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Gonzales pushes plan to criminalize copyright infringement, making it punishable by life imprisonment; to increase wiretaps; and to require Homeland Security to notify the RIAA in certain circumstances. "To meet the global challenges of IP crime." I'd comment on this, but I'm afraid that someone might think I was copying someone else. The Intellectual Property Protection Act (official press release) appeared previously in a speech (2005) and as a draft (2006) - now the Justice department is pushing Congress to bring it forward. [newsfilter]
posted by blacklite at 11:24 PM PST - 59 comments

Awesome Tapes from Africa (via)
posted by roll truck roll at 10:45 PM PST - 40 comments

Is it 2000 bucks worth of offensive? A Sydney youth who has created an uproar with an online game based on the Virginia Tech massacre, says he will remove the game if he receives $US2000 in "donations". More via Melbourne Age
posted by mattoxic at 10:20 PM PST - 32 comments

UniverseNewsFilter: Scientists claim to have detected dark matter! Here are NASA's press release, feature page and multimedia presentation. For an explanation what dark matter is, I refer you to this page. After all that excitement, you can sit down and work out how much dark matter is in the Milky Way.
posted by Kattullus at 9:12 PM PST - 31 comments

"When a marriage dies, what should be done with the wedding ring? Until now, millions of wedding rings have been banished to remote corners of sock and underwear drawers. Now you can give these wedding rings the proper final resting place they deserve."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:17 PM PST - 45 comments

Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma was recently released on DVD.
posted by RogerB at 7:39 PM PST - 15 comments

Three exceptionally beautiful videos featuring surreal genius architect Antoni Gaudi
posted by vronsky at 6:25 PM PST - 31 comments

The Daily Dump [video] is an open source design for a terracotta home composting unit that aims to provide manifold benefits - for potters, for homemakers, and also for civil society, particularly in a country where waste removal isn't as regular or reliable a service. How to's here.
posted by infini at 5:49 PM PST - 18 comments

Netflix of Books? BookSwim aims to be 'Netflix' of books with a monthly subscription, 3 book-at-a-time with free postage. They are not the first, BooksFree offers a wide selection of 'beach books' and JiggerBug rents a wide audio book selection. Google tried it in 2005, and nearly got burned to the ground. Could libraries and local used book stores be marginalized (though never destroyed) as the local video rental store? Will Border's become the same struggling dinosaur Blockbuster has turned out to be?
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:26 PM PST - 71 comments

Tvashtar in Motion. Awesome five-frame GIF of fountaining sulfuric lava on Io courtesy New Horizons as it swung by Jupiter earlier this year. Found via Planetary Society Blog (Thank you, Emily). More on Tvashtar.
posted by brownpau at 2:12 PM PST - 19 comments

Add to Cart, Buy, Buy Now, Add to Brown Bag? 107 clickable shopping cart buttons on one page. Most popular colour: red. I only recognize the Amazon button--clearly I need to hone my online shopping-fu.
posted by dbarefoot at 11:22 AM PST - 18 comments

[news filter]Iraq veteran wins blog prize "The timing of the award is almost as striking as the writing which it honours. A former American machine gunner's memoir of a year's tour of duty in Iraq based on his blog has just won a major accolade at precisely the moment when the US military high command is clamping down on blogs among the rank and file."
posted by Postroad at 11:08 AM PST - 11 comments

[NewsFilter] Jerry Falwell was found unconscious in his office today and has since died. Exactly what did they mean by "heart challenges" ?
posted by scblackman at 10:45 AM PST - 574 comments

Pinning down the elusive Banksy. "The art world is the biggest joke going," he has said. "It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak." Yet the stencilist/graffiti writer's pieces regularly sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds at places like Sotheby's--not bad for a man who still remains cloaked in complete anonymity. The New Yorker gets a rare e-mail interview. [Previously: 1, 2, 3]
posted by dead_ at 10:32 AM PST - 33 comments

Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog. The NYTimes Magazine on the convergence of the internet and pop music.
posted by OmieWise at 10:29 AM PST - 24 comments

Founded in Berkeley by artist Jim Mason, The Shipyard, a collaborative industrial arts space constructed from recycled shipping containers, has hosted numerous large-scale projects and events including a Survival Research Labs show, Power Tool Drag Races, gassification experiments and workshops, and various large-scale Burning Man projects such as 2005's Clockworks. Short documentary here (quicktime). However, relations with the city of Berkeley have been consistently tense. Recently, the city shut off the Shipyard's power, to which the Shipyard responded by going off grid. On May 8, Berkeley issued 3-day vacate and abate notice, with which the Shipyard is attempting to comply (auto-playing video).
posted by treepour at 10:06 AM PST - 8 comments

You may know that November is NaNoWriMo, but did you know that this June is the first annual Script Frenzy?
posted by brundlefly at 8:51 AM PST - 20 comments

Sleepless in Penzance. Tony Wright is trying to stay awake for eleven days, in order to beat the current 1964 world record held by Randy Gardner. You can watch him on a live webcam. More on what attempting this might do to your brain.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:02 AM PST - 45 comments

Heard enough about Pain at the Pump? The 24-hour news love to cover the "unreasonable" record gasoline prices, but the real issue is crude oil supply--and this latest installment of Stuart Staniford's highly detailed analysis of the world's largest oil field, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, provides new evidence of sharply declining production. Can Saudi Arabia really increase supply to meet world demand that is surging on growth in India and China? Signs point to no--in the past week they have again voted to maintain OPEC's "voluntary" production cuts, and their petroleum minister commented that there may not be a "need" to increase Saudi production much further.
posted by DAJ at 7:53 AM PST - 64 comments

It began with an innocent-looking Valentine's Day card in 2005. Inside the card were several slips of paper, a hastily cut-up printout of names of 550 secret detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The human rights lawyer who received "this weird valentine" handed it over to authorities, and this week the court martial begins for JAG LtCmdr Matthew Diaz, facing 36 years for divulging state secrets.
Whither goest thou, American Jurisprudence?
posted by planetkyoto at 7:50 AM PST - 47 comments

"If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too." The World Bank opted to fuck with Wolfowitz anyway.
posted by chunking express at 7:37 AM PST - 93 comments

How many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?

None, they have machines to do that now. If you don’t like the 909, check out the Roland TR-330, or perhaps the Suzuki RPM-40, or even the classic Electro-Harmonix Rhythm 12, and many, many more
posted by psmealey at 6:48 AM PST - 38 comments

Woodstock^ (YouTuner)
Day ☼ { Richie Havens ♪ Country Joe McDonald ♪ John Sebastian ♪ Sweetwater ♭ Incredible String Band ♪ Bert Sommer ♭ Tim Hardin ♪ Ravi Shankar ♭ Melanie ♪ Arlo Guthrie ♪ Joan Baez ♪ }
Day ☼☼ { Quill ♪ Keef Hartley Band ♭ Santana ♪ Canned Heat ♪ Mountain ♪ Janis Joplin ♪ ♫ Sly & the Family Stone ♪ Grateful Dead ♪ Creedence Clearwater Revival ♪ The Who ♪ ☻ ♫ Jefferson Airplane ♪ ♫ }
Day ☼☼☼ { Joe Cocker ♪ Country Joe & the Fish ♪ Ten Years After ♪ The Band ♪ Blood Sweat & Tears ♪ Johnny Winter ♪ Crosby, Stills & Nash ♪ ♬ ♫ Paul Butterfield Blues Band ♪ Sha-Na-Na ♪ Jimi Hendrix ♪ ★ ♫ }

posted by pruner at 6:20 AM PST - 50 comments

The Best Places to Get Free Books.
posted by Tommy Gnosis at 3:35 AM PST - 24 comments

Readersvoice.com is a lovely, low key site that interviews authors in a down to earth fashion that you normally don't see. The whole approach is wonderfully refreshing and endlessly fascinating.
posted by milkwood at 2:46 AM PST - 3 comments