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Failed Philosopher King Michael Ignatieff confirms Machiavelli in the latest edition [direct link to mp3] of the Philosophy Bites Podcast.
posted by sockpup at 9:40 PM PST - 32 comments

Gritty Cityscapes by Jeremy Mann. Dramatically and skillfully rendered, the cityscapes and figurative works of Jeremy Mann give visual form to the emotive essence of modern life (nsfw).
posted by homunculus at 4:24 PM PST - 20 comments

The Free City Sourcebook: Primary sources on the Free City of Danzig This website brings together all available primary sources (eg, government documents, newspaper articles, photos, etc) relating to the Free City of Danzig (1920-1939). [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 2:44 PM PST - 12 comments

Gilens and Page analyze 1,779 policy outcomes over a period of more than 20 years. They conclude that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” Average citizens have “little or no independent influence” on the policy-making process? This must be an overstatement of Gilens’s and Page’s findings, no? Alas, no... (pdf)
posted by anazgnos at 1:41 PM PST - 36 comments

Unsung Hero [SLYT] Warning: May cause intense sensation of heartstrings being tugged.
posted by Mike Mongo at 12:18 PM PST - 24 comments

The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie. No grave site, no photograph. Forget that — no anecdotes. This is what set Geeshie and Elvie apart even from the rest of an innermost group of phantom geniuses of the ’20s and ’30s. Their myth was they didn’t have anything you could so much as hang a myth on.
posted by oinopaponton at 9:52 AM PST - 42 comments

In the Spanish province of Burgos, Castile y León, about 200 kilometers north of Madrid, is a tiny little village named Castrillo Matajudíos (pop. 60). The village is considering changing its name. [more inside]
posted by skoosh at 9:46 AM PST - 38 comments

Ask Polly: Will Our Class Differences Tear Us Apart?

I've been with my current boyfriend for three years. We're really great together—similar interests, senses of humor, great sex. I love him so much—the only issue is that of our respective backgrounds. He grew up in a tony suburb, went to prep school, then to a very prestigious college, and finally the very prestigious graduate school where we met. I went to public school in a bad neighborhood, put myself through a not-so-prestigious college, made a name for myself in my field, then got into that same prestigious grad school. Our families could not be more different. I didn't think it would matter so much, but something happened recently that I can't shake.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:32 AM PST - 89 comments

The earliest Shakespeare quartos are over four hundred years old and constitute the rarest, most fragile body of printed literature available to Shakespeare scholars. Sold unbound and often read to pieces, they are among the most ephemeral books of the age and survive in relatively low numbers. In the absence of surviving manuscripts, the quartos offer the earliest known evidence of what Shakespeare might actually have written, and what appeared on the early modern English stage. Only about half of Shakespeare’s plays were printed in quarto during his lifetime (1564–1616), and before the first printed collection of his plays, the First Folio of 1623. They are living artifacts telling the story of how Shakespeare's Hamlet, Henry V, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, to name just a few, first circulated in print.... Due to their rarity and fragility, the earliest quartos are often not accessible to those who need to study them. Today, six institutions in the United Kingdom and United States stand out as the main repositories of the pre-1642 quartos.... Through this international collaboration, many of the earliest Shakespeare quartos are now freely available for in-depth study to students of Shakespeare across the globe. You can read, compare, read annotations and overlay copies at Quartos.org.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:59 AM PST - 20 comments

Computers are providing solutions to math problems that we can't check - "A computer has solved the longstanding Erdős discrepancy problem! Trouble is, we have no idea what it's talking about — because the solution, which is as long as all of Wikipedia's pages combined, is far too voluminous for us puny humans to confirm." (via; previously ;)
posted by kliuless at 8:55 AM PST - 24 comments

On April 9th, Dropbox announced that Condoleezza Rice will be joining their Board of Directors. Some folks aren't happy about that decision.
posted by Fuzzypumper at 8:49 AM PST - 133 comments

Monday, Sam and his party set out for Rochester and Chatham, where they told ghost stories. On Tuesday he had a boat trip, got drunk, and kissed all the ladies. Wednesday he met a singing parrot and enjoyed some music but was a little distracted by Rebecca. More snogging and joking with friends. Thursday it was goodbye to Rebecca with a pang of guilt, and on the way home he stole some beer and played some practical jokes. So to bed very sleepy for last night’s work, concluding that it is the pleasantest journey in all respects that ever I had in my life.
posted by bq at 8:13 AM PST - 4 comments

"Android users are less lucrative than iPhone users, and designers are iPhone users. It's a socio-economic split on class lines, in favor of iPhone over Android."

Cennydd Bowles, a design lead for Twitter, asks why developers don't take Android seriously. At the Business Insider, Jim Edwards response is that Android users are, well, poor. It also turns out that a lot of Android users use their phones disappointedly as just phones, while developing for Android is much more costly than for iOS. All of which may just explain why it's rumoured Samsung wants to abandon Android for its own operating system.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:06 AM PST - 315 comments