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In another shock for Australians this week, car racing legend Peter Brock has been killed in a fatal car crash at a race in Western Australia. May He Rest In Peace.
posted by cholly at 10:26 PM PST - 29 comments

In the 1981 film Escape from New York, the entire island of Manhattan had been converted to a self-sufficient, walled off open air prison, devoid of guards & cells. The fiction of the film bears an alarming similarity to the reality of life in San Pedro Prison, a walled off, police-free convict slum in Bolivia's capital city, La Paz. This fascinating/horrifying experiment in criminal justice is the feature of a 2003 eponymous documentary; some of the details include the story of a drug kingpin, unhappy with his cell, who had a second story constructed to allow more breathing room; or the prison soccer team, sponsored by coca-cola, or even the non-prisoner children of the imprisoned, who roam the streets of San Pedro ("At least this way the parents live with their kids, and the family stays together. Outside, they’d have nowhere to live").
posted by jonson at 9:31 PM PST - 24 comments

Louis Savain is the most coherent, articulate and ambitious Internet crank I've found. He's going to fix software, he's out to clean up physics, he's cracked the Da Vinci code, and he's got a discussion forum. Enjoy!
posted by flabdablet at 9:20 PM PST - 21 comments

GridWars 2 is superlative shooty thing for Windows; download here.
posted by riotgrrl69 at 9:20 PM PST - 26 comments

Alabama has many beautiful rivers, but the Cahaba is special. Its biodiversity is impressive. Boasting 131 different fish species, no other river in North America has more species of fish per mile. It's also the longest free-flowing river remaining in Alabama. It is home to a considerable number of rare plants*, including the Cahaba lilly. The proximity of Birmingham has taken a toll, but recovery efforts are underway, and the Cahaba remains popular with river and wildlife enthusiasts. *Page contains embedded quicktime
posted by owhydididoit at 8:51 PM PST - 8 comments

Chiquita Secrets Revealed - On May 3, 1998, the Cincinnati Enquirer published a series of investigative articles on Chiquita's business practices in South America, all in its own pullout section. The stories claimed the company sprayed workers in the field with pesticides and destroyed a village to stop union activity, among other offenses. A few weeks later, the Enquirer ran a huge apology on its front page for three days, and paid the company $10 million, because a reporter illegally accessed Chiquita voicemail in the course of his work. The renouncement became more of a story than the original articles, but one question remains: are the stories true? To this day, the Enquirer refuses to give a straight answer.
posted by brett at 8:37 PM PST - 18 comments

Much of the “jobs of the future” rhetoric surrounding the eagerness to end shop class and get every warm body into college, thence into a cubicle, implicitly assumes that we are heading to a “post-industrial” economy in which everyone will deal only in abstractions. Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking...
posted by Kwantsar at 7:53 PM PST - 54 comments

"Himself an agnostic, Rove has masterminded a strategy that has helped to broaden the Republican base beyond its pro-business, anti-government heritage to appeal to devout evangelicals. In a calculated effort to weaken the Democratic base, Rove has engineered plans to use the antiabortion stance to attract Catholics, the anti-gay stance to attract black churchgoers, and the pro-Israel stance to attract Jews." Karl Rove's agnosticism also mentioned here and here (audio).
posted by Brian B. at 6:18 PM PST - 50 comments

You may have never heard of it, but you've damn near certain heard it. The Mellotron (FortuneCity link) is a keyboard instrument; each of its keys triggers a tape with a pre-recorded instrument on it. It was effectively the world's first sample player. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:03 PM PST - 38 comments

In an effort to track down the source of information leaks by Hewlett-Packard Co. insiders, private investigators hired company Chairwoman Patricia Dunn obtained reporters' telephone records illegally. They got the records by impersonating journalists from the Wall Street Journal, CNET.com and other news organizations in a practice known as “pretexting.” The news comes after the departure of HP director Tom Perkins [PDF], a founder of legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in May. Perkins later learned from AT&T that his private records were also illegally obtained. State and federal investigations have been launched.
posted by ericb at 5:30 PM PST - 18 comments

Sonny Rollins, one of the founding tenors of bop and post-bop jazz, is 76 today. Unlike many other jazz giants who passed away well before they ought to have, Sonny is still going strong. Rollins became famous with his record Saxophone Colossus which included, among others, the memorable St. Thomas. Sonny also became known for his ability to craft imaginative, articulate solos while playing with just a bassist and drummer (without the benefit of a chordal instrument such as piano to "flesh out" the harmonies). Happy Birthday, Sonny!
posted by rossination at 4:38 PM PST - 28 comments

Sure, Louis Farrakhan talks about UFOs. And, yes, some people think he had a hand in the death of Malcolm X. And maybe a case can be made that he isn't the most tolerant of men. Be that as it may, he was a suburb calypso singer.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:10 PM PST - 22 comments

Microcars are cool. (Earlier microcar post )
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:44 PM PST - 39 comments

Thousands of new products and businesses every year need names. The creation of these names, is a business in itself, and is usually a pretty secretive process. But Igor, a naming and branding agency, offers a surprisingly detailed and illuminating primer on the naming game. Igor describes how they do it and who they’ve done it for. Igor’s naming taxonomy charts for various products (including one for the company names of naming companies) help illustrate the research portion of the process. Check out: studies of successful names like Pepperidge Farm’s cookie names, and why AT&T Canada’s name change to Allstream was a bad idea. And don’t miss Igor’s two blogs (metablogged here): Snark Hunting, “all about naming and branding in popular culture” and Wordlab, on “naming and branding issues.” For fun, try Wordlab’s own tongue-in-cheek naming tools, like the Drug-o-matic drug name generator, Name Your Band, and the Morpheme generator.
posted by beagle at 2:43 PM PST - 25 comments

Dealing a blow to meteorologists around the world, the nightly weather forecast at CBS 19, The Eye of East Texas, is delivered, in part, by a dog.
posted by punkfloyd at 1:58 PM PST - 35 comments

Since 2000, at least 40,000 soldiers have deserted the Army--most of them as a result of the Iraq War. 50,000 deserted during Vietnam. How do we compare their statements of moral outrage with those of Siegfried Sassoon? (related)
posted by mattbucher at 1:46 PM PST - 73 comments

Strange Bedfellows: Xavier Von Erck dropped out of college, started a pedophile-hunting vigilante group, and spent months posing as a woman to trick an online enemy to fall in love with him. Meet the new savior of NBC News.
posted by P-Soque at 1:19 PM PST - 68 comments

The Orb, known as one of the principal architects of ambient house, have receded into relative obscurity since the popular heyday of the electronic music movement in the US. Despite changes in the lineup - the group now consists of a duo featuring founding member Dr (Duncan Robert) Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann. Paterson's DJ sets are the stuff of legend and I was pleased as punch that they've just put together a podcast (actually a 50.8mb .zip file containing an mp3) that's available through their minimal website.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 1:08 PM PST - 36 comments

Competitive eating continues to go from strength to strength in the USA. But there has to be another, more subtle role for a Horseman of the Oesophagus. Step forward Steve, a man who eats weird stuff so that we don't have to.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:54 PM PST - 23 comments

David Watson's CADTutor, which deals with AutoCAD, PhotoShop, and several other design programs, is one of the most elegantly-designed tutorial sites I've ever seen.
posted by koeselitz at 11:59 AM PST - 7 comments

Prepare yourselves, teenaged Trollope fans! You have just four months remaining in which to send your Barchester Towers fanfiction to the Anthony Trollope Society's annual £1000 Short Story Competion. Previous champions have been feted at luxurious club dinners by titans like Andrew Davies and P.D. James. Could you be next to join their august ranks?
posted by Iridic at 11:07 AM PST - 7 comments

Felipe Calderon has been declared the next President of Mexico, but the controversy has not ended as his rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to stay in the streets. The most intense conflict has been in Oaxaca, but this is underreported in the US media. Tie this in with a recent Mother Jones article describing the current influx of Mexicans into the United States as an exodus from a failed economy, and all of a sudden the reports coming from Mexico take on a very different meaning.
posted by graymouser at 9:51 AM PST - 33 comments

"One Thing to Do About Food". Short essays on what to do about the nations food supply by Michael Pollan (Omnivore's Dilemma), Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and others.
posted by stbalbach at 9:09 AM PST - 28 comments

Tony Blair announces that he will resign as UK Prime Minister. Just broadcast on BBC. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is expected to be nominated by Labour party as the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Blair hasn't set a date for departure.
posted by three blind mice at 7:06 AM PST - 72 comments

ClickDragType (version 3, just released) was the inspiration for a casual games design contest at Jay is Games. Play the games. See the winners. (All games in Flash, some require sound).
posted by empath at 6:30 AM PST - 11 comments

"Imagine a blend between a National Geographic documentary and a Tex Avery cartoon. This short is a combination of 3D characters and live footage." Five-ish minutes in the life of a ladybug with anger issues. (YouTube)
posted by Orb at 3:02 AM PST - 21 comments

In New Zealand at Ferrit you can buy things online. It hasn't had the best press. But it doesn't do itself any favours either.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 1:45 AM PST - 14 comments