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According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, military spending for 2005 increased by 3.4% from 2004, and now tops US$1.12 trillion. Spending has however declined as a proportion of gross world product, from 2.6% to 2.5%. Naturally, the USA is No. 1 all the way, with 48% of total expenditure. China is in the top five with a bullet , although their guns are different, apparently, because they 'promote peace and stability'.
posted by wilful at 12:19 AM - 21 comments

Do you like pickup trucks? How about automotive history and evolution? Here are some pictures of old pickups, from the blatantly-obviously named oldcarandtruckpictures.com. And since I got complaints on IRC that the wheels weren't big enough...
posted by Eideteker at 12:17 AM - 11 comments

We've just replaced Bob's Folger's with 5000 micrograms of LSD. Let's see if he'll notice the difference. (Quicktime video. Not safe for the reasonably sane or unmedicated.)
posted by loquacious at 8:39 PM - 165 comments

Explosion at Iowa Army Ammunition Plant Interesting to note, this plant which is just a few miles from my hometown remained relatively dormant after the cold war ended.
posted by Tablecrumbs at 7:09 PM - 39 comments

Yo Gabba Gabba is a new concept for a children's television show, featuring a hip-hop edge, guest starring Biz Markie and Paul Frank's Julius The Monkey, as well as the standard complement of day-glo monsters and songs. Some children's programming is the product of serious thought. Some is completely bewildering. Some just plain rocks.
posted by padraigin at 6:16 PM - 17 comments

Ten contestants. Ten days. They all grew up in shelters -- but one of them will claw his or her way to the top. It's the Meow Mix House, where ten cats will vie to become Meow Mix's Feline Vice President of Research and Development. (And, win or lose, they will all be adopted by families.) The webcams. [ article || via ]
posted by milquetoast at 4:23 PM - 28 comments

How valuable is your favorite sports star to his or her team? Sports economics take center stage as the NBA finals are underway in the United States and World Cup fever has gripped the rest of the world. Malcolm Gladwell reviews the Wages of Wins, where “Freakonomics meets ESPN”
posted by msali at 4:13 PM - 16 comments

The Broad Band has released an on-line protest song: God Save the Internet. Jill Sobule, Kay Hanley, and Michelle Lewis are trying to stir up a webgrass protest against what may already be a done deal. They are in favor of Net Neutrality, by the way.
posted by mmahaffie at 3:23 PM - 30 comments

Ever wanted to make jellied moose nose? How about penis stew or cockentrice? Bert Christensen has recipes for all those and so much more.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:16 PM - 14 comments

Haughey Dead No, not that one. Charles Haughey – Former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, and probably the most controversial figure in recent Irish political history, has died of complications arising from prostate cancer.
posted by Sk4n at 2:43 PM - 26 comments

In which one man sets out to cancel his AOL account: the mp3 phone call (backup link), the blog post.
posted by JPowers at 2:05 PM - 78 comments

Hadji Girl (10.6 MB wmv) Some folks think this is funny. Some don't. What do you think?
posted by taosbat at 1:55 PM - 159 comments

Mobile Cinema: From the little to the big; DIY to HOLY (pics) COW (pics)! Coming attractions has never seemed so literal.
posted by bjork24 at 12:46 PM - 6 comments

Global Fussball OK (video)
posted by LimePi at 12:08 PM - 18 comments

Head-On is a riveting 2004 German film which garnered spirited praise and quite a large share of hype. The film went on to win numerous awards. Days after receiving the Golden Bear, some colorful information about the film's female lead broke in the German tabloids and led to a reaction from her traditional Turkish family nearly identical to actions of her eponymous character's parents in the movie. Is this simply a case of life imitating art, or perhaps an inevitable repercussion of casting someone who's life so closely coincides with that of her on screen persona?
posted by kaytwo at 10:36 AM - 21 comments

Have your rejection letters printed onto toilet paper. Meanwhile, a small UK publisher has posted a thoughtful open rejection letter.
posted by staggernation at 8:18 AM - 25 comments

Unmarked police SUV stolen containing guns, body armor I especially like this part: "The green Ford Explorer was taken from a driveway in the 8500 block of William Cummins Court, said Officer Dwight Mitchell, a police spokesman. The officer was not identified because he works undercover." Searching Google Maps for "William Cummins Ct, Louisville, KY 40228" using the "hybrid" map+satellite view is especially pointful.
posted by davy at 7:44 AM - 76 comments

Newsfilter: Rove won't be charged in CIA leak case. More coverage here, here, and here.
posted by Heminator at 7:21 AM - 150 comments

Crumbs is a music video to a song built from splicing together instructional tapes for drums, bass & jazz guitar, using loops & selective editing to build a song out of the three distinct elements. Link goes to embedded quicktime.
posted by jonson at 7:18 AM - 31 comments

Many news sites already show a list of the most popular stories, but the BBC has gone one further with its BBC News Live Stats. Not only can you see the most popular stories updating in real time and also based on region, but you can also view the flow of the news over a day; this will be very interesting to watch when breaking news occurs.
posted by adrianhon at 5:49 AM - 12 comments

“You should consider a new career as a garbage collector in New York City, because you’ll never quote a Joyce text again." A New Yorker profile of Stephen Joyce, the man who controls James Joyce's estate - and, by extension, Joycean scholarship the world over. [more inside]
posted by anjamu at 10:01 PM - 75 comments

If you watch enough television, you may have noticed that nobody says good-bye on the telephone. A little google action finds that some are worried that it may be a natural sociological progression. Or maybe it only happens on TV and with annoying telemarketers?
posted by Ekim Neems at 8:36 PM - 101 comments

In 1987, Canadian photographer Robin Collyer began documenting houses that aren't houses at all – they're architecturally-disguised electrical substations, complete with windows, blinds, and bourgeois landscaping.
posted by signal at 7:37 PM - 31 comments

Revamping the browser Browser add ons such as Browster for IE and Firefox or entirely new browsers such as Flock (limited info) promise to rework the way browsing has been done during the IE only years from 1997 to 2004. More inside...
posted by hockeyman at 7:16 PM - 35 comments

The all-new sneeze-free cat this week joins a distinguished roster of altered organisms, such as glowing green pigs and bunnies, ampicillin-resistant maize and tomato, and even a potato with a bacterial pesticide spliced in. And don't forget OraGenics, the company that wants to infect your teeth with bacteria that won't cause decay - and will crowd out the ones that do. Brave New World, indeed. What's next?
posted by ikkyu2 at 6:21 PM - 47 comments

Elongated Pennies. Pressed pennies, flattened pennies, squished pennies, smashed pennies, whatever you call them, they are an exciting, kid-enticing presence at any tourist attraction, amusement park, or museum. For two quarters and a penny (pre-1982 preferred by the serious buffs) you can legally flatten the lowest of our nation's currency (and sometimes Canada's) into a souvenir disk that's embossed with a picturesque reminder of your trip. But these pennies don't live and die by the child's pants pocket, pressed penny collecting is serious business. Heck, there's even a museum devoted to the hobby, as well as a thriving collecting scene. So next time you pass by one of these cool machines, pause, elbow the penniless kids out of the way, and get yourself a neat little trinket of remembrance.
posted by lychee at 4:42 PM - 51 comments

Net neutrality: Meet the winner As Verizon Communications' executive vice president for public affairs, policy and communications, Tauke has spent the last few months embroiled in a fiery debate over Net neutrality, the concept that broadband providers must be legally required to treat all content equally.
posted by Postroad at 4:07 PM - 42 comments

New analysis of the language and gesture of South America's indigenous Aymara people indicates they have a concept of time opposite to all the world's studied cultures -- the past is ahead of them and the future behind. The morphologically-rich language, of which you can hear samples here, may also prove useful to computer scientists due to its unique ternary logic system.
posted by youarenothere at 4:04 PM - 42 comments

TRACE - The Transition Region and Coronal Explorer, a solar telescope satellite. Launched in 1998, it has since taken millions of pictures of the sun and its many spots, prominences, and filaments. There are thousands of amazing images for you to browse, some with extensive explanations. There are movies as well, strange and beautiful. And don't be ignant, get your sun facts straight!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:12 PM - 9 comments

So. Paul Bausch of all sorts of fame rolled-out an update to his amazing Amazon feed-builder. What's the big deal? Well, I'm a big fan of Wendell Berry and Craig Thompson, of Naguib Mahfouz and books about New Urbanism... and now, with the help of PB's delicious feed-builder, I'll be notified whenever something new comes from any of these authors or meets the "New Urbanism" search criteria, so I can add them to my Amazon wish list... and I think that's pretty darn cool. Add that to Amazon's pre-existing wish list feeds, which let you monitor other people's wish lists for additions ( you can find a wish list's feed on its "home" page ), and I'm in heaven.

( As a direct result of the feeds I subscribed to this weekend, my Amazon wish list has grown from 1600 to more than 1800 items. I blame Paul... he's such an enabler! )
posted by silusGROK at 1:55 PM - 17 comments

Tim Hildebrandt, half of the Brothers Hildebrandt artwork team, died yesterday due to complications from diabetes.
posted by WolfDaddy at 1:44 PM - 28 comments

NYT story about superhigh frequency ringtones. A new ringtone at a frequency of 17 Khz is supposedly inaudible to most adults, and so highschoolers and others are using it to sneak text messages in school, etc. BUT. An mp3 of the tone is included with the story and I can totally hear it, though it hurts my ears. And I am in my 40s. Can others hear it?
posted by jfwlucy at 1:39 PM - 274 comments

The last liner. Once the longest. Still the fastest. She's off to India to be broken up. The BBC has said its goodbyes. OPEC, the 747 and the need to subsidise Concorde sealed her fate in 1974, despite a mutiny by the crew. She rotted for years in Le Havre, had an unexpected second life as SS Norway, and is now the SS Blue Lady, a nom-de-scrap solely to be used for her final trip.
posted by gdav at 1:29 PM - 18 comments

The Impersonals – Our own the jam couldn't find a personals site that he wasn't embarrassed to join, so he made his own. No popularity contests, no horoscopes, no buddy lists. Just profiles made from wide-open text fields and anti-creepiness features baked in at every turn.
[Lifetime membership will be $5, but until it hits 10,000 profiles, it's free.] via mefi projects
posted by blasdelf at 12:45 PM - 39 comments

RIP. Composer Gyorgy Ligeti dies in Vienna at age 83.
posted by NemesisVex at 11:57 AM - 28 comments

For those who never have seen anything by Jason Nelson. Check out these... uh.... things he made. For instance, there is Uncontrollable Semantics, which is a program that has something to do with words and music and shapes and mice. And then there is the Hermeticon, which apparently is a thing that utilizes letters and 80's kid commerical videos. Or the slot machine that tells you how you will die.
posted by dios at 11:11 AM - 19 comments

From the U.S. National Academies Press: 3,000 Science, Technology, Medical, and Social Science Books Available Free, Online. The interface is clunky - you can only see one page at a time, can't download PDFs (except paid) and image view is via TIFF - but! the content is all there, and free. Some is quite technical, but much is readily accessible. Some idea of the breadth: A Doctor's Memoirs of Treating AIDS in Haiti, The "Drama of the Commons", The 1872 Research Voyage of HMS Challenger, Biography of Stephen Hawking, Biotechnology Research in the Age of Terrorism, Risk Reduction Strategies for Human Exploration of Space, Forensic Lead Bullet Analysis, 50 Short Essays on How Mathematicians Think, Recent Research on Non-Lethal Weapons, and Introduction to Tough Topics in Contemporary Science. Also, see their rather spiffy site on the cosmos.
posted by Rumple at 10:57 AM - 13 comments

Never Coming Home is about the families of five young men killed in Iraq. Slate presents a short documentary that focuses on the bereavement of the parents, or in one case, a brother. This portrait of grief and sacrifice is brought to life through the use of still photography and the recorded voices of family members.
posted by ND¢ at 10:31 AM - 24 comments

Torch my ride! Debt-heavy consumers, finding their pocketbooks unable to support their monstrous gas-guzzlers, are apparently turning to perfectly rational and legal means of debt resolution: insurance fraud. Meanwhile, across the pond, people are are still immolating cars for the more traditional reason: destroying the evidence. Should you find yourself in either situation any time soon Slate has a handy guide for you. If you have no such plans however, you may still want to read this in case your car ignites legitimately. And have a damn good story ready.
posted by baphomet at 9:37 AM - 43 comments

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the article about the flatworm with 230 penises and one vagina referenced (but unfortunately not linked) in this article about the in the amazing Earth, Sea and Sky exhibit which opened today as part of New Zealand's beautiful Te Ara Encyclopedia.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 8:10 AM - 24 comments

When taking lessons in English from the BBC, be sure to follow up with remedial "playground-speak"
posted by Mr. Six at 12:40 AM - 198 comments

For those of you that love photos of animals getting along with other animals that they would normally be eating, the photos section of the Animal Liberation Front website is for you.
posted by jonson at 12:14 AM - 134 comments

Goldfish can be trained to do some pretty cool stuff.[mi]
posted by bigmusic at 11:42 PM - 32 comments

I don't read French, so I can't tell you too much Musicovery, except that it is very pretty, very good and I am in love. (flash and obviously, music)
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 10:34 PM - 30 comments

Shakespeare in the Bush: in which an anthropologist tells the story of Hamlet to a group of Tiv, and ideas about the universal nature of literature get the worst of it.
posted by a louis wain cat at 8:43 PM - 27 comments

Those are dirty numbers!! "The images in this room are created entirely from mathematical algorithms. If you find them offensive in any way, all I can say is that beauty (or obscenity) is in this case most certainly in the eye of the beholder." (via)
posted by JPowers at 8:27 PM - 23 comments

Music Competition 1 week left!!!
"Gizmodo Idol" competition to win some serious headphones (reviewed here )
Not too many entries yet,you have a chance still but look out for serious competition.
posted by wuakeen at 6:01 PM - 27 comments

Assistive Media is a non-profit organization dedicated to offering audio access to literary works for the blind. They have placed an extensive archive of downloadable magazine articles in mp3 format online, including selections from The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and American Heritage.
posted by huskerdont at 5:44 PM - 13 comments

Power is out for around half the people in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. At around 8:30 this morning, high winds blew a grounding cable onto high-voltage cables in the Otahuhu substation, causing about 1/3 of the load to fail, including all buildings and traffic control in the central city. I guess no one has heard of redundancy, nor learnt from prior mistakes?
posted by pivotal at 5:24 PM - 30 comments

Start or stop Atlantica. [via CBC]
posted by boost ventilator at 2:26 PM - 30 comments