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"Close your eyes. See if you can distinguish the voice of the New Edison from that of the artist. Did you ever believe it was possible to recreate the human voice?" As featured on the July 16 episode of NPR's Next Big Thing, Thomas Edison's promotional tone tests have been recreated by composer Nicholas Brooke for the stage, which New York MeFites can see at the Lincoln Center Festival later this week. (More wonderful phonographic ephemera here, by the way.)
posted by scody at 10:10 PM PST - 1 comments

"The Federal Trade Commission and Congress must act to prevent Fox News from using the deceptive and misleading trademark 'Fair and Balanced.'" After yesterday's 2,700 viewing parties and a Doonsbury plug, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is now the #1 selling DVD on Amazon. At the same time, MoveOn launches a campaign against the slogan, and AlterNet challenges Fox's trademark. (Previous discussion.)
posted by muckster at 8:53 PM PST - 64 comments

Top 25 Celebrities Turned Politicians
posted by Rastafari at 8:42 PM PST - 8 comments

Ordering pizza in a surveillance society. [Flash, via Crooked Timber.]
posted by homunculus at 5:29 PM PST - 19 comments

Wal-Mart Locator 2004 - For years Wal-Mart has allowed RV owners to camp for free in their parking lots (sometimes to the dismay of campground owners). But the Bay Area wants to pull the plug on the practice for fear of the stores becoming impromptu homeless encampments.
posted by falconred at 3:58 PM PST - 29 comments

New Details Surface A light hearted look at what goes on inside the halls of the United States Senate.
posted by chunking express at 3:24 PM PST - 4 comments

typoGenerator. typoGenerator is a random generator for 'typoPosters'. a typoPoster is a poster, created from images and letters/text that doesn´t have any sense, just to look good [via coolstop]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 2:54 PM PST - 16 comments

The Box Doodle Project - Cool cardboard art.
posted by dobbs at 2:17 PM PST - 3 comments

Predicting the Internet's catastrophic collapse: "...CD-ROMs through Federal Express will emerge as the information superhighway. Instead of an Internet brimming with Web pages under construction, too few of us will haunt ghost pages."
posted by reklaw at 2:01 PM PST - 17 comments

Living Myths.
posted by hama7 at 12:16 PM PST - 4 comments

Wouldn't it be great if you could get the weather from a poorly synthesized computer-generated voice? Well, now you can. Call 1-888-573-8255 and ask Jupiter what the weather is like, or will be like, for nearly any city you want. (via Cool Tools)
posted by euphorb at 12:07 PM PST - 12 comments

Brown = Terrorist - Part II With Bush running about the country telling us how much safer we are, it's fun to look at some of the so-called terrorists we're being protected from: "Five Mexican citizens who stole cans of baby formula from store shelves throughout Iowa and sold them to a man of Arab descent for later resale."
posted by y6y6y6 at 11:08 AM PST - 51 comments

A large catalog of interesting handmade Russian chess sets. Some that caught my eye: Soviet vs. American; "Soviet-Fascist Chess" (note the kings); and American vs. Russian politicians (note the American queen).
posted by Prospero at 11:08 AM PST - 5 comments

Fountains of Youth and Health : periodic, therapeutic fasting and caloric restriction. Ben Franklin wrote of this, and most religions advocate periodic fasting. In the "Fasting Worm Study", earthworms became nearly immortal. Recent research underscores the health benefits, which do not require overall caloric restriction (a "fast and gorge" cycle works too) for humans. Fasting shows promise for the treatment of most addictions, Cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, Gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, Uterine fibroid tumors, Back and neck problems, high blood pressure, arthritis and joint pain, depression, perhaps Huntington's Disease... Here's a clinic which specializes in medically supervised water only fasts and offers recent studies and writings on the subject (PDF, .doc, and .htm format). Fasting seems to be very good for your brain overall. Meanwhile, inside : the benefits of caloric restriction, which seems to dramatically slow many age-related diseases.
posted by troutfishing at 10:50 AM PST - 57 comments

Another touching, sad, chilling account of obesity in America. The story of Anamarie Regino, a 3-year-old who was abnormally large for her age. Anamarie was taken out of her parents' custody because, it was determined, her life was in jeopardy because of her size. This despite a 550 calorie/day diet and obvious signs that "too much food" wasn't an issue.
posted by hijinx at 10:37 AM PST - 78 comments

bestgameever [Flash]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 9:16 AM PST - 24 comments

The scientific productivity of nations (pdf). An article by the UK's chief scientific advisor, published this week in Nature, quantitating the scientific output of different countries, normalized to per capita GDP, area of study, number of researchers, higher education research spending, and more. A commentary, from a UK perspective.
posted by shoos at 8:52 AM PST - 6 comments

Let the games begin.
posted by togdon at 8:14 AM PST - 8 comments

Touching, sad, chilling account of obesity in America People outside the US have this view of us as disgustingly, morbidly obese...and it can be true. This article from the Washington Post Sunday Magazine (free registration may be required) put a touching, terrifying, human face on one of America's biggest problems.
posted by chinese_fashion at 6:37 AM PST - 219 comments

Every Sunday, it's Halloween in Harajuku. Hanging out by the train station at Tokyo's most fashionable district are young women dressed as nurses, but with white faces and a trickle of painted blood dripping from a lip. Men in their late teens or early twenties fidget under huge manes of spiky green hair and layers of black leather.
Some really amazing costumes can be seen here. And by amazing I mean interesting, and by interesting I mean freaky.
posted by Jase_B at 2:53 AM PST - 30 comments

Anatomy of a 419 Scam. A detailed blow-by-blow account of how an otherwise intelligent and ordinary human being is suckered into losing a grand of his own money.
posted by Blue Stone at 2:23 AM PST - 49 comments

Capital of the Minimal is a new feature at the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. It contains poetry, photography, and art work by 24 Dunedin writers, as well as some previously unreleased recordings by Flying Nun legends The Clean, The Verlaines, and The Chills (as well as some considerably more obscure stuff). [M.I.]
posted by Sonny Jim at 1:27 AM PST - 6 comments