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The Collier Classification System for Very Small Objects. By the Collier taxonomy, this bugger, which I just pulled from my heel, would be an onlipart shosolattach tanpointisharpanilik. [via]
posted by Tufa at 11:24 PM PST - 15 comments

Mexican Pictures and many others as well. The photos of Raul Gutierrez (more inside).
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:18 PM PST - 2 comments

We were invited, we didn't invade. Recent white house daily press release where Scott McClellan avoids answering direct questions. Is this history re-written before our eyes?
posted by Balisong at 10:12 PM PST - 72 comments

Stereotypes
posted by anastasiav at 9:34 PM PST - 24 comments

Symbol fun. Happy Friday.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 9:02 PM PST - 13 comments

Sexuality, politics, and memory in Twentieth-Century Germany. The introductory chapter of Dagmar Herzog's brilliant, deeply researched, and beautifully written book, and an informative review by Thomas Laqueur. (via nextbook)
posted by semmi at 8:32 PM PST - 7 comments

California Condors, including basic condor, condors in history, population history, and condor behavior.
posted by alms at 8:07 PM PST - 4 comments

Orson Scott Card on The Riots of The Faithful: So Newsweek prints an uncorroborated allegation about American interrogators flushing Qurans down the toilet in order to get fanatical Muslim prisoners to talk, and there's rioting and death all over the Muslim world. There are several lessons to be learned from this incident, some trivial, some quite important...
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:28 PM PST - 103 comments

Yoda/gigolo a little flash friday fun
posted by hortense at 6:00 PM PST - 16 comments

Technophobia? or ignorance? or mendacity? A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent. The specific crime here aside, why is encryption - and by extension privacy - viewed as something seedy?
posted by Smedleyman at 5:47 PM PST - 10 comments

You got owned... an entertaining study of life's little mishaps on video. Some you've seen, some you may not have. (wmv)
posted by crunchland at 5:18 PM PST - 33 comments

Time Mag's 100 All Time Best Flicks Compiled by their OWN critics, of course. Hence no Kevin Smith masterpieces mentioned. The List also fails to mention some of the most popular movies of all time. It can't be right if it doesn't include the Wizard of Oz.
posted by PrincessLara at 4:48 PM PST - 35 comments

The mystery of the beeping house is haunting me. I've been following this thread on the "General Chit Chat" section of the TiVo Community for two weeks now and no one has been able to figure out WHAT is beeping in this guy's house. We have the some of the greatest minds on the internet offering theories and so far nothing has panned out. He's pulled the power on the place. He's checked every smoke and CO2 detector... all to no avail. And this dude's house has been beeping every minute, every day, for ONE YEAR. His neighborhood had a blackout, and the beep persisted.

ONE YEAR!

It's gotten so absurd that at least 8 of the people in the discussion are planning to GO to the dude's house this weekend and annihilate the beep, once and for all. They've even bought "beep finding" equipment. They are the "beepbusters."
posted by neilkod at 4:03 PM PST - 58 comments

Star Wars Easter Eggs (via Forever Geek)
posted by oissubke at 3:46 PM PST - 17 comments

Two-thirds agreement, friend or foe? Condoleezza Rice had an informal interview with an NPR reporter this week. During the talk the interviewer brought up U.S. pop culture. He stated that some of the reasons why Bin Laden attacked the U.S. was because of its (our) Pornographic culture, children being out of control, women having too much power. Condi seemed to only protest the complaint of women having too much power. What does she believe in? The way the question was responded to makes me unsettled more about this administration, as impossible as I thought this was possible. The portion is 3:35 minutes in.
posted by MrLint at 3:35 PM PST - 17 comments

Window Standpoint. If you've ever wondered what international sound artists see and hear when they're at home, staring out of their pokey apartment windows and watching the world go by, then this is the site for you.
posted by nylon at 2:03 PM PST - 7 comments

Sex Advice from Accordion Players! Because sex advice is too important to be trusted to guitarists.
posted by AccordionGuy at 12:56 PM PST - 11 comments

The end of the British slasher film? [Article on NYT which needs account.] Love the phrase (with reference) "Once resistance from clothing and skin is overcome, little extra force is required to injure vital organs, increasing the chance of a fatality (likened to cutting into a ripe melon)."
posted by birdsquared at 12:49 PM PST - 17 comments

Today is my 30th birthday.
posted by Capn at 10:40 AM PST - 83 comments

The US Postal Service has issued a series of postage stamps honoring great American scientists including: Josiah Willard Gibbs, thermodynamicist best known for the Gibbs Phase Rule; Barbara McClintock, geneticist who showed genes could transpose within chromosomes; John von Neumann, mathematician who made significant contributions in game theory and computer science; and Richard Feynman, infamous physicist best remembered for his work on quantum electrodynamics, the Manhattan Project, Feynman Diagrams, and his testimony at the Space Shuttle Challenger hearings.
posted by chicken nuglet at 10:08 AM PST - 15 comments

(As any Mets geek might say when talking to Mike & the Mad Dog: First time [MeFi] poster, long time reader)
Underestimating the Fog...No, not crochety ol' McNamara's take on the situation in Iraq. Rather, it's an astonishing (if only partial) recanting [.pdf] by the patron saint of statheads, seamheads, and rotogeeks everywhere, Bill James. Like his namesake, James is a radical empiricist, the Jedi master who defined sabermetrics (his coinage) as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball." Over the past several decades, James' influence has been enormous. After Michael Lewis famously detailed the saber-success of Billy Beane's Oakland A's, Sabermetric-leaning analysts have made their way into the scouting ranks and GM's offices of a growing number of major league ballclubs. From the halls of academia [.pdf] to newspapers and Cable personalities, even the NFL and NBA are on board!
posted by ericbop at 10:01 AM PST - 25 comments

On-On! I had never heard of the Hash House Harriers ("the drinking club with a running problem") until a friend clued me in. Now I don't know how I had missed them! They're certainly very visible -- and audible. Here's how it works. Their origins are in the British expat community in Kuala Lumpur, but nowadays they are everywhere!
One of their key ingredients is a bit problematic in this post-9/11 world, but they are adaptable.
posted by gurple at 9:50 AM PST - 15 comments

A Canadian Love Story Your husband is a serial rapist. You are a veterinary clinic worker who wants to give him something special for Christmas. How about giving your younger sister as a rape toy? [more inside]
posted by RockCorpse at 9:44 AM PST - 88 comments

Why can't Robert Lansberry get mail?
posted by Lusy P Hur at 9:31 AM PST - 7 comments

Chris Sickels (aka Red Nose Studio) makes beautiful images with various bits of wire, cardboard, fabric, paint, found objects, and most importantly, puppets.
posted by crumbly at 9:29 AM PST - 9 comments

"And the 'Soldier Kicking Asshat of the Month' award goes to..." Rep. Duncan Hunter (R - San Diego), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who stripped a bipartisan-approved amendment out of the defense budget which would have given America's 1.1 million reservists the ability to pay $75 a month / $233 per family for healthcare insurance. Hunter claimed that the extra cost would blow the DoD's budget. The cost? About $770 million a year over five years... approximately .0018% of the yearly defense budget, or about 2/3rds the cost of a single stealth bomber.
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:41 AM PST - 31 comments

Your mother was right. You can go blind from doing that. Federal health officials are examining rare reports of blindness among some men using the impotence drugs Viagra and Cialis. Since it doesn't actually do anything, Enzyte should still be safe.
posted by hipnerd at 8:33 AM PST - 20 comments

While some squabble over who is the “Father of Podcasting” (see “Bickering among the 'Pod Squad’ : Who is the 'Podfather"? And who cares?”), Seth Godin suggests that now is the time to start podcasting: “If your goal is to be an A list podcaster, today's the day to start. And invest. And persist.”

On his blog at MSNBC Will Femia states: “Speaking of shark jumping, ABC News kicks off the mainstreaming of podcasting.”

Is podcasting a “fad”, or likely a future mainstay in modern media?
posted by ericb at 7:48 AM PST - 53 comments

The U.S. removes the nuclear brakes Under the cloak of secrecy imparted by use of military code names, the American administration has been taking a big - and dangerous - step that will lead to the transformation of the nuclear bomb into a legitimate weapon for waging war. Ever since the terror attack of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has gradually done away with all the nuclear brakes that characterized American policy during the Cold War. No longer are nuclear bombs considered "the weapon of last resort." No longer is the nuclear bomb the ultimate means of deterrence against nuclear powers, which the United States would never be the first to employ. In the era of a single, ruthless superpower, whose leadership intends to shape the world according to its own forceful world view, nuclear weapons have become a attractive instrument for waging wars, even against enemies that do not possess nuclear arms.
posted by mk1gti at 7:25 AM PST - 96 comments

The worst Superhero costumes ever? "It's not every day that we see a hipster ape grabbing a dude's ass." So True.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 7:04 AM PST - 39 comments

Friday Flash Fun: More point 'n' click adventure games than you can shake a stick at. [Most have sound, and a very small percentage may be NSFW.]
posted by Sibrax at 6:30 AM PST - 8 comments

AskGod.com Forget Jeeves. For $25 a month, you can soon call a googling "angel" from your mobile phone with questions. According to the press release (pdf): "Soon, with the coming of Ask God, the prayers of all the data-starved will be answered and the prophecy of information on-demand will be fulfilled." In a country caught in the grips of religious mania, is this smart marketing or tone deaf? And with the web increasingly on our phones already, who's going to pay for this?
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:45 AM PST - 87 comments

A new Harper's article by Jeff Sharlet, author of the also-must-read Jesus Plus Nothing. To win a war, you must have an elaborate strategy...
posted by deusdiabolus at 3:47 AM PST - 24 comments

At first glance Annette Messager's work (mentioned en passant here can seem cute. But the MOMA web-pages dedicated to her work reveal there's more to it. From stuffed starlings through babies with their eyes scratched out on to the floppy phalluses of 'Piques', she glides from light to shade and from cradle to grave - or, as she adds in this interview, from bedroom to dining room. Or is it the other way round? I took in her installation at Les Cordeliers recently - un grand voile noir mû par le vent - I wish you could have seen it.
posted by TimothyMason at 3:20 AM PST - 5 comments

Marshmallow baby Jesus? Check. Kitchen timer baby Jesus? Absolutely. Giant inflatable baby Jesus that lights up? You betcha. All this and more at the Cavalcade of Bad Nativities. Once you're finished beholding him in all his cheesy infant glory, meditate upon the rest of his (badly rendered) life and works at The Passion of the Tchotchke.
posted by LeeJay at 12:26 AM PST - 14 comments