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"The Talking Statues" of Staglieno. Beautiful photographs of the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno in Genova, Italy. These statues were immortalized on two Joy Division covers, and of note, Oscar Wilde's wife is buried there. (mentioned in this story linked in this previous thread)
posted by NorthernSky at 11:56 PM PST - 6 comments

Orion Nebula in very high resolution gorgeous
posted by obeygiant at 11:51 PM PST - 30 comments

Draw Batgirl. Jamie Dee Galey decided to draw Batgirl and post it on his livejournal site. And thus a meme was born. The list of LiveJournalers who have joined him keeps growing and growing. Many of them are pretty good!
posted by jazon at 10:42 PM PST - 42 comments

Alibaba regularly ranks as one of the top destination web sites in the world, currently higher than Wikipedia or CNN, it is a mind boggling Bazaar of bulk items available for import and export, mainly from China. A popular site rarely heard about, it is for those who buy by the shipping container or become lost in the bewildering variety and possibilities of generic bulk commodities.
posted by stbalbach at 10:26 PM PST - 28 comments

Black sergeant was 'loyal Klansman' Those ironic quotes are central to this story of Krazy Konehead Klowns. Stunning proof that white supremacy is for the truely stupid.
posted by warbaby at 7:12 PM PST - 20 comments

NSFW: Not sure if this is an extension of crush, but if you dig seeing women in fancy shoes destroying real automobiles with sledge hammers and such, the Crash Car Girls are here!
posted by bonefish at 5:15 PM PST - 20 comments

Can God make a rock so heavy that he could not lift it?
posted by brownpau at 2:46 PM PST - 161 comments

The vision: a federally funded 5-acre enclosed rainforest, supposedly the world's largest, will make Coralville, Iowa into a world-class destination city and ignite the imagination of its heretofore benighted citizens. The problem: a federally funded rainforest. In Iowa. Read some entertaining background and analysis on the inspiring project here and here.
posted by thirteenkiller at 2:12 PM PST - 36 comments

Study finds that 40% of Ashkenazi Jews come from four Jewish mothers. Previously discussed on Metafilter: the peculiar genetics of Ashkenazi Jews and their impressive intellect.
posted by billysumday at 1:35 PM PST - 153 comments

Grasses and other green growth may produce 10 to 30 percent of Earth's annual methane output. German researcher Frank Keppler reports in Nature [reg req] that living plants give off between 60 and 240 million tonnes of methane per year, which may mean that the use of carbon sinks to offset CO2 emissions may need to be rethought. [Also: audio on NPR ]
posted by F Mackenzie at 10:25 AM PST - 25 comments

Bush authorized domestic spying before 9/11. What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information. But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.
posted by rxrfrx at 10:17 AM PST - 122 comments

On January 30, 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise ship packed full with refugees fleeing the Russian advance into Poland was sunk by a Russian submariane. Nearly 10,000 people died and it remains the world's worst single maritime disaster. Radio National's Late Night Live recently devoted a programme to this little-known tragedy. Well worth listening to (mp3).
posted by Huw at 10:17 AM PST - 13 comments

Flash Friday. Find the bombs and save the hotel.
posted by caddis at 10:09 AM PST - 16 comments

Graphs, Maps, Trees. The Valve is hosting a literary event for professor Franco Moretti's new book, Graphs, Maps, Trees. Moretti aims to reinvigorate literary studies by constructing abstract models based upon quantitative history, geography, and evolutionary theory. PDFs of the original articles: Graphs, Maps, Trees. A review at n+1 is here.
posted by painquale at 9:54 AM PST - 10 comments

The Impeachment of George W. Bush It's been called for again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, and some MeFites have been praying for it for almost 6 years now. When I saw it pop up in del.icio.us/popular/ this morning I had to read it. An upcoming Nation article written by Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who was there for the Nixon impeachment. Will anyone come to the defense of our President? Let the debate begin!
posted by daHIFI at 9:46 AM PST - 172 comments

China may actually have discovered the Americas first. Two years ago, Gavin Menzies released a book entitled 1421: The Year China Discovered America. The book was widely read, but its contents were controversial and the evidence not strong enough to convince everyone. Now, a two hundred and fifty year old map, apparently copied from one made in 1418, will be revealed to the public and may permanently change the way we think about the Americas.
posted by borkingchikapa at 9:06 AM PST - 76 comments

And the award for best video game reenactment goes to...
posted by kosem at 8:54 AM PST - 22 comments

The (Broken) Triangle: Progressive Bloggers in the Wilderness. The Huffington Post's Peter Daou, whose dour forecast of how Bush and lazy media would spin away the NSA scandal proved prescient, on why "netroots activists" can't get traction: "It's slow-motion-car-wreck painful, and most certainly NOT where the left's triangle should be a half decade into the new millennium, as the Bush-propping machine hums and whirrs, poll numbers rise and fall, Iraq bleeds, scandal dissolves into scandal, terror speech blends into terror speech. The landscape is there for everyone to see, to analyze. Enough time has elapsed to make the system transparent. It is dismaying for netroots activists to see the same mistakes repeated..."
posted by digaman at 8:53 AM PST - 19 comments

A subjective comparison of Germany and the United States. A sober and interesting look at some of the differences between the two countries, written by a man who grew up in Germany and now lives and teaches in the United States. (via @rgumente)
posted by Ljubljana at 8:48 AM PST - 62 comments

Trinidad's pitch lake has been called the Caribbean's ugliest tourist attraction.
posted by 31d1 at 8:27 AM PST - 31 comments

So by 2006, tattoos and piercings are so mainstream that it's hard for a genuine bad-ass to stand out anymore. While some options still exist, for my money nothing beats embedding a set of brass knuckles directly under your skin.
posted by jonson at 7:35 AM PST - 79 comments

For interrupting an NFL game, weathercaster George Flickinger was fired last week by Clear Channel owned KOKI Fox 23 of Tulsa. The reason? Breaking into the Seahawks-Giants game to warn the public during the wildfires [PDF] of November 27. The fires engulfed 50 homes and prompted the governor to declare an emergency the next day. Flickinger's termination was confirmed in the Tulsa World newspaper, unfortunately they want $7 for the article.
posted by rolypolyman at 7:06 AM PST - 37 comments

This is great, California is going to be dropping some serious money on solar programs 3 BILLION!! dollars. Once you get past the idea that we spend about 6 billion A MONTH in Iraq, you will notice that this is a lot of money for a solar program. With 2005 being the hottest year on record worldwide, its about time someone (anyone) start doing something to get us off our oil addiction.
posted by stilgar at 6:53 AM PST - 29 comments

Death Race 2000. Eric Red isn't the only celebrity to have killed someone in a car accident. But his story may be the most bizarre.
posted by you just lost the game at 6:29 AM PST - 19 comments

The jolly green Hummer? The growing band of environmental offset companies which give you the chance to offload your SUV driving, energy squandering guilt onto an annual subscription and a fancy bumper sticker looks like one way that we'll be able to live with ourselves in the power hungry 21st century. Is this the placebo we've all been waiting for?
posted by Duug at 5:33 AM PST - 20 comments

what is the point of it all
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 5:15 AM PST - 39 comments

I'm quitting my job so that I can go and be a pirate... Angel, a graphic designer from Orlando, is putting his life on hold to go to the Bahamas and play an 'Asian pirate' in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. At the moment, he's soliciting donations on his web site, but plans to run a blog on the experience of being a extra as soon as filming starts.
posted by jedrek at 12:46 AM PST - 46 comments