a talk at the recent Siggraph conference. '"When you're making tentpole films, bullshit." Hendrickson showed a chart of the top 12 all-time domestic grossers, and noted every one is a spectacle film. Of his own studio's "Alice in Wonderland," which is on the list, he said: "The story isn't very good, but visual spectacle brought people in droves. And Johnny Depp didn't hurt."'
posted by joannemullen at 10:30 PM PST - 107 comments

Singer, knob twiddler and bass player MNDR has had a great year, especially considering that she hasn’t even finished her first full-length solo recording yet. MNDR is best known in the pop world so far for her collaboration with Mark Ronson and Q-tip on Bang Bang Bang, a song that plays with the french children’s song alouette with a double entendre squeezed out of the consonants in “plucking feathers.” [more inside]
posted by umbú at 9:09 PM PST - 12 comments

Be Near Me (SLVimeo)
posted by IvoShandor at 8:54 PM PST - 11 comments

iTex2Img converts LaTeX equations into images online.
posted by Upton O'Good at 8:16 PM PST - 13 comments

Straight outta Cleveland. Rapper Machine Gun Kelly headlined the Village Voice's music section last week ahead of a show in New York last weekend and after inking a deal with Bad Boy records earlier this month. [more inside]
posted by Jahaza at 8:07 PM PST - 12 comments

Does the TSA have "a thing" about black womens' hair?
posted by John Cohen at 7:21 PM PST - 107 comments

Rick Rypien and the crisis of faith on hockey fighting Rypien's death on Monday marked the second time this year someone has arrived at the home of a young NHL player who fought his way into the profession — literally and figuratively — to find that player had suddenly died. [more inside]
posted by mannequito at 7:02 PM PST - 83 comments

Paul Cezanne: The Complete Works
posted by Trurl at 6:56 PM PST - 13 comments

The Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Crash Course (previously, related)
posted by villanelles at dawn at 3:35 PM PST - 29 comments

The Sexperience 1000 is a neat interactive journey / visualization through the sexual experiences and preferences of British individuals. [more inside]
posted by stratastar at 2:39 PM PST - 61 comments

Alex Reads Creation. From the same guy who made going to Walmart fun, and making fun of Twilight entertainment: a different take on Genesis.
posted by litnerd at 2:32 PM PST - 30 comments

Nick Sayers makes spheres.
posted by Gator at 1:51 PM PST - 10 comments

Whenever, wherever, however they can, folks around the world gotta cop a few Zs. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:45 PM PST - 41 comments

Meet Karl Welzien. He lives in Grand Blanc, Michigan. He is recently divorced from Ann, and lives with his buddy Dave. He loves drinking cold ones, driving his Sebring, maxing out some karaoke, and knocking back some Chili's hot wings because they have big bold flavor. He's a big fan of Guy Fieri, and loves the occasional "toilet nap" during his workday. Karl is a fictional character that exists only on Twitter, @DadBoner. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 1:41 PM PST - 37 comments

The Elusive Big Idea "It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock — to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief."
posted by bitmage at 1:23 PM PST - 89 comments

Evolution of NBA Team Logos
posted by swift at 11:52 AM PST - 133 comments

Möbius: A collaborative stop motion sculpture "Twenty-one large triangles animated by Melbourne, throughout Federation Square. MÖBIUS is a sculpture that can be configured into many cyclical patterns and behave as though it is eating itself, whilst sinking into the ground." (by Ducroz)
posted by dhruva at 11:37 AM PST - 21 comments

Poverty may be miserable. But being able to feel a bit better-off than someone else makes it a bit more bearable. Economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggest that people near the bottom end of financial inequity are less likely to be in favour of programs that will help increase their income if those programs will also help those lower on the scale than they are.

...the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and informed about the “income distribution” that resulted. They were then given another $2, which they could give either to the person directly above or below them in the distribution. The people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them..

This may also explain why Warren Buffet's cry to stop coddling the rich (previously) will continue to fall on deaf ears.
posted by asnider at 10:03 AM PST - 136 comments

Science fiction always uses it in varying degrees. Some believe it will bring about a perfect Technological Utopia:Heaven on Earth. Some believe it will herald a dark and dystopian future. Perhaps it will elevate man to a being that is more than human; Human+ and permanently and irrevocably transform the human condition, and still others believe that too much involvement in it will void your existence. Some religions totally depend on it and others find it harder to deal with: The list of emerging technologies.
posted by Cogentesque at 8:54 AM PST - 49 comments

"Reading every word of this disjointed, strange monster of a manuscript would make even an Adderall addict bleary." Anita Dalton of I Read Odd Books reviews 2083: A European Declaration of Independence by Anders Behring Breivik.
posted by Pants McCracky at 8:43 AM PST - 60 comments

Roger Ebert has posted the intro of his memoirs, Life Itself, to his blog, which particularly talks about how therapeutic his blog has been, giving him a voice when he can no longer speak. Originally dismissive of online media, he's gone on to embrace it (for example, with his twitter feed), in a manner matched by few other celebrities.
posted by kaszeta at 8:32 AM PST - 22 comments

Did you inherit your parents stress? Your grandparents stress? What about their environmental enrichment? Current research in rats is exploring possible mechanisms through which stressful and positive environments could affect our future children and grandchildren. Also something to consider in tandem: many of the genes associated with addiction and mental illness are also associated with resiliency. [more inside]
posted by xarnop at 7:43 AM PST - 38 comments

A year after spending some time in Edinburgh, and subsequently finding his way home across Scotland, Danny MacAskill unexpectedly finds himself in an abandoned ironworks. A zen-like state of bicycling ensues. [via kottke]
posted by schmod at 7:02 AM PST - 57 comments

The Internet in 1995 on MTV News. (SLYT)
posted by ignignokt at 5:50 AM PST - 84 comments

Chat Room Rules : 1. Be respectful, polite, and focused on eagles. [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 5:18 AM PST - 6 comments

25 Greatest Unscripted Scenes in Films
posted by Rykey at 5:04 AM PST - 81 comments

"Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman. In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named." (Most recent previously.)
posted by Len at 4:58 AM PST - 76 comments

When Brandon left for camp, his last words were, "stay out of my room!" Unfortunately for Brandon, he has the meanest most awesome family in the entire world. [more inside]
posted by phunniemee at 10:15 PM PST - 558 comments

World peace could be closer than you think. Joshua S. Goldstein, author of Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide writes in Foreign Policy Magazine on why things are getting better. "The last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years."
posted by joannemullen at 9:53 PM PST - 46 comments

Behold! The worst at-bat in the history of Major League Baseball! Or is it actually the greatest at-bat in the history of Major League Baseball? Sunday afternoon, [San Francisco] Giants reliever Santiago Casilla batted against [Florida] Marlins reliever Jose Ceda, and they were both really terrible. (via SportsFilter)
posted by NoMich at 7:46 PM PST - 154 comments

Hipster Ipsum: Artisanal Filler Text
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:19 PM PST - 89 comments

Seven boxes marked "WW3" hold works ready for immediate evacuation if the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC faced catastrophic destruction. An essay published in the Washington Post discusses how Curator Andrew Robinson decides which seventy-four items in his area of responsibility hold top priority out of more than 100,000 watercolors, drawings, prints and rare books.
posted by woodway at 5:59 PM PST - 127 comments

GPS and the End of the Road (Bonus: The science of driving directions)
posted by vidur at 5:01 PM PST - 31 comments

"Hot Wheels, Nerf Balls, Spyrograph, View Masters... Remember any of those? Well, that’s the idea behind Jellio. Think of all those times that you flashed back to something from childhood, and it put a huge grin on your face. Well we think you can surround yourself with a few of those memories on a long-term basis."
posted by cp311 at 5:01 PM PST - 51 comments

Roubini warns of global recession risk. In a video interview with the Wall Street Journal, Economist Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics warns that the risk of a global recession is higher than 50%, suggests investing in cash, blames George Bush for the United States' economic predicament, advocates higher taxes, warns of a possible break-up of the European monetary union and states that "Karl Marx was right". [more inside]
posted by moorooka at 4:58 PM PST - 122 comments

Ryan Lizza profiles Michele Bachmann for the New Yorker. Of special note is the in-depth look into the of her political and theological conservatism.
posted by graphnerd at 4:51 PM PST - 130 comments

Shepard Fairey was beat up by punks in Copenhagen — apparently for painting on the site of the former Ungdomshuet. (previously)
posted by Tom-B at 3:09 PM PST - 152 comments

As reported by Agence France Presse, the Guardian and the New York Times, last week four families in Kano, Nigeria received $175,000 each as compensation for the deaths of their children, who participated in a drug trial conducted by Pfizer Inc. (Wikileaks links inside) [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 2:54 PM PST - 14 comments

Brian Phillips of The Run of Play (previously) examines FIFA's history of corruption from the birth of sports sponsorship deals to a serious of mysterious deaths in South Africa before the 2010 World Cup and speculates about the future of embattled FIFA President Sepp Blatter. [more inside]
posted by Copronymus at 2:45 PM PST - 15 comments

Over the centuries, the high seas have served as a blank canvas for cartographers’ worst nightmares. They have dotted the oceans with a whole crypto-zoo of island-sized whales, deathly seductive mermaids, giant sea serpents, and many more - a whole panoply of heraldic horrors. As varied as this marine bestiary is, mapmakers have settled on a single, favourite species for land-based beastliness: the octopus. Bonus: Satire Maps and Fred W. Rose (YT, 3:32); Fred Rose's Serio-Comic War Map (YT, 1:52). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:54 PM PST - 10 comments

We hate the “I Hate Reading’ Facebook page. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:08 PM PST - 130 comments

Special Report: The bonds that turned to dust - the extent and impact of corporate secrecy in the United States and beyond. 'After his fund lost investors hundreds of millions of dollars in the credit crunch' Italian economics professor Alberto Micalizzi 'quietly moved most of its assets into bonds in late 2008. These were no ordinary bonds. They were $500 million of highly illiquid paper purportedly issued by a company in a trailer-park suburb of Phoenix' Arizona, 'on behalf of a small Australian commodities firm -- and backed by the proceeds from $10 billion of diesel from the tiny autonomous Russian republic of Bashkortostan.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 11:51 AM PST - 20 comments

The Face That Intimidated Groucho Marx (SLYT)
posted by pmugowsky at 11:49 AM PST - 33 comments

"Flight into Danger" invented the cliches of the disaster film genre, invigorated the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and changed the life of its author, tractor-trailer company advertising executive Arthur Hailey.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 11:17 AM PST - 16 comments

Between 1946 and 1948, the United States deliberately infected hundreds with gonorrhea and syphilis in Guatemala. This link goes to a page on the National Archives posting the records of Dr. John C. Cutler, a surgeon with the United States Public Health Service. Some of the 70 links from that page go to files containing graphic images. The National Archives and Records Administration has reviewed these historical records for release, and has redacted only information identifying each patient (updated 8/2/11). The original records are available for public research in the National Archives at Atlanta. Some of the files contain graphic medical images of the effects of untreated sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including syphilis, which may not be appropriate for all audiences. A preview of some of the Doctor's correspondence is available at Harper's. (Subscription required.)
posted by notmtwain at 11:05 AM PST - 29 comments

জয় হে : So you have seven swara's, or musical notes, each associated with elements, animals, chakra's and Hindu gods. Linearly arranged swara's, or sur's in Hindi, form a swaramalika, a chain of swara's. Mixing yours and my swara's, for instance, produces our sur_(YT) (text). Once again,_(YT) on a Continuum Fingerboard. The seven swara's together are also called a 'sargam', a Devnaagri acronym formed by taking the first letter of each note. Sargam mix with each other and form raaga's, melodic modes that depict the colours, hues and moods in Indian classical music. Assembling known maestros from every corner of the nation, and asking them to play their sargam's, you get desh raag_(YT): the Sound of a Nation. [more inside]
posted by the cydonian at 10:25 AM PST - 10 comments

If you are dancing in a way that could create a baby/fetus/alien -- STOP! It is not behooving of you and awkward.

No Breasts No Requests is a tumblr collection of signs found in and around the DJ booth.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 10:14 AM PST - 125 comments

Since their release in 1978, hit albums like Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute,” Kenny Rogers’s “Gambler” and Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove” have generated tens of millions of dollars for record companies. But thanks to a little-noted provision in United States copyright law, those artists — and thousands more — now have the right to reclaim ownership of their recordings, potentially leaving the labels out in the cold.
posted by philip-random at 10:10 AM PST - 29 comments

NSKYC: The average color of the New York sky, updated every 5 minutes. A webcam pointed at the sky, showing the average color. Now in Washington, DC as well. Interview in the Village Voice with creator Mike Bodge. Looking for cameras in more cities.
posted by skynxnex at 8:55 AM PST - 31 comments

Radiophonics Workshop Founder Daphne Oram's Oramics Synthesizer "So there Dr. Mick Grierson was, wandering around a French barn, minding his own business when all of a sudden he happened upon an antique: one of the earliest modern synthesizers." [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 8:27 AM PST - 11 comments

Ralph Branca's story now manages to combine baseball, tragedy, genealogy, Judaism and the Nazis
posted by xowie at 8:07 AM PST - 14 comments

Yuja Wang (official site / wikipedia) is a 24-year old, Chinese virtuoso classical pianist who became an overnight sensation in 2007 when she filled in after piano legend Martha Argerich, cancelled a performance with the Boston symphony. Since then, Ms. Wang has become a superstar in her own right, hailed by critics for her precise, passionate performances and lightning-fast technique. But after a recent appearance on-stage in a short red dress and high heels led to a critic's complaint about her outfit, others are now weighing in on whether it is appropriate for a female classical musician to wear revealing clothing. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:48 AM PST - 101 comments

"Having now played the game, I'd like to take issue with the slogan on the box. 'Fun' this game is not. And 'educational'? Well, if disappointment, conflict and frustration are character building experiences, then I guess you could say there is an educational element to this game." Rap Rat is a bizzare video board game with an aesthetic that can best be described as in your face (gameplay video). [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:34 AM PST - 23 comments

Alex Papadimoulis (of The Daily WTF fame) and friends review various Finnish salty liquorice candies in the blog called Salmiyuck! [more inside]
posted by tykky at 5:08 AM PST - 57 comments

Welcome to... Egg-Coddlers.Com [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 5:04 AM PST - 25 comments

Stop coddling the super-rich, an opinion piece by Warren Buffet.
posted by splatta at 4:55 AM PST - 204 comments

National Characters is a long, multi-part essay about how computer games deal with the concept of nations and turns it into a game mechanic. The author, Troy Goodfellow of strategy gaming blog Flash of Steel, focuses on how the fourteen indistinguishable national factions of the original Sid Meier's Civilization have been treated by different games through the years. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 4:48 AM PST - 48 comments

Snow on Cuba Mall in central Wellington Ok, so it snows all over the world, but here in Wellington, New Zealand, we are experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime cold snap with snow throughout much of the country. The joy of Wellingtonians experiencing snow in downtown Cuba Mall is beautifully captured here on video.
posted by vac2003 at 3:21 AM PST - 42 comments

Christiania , the freetown within the Copenhagen city limits, popular with tourists, has obtained some measure of security after decades of uncertainty. [more inside]
posted by arcticseal at 2:17 AM PST - 27 comments

8 Hours in Brooklyn - Fantastic little compilation of slo-mo footage taken over the course of eight hours in BKLN. Extra good watched in fullscreen.
posted by dobbs at 9:56 PM PST - 12 comments

"Incompatibility between our big aspirations and the reality of life is bound to disappoint unless we learn to be a bit more gloomy, says Alain de Botton."
posted by joannemullen at 9:38 PM PST - 41 comments

Before there were yuppies, there were uppies—the term Up With People members use to refer to themselves. Most Americans over the age of 35 are vaguely familiar with Up With People, as its cast members have sung to more than 20 million people worldwide, and at the height of the ensemble’s fame it provided the halftime entertainment at four Super Bowls (1976, 1980, ’82, ’86). But many are unaware of the group’s cultish utopian ideology, its political connectedness, and how it was funded by corporate America, part of a deliberate propaganda effort to discredit liberal counterculture in the 1960s and ’70s. In the documentary Smile ’Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story (Storey Vision), writer-director-producer Lee Storey provides a thorough, balanced look at the organization’s history, demonstrating “what can happen when ideology, money and groupthink converge to co-opt youthful idealism.” [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 6:24 PM PST - 90 comments

Tiny origami on fingertips. Artist: Anja Markiewicz. Her Flickr set and nano-origami set. More teeny tiny origami by Mui-Ling Teh. Perhaps inspired by MeFite Specklet's Tiny Animals on Fingers. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 6:12 PM PST - 9 comments

The original Yahoo, Bollywood actor (and internet buff) Shammi Kapoor passed away after illness in Mumbai on 14th August 2011. The actor belonged to the Indian film industry's famous family of actors which included his father, Prithviraj, and brothers Raj and Shashi Kapoor. (His first wife Geeta Bali was a superstar in her own right) One of the most popular stars of his generation, also known as the "Elvis Presley of India" he starred in hits like Junglee, An Evening in Paris, Chinatown and Kashmir Ki Kali.
posted by infini at 6:03 PM PST - 11 comments

A short Simon's Cat adventure.
posted by HuronBob at 5:39 PM PST - 14 comments

Looks like the Fin-Fish Airship from 2008 just went gold.
posted by Surfin' Bird at 5:00 PM PST - 38 comments

The Code Challenge - a maths treasure hunt by the BBC [via mefi projects]
posted by lioness at 4:44 PM PST - 7 comments

Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands is a free download (PDF, Online and epub) from Australian National University E Press. To accompany the illustrated book are some mp3 format audio files. [via]
posted by unliteral at 3:57 PM PST - 3 comments

The Super Friendship Club is an effort by Stephen “Increpare” Lavelle (previously), Terry Cavvvvvvanagh (previously, with Stephen Lavelle), Jonas Kyratzes (previously, with Terry Cavanagh), Jasper Byrne (previously), Ian Snyder (previously), and several others, to provide another place for game developers to make games. It aims to be a focussed alternative to TIGSource Forums, Indiegamer, and others by avoiding more general discussion boards and topics.

Every other month, thematic pageants are held where entrants are encouraged to make a game and share their progress. The first pageant, “Justice,” was held in July and yielded these (including [previously]).
posted by stance at 3:12 PM PST - 11 comments

A record crowd of nearly 2 million people attend the 2011 Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. A brand new 300-400 seat comedy club opens in Washington, DC. Nine R-rated comedies released this summer. Bridesmaids becomes Judd Apatow's highest-grossing movie. The Hangover and The Hangover Part 2 now rank third and fourth, domestically, as the top-grossing R-rated movies of all-time. Marc Maron's WTF podcast repackaged for public radio distribution. Showtime orders another Green Room/WTF type show for 2011. The CW is shopping for sitcoms. Whitney Cummings signs development deals with CBS and NBC. Peak comedy or sign that we're laughing more than ever as we face end times?
posted by wensink at 2:57 PM PST - 40 comments

Franz Kafka's "It's a Wonderful Life."
posted by iamkimiam at 2:02 PM PST - 9 comments

Did "The Adventures of Pete & Pete" Invent the Hipster? This blog says so*. The AV Club loves it unironically. But so do the professional comedians at Splitsider and the sci-fi geeks at Tor.com. And the show definitely seems to have some influence on some young folk**. (Recently discussed as part of Rhaomi's epic Nickelodeon post)
* BIG disclaimer: the blog is on MTV's site, same corporate parent who is currently rerunning the show on TeenNick's '90s block, so there is some Pepsi Blue involved - or Krebsi Blue
** Yes, it's real, it shows up in later pictures on her tumblr.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:22 PM PST - 55 comments

When Richard Feynman was a young boy his father told him of the remote land of Tannu Tuva, igniting an obsession that would remain with him for the rest of his life. The Last Journey of a Genius chronicles Feynman’s attempts to get to the country at the geographic center of Asia, all stymied by the Iron Curtain, although he did correspond with some of its citizens and was a fan of its distinctive music and stamps. A visa for Tuva finally arrived days after his death.
Most would suggest that the story ends there, but not so: Feynman’s friend Ralph Leighton eventually made it, and formed the Friends of Tuva; later, Feyman’s daughter Michelle made the trip her father planned but never completed, an emotional journey recorded by the Russian service of the BBC [MP3]. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:48 PM PST - 20 comments

Style Like U features an exhaustive video archive of people talking about their clothes and history and what personal style means to them and the power of self transformation. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 12:36 PM PST - 32 comments

Chinese-English Ambigrams [Previously] [Wikipedia]
David Moser and William James (Wm Jas) Tychonievich
posted by jng at 12:00 PM PST - 14 comments

Generation Vexed: Young Americans rein in their dreams. 'Amid so much economic uncertainty, many are rethinking career plans, putting off marriage and avoiding the stock market like the plague.' 'Fewer than half of Americans believe that the current generation will have a better life than the last, according to a Gallup poll this spring. It was the most pessimistic showing for that barometer in nearly three decades. Another poll, of Americans ages 18 to 29, found that three-quarters of them expect to delay a major life change or purchase because of economic factors.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 10:51 AM PST - 219 comments

In July 1969, just two days prior to the launch of Apollo 11, six intrepid aquanauts climbed into a submarine built in the mountains of Switzerland, slipped beneath the waves near Palm Beach, Florida, and switched off their motors. Thirty-one days later, they surfaced about 300 miles from Halifax, Nova Scotia, having drifted 1444 miles in the Grumman/Piccard research submersible PX-15 Ben Franklin. [more inside]
posted by sonascope at 9:29 AM PST - 30 comments

Since 2008, NPR's All Songs Considered has been doing the Tiny Desk Concert series in which they invite a musician or band or very large group to come and play a song behind the desk of the show's host, Bob Bollen, with the video camera running. The result can be intimate, absurd, raucous and just plain enjoyable. A browseable archive of all 150+ shows is here. [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:27 AM PST - 42 comments

Tanooky Tracks is a cute game wherein you use riddles to help you find all the Tanookies (whatever those are) hidden around your house. It's a neat little take on the standard escape-the-room fare.
posted by phunniemee at 8:24 AM PST - 35 comments

PJ Harvey, solo, studio: To Bring You My Love and Down by the Water.
posted by maxwelton at 4:31 AM PST - 36 comments

Estradasphere may be on permanent hiatus, but the party can't be stopped with their 23-minute version of Hunger Strike (NSFQuiet) [more inside]
posted by mannequito at 2:39 AM PST - 12 comments

Double or Nothing: 9/11 Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke Speculates That the CIA Tried and Failed to Recruit the Hijackers, and Then Engaged in a Cover-Up. Admitting that he has no proof, he nonetheless alleges that CIA Director George Tenet and others concealed their knowledge that the suspected Al-Qaeda members were inside the country, which in turn prevented the FBI and other agencies from thwarting the 9/11 attack. Tenet et al. have responded to this charge via a prepared statement.
posted by darth_tedious at 1:13 AM PST - 88 comments

Cameron said: “Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them.”
posted by knz at 12:38 AM PST - 73 comments

Louis Comfort Tiffany: The Mother-lode. [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 12:00 AM PST - 9 comments

Movie posters from the country of Ghana. [more inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:58 PM PST - 15 comments

An Era in Ideas. "To mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, The Chronicle Review asked a group of influential thinkers to reflect on some of the themes that were raised by those events and to meditate on their meaning, then and now. The result is a portrait of the culture and ideas of a decade born in trauma, but also the beginning of a new century, with all its possibilities and problems." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 9:35 PM PST - 11 comments

Side Two of the original soundtrack album for 1984's The Terminator featured 5 songs: You Can't Do That, Burnin' In The Third Degree, and Photoplay by Tanhee Cain & Tryanglz, Pictures Of You by Jay Ferguson & 16mm, and Intimacy by Lin Van Hek. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:15 PM PST - 20 comments

Pronunciationbook has many helpful Youtube videos for learners of American English. If you want to learn to pronounce things like bolognese, gyro, pwned or Ke$ha, pronunciationbook has you covered.
But in recent months, a competitor has popped up. Now, PronunciationManual can tell you how to pronounce such things as penis, Hulk Hogan, or milk argument. [more inside]
posted by CrunchyFrog at 7:26 PM PST - 58 comments

Jay-Z and Kanye West collaboration Watch the Throne, as reviewed by Ghostface Killah. Words: they are not minced.
posted by nthdegx at 5:04 PM PST - 60 comments

Rep. Michelle Bachmann has won the Ames Straw Poll. Rep. Ron Paul came in a close second. This poll, though undemocratic, has a fairly good predictive track record. Since 1979, the winner or runner up has gone on to win the Iowa caucuses each time. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 4:43 PM PST - 456 comments

The Ballerina Gallery
posted by Trurl at 4:36 PM PST - 9 comments

How is kitteh video formed? (SLYT) Did you ever wonder the origin of all the wonderful cat videos on the Internet? You're welcome.
posted by k8t at 3:52 PM PST - 24 comments

With five NBA championships and seven rebounding titles won during his career, the oft-times colorful and flamboyant Dennis Rodman has earned a place in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. His heartfelt and emotional speech at his induction last night in Springfield, Massachusetts displays a very different Rodman.
posted by ericb at 2:15 PM PST - 40 comments

Novelist, frontman, economist, pig stealer, and man from Ireland, Julian Gough invites you to join him on an adventure in "a love-based mutant version of capitalism."
posted by villanelles at dawn at 1:45 PM PST - 18 comments

It’s extremely lo-fi and tricky to find your way about, but it’s startlingly atmospheric for a game of so little content. It’s a clunky, grainy first-person game set at night in a snowy wood, under distant searchlights and sirens. The object of the game is find five locations, and read the five plaques, before the thing that is searching for you – some kind of disturbing mobile searchlight thing light – manages to find you. Sprint and you’ll get out of breath and need to stop to recover. It’s extremely lo-fi and tricky to find your way about, but it’s startlingly atmospheric for a game of so little content. Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:30 PM PST - 16 comments

The End is a charming flash platformer geared towards young adults which integrates strategy, puzzles and philosophical questions into a world that explores a range of views about mortality.
posted by carsonb at 12:07 PM PST - 12 comments

Leaked AT&T Letter Demolishes Case For T-Mobile Merger. In trying to gain legal approval for a $39 billion T-Mobile buyout, AT&T has publicly claimed that they need T-Mobile to improve LTE coverage and that the merger would increase network investment. This document tells a different story, of AT&T telling investors that they would actually decrease investment in the network and that the actual cost to improve their LTE network is much less than the $39 billion they are spending on T-Mobile. AT&T has told Wireless Week that the letter contains no new information.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 10:47 AM PST - 48 comments

Babies by nobody and for nobody are an institution in France and a hundred-thousand+ dollar illegal commodity in LA. [more inside]
posted by Salamandrous at 9:49 AM PST - 28 comments

Interview with a one year old | Interview with a 2-Year-Old | MrArturoTrejo's YT channel.
posted by nickyskye at 8:14 AM PST - 14 comments

Starting last month, the French daily Le Monde has been publishing an economic thriller in series, called Terminus pour L' Euro (in French) (The End of the Line for the Euro). The series is behind a subscription wall, but Presseurope has started republishing the series in ten languages, including English...
The story narrates the events of summer 2012, as Germany decides to leave the Euro and what follows. It has caused a stir in France, as rumors about the true identity of the author (who signs the series as Philae, after an island in Egypt apparently) continue to circulate, and some think he is the French agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire. Some say that the rumors that led to the precipitous fall in French banks' stock a few days ago, were due to misunderstanding the fictional character of the story...
Real rumors that Germany threatened to leave the Euro last year, were dismissed by its Chancellor, yet as the eurozone crisis develops, no one is certain any more that the series is simply fiction and not a possible, real scenario, advocated by many...
posted by talos at 8:09 AM PST - 24 comments

Just because you own a camera, you are not a photographer. Have you noticed how 50 girls you went to school with have set up shop as a "professional" photographer? [more inside]
posted by lily_bart at 7:24 AM PST - 128 comments

Sukhi Barber: Beauty & Emptiness. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 8:22 PM PST - 7 comments

"I assume capes aren't functional because they can get snagged on things." A fascinating article by Jon Ronson profiling costumed avengers in the real-life superhero movement. Also: Why Doesn't Batman Kill? and Teaching Philosophy With Spiderman. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 7:32 PM PST - 84 comments

Do you see what I see? Do people always see the same thing when they look at colours?
posted by crossoverman at 7:09 PM PST - 67 comments

Prof. Michael Coe, an expert on the Maya, discusses the challenges facing Mormon archaeologists investigating the historical truth of the Book of Mormon. [more inside]
posted by Ideefixe at 6:51 PM PST - 190 comments

Post-Conflict Potter, living and rebuilding the world after Voldemort, by Foreign Policy Magazine.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:26 PM PST - 37 comments

How would you like your own celebrity sock puppet? Control their facial expressions in real time with the technology in Being John Malkovich (video).
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:34 PM PST - 15 comments

You've probably heard Madonna's Holiday. You might be aware of the Dutch rap version by MC Miker G & Deejay Sven. What may be new to you is the Soviet parody. [more inside]
posted by Nomyte at 3:17 PM PST - 43 comments

Shooting Stars was a celebrity panel game that ran on the BBC from 1993-1997, and was revived again last year. It features two comedians asking guest panellists questions, and the leader has to do a final challenge. And it's probably nothing like you're imagining it is... [more inside]
posted by mippy at 2:59 PM PST - 47 comments

What We Want is "a montage of 'Voices' from people around Oregon sharing what they want for the future - set to the music of Storm Large".
posted by OverlappingElvis at 2:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Bay Area Rapid Transit subway system asked Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile to suspend service last night in four downtown San Francisco stations, to prevent a protest over the shooting death of Charles Blair Hill to occur. Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile complied, and the suspension of cell service prevented protesters from organizing and the protest failed to materialize as conceived.
posted by cashman at 2:30 PM PST - 232 comments

one, two, three, FOUR, five, six, seven, eight, NINE, ten, eleven, twelve! The Sesame Street's Pinball Number Count by the Pointer Sisters reimagined with stop motion.
posted by P.o.B. at 2:10 PM PST - 26 comments

Hacking with gestures in a 3D space is now possible, with Kinectasploit (a mashup of Metasploit and Kinect with OpenNi, in a Blender-made environment). (via Slashdot)
posted by filthy light thief at 1:42 PM PST - 20 comments

Fifty years after British colonialism, ten years after military rule, Nigerians are free. Not economically free, not yet, and we see the effect of that lack of economic freedom in the kinds of crimes that are committed. But they are free in important ways. You can live where you want, associate with whom you want. You can sue people in court, gather to practice your religion, under the leadership of whichever holy man or charlatan you prefer, and you can marry and divorce as you please. This is a major thing. This is modernity, and to tell these stories, to give the protagonists of these losses even that little bit of attention, is to honor the fact that they are there, that their life goes on.

On his twitter feed, novelist Teju Cole has been taking the French literary tradition of faits divers and adapting it to "bring news of a Nigerian modernity."
posted by villanelles at dawn at 1:38 PM PST - 11 comments

Airline pilots used to communicate with passengers by passing notes. No non-stop flights meant plenty of time for reading books, eating dinner and passing notes from the pilot around. These personal records of one man's mom who was a stewardess on the Chicago to NY route (which meant stops in Fort Wayne, Ohio and Pennsylvania), are particularly chilling.
posted by Kokopuff at 1:06 PM PST - 12 comments

An anonymous, tenured, mid-career faculty member at a Tier One law school shares his/her observations on the state of contemporary American legal education.
posted by joe lisboa at 12:59 PM PST - 81 comments

The movie 30 mins or less, parallels real life story.
posted by MechEng at 12:55 PM PST - 60 comments

Dog Parkour. (slyt. / via)
posted by Mngo at 11:52 AM PST - 39 comments

The US military's secret military. 'Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year,' 'that number will likely reach 120.' 'Unknown to most Americans', 'in 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces'. US Special Operations forces are 'approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where the US' elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 10:38 AM PST - 121 comments

The 808 Car Keys Micro Camera is a cheap, poorly made, difficult to use miniature DV camera that is nevertheless embraced by model RC pilots, experimenters, hobbyists, and adventurers. If you want to hack or mod your own, start with Chuck Lohr's vast 808 Car Keys Micro Camera Review page.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 10:31 AM PST - 19 comments

Heello is a social media site that seems to be have been launched in revenge against Twitter by the founders of Twitpic, but it has become a window into a bizarre alternate social media universe. One in which CNN screams headlines in all-caps, fake Mark Zuckerberg insults people while counting his money, a generic social media expert tweets like a generic social media "expert," and companies ranging from Twitter to MySpace insult each other. Indications are that Heello is not amused by all of this, and has deleted a few particularly good fake accounts.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:13 AM PST - 33 comments

FastKat, for Friday fun HTML5/CSS/canvas game. Dodge the round dots in you modern browser. (Has no cats that I've found.)
posted by skynxnex at 9:00 AM PST - 16 comments

The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy. (SLNYT article on selective reduction) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:03 AM PST - 165 comments

An oldie but a goodie: David Bennabaum on learning how to program and be a sys admin at his high school in his youth.
posted by reenum at 8:03 AM PST - 18 comments

"IBM is proud to announce a product you may have a personal interest in. It's a tool that could soon be on your desk, in your home or in your child's schoolroom. It can make a surprising difference in the way you work, learn or otherwise approach the complexities (and some of the the simple pleasures) of living." [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 7:53 AM PST - 82 comments

If Scenic, South Dakota isn't scenic enough for you, now you can have the opportunity to buy a chunk of Custer's Last Stand. The "town" of Garryowen is for sale on eBay, perched at the point where the Battle of the Little Bighorn came to a head. [more inside]
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:28 AM PST - 13 comments

Hovering Art Directors (SLTB)
posted by elphTeq at 3:51 AM PST - 63 comments

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:16 AM PST - 221 comments

A little while back, Ars Technica did a review of the $99 Maylong Android tablet and suggested that it was not good for much of anything, questioning if it was one of the worst gadgets ever. [more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:46 PM PST - 83 comments

The Porticus Centre is a repository for historical material from Beatrice Foods, Bell System and the Borden Company. [more inside]
posted by unliteral at 9:11 PM PST - 10 comments

More educated tend to be more religious, by some measures.
posted by selfmedicating at 8:37 PM PST - 74 comments

Teachers [more inside]
posted by hellojed at 7:57 PM PST - 30 comments

The History of Torture—Why We Can't Give It Up. "Some 150 years ago, the West all but abandoned torture. It has returned with a vengeance." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 5:16 PM PST - 48 comments

In a draft document obtained by the Washington Post (print version), the United States Post Office proposes cutting 120,000 jobs, losing an additional 100,000 through regular attrition, withdrawing from employee health plans, and most dramatically "asking Congress to eliminate the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements," all by 2015. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 5:13 PM PST - 77 comments

Seventy-five years ago today, Rainey Bethea was the last person to be publicly executed in the U.S. [more inside]
posted by longsleeves at 1:56 PM PST - 39 comments

Grey is a flash game where you bring color to your world.
posted by schyler523 at 1:23 PM PST - 48 comments

Simon is a deeply religious man in the 4th century, who wants to be nearer to God, so he climbs a column. The devil wants him to get down on earth an is trying to seduce him. But Simon recognizes him every time. So the devil takes him to a nightclub in New York of the 1960s (1965, 43 minutes, with English subtitles). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:12 PM PST - 18 comments

Katy Perry (Firework), Pink (Raise Your Glass), Britney Spears (Till the World Ends) and Sheryl Crow (Soak Up the Sun) are among those who have approved songs for you to use when you make a Pink Glove Dance video that could win you $10,000 donated to your favorite Breast Cancer Charity. Previously the videos featured healthcare employees. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 12:13 PM PST - 47 comments

A writer in Slate examines the scientific literature for clues that will help him to write faster.
posted by chrchr at 11:36 AM PST - 69 comments

Gulp - the world's largest stop motion animation, shot on a Nokia N8 . Making of
posted by manny_calavera at 10:35 AM PST - 22 comments

Is human history every bit as important and worth saving as natural history? William Cronon explained that the 1964 Wilderness Act and National Park Service policy separates "nature" and "culture" as two very distinct things. This attitude means that, in lots of places, the Park Service has actually torn down historic buildings and removed traces of past human habitation in order to make National Parks more "natural." The Apostle Islands, the northernmost part of Wisconsin, appears to be totally wild. But less than 100 years ago, it was thriving stone quarry that supplied building materials to NY, Chicago and other major metropolitan cities.
posted by Kokopuff at 8:25 AM PST - 84 comments

Has the Higher Education Bubble Popped? According to the CSM, the boom in demand for bankers, barristers, and bureaucrats is over.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:24 AM PST - 78 comments

More apocalyptic doom and gloom, but today's flavor is whiskey.
Aging bourbon is expensive—and distilleries are cutting corners to speed up the process. Will the entire industry decline?
posted by Stagger Lee at 8:05 AM PST - 72 comments

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the the 2001 bestseller "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America", releases a new afterward for the tenth anniversary edition of the book, focusing on what has changed in the last 10 years. The conclusion: Poverty has since turned into an American crime. [more inside]
posted by windbox at 7:55 AM PST - 176 comments

"Three days after the September 11 attacks, reporters at The New York Times, armed with stacks of homemade missing-persons fliers, began interviewing friends and relatives of the missing and writing brief portraits of their lives to create “Portraits of Grief.” Not meant to be obituaries in any traditional sense, they were informal and impressionistic, often centered on a single story or idiosyncratic detail." As we near the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the Times has revisited some of the people they interviewed back then, for Profiles Redrawn. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:40 AM PST - 8 comments

"Running Alphabet is a project by the designer and runner Joan Pons Moll. The purpose of it is to run every character from the alphabet, captured by GPS and create a complete typeface from it. This is a collaborative initiative so if you are interested in running a letter go to participate and follow the instructions. Ready, Type, Go!" [more inside]
posted by OmieWise at 6:41 AM PST - 16 comments

What's in a name? The UK riots and language: 'rioter', 'protester' or 'scum'? [Guardian.co.uk] "The BBC drew a small storm of criticism for the word it initially used to describe the people taking part in this week's trouble."
posted by Fizz at 6:09 AM PST - 144 comments

MIT scientist Dr. Todd Rider has developed a viral infection treatment that works by triggering host cell suicide when it finds the cell has been producing double-stranded RNA. Since dsRNA is the mechanism by which all viral infections proceed, but is not part of normal cellular function, the treatment seems both universal and safe. [more inside]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:08 AM PST - 47 comments

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism have been carrying out research into the extent of drone missile strikes carried out by the CIA. Today they published findings. See also: facts and figures, a timeline, and their Twitter feed where updates are ongoing.
posted by nthdegx at 3:14 AM PST - 56 comments

Charles Forsman: "After my Raiders/Popeye strip was so well received I decided to try another combination. After a failed attempt at another combination I decided to try mashing up 2 of my all-time favorites: Spielberg and Benchley's Jaws drawn like Schulz's Peanuts. " [more inside]
posted by dubold at 2:03 AM PST - 26 comments

Arne Duncan, United States Secretary of Education, former "CEO" (Superintendant) of Chicago Public Schools, announced that there will be a waiver from NCLB for schools that apply and can prove that "adopt standards designed to prepare high school graduates for college and careers, use a 'flexible and targeted' accountability system for educators based on student growth and make 'robust use of data,' among other things." Many school officials are wary of the strings that will inevitably accompany the waiver. This is after Duncan predicted that by the end of this year, 82 percent of schools would not be making AYP, or Adequate Yearly Progress - a measure of standardised test scores in American schools. [more inside]
posted by guster4lovers at 11:50 PM PST - 49 comments

"This is my 24th visit to the DPRK, but it is the first time I have ever visited a polling station here." (Background here and here)
posted by vidur at 11:01 PM PST - 33 comments

A Mexican anti-technology terrorist organization called Individuals Tending to Savagery/Wildness (ITS) has claimed responsibility for two bombing attacks on researchers in Mexico.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:47 PM PST - 40 comments

Everything went silent, Judi told me, as if she'd been pulled underwater. She read the sentences over and over, trying to comprehend them.
The boy Sulaiman Suma had been looking for all these years was her 16-year-old son, Samuel.

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:52 PM PST - 12 comments

It Ain't Necessarily "Porgy". Director Diane Paulus is turning The Gershwins' (and DuBose Heyward's) Porgy & Bess from an opera into a commercial Broadway musical, with a more upbeat ending. Stephen Sondheim takes issue with this bold reinterpretation. [more inside]
posted by crossoverman at 8:34 PM PST - 52 comments

Brokers (or traders?) with hands on their faces - blog (updated)
posted by Surfin' Bird at 7:54 PM PST - 44 comments

Pinball machines, when you can find one, have gotten pretty complex over the years (for a notable example of pinball complexity, check out the Twilight Zone pinball machine). The average person likely plays one for a bit, figures it's about keeping the ball alive as long as possible, and hopes for the best. Why did I just rack up a million points on that go-around? Who knows. [more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix at 7:47 PM PST - 62 comments

What If Male Superheroes Posed Like Wonder Woman On The David Finch Justice League Cover?
posted by griphus at 5:53 PM PST - 186 comments

List of unusual deaths; of inventors killed by their own inventions; of chess related deaths; of entertainers who died during a performance.
posted by madamjujujive at 5:36 PM PST - 56 comments

Father Roberto Busa, whose work to analyze and index the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas led to the foundation of the discipline now known as the digital humanities, has died at the age of 97.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:35 PM PST - 11 comments

A new study by UC San Diego claims that stories are not ruined by 'spoilers'. Warning: the article contains a spoiler for The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 5:01 PM PST - 81 comments

There are excellent recipes on this website. I've been forced to get healthy and stumbled upon this website. I know there are those that are annoyed by vegans. What I like about this site is it is vegan/vegetarian focused without being preachy. The recipes are delicious. I've gone from a diet of gas station food, corn nuts and fast food to eating (and cooking) things I've never imagined. I thought maybe some of you might find it interesting. Let me know if you do. Can you be a carnivore and co-exist with vegan eating in your diet?
posted by zenhues at 4:31 PM PST - 48 comments

The Interrupters is a new film from Steve James (Hoop Dreams) and Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here) about the work of CeaseFire's Violence Interrupters (previously), who work to prevent violence in Chicago with direct intervention and mediation. The film follows Ameena Matthews, the daughter of of a notorious gang leader; Eddie Bocanegra, who teaches art to children and is driven by remorse for a murder he committed when he was seventeen; and the charismatic Cobe Williams, who recently joined James and Kotlowitz for an interview with WFMT's Andrew Patner. Some of the videos contain strong language and scenes of violence.
posted by hydrophonic at 2:52 PM PST - 10 comments

Fun While It Lasted is a blog that details the histories of long-dead sports franchises, including the Hawaii Leis/Sea-Port Cascades/Seattle Cascades, the Portland Lumberjax, the Columbus Minks, the Denver Comets, and the Phoenix Fire -- a professional soccer team that never actually played a game. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 2:50 PM PST - 21 comments

I had plans to cosplay as Edward Elric this year at Dragon*con. Building the arm seemed like fun and I always enjoy seeing good Edward costumes. Then Portal 2 came out. And I played it. And everything changed. The decision that I had to build Wheatley was pretty instant... [more inside]
posted by BZArcher at 2:27 PM PST - 23 comments

The bravest woman in Seattle would like us to know her name. Warning: The earlier posts are brutal and very hard to read, and possibly especially so for victims of violence and sexual assault. Previously, previously.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 1:11 PM PST - 34 comments

With news that Blizzard will require an internet connection to play Diablo 3 to curb piracy and prevent character-boosting cheats (previously), Wall Street Journal's China Realtime Report blog has new coverage of an old game. The article covers the actions of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd., the Chinese distributor of the MMORPG The Legend of Mir 2, and their fight against illicit private servers that offer increased experience per task and more common rare items.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:49 PM PST - 62 comments

Drew Curtis' FARK.com has settled a lawsuit with a patent troll. The popular "not news" site was sued by "Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC" which held a ridiculous broad patent (6,370,535) that it claimed covered the basic concept of generating a press release online. Other sites targeted included Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, TechCrunch & Others. In the case of Fark, the suit was settled for $0. Curtis writes, "I paraphrased our best one-time settlement offer as "how about jack sh*t and go f*ck yourself."
posted by furiousxgeorge at 12:31 PM PST - 78 comments

The Secret History of Guns. "The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 12:28 PM PST - 36 comments

"In each of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue completely melted away in a few weeks, and a year later it is still gone." [more inside]
posted by restless_nomad at 12:25 PM PST - 56 comments

Pearl Bailey and Andy Williams (1963, from the Andy Williams Show) - Give Me the Simple Life (SLYT)
posted by beisny at 11:46 AM PST - 12 comments

New research shows the Rich truly are different from you and me in one key respect: they feel less empathy (overview of the research here; unfortunately, a full report of the findings is only available behind various pay-walls). Previously, the same team of researchers found that members of the economic upper-class have a harder time recognizing others' emotions.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:26 AM PST - 115 comments

Why are restaurant websites so horrifically bad?
posted by The Gooch at 11:20 AM PST - 67 comments

Nate Silver: Why Standard & Poor’s Ratings Are Substandard and Porous
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:14 AM PST - 46 comments

Say Anything with Lloydtube [via*] [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 10:23 AM PST - 28 comments

Hiroshima after the atomic bomb 360º panoramas of the destruction, taken six months after.
posted by dabitch at 10:22 AM PST - 17 comments

The art of the menu.
posted by crunchland at 10:08 AM PST - 20 comments

The Art of Teknique
posted by dersins at 9:19 AM PST - 13 comments

250 lucky attendees to a right-wing concert in Germany were given free souvenir t-shirts with the slogan "Hardcore rebels” and a skull and nationalist flags. [more inside]
posted by mojohand at 8:41 AM PST - 47 comments

How Obama can get re-elected: Act like Reagan from the Globe and Mail. [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 8:16 AM PST - 155 comments

On July 23, 1920, Charles Ponzi hired former Boston Post journalist William H. McMasters as his publicist, who quickly realized that his new client was defrauding the public. Just ten days later, McMasters wrote an exposé published in the Post that led to Ponzi's ultimate downfall. The newspaper won a Pulitzer. McMasters was The Man Who Time (Almost) Forgot (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:24 AM PST - 11 comments

After weeks of fake primaries, fraudulent mailers, special interest moneybombs, and last-minute attempts at voter suppression, Wisconsinites went to the polls yesterday in an unprecedented round of six recall elections targeted mainly at Republican state senators for their support of Governor Scott Walker's controversial union-busting agenda. Five of the six races were called by Tuesday evening, with Democrats taking two of the three they'd need to regain control of the state senate. The lone holdout? A dead heat between incumbent Alberta Darling and challenger Sandy Pasch in District 8 -- the very same district that saw suspicious vote-counting by conservative Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus unexpectedly tip the balance towards Walker ally David Prosser late in the crucial state supreme court race this past April. The protracted count and late-night shift toward Darling coupled with Nickolaus's questionable history soon prompted Democratic officials to make accusations of fraud (later retracted). Control of the senate now lies in the defense of two Democratic seats up for recall next week and the possible wooing of GOP Senator Dale Schultz, the only Republican to vote against Walker's bill. Walker himself will be eligible for recall next spring. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:07 AM PST - 132 comments

"For the Germans the euro isn’t just a currency. It’s a device for flushing the past—another Holocaust Memorial. " Vanity Fair's Michael Lewis checks in with Europe's savior.
posted by shii at 4:58 AM PST - 63 comments

A face as seen from inside a cat's brain. UC Berkeley scientist Yang Dan says she can connect to the neurons in a cat's brain and record what the cat sees. [more inside]
posted by Termite at 4:36 AM PST - 113 comments

New Italian documentary updating Rossi's cold fusion claims (subtitles), featuring most of the scientists vouching for the process. [more inside]
posted by Brian B. at 9:03 PM PST - 47 comments

This is a zoetrope (previously). It's a device that creates the illusion of animation from a succession of still pictures filtered quickly through slits in a wheel. Pixar made a really cool one with a strobe light. Here it is more up-close and personal. Here it is in a higher resolution.
posted by SpacemanStix at 7:14 PM PST - 29 comments

"Hagens Berman has filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit claiming that Apple Inc. and five of the nation’s top publishers, including HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group Inc. and Simon & Schuster Inc. illegally fix prices of electronic books, also known as e-books. [more inside]
posted by joannemullen at 6:51 PM PST - 105 comments

Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator. The author of the SNES emulator bsnes talks about the difficulties in creating emulators that accurately simulate classic game consoles, and why it will take lifetimes to generate enough computer power to perfectly recreate the most modern consoles.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 6:30 PM PST - 48 comments

Jonathan's Starbucks Card. Add the image of Jonathan's Starbucks card to your smartphone and if there is a balance (check twitter) you can have a free coffee.
posted by morganannie at 6:15 PM PST - 82 comments

Was Albert Camus killed by the KGB?
posted by anothermug at 6:14 PM PST - 27 comments

Boehner and Pelosi announce the end to the House of Representatives Page Program.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:13 PM PST - 51 comments

It's Census time in Australia. Watch Australians age, lose religion and get divorced with these interactive infographics based on historical data. Then play with the Australian Bureau of Statistics' neat tool that puts a personal touch on the data. [more inside]
posted by puffl at 3:48 PM PST - 48 comments

Kinfolk Magazine (intro Video) is a "growing community of artists with a shared interest in small gatherings." Many of these artists (mostly married couples) have their own blogs in which they post photos and discuss marriages, travel, cooking, crafts and (with less frequency) their belief in Fundamentalist Christianity. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:43 PM PST - 12 comments

Last gay concentration camp inmate dies.
posted by maiamaia at 3:21 PM PST - 27 comments

Fuck Yeah Ugly 90s Clothes A 'celebration' of how dated and strange the 'looks' of twenty years ago seem today.
posted by mippy at 3:08 PM PST - 212 comments

You probably knew that much of the physical Internet consists of fiber optic cable. However, you probably didn't know just how many ways it can be broken. via
posted by fake at 2:36 PM PST - 31 comments

"For us, it's devastating ... I'm sure there are labels which aren't insured. I'm sure there will be labels that will go bust." A fire set as part of the ongoing London riots has destroyed the Sony-owned PIAS distribution warehouse, decimating the physical stock of most of the UK's independent music and film labels. Over 150 companies have been affected, including Domino, 4AD, Warp, XL, Rough Trade, Ninja Tune, Soul Jazz, Fat Cat, Chemikal Underground, Rekids, and the DVD labels Arrow Films (whose entire stock has been destroyed) and Masters of Cinema. The warehouse also housed stock for American labels Sub Pop, Drag City, Thrill Jockey and Secretly Canadian and Vice. Everything stored in the 20,000 square meter warehouse has been destroyed.
posted by alexoscar at 2:29 PM PST - 159 comments

The Dutch Heartbreak Hotel offers separating couples throughout the Netherlands and Belgium a unique service: a complete, finalized divorce in just 48 hours. [more inside]
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 1:59 PM PST - 4 comments

You may already be screwed. And not in the good way you were hoping for. MeFi kink favourite, FetLife has been ignoring a longstanding security and privacy compromise. (nsfw)
posted by rodgerd at 12:37 PM PST - 57 comments

You might know Parry Gripp (previously) as one of the nerf herders behind the Buffy theme song or the writer of dozens of obnoxiously catchy fake jingles. But did you know that he's also magic? Today, in honor of the release of Lev Grossman's The Magician King (review contains spoilers Grossman's The Magicians), Gripp has released "I Wanna Be a Magician," a Magicians fan song. [more inside]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:14 PM PST - 24 comments

What happens when Steve Albini, (in)famously cranky musician, engineer, and all-around opinionated dude (as well as a pretty good food blogger!) meets the Odd Future Wolf Gang crew (themselves no strangers to controversy) in an airport shuttle? This happens, of course.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 12:02 PM PST - 109 comments

In honor of the Fantastic Four's upcoming 50-year anniversary, Bully presents an origin story retrospective.
posted by griphus at 11:32 AM PST - 30 comments

98 year old woman just got her 10th level black belt in Judo. Only three people in the world, all men living in Japan, have ever reached that mark. The martial arts promotion by USA Judo brought 98-year-old Fukuda to tears at the women's dojo where she still teaches in Noe Valley. Last week, Sensei Keiko Fukuda of San Francisco became the first woman to be promoted to judo's highest level: 10th degree black belt. Video about Fukuda Keiko. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:12 AM PST - 93 comments

Described as 'cryptography's holy grail', Homomorphic Encryption/Computation is a form of encryption where specific algebraic operations on the plaintext translate into different algebraic operations on the ciphertext, allowing the plaintext's owner to 'outsource' computations to untrusted machines. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 10:56 AM PST - 17 comments

Stephen Strange was an arrogant doctor, until a car accident damaged his hands, leading him try every cure possible. Eventually he made his way to the East, where the story progressed, and now he's Doctor Strange, master of magic! His thrilling tale is set to be the first Marvel superhero movie since Marvel was purchased by Disney. But there has been much history behind the latest movie, including a period when Guillermo del Toro was involved and wanted to include Neil Gaiman, a draft script by Alex Cox (1990, 5.1 mb PDF; review), and a draft script by Bob Gale (January 21, 1986, 3.5 mb PDF; review). Along with these incomplete attempts, there was the 1978 Dr. Strange TV movie, which you can watch online (full movie with Portuguese subtitles, or YT playlist). If you'd like another take, head to 1992 for the direct-to-video movie Doctor Mordrid. Depending on who you ask, it's a more or less entertaining/accurate take (warning: spoilers) on Dr Strange. Modrid is also online.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:54 AM PST - 34 comments

NASA Proves Building Blocks Of DNA Come From Space. "NASA researchers studying meteorites have found that they contain several of the components needed to make DNA on Earth. The discovery provides support for the idea that the building blocks for DNA were likely created in space, and carried to Earth on objects, like meteorites, that crashed into the planet’s surface. According to the theory, the ready-made DNA parts could have then assembled under Earth’s early conditions to create the first DNA."
posted by homunculus at 10:36 AM PST - 43 comments

Are we doomed? [more inside]
posted by zennie at 10:09 AM PST - 78 comments

The 34th European Juggling Convention is currently taking place in Munich. [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 9:54 AM PST - 7 comments

Rock
Paper
Scissors
posted by flabdablet at 9:11 AM PST - 17 comments