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Asian Beat.An introduction to the music scene which flourished in Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore in 1964-1969. From Tofu Magazine.
posted by onkelchrispy at 11:54 PM PST - 8 comments

The Smithsonian Photography Initiative provides access to "1,800 digital images, the work of 100 photographers, who used 50 different processes." It's the first online batch of the Smithsonian's 13 million photographs. (More info here and here). The Enter the Frame feature lets you save your own photo sequences.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:40 PM PST - 4 comments

Federal Appeals Court opinion "We respectfully disagree and reach a different conclusion... Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity." Even if no evidence of a drug related crime is provided, you are guilty until proven innocent. BTW, they wont return the money.
posted by IronWolve at 10:37 PM PST - 103 comments

Scott Petersen, aka "reptileman", opens his Serpentarium to visitors 365 days a year. Have a look at some of his snakes, lizards, invertebrates, crocodilians, and turtles, and kids blythely handling them. reptileman recommends that you also visit Zach's Lizard Land, where you can meet Jerky, Buddy, and Cola, all of whom are lizards.
posted by owhydididoit at 9:49 PM PST - 8 comments

Is Dr. Gregory House, a gleefully misanthropic diagnostician of infectious diseases (played by the endlessly brilliant Hugh Laurie), the modern-day counterpart of Sherlock Holmes? There's plenty of connections* to read into, starting most obviously with the play on words: Holmes is a homonym of "homes", which is a plural synonym of "house".
posted by Lush at 9:36 PM PST - 45 comments

Next step: English Video helping kids learn roman script
posted by kozad at 8:43 PM PST - 5 comments

Heard of Girls Gone Wild? Of course you have, but what about Girls Gone Wild - Baghdad? or Black Girls Gone Wild? How about Golden Girls Gone Wild (contains partial blurred puppet nudity)? Into fetishes? what about Blind Chicks Gone Wild? Of course no GGW link compendium would be complete without the GGW segment from The Daily Show which aired a while back. (yes, it's YouTube. They all are.)
posted by clevershark at 8:19 PM PST - 9 comments

Type, handwriting, and lettering
posted by persona non grata at 7:50 PM PST - 17 comments

Deadwood: Ok, ok it's a youtube link, but it's funny and it's Deadwood for chrissakes!
posted by Neiltupper at 7:27 PM PST - 44 comments

Pope Benedict XVI makes his usual Sunday address during Italy's National August Holiday and about two-thirds in points out that "excessive activity" can lead to "hardness of heart", specifically recommending taking time out for prayer. It becomes the highlight of the speech, gets picked up all over, by Reuters and AP, and suddenly he's the Patron Saint of Slackers. Huh? Maybe that's why it's called The Protestant Work Ethic. Meanwhile, Americans are 'giving up' on vacations (voluntarily?) and in parts of Turkey a Muslim Protestant Work Ethic is emerging. And whatever happened to the Hacker Ethic?
posted by wendell at 7:14 PM PST - 22 comments

What's your water situation, America? Real-time and historical ground and surface water data.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:32 PM PST - 18 comments

Crummy Church Signs
posted by konolia at 4:10 PM PST - 59 comments

Google mislays Tibet. Tech news site The Register uses Google Earth to do a virtual flyover of Tibet Tibet Autonomous Region. They see lots of neat stuff, including railways, bridges, and the (former) Northwest Nuclear Weapons Research & Design Academy. Among other things.
posted by Drunken_munky at 12:56 PM PST - 23 comments

Proofs and Pictures: The Role of Visualization in Mathematical and Scientific Reasoning [video] "The picture is a telescope for looking into Plato's heaven." -- James Brown [cached]
posted by Chuckles at 12:08 PM PST - 27 comments

Mobile saunas from around the world (that is, "Finland and a few other places".) I was particularly taken with the Saab conversion.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:18 AM PST - 12 comments

Federer as Religious Experience by David Foster Wallace.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 11:01 AM PST - 93 comments

Maybe you heard the song Living Next Door to Alice long ago and never gave it another thought. But crappy glam rock band Smokie is still making the world rock, they have been milking that song ever since, and are quite popular in a lot of non-English speaking parts of the world - "We said Smokie first, puppet show second."
posted by Meatbomb at 10:24 AM PST - 16 comments

The Fart Heard Round the World. An extraordinary performer, who farted for his living for 20 years, Le Pétomane (YouTube) was the highest paid stage artist of his time in 1897 France. He farted songs, impressions of people, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and farm animals, among other things. The management of Moulin Rouge had to hire nurses to help members of the audience who passed out laughing so hard. He was pusued for many years by an obsessed doctor. Two movies were made about his life in English, the 1979 short film (33 minutes) of Le Pétomane (Google video) and in 2005 Parti Avec Le Vent, which translates as Gone With the Wind. [more]
posted by nickyskye at 9:00 AM PST - 39 comments

Dan Glickman, president of the MPAA, and John Perry Barlow, Greatful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the EFF, debate movie piracy in this interview (RealVideo) on the BBC's "Click".
posted by Mwongozi at 8:59 AM PST - 17 comments

Mandolux - photographic desktop wallpapers. Just keep hittin' previous.
posted by nthdegx at 3:04 AM PST - 23 comments

"The Lutherans had Davey & Goliath and I wondered what we Baptists could do for children's television," remembers Dr Paul M. Stevens. Stevens, then president of the Southern Baptist Radio & Television Commission contracted Byers and Perry to develop JOT THE DOT into a children's television show with the purpose to reach children with moral messages on their level." What they created are also a series of modernist gems. via
posted by maryh at 3:03 AM PST - 19 comments

Lonely? Online? Unwilling to fuck people that aren't exactly like you? Good news! The PeopleMeet Empire has a dating website custom designed specifically to fit your needs, whether you're Italian, Jewish, Divorced, Marriage Minded, Asian (nonspecific), Asian (specific), Old, Really Old, Christian (Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentacostal, Born Again, Mormon or Other), Republican, Democrat, Midget, Fit, Fat, the Outdoor type, the Indoor type, a Pet lover, Professional, some kooky Black variation of the earlier types, or even (gasp!) Californian.
posted by jonson at 12:12 AM PST - 64 comments