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The most valuable strategic square acreage on the planet? Or a modest, charmingly low-key town in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina? The BBC provides a fascinating report on Spruce Pine - the Mineral City where the Unimin Corporation mines the world's main supply of high purity quartz from the local hills. High purity quartz is essential to the manufacture of silicon wafers.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 11:50 PM PST - 18 comments

'Artisanal butters' are favored and appreciated by cooks and gourmands -- especially those crafted by "garage entrepreneurs" from Maine [video]* and Vermont (churned by Diane St. Clair and favored by Thomas Keller at his noted restaurants, The French Laundry and Per Se). Butters from Canada, France, Ireland and elsewhere are also cherished. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 10:43 PM PST - 36 comments

Vortex Cannon : SLYT "Jem Stansfield builds a vortex cannon to pick up where the big bad wolf failed to blow over a house of brick." More details at the BBC.
posted by bwg at 10:02 PM PST - 43 comments

The awesome Michael Palin, who's comedy group used to gently mock Biggles adventure stories back in the Python days, has been reading a 1940's Biggles adventure book "Biggles Flies North", on BBC Radio 7. It's available worldwide via BBC iPlayer, five episodes available as I post, but episode one expires today, so there's no time to waste. [more inside]
posted by w0mbat at 3:26 PM PST - 33 comments

"August is the cruelest month," is what Eliot must have meant and Edna O’Brien wrote a novel called August Is a Wicked Month, and indeed, it has proved historically to be a month of dramas and crises, especially sociopolitically. Leo is a fixed, intransigent sign and can create stubborn stances in the world and it is a notorious month for coups, bombings and revolution. The late rock writer Al Aronowitz penned the line, "August is the month when wars start." Both the first and second world wars broke out in August. The first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. There were significant cold war crises in August. The Berlin wall was built in August 1961. The Tonkin Gulf crisis marked a serious escalation of the Vietnam War in August 1964. Russia invaded Czechoslovakia and ended the Prague Spring in August 1968. Gorbachev was ousted for being too liberal by communist hardliners in August 1991. Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Russia invaded Georgia last August. (slightly corrected paragraph via)
posted by infini at 9:45 AM PST - 94 comments

Umberto Eco: An Illustrated Presentation on the History of Beauty and Ugliness (running time: 52:42); Salman Akhtar: The Trauma of Geophysical Dislocation (51:55); Ronald Wright: America's Ideals and the Realities (34:52); Norman Doidge: Altered States of Mind (55:21); Lewis Lapham: The American Education System and the Gradual Disappearance of Historical Consciousness (44:09); Leo Panitch: Still a Marxist After All: Lessons and Insights for our Time (43:24); Hazel Carby: Belonging to Britain—the Historic Relationship between England and Jamaica (46:35); Gabor Mate: Close Encounters with Addiction (54:17); and Jordan Peterson: The nature of Evil and its Distinction from Tragedy (42:35) are some of the video lectures available from the Big Ideas TV show that is broadcast on TVOntario. Here's the full list of videos, and many more, but not all, episodes are available as audio downloads.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:39 AM PST - 16 comments

Jack Nicholson and January Jones. Together at last. [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 9:34 AM PST - 29 comments

Bolek i Lolek and Reksio are both Polish cartoons with little dialogue and similiar animation style. Both cartoons originated in the 60s (during the Communist era in Poland), and were extremely popular for decades. Due to their general lack of vocalization (except for Bolek i Lolek's later seasons), both cartoons were easy to bring to other markets. Famously, Bolek i Lolek was one of the cartoons broadcast on Iranian television after the 1979 revolution. [more inside]
posted by Askiba at 8:07 AM PST - 11 comments

Six-year-old artist. Extraordinary understanding of perspective and shading. Side by side comparisons. Local coverage. [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless at 1:46 AM PST - 105 comments

So you've tried to quit smoking, but after having a 30-a-day habit for more than 40 years, it's tough. Really tough. So what's a man to do? Well, one way is to keep cigarettes out of arm's reach. A long way out of arm's reach. Geoff Spice is marooning himself on Sgarabhaigh Island (pron: 'Scaravay') in the Outer Hebrides, an uninhabited islet where there are no people ... no buildings ... and no tobacco shops. [more inside]
posted by woodblock100 at 12:49 AM PST - 70 comments