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"The Hand That Time Forgot" - Richard Brandt interviews two men who worked on the now-classic train wreck of a film, Manos: The Hands of Fate. Find out what drives someone to gather $19,000 and make what is by many accounts the worst film ever made! Also available is the followup, "Growing Up Manos," in which we gain another perspective ("It was so obviously bad that even a seven-year-old could see it") from Jackey Jones, who played the little girl.
posted by Monster_Zero at 10:37 PM PST - 111 comments

What makes a prank great ? The Economist (of all places) is looking for the finest prank in history. I'd be happy just to hear your finest. "For the most impressively elaborate pranks, however, go to a university campus. Take thousands of bright young things with too much time on their hands, itching to achieve, amuse and misbehave, and splendid acts of delinquency will follow." See also: Shenanigans
posted by spock at 9:45 PM PST - 53 comments

Burning Man 2005... 100 photos by Scott London. (note: some nudity. may not be safe for work.)
posted by crunchland at 9:41 PM PST - 65 comments

What is the cost of the war on Iraq? [more inside]
posted by edverb at 8:40 PM PST - 48 comments

A million little peices of BS.
posted by delmoi at 8:04 PM PST - 119 comments

Terrorists not allowed in space (the FAA would like to regulate commercial space flights)
posted by gunthersghost at 7:39 PM PST - 22 comments

Teju Cole is a Nigerian who is returning home after years in the US. His writing is some of the best online prose I have ever read. Good photographs too.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:13 PM PST - 12 comments

Begging the Question, Defined Thank you, Anthropomorphic T. Rex, for explained exactly what "begging the question" means, in an easily accessible format.
posted by John of Michigan at 2:47 PM PST - 146 comments

Will the real JT Leroy please stand up? (ny times link) The public face of JT Leroy is confirmed as Savannah Knoop, the half-sister of the man who claimed to be JT Leroy's caretaker. The authenticity of JT Leroy was previously discussed on Metafilter here, in which a New York magazine article portrayed Ms. Albert, 40, and Mr. Knoop, 39, as unfulfilled rock musicians who concocted the character of JT Leroy to gain access first to literary circles and, later, to celebrities. Have JT Leroy fans now officially been punk'd?
posted by billysumday at 2:21 PM PST - 47 comments

Similar in implementation to the Fensler films, but not connected to him in anyway, Johnny Whoop Ass is a funny overdub of the former Saturday morning cartoon (or half-hour long toy commercial) He-Man. Start at Episode 1 (Embedded QT). Audio is most definitely NSFW.
posted by toftflin at 12:47 PM PST - 10 comments

File under "LazyWeb 2.0": expialidocio.us. Maps your del.icio.us tagging habits over time. Not mindblowingly useful, but nifty nonetheless.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:22 PM PST - 9 comments

Looks like mah horse has left ... From 1974, a 35 minute montage of Elvis’s on-stage banter, non-segues, non-sequiturs, bad jokes, requests for scarves, and whole lotta “Well…well…well”’s.
posted by carter at 12:00 PM PST - 18 comments

"Why is it that students can graduate from MIT and Harvard, yet not know how to solve a simple third-grade problem in science: lighting a light bulb with a battery and wire?" "Minds of Our Own shows that many of the things we assume about how children learn are simply not true." Three one hour streaming video programs on teaching science. (low hassle reg. required, or try login:metafilter@mailinator.com, password:metafilter)
posted by Chuckles at 10:25 AM PST - 39 comments

Guaranteed to hear the voice of God or your money back! (via Effect Measure.)
posted by docgonzo at 9:20 AM PST - 39 comments

Philo-Semitism: Just another form of Anti-Semitism? Interesting Wash Post article on Evangelicals turning away from supersessionism -- the centuries-old belief that with the coming of Jesus, God ended his covenant with the Jews and transferred it to the Christian church, and the concerns it is raising. ..."That hope is felt and expressed by Christians as a kind, benevolent hope," ... "But believing that someday Jews will stop being Jews and become Christians is still a form of hoping that someday there will be no more Jews." ... Is it that philosemitism is just as dehumanizing as antisemitism and, because it masquerades as its opposite, more insidious, or just the most recent manifestation of the longstanding appropriation of us Jews as symbols, whether it helps or hurts us?
posted by amberglow at 8:54 AM PST - 138 comments

Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, now has a weblog.
posted by nthdegx at 3:55 AM PST - 33 comments