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10 reasons not to accept a diamond. Something to think about if you are tieing the knot. I'm sure this list doesn't make these folks very happy - more reason to spread the word.
posted by Dag Maggot at 11:27 PM PST - 250 comments

Oddly obsessive statistical analysis of the rates paid by customers of legal Nevada prostitutes, broken down by sex act, attractiveness, body type and presence or absence of a jacuzzi, among other topics. [via Cynical-C, who swears he found it by accident]
posted by mediareport at 9:33 PM PST - 32 comments

Kintaro Walks Japan A Google Video featuring an American who walks from Kyushu to Hokkaido in the hopes of learning about Japanese Culture and finding his father's birthplace. (Running time ~ 1hr)
posted by matkline at 8:58 PM PST - 15 comments

Fun in the photo booth I don't usually post anything like this, but you might laugh a bit. Slightly NSFW at the end.
posted by snsranch at 6:40 PM PST - 55 comments

Ninjas vs. Pirates: The Movie You asked for it, now see the epic battle in four acts. {qt} [via linkfilter ]
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 6:02 PM PST - 16 comments

Earthquake rocks Greece and felt as far away as Italy, Egypt and Israel. [NewsFilter, except not in the US]
posted by phaedon at 5:29 PM PST - 23 comments

"One could go on, and one will -- praising (...) the National Center for Jewish Film for releasing all four of Edgar Ulmer's Yiddish films in restored editions. But the DVD player is beckoning, and I think it is time for me to get back to the couch".
The National Center for Jewish Film (NCJF) is a unique nonprofit motion picture archive, distributor and resource center housing the largest, most comprehensive collection of Jewish-theme film and video in the world. In their archives you can discover the works of Leo Fuchs, the "Yiddish Fred Astaire", restored gems (scroll down) like "Motl the Operator" and re-releases like "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg". (More on Greenberg, the Jewish kid who challenged Babe Ruth’s homerun record here, more on the NCJF inside).
posted by matteo at 3:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Did Jesus Really Exist? Also some notes on the doubtful existence of Hannibal.
posted by brownpau at 3:41 PM PST - 122 comments

Were you a minger, sporting a mullet, looking a bit naff when you were getting mullered while out on the pull, anytime before 1988? Or were you posh and minted, looking snazzy after spending your dosh to get a nip and tuck before 1980? If so, the Oxford English Dictionary and the BBC need you for their Wordhunt – a call to help find the earliest verifiable usages of a list of words from the past decades whose origin is still uncertain.
posted by funambulist at 3:13 PM PST - 28 comments

Hyperdrive and a possible Unified Theory. New Scientist article about a paper and proposal to NASA outlining development parameters and possiblities for a faster-than-light anti-gravity propulsion system, based on some rather interesting physics theories originated by a guy named Heim. You mean you've never heard of the Millenium Falcon? (via)
posted by zoogleplex at 3:07 PM PST - 70 comments

Re-Introducing the Real Windows Vista Bill Gates' demo of Vista from the CES show dubbed over footage of OS X. Apple told Microsoft to start their photocopiers and it looks like they did. [via]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:24 PM PST - 81 comments

Osama bin Laden is dead?
And, according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 1:22 PM PST - 102 comments

What’s "Sacred" about Violence in Early America? Susan Juster discusses the "oversized colonial martyr complex" with its attendant paradox: "colonial martyrs were everywhere, religious violence... in short supply." She begins:

One of the most chilling images in early American history is the deliberate firing of Fort Mystic during the Pequot War of 1637. Five hundred Indian men, women, and children died that day, burned alive along with their homes and possessions by a vengeful Puritan militia intent on doing God’s will. "We must burn them!" the militia captain famously insisted to his troops on the eve of the massacre, in words that echo the classic early modern response to heretics. Just five months before, the Puritan minister at Salem had exhorted his congregation in strikingly similar terms to destroy a more familiar enemy, Satan; "We must burne him," John Wheelwright told his parishioners. Indians and devils may have been scarcely distinguishable to many a Puritan, but their rhetorical conflation in these two calls to arms raises a question: Was the burning of Fort Mystic a racial or a religious killing?

She avoids easy answers and makes some interesting connections. If you want to find out more about the Pequot War, there's good material in the History section of this site. (Main link via wood s lot.)
posted by languagehat at 12:30 PM PST - 35 comments

New York transit history, slides and commentary Audio-visual presentations on various aspects of New York's transit history. I particularly liked the third one, 'Subway style - Design & Architecture in the New York City Subway.'
posted by carter at 12:30 PM PST - 7 comments

US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist li Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later. Dr Fadhil is working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated. Question: Coincidence or Coercion?
posted by Mr Bluesky at 12:28 PM PST - 21 comments

This weekend, NASA will order the Stardust spacecraft to jettison its 100-pound capsule that contains comet dust. The capsule will hurdle through earth’s atmosphere and make a soft landing in the Utah desert. Not directly connected to last summer’s Deep Impact, Stardust’s mission is to bring comet debris back to earth for study. Here’s hoping we don’t need the Wildfire lab.
posted by mania at 12:07 PM PST - 17 comments

Sodaconstructor. "Looking at the fluid, lifelike way these creatures walk and roll and slink across the screen you might think that there must be some very complicated stuff going on behind the scenes. well fear not, it's actually very simple. it only looks complicated because lots of simple bits are working together." Be sure to stop at the sodazoo to see others' creations.
posted by AstroGuy at 11:42 AM PST - 27 comments

Things Came Up To My Brain...Museum? A little Flash game, from the same Samorostian/Goldbergian mind that brought us Find The Treasure. Warning: There doesn't appear to be any way to toggle the sound off.
posted by Gator at 10:15 AM PST - 10 comments

How is life for accused war criminals (see e.g. drag-down list at top) awaiting trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia? Stimulating if they enjoy chess or model ships, according to this brief Slate dispatch. How well do such alleged monsters need to be accommodated?
posted by grobstein at 8:55 AM PST - 39 comments

Flaming anonymously is now a federal crime.
posted by unSane at 8:30 AM PST - 125 comments

Grandiloquent Dictionary For all the logophiles. Not intended for those afflicted with ultracrepidarianism or logorrhea.
posted by caddis at 7:59 AM PST - 23 comments

A revolution is the solution We talked about how Ebaum's World sucks before in the Blue, but it's looks like things have been taken a step futher with Eric Bauman's latest theft of an animated GIF of Lindsey Lohan. While script kiddies have already been concentrating on wiping Ebaum's World off the net completely, the latest swipe from ytmnd.com (NSFW?) has caused a 'massive' DoS war against Bauman as this wonderful writeup from Vitalsecurity.org explains.
posted by daHIFI at 7:40 AM PST - 59 comments

Space Suits
posted by anastasiav at 7:30 AM PST - 18 comments

Deep End Dining. The greatest thing since duck fetus and live octopus tentacles combined and slathered in mayo on rye. [via a comment made at MetaChat by edible energy]
posted by panoptican at 7:18 AM PST - 15 comments

Angry and Furious at the Collaborationist Democrats I [Martin Garbus] don't understand. An hour after I saw the Times "scoop" on the Bush illegal wiretapping plan, I wrote that it was clearly illegal and unconstitutional. But as it now turns out, dozens of politicians, as well as the New York Times knew about the surveillance plan and did nothing. Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, and Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, a man known for some sensitivity to civil liberties infringements, and a substantial number of congressmen, plus the New York Times, all knew of Bush's illegal spying.
posted by Postroad at 7:05 AM PST - 56 comments

Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets: “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam”
posted by sundaymag at 1:32 AM PST - 46 comments