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Hey, that drum set looks like it's melting! Acid starting to kick in? No! It's a TRIXON drum set! Trixon is exciting! Incontrovertible evidence that when it came to funny looking drum kits, the Germans had it down. Well, maybe with the exception of these.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:42 PM PST - 14 comments

Mona Lisa and other classics in clay animation. Joan C. Gratz is the talented artist behind this and other projects. This particular short film won an academy award for best animated short film in 1992. I am surprised to have never viewed it before today. Wikipedia has next to nothing on Gratz or her works.
posted by jkafka at 11:31 PM PST - 6 comments

Matsushita Shuji writes about the latest effort to prop up the Hanko system in Japan.
posted by tellurian at 11:06 PM PST - 23 comments

Nimian Hunter ~ Ride your horse, lasso the creatures, and feed your demon. (note: flash)
posted by crunchland at 9:58 PM PST - 17 comments

Redbone manager says Butte fair-goers saw ‘blatant’ imposters. Of course this sort of thing has been going for a long time (Imposter Zombies), but has gotten so bad that several states have passed laws requiring at least one original member to be present. "... a fan went to see The Drifters and realized none of the singers was authentic. Later, the fan went to another show and found the same charlatans on stage, this time posing as The Coasters..."
posted by 445supermag at 9:57 PM PST - 28 comments

The sketchbooks of Edward Burne-Jones, Benjamin Champney, Henri-Edmond Cross, Jacques-Louis David, Paul Feeley, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Sanford Gifford, George Grosz, Frederic Leighton, and John Singer Sargent. UnderCover, Artists' Sketchbooks exhibition by the Harvard Art museums [via woolgathering]
posted by bigmusic at 7:15 PM PST - 9 comments

Sock Wars: Assassination by sock - a much more productive way to find out who is really the world's fastest knitter.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi defies opposition, makes annual controversial trip to Yasukuni Shrine. Naturally, China and Korea are not amused. Adding to the drama and sparking debate amongst the Japanese is a recently discovered private journal of former Emperor Hirohito that reveals Hirohito stopped visiting the shrine in the 1970's when he learned that 14 class A war criminals had been secretly interred. Those 14 Class A war criminals are the focus of the controversy, and many Japanese are discussing having the remains of those men removed from Yasukuni.
posted by zardoz at 5:15 PM PST - 45 comments

Can you see me now? is a chase game played online and on the streets. Players are dropped at random locations into a virtual map of the Banff Centre. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory's runners appear online next to your player. The runners use handheld computers showing the positions of online players to guide them in the chase. From the good folks at Blast Theory and the Mixed Reality Lab.
posted by greatgefilte at 4:11 PM PST - 8 comments

Where do you find the U.S. in this 2006 CIA World Factbook list? Yep. It's ok... things are cool because of all those lucrative foreign investments like T-bills. Trouble is, oil and euros are looking a lot better. Is this a recipe for a collapse?
posted by chef_boyardee at 3:12 PM PST - 42 comments

Temari have been a hand-crafted tradition for centuries in China and Japan. Also known as kishu-temari, edo-temari, etc., these intricate woven balls were originally toys for children and later became gifts symbolizing friendship and loyalty. Though they used to be constructed from scraps of old kimonos, over the years they have evolved into elaborate geometric designs using silk as well as other, less expensive materials. People outside Japan have been making their own recently and a homemade temari makes a beautiful gift indeed.
posted by ktoad at 3:02 PM PST - 11 comments

Alan Abel is a self-described "professional hoaxer" active since 1959. His classic hoaxes include the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, the 1964 presidential campaign of Jewish housewife Yetta Bronstein, a topless string quartet (slightly NSFW), and the wedding of Idi Amin. He also released two mockumentaries long before Spinal Tap was a gleam in Christopher Guest's eye. Now Abel's daughter Jenny has released a documentary tribute to her father, Abel Raises Cain, which has some great You Tube clips, including 1970s talk show staple, Omar's School for Beggars. (some clips may be NSFW)
posted by jonp72 at 2:30 PM PST - 15 comments

"Let's give a welcome to Macaca here."
posted by EarBucket at 2:16 PM PST - 72 comments

Bicycle Coffee Systems reviews products essential to the "joys of bicycling and drinking good coffee, at the same time" and is written by "The Earth's Leading Authority on Conveying Coffee by Bicycle".
posted by turbodog at 1:50 PM PST - 8 comments

Dynamic 3D with CSS and the DOM Brothercake describes how to generate 3D mazes using nothing but CSS, the DOM and cunning. If you're not interested in the explanation, jump right to the example.
posted by boo_radley at 1:01 PM PST - 22 comments

The decade between 1922 & 1932 was not a good one for Frank Lloyd Wright; his star had faded in the US upon his return from Japan, and even though his most prolific years were still ahead of him, he had trouble finding work, and was evicited, his fabled home siezed by creditors. The Library of Congress hosts a fantastic collection of 5 projects he undertook during this era, none of which ever came to fruition. All that's left are his extensive blueprints, perspective drawings, and scale models carved specifically for the exhibit.
posted by jonson at 12:58 PM PST - 15 comments

I've long felt that the U.S. of A. "jumped the shark" as a country when we rejected the Metric System. The price of gasoline would still be under a dollar (per liter). Yet, we'd drive less because a short 20 mile trip would become a long 32 km trip. Then there's the most important measurement of all [maybe NSFW animated graph], providing us with the joy of 12.9(!) while we try to ignore that Japan is .1 ahead of us and France is .1 more than South Africa. (And is that Korean average North or South?)
posted by wendell at 11:43 AM PST - 66 comments

NPAA Best of 2006 Photojournalism from around the world: Escuintla Guatemala, Tahrir Baghdad, Odobesti, Naples Fla, New Orleans, Kashmir, Odessa, Immokalee Fla, Utica, Detroit
A project of the National Press Photographers Association.
posted by Lanark at 11:27 AM PST - 14 comments

Tonight is the world premiere, at the Edinburgh film festival, of "The Flying Scotsman", a biopic of Graeme Obree, the Scottish cyclist who broke the world hour record on a bike famously made from washing machine parts. Obree has faced many problems in his life, and the film has too, many of the participants haven't been paid yet. Of course, you could just buy the book.
posted by aisforal at 11:14 AM PST - 3 comments

Piet is a programming language in which programs look like abstract paintings. You can view some sample programs, or if you just like Mondrian, why not make your own with the Mondrian Machine? Or maybe you don't like Mondrian but you do like programming, in which case you can check out other strange languages, such as Petrovich, where you can punish or reward your PC. Finally, if you don't like programming OR Mondrian, have a look at a silly gif of a kitten.
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:55 AM PST - 11 comments

IBM raises lowers the bar. Apparently 1.5 nanometers is all that is needed for a 0 or a 1. This advance in data storage technology is a ways off from making an impact in chip construction, but allows for storage that is 1/8 the size of CMOS's wildest dreams. Neat. via ZDNet
posted by Addiction at 10:47 AM PST - 14 comments

Sex in prehispanic times. Cuba Chronicles. The arrow of time. Brazilian homosexual culture. The sword and the cross. Very similar. Bestiarium. Mini-descriptions of the many varied exhibits. Essays in English and Spanish by the artists with their images from ZoneZero.
posted by nickyskye at 10:42 AM PST - 7 comments

Nutpicking : It's a new and long overdue slur to describe the increasingly common practice on the right (and yes, on the left, too) of cherry-picking random comments or hate emails to smear your entire opposition as raving nuts. The worst so far: this execrable WSJ op-ed by Lieberman adviser Lanny Davis. Can the new term (which is modeled on the success of Godwin's Law) succeed in shaming the nutpickers? Either way, the practice is likely to become more common, especially if the "netroots" actually win some races this November.
posted by TheWash at 9:58 AM PST - 61 comments

So we all have our favourite question site. And we all know the big-brand takes on the space. But now there's the Web 2.0 Q&A sites: Wondir (Wondr?), Oyogi (in beta, of course) and the latest, Yedda. [via TechCrunch]
posted by GuyZero at 9:40 AM PST - 30 comments

Learn how to floss on Dental Movies dot com! Or learn more about what could go wrong with your teeth if you don't. Lots of fine dental info, with amusing animated gifs. Do you have bad breath? It's too bad they've had to temporarily shut down their offer for free simulated dental makeovers.
posted by owhydididoit at 9:17 AM PST - 6 comments

Al Jazeera have the scoop on the new name for OLPC's $100 $140 dollar laptop.<via olpcnews.com>
posted by davehat at 8:32 AM PST - 32 comments

NewsFilter: Castro Alive and kickin' it old school. The Cuban media has released some pictures of Castro alive and well. This is actually the first time I've ever seen him not wearing military garb.
posted by delmoi at 8:16 AM PST - 32 comments

We’ve detected background radiation from the Big Bang. We’ve sent explorers to the bottom of the ocean and the moon above us. We have images of the individual atoms of which our world is made. But we cannot have direct access to the sensory experiences of another human being. Language can help to bridge the gap but it is an imperfect tool. The closest we have come is Brain Fingerprinting and even that only indicates recognition of a scene or object; it does not capture the actual visual memory of the scene or object. This may soon change. Several years ago, researchers at Berkeley wired a cat’s neurons to a computer and were able to obtain videos of what the cat was seeing.
posted by jason's_planet at 7:51 AM PST - 50 comments

Chicken Noodle Soup! It's a dance. Some people wonder, "Is the Chicken Noodle Soup dance racist?"
posted by chunking express at 7:11 AM PST - 54 comments

Too Wong Foo: There's Mixed-Up Surf Nazis Invading A Plane! In honor of Snakes On A Plane slithering into theaters this coming weekend, Boston.com offers eleven perfectly descriptive, or overly cryptic, but all memorable movie titles. How would you retitle your favorite movie to be as descriptive as Snakes On A Plane? For example, The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down?
posted by Lord Kinbote at 7:10 AM PST - 119 comments

Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story. Jill Carroll, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, was ambushed along with her Iraqi translator, Alan Enwiyah, on January 7, 2006. He was shot and killed, but she was held captive until her release on March 30, 2006. She tells her story in an ongoing 11-part series.
posted by initapplette at 6:49 AM PST - 9 comments

OTR Network.. Free archives of over 11,000 old radio shows, get your Jack Benny fix here ! Yeah, they use RealPlayer, but it's still pretty cool.
posted by lobstah at 6:09 AM PST - 12 comments

The 50 coolest websites : according to Time Magazine, at least. Who cares if they changed the world or not: as long as they're cool, that's all that really matters! Unsurprisingly, Digg's in there, as is MySpace (!), but they somehow seem to have neglected Metafilter, deciding that Cute Overload is way more hip instead. And no, Flickr's not in this one either.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 5:40 AM PST - 40 comments

OutsideIn Korea - brought to the world by our own stavrosthewonderchicken. He asked what you would like to see on the site here. Now sit back while he brings it to you. Or not. Probably not, now I think about it. In any case, the man writes like a demon on crack (except twice as interesting) and, whether or not you have the slightest interest in Korea, you will be entertained by the stories. If you follow his personal site, you know what to expect. If you have never read his writings before, strap in, you're in for a bumpy ride.
posted by dg at 4:38 AM PST - 19 comments

Beethoven stretches out and relaxes. Gorillas belch to let others know where they are. Fish sing the body electric (.mov, 12 MB) for food and safety. How has your own perception shaped your worldview?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:18 AM PST - 4 comments