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Covers It seems that, according to this guy, the fastest way to success is to cover Joy Division's classic 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. These 25 artists have taken his suggestion to heart, with covers ranging from rock giants U2 to latest pop punk darlings Fall Out Boy, via French lounge act Nouvelle Vague and, of course, New Order.
posted by muthecow at 6:56 AM - 39 comments

He lost his chruch,(streaming mp3) lost his congregation, and started a new_{to oklahoma} evangelistic Christianity. (pdf)
posted by bigmusic at 10:50 PM - 47 comments

Rugby League player involved in unprovoked drunken assault on woman. The sporting world’s longest running train wreck? Lewd, alcohol-fueled phonecalls and brothel visits during a State team "bonding session". Coaches quitting because players can’t obey simple rules such as "please don’t show up drunk to training." Faeces smeared walls? No problems. I’ll even take a leak under a blackjack table for good measure. The Australian Captain gets dumped, unconscious, outside a police station by a taxi driver. Serial on-field sodomy. Millionaire businessman and boss of an NRL team (and father of supermodel Elle MacPherson) involved in drunken, jumper-slashing fight (or two). Sexual assault at a university dorm. Pack rape group sex by the pool, anyone? And what do you do when you’re the Australian Captain when these sexual assault claims are causing so much angst? Joke about it at a national press conference, of course. Despite all this, interest for tomorrow’s big game is high.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 10:43 PM - 36 comments

"We wired the Ho Chi Minh Trail like a drugstore pinball machine and plugged into it every night." From 1965 to 1975, telemetry from thousands of microphones hidden in remote Vietnam jungles were fed to a massive data processing center in Thailand, where an IBM System/360 [wiki] mapped real-time Vietcong movements to display terminals. The details of Project Igloo White remained compartmentalized and highly classified until only several years ago.
posted by rolypolyman at 10:37 PM - 33 comments

Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robots — Overview: an experimental mechanism that uses a living Madagascan hissing cockroach atop a modified trackball to control a three-wheeled robot. If the cockroach moves left, the robot moves left. Infrared sensors also provide navigation feedback to the cockroach, striving to create a pseudo-intelligent system with the cockroach as the CPU. Garnet Hertz, creator of Fly with Implanted Webserver and Cockroach with Wireless Video, has used Gromphadorhina portentosa on three generations of autonomous roachbots (YouTube video and Ars Electronica 2005 gallery).
posted by cenoxo at 8:58 PM - 29 comments

The Ingmar Bergman site is now available in English. I find the 'Universe' section (examining repeated themes) is particularly interesting.
posted by tellurian at 5:17 PM - 6 comments

Watch as the jet blast from a 747 tosses cars as if they are toys! Would Flight 77 Have Really Thrown Cars & People Off The Highway? Perhaps.
posted by augustweed at 3:26 PM - 70 comments

Over the weekend Oregon's Portaland General Electric demolished the decomissioned Trojan Nuclear Plant's 499ft cooling tower using 1.3 tons of TNT. Plenty of implosion pr0n is all that remains. Oh, and the containment dome, a bunch of rods with no home, some asbestos, but the tower, man, that's gone.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 3:23 PM - 39 comments

Promoted Above Accountability Two years after news of torture at Abu Ghraib broke, the Bush Administration still will not hold decision makers accountable. Investigations into the incidents have focused almost exclusively on enlisted personnel.
posted by expriest at 2:23 PM - 28 comments

Blender, meet science: The Pain, the Pain: Modelling Music Information Behavior and the Songs We Hate [link to 454Kb PDF]. The paper, presented at ISMIR 2005, offers "a grounded theory analysis of 395 user responses to the survey question 'What is the worst song ever?'"
posted by camcgee at 11:34 AM - 57 comments

Hurricane headlines differ. (warning: Newsfilter)
posted by whimsicalnymph at 11:27 AM - 56 comments

Henry Wessel is an American photographer and Professor at San Francisco Art Institute who works with just one camera and just one type of film to capture the American West [NYT]. More specifically, he is interested in documenting light.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:58 AM - 19 comments

Radiating Places. Twenty years after the Chernobyl disaster, seven artists from Moscow, Minsk, and Berlin travelled to the desolate, restricted area to commemorate the catastrophe.
posted by Gamblor at 8:43 AM - 17 comments

The Interpretative Dance Theocrats. Inspired by Salon's excerpt from Michelle Goldberg's new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, this handy guide will resolve your confusion over Christian theological jargon. [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:35 AM - 15 comments

Banned in D.C., not to mention the rest of the U. S. A. --British-Sri Lankan rapper M. I. A. (myspace page, with music), aka Maya Arulpragasam, has apparently been denied entry into the United States to record her next album, a follow-up to the surprise success of her first major release, "Arular." Could it have been this album that pricked the ears of immigration officials? Or maybe these lyrics ("Sunshowers," available at myspace)?
posted by bardic at 6:44 AM - 146 comments

Speaking truth to power: when power speaks back (scroll down). Graduating senior Jean Rohe & Senator John McCain spoke at the New School's graduation ceremony at Madison Square Garden this Saturday. Rohe's speech attacking McCain's actions & positions has been hailed by many on the Left as "speaking truth to power". McCain staffer Mark Salter thinks Jean isn't being fair to his boss. Scroll down to read his reaction.
posted by scalefree at 6:38 AM - 121 comments

Wired News has obtained a copy of a file detailing AT&T's involvement with the NSA that was sealed in the EFF's class-action lawsuit against AT&T. At 2AM EST this morning they have published that file on their site for anyone to download (this is the fixed link, the one on Wired is currently broken).[via]
posted by Ryvar at 5:24 AM - 65 comments

How many group photographs do you have to take to get one in which nobody is blinking? Nic Svenson and Dr Piers Barnes work it out.
posted by d-no at 3:01 AM - 9 comments

Chicago: The New Barcelona? When it comes to cuisine, GQ seems to think so.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:02 AM - 22 comments

Berkeley's infamous Naked Guy died of an apparent suicide on Thursday. Before and after his 15 minutes, he was a real person. People loved him. Rest in peace, Andrew Martinez. (NSFW)
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 10:06 PM - 64 comments

Corruption Filter: Rep. William Jefferson (D. Louisiana) has been caught on tape accepting more than $100,000 in cash bribes. This is the same Rep. Jefferson who commandeered Katrina relief resources to secure his personal home and retrieve a laptop, three briefcases and a large box.

Jefferson was already under federal investigation pre-Katrina and his house had been raided once for evidence. Jefferson's offices were raided again yesterday where the FBI found another 90k in cash in the freezer. Does anyone else think they know what was so important he had to use a National Guard helicopter to secure it?
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:16 PM - 48 comments

NewsFilter: 1 in every 136 US residents in jail or prison.
posted by sourbrew at 7:54 PM - 72 comments

This evening, I entertained myself with these clips from YouTube and Google Video. Come inside if you like Bette Davis, Charles Laughton, Kubrick, Frankenstein, Shakespeare, and company...
posted by grumblebee at 7:38 PM - 45 comments

A rather well-edited and well-editorialized video of anti-protester police tactics as seen from perspective of police-operated cameras from the infamous protest in Portland of 2002. (Coral Cache here.)
posted by loquacious at 7:19 PM - 79 comments

A 20-minute video that will change your life! Well, maybe not.
posted by c13 at 7:17 PM - 37 comments

In the competition for best streaker ever, I'm torn between this choice, which gets points for the impact the streak has on the news reporter, & this one, which has the added bonus of unlikely athleticism. Both links go to embedded video, both found via this page, which details the revised rules of streaking).
posted by jonson at 4:23 PM - 26 comments

Beatles moments part I and II. A proper use of 30-second clips.
posted by funambulist at 1:28 PM - 40 comments

When I Came Home: Iraq War veteran Herold Noel suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and lives out of his car in Brooklyn. Using Noel's story as a fulcrum, this doc examines the wider issue of homeless U.S. military veterans-from Vietnam to Iraq-who have to fight tooth-and-nail to receive the benefits promised to them by their government.
posted by riley370 at 10:29 AM - 45 comments

Backward Movies. When you play a movie backwards, what you get is not creepy messages, but rather a new movie. For example:
Titanic
An enormous iron ship surges up from the vast depths of the ocean in order to save a large number of people who are inexplicably, and somewhat foolishly, floundering in the water near an iceburg. It then kindly takes them back to Southampton.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 8:56 AM - 53 comments

Discovering Chylum: Swarthmore Professor David Harrison traveled to Siberia to learn about Chulym, a previously undiscovered local language that reflects its population's culture of hunting, animastic belief system, and bear worship. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 6:36 AM - 17 comments

TVFolk is a collection of 400-odd videos of traditional music from nothern Europe, including a live (leek-free) performance from Loituma (below) in 2001. Other standouts include Hedningarna, JPP, and Garmarna.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:50 AM - 12 comments

The top entry* (turn up the volume) in the Scanner Darkly remix contest is already better than the (turn it back down) official trailer.
posted by Tlogmer at 3:02 AM - 45 comments

The Dot and the Line. (by Norman Juster) Read the book. Watch the movie.
posted by jrb223 at 11:58 PM - 20 comments

Beer Caps. With 12,568 scans available to peruse, Uncle Corkie is the winner in my books. Franco Ferretti may have the largest collection of bottle caps but it's not online. Collecting, a postmodern pastime?
posted by tellurian at 10:48 PM - 11 comments

BabyFirst TV is a 24 hour satellite channel designed to entertain babies so you don't have to. Don't expect this American idea to catch on in Britain anytime soon. Even television-wondering Americans are wondering, what was wrong with Big Bird? [NYT] The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that children of this age group shouldn't be watching television at all. On the other side of the argument, some parents believe that if they're watching anyway, it's better to watch something educational.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 10:06 PM - 39 comments

loituma! Dit deedle dit boom bam! (flash)
posted by boo_radley at 9:46 PM - 45 comments

Ray Nagin has been reelected as the mayor of New Orleans.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 8:08 PM - 79 comments

Is this America's new meme? Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), May 18, 2006: "I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties. But you have no civil liberties if you are dead." (via) Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), December 19, 2005: "None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead." Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), responded to Cornyn: "Give me liberty or give me death." Good on that. First Amendment, Fourth Amendment (General Hayden's version), civil liberties.
posted by taosbat at 7:02 PM - 87 comments

Eurovision winner declared: Finland's Lordi, (previously mentioned here, wins with the highest Eurovision score of all time, 292 points, breaking Finland's 40 year long bewitchment of the Eurovision Curse. [Euro♥isionFilter]
posted by taursir at 3:38 PM - 103 comments

"The sound was not of this world, it hovered in space like some celestial blessing".
He could play the piano ”before he had learned to smile”, his mother said, and he gave his first concert at the age of six. He studied under Alfred Cortot, Charles Munch, Paul Dukas, and Nadia Boulanger. He was an esteemed teacher and critic at 19, an international phenomenon at 24. He escaped from his native Rumania to Switzerland in 1943 with his fiancée, a joint capital of five Swiss francs in their pockets. After the war, just as he had arrived in the pantheon of great performing artists, Dinu Lipatti was diagnosed with leukemia. In September 1950, near death, despite the urgings of his doctors Lipatti insisted upon one last recital at Besançon. As his wife recalled, this was the only way Lipatti could bear to take his leave of the world. Lipatti was so weak he could barely walk to the piano. But once he began playing, he became transformed. After performing 13 waltzes, he could no longer muster the strength necessary to perform the final selection. So he substituted Myra Hess's piano arrangement of Bach's 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".(page with sound). Three months later, Lipatti died at the age of 33. After Lipatti's funeral, his old mentor Cortot wrote: "There was nothing to teach you. One could, in fact, only learn from you."
posted by matteo at 11:14 AM - 15 comments

Schaffer Library of Drug Policy - read the transcripts of hearings held on the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, or the text of court decisions regarding drug policy, or the well-researched Consumer Unions report on licit and illicit drugs, or the differences between beer and drugs, according to Anheuser-Busch. A huge archive of materials, admittedly compiled from a pro-reform perspective.
posted by daksya at 10:06 AM - 25 comments

"Every war becomes a proving ground for new tactics and new technologies."... "...The Pentagon began this war believing its new, networked technologies would help make U.S. ground forces practically unstoppable in Iraq. ... But now, more than three years into sectarian conflict and a violent insurgency that has cost nearly 2,400 American lives, an investigation of the current state of network-centric warfare reveals that frontline troops have a critical need for networked gear—gear that hasn’t come yet. " [more inside]
posted by paulsc at 3:18 AM - 26 comments

the origin of fun bags. The age old question of where breasts came from may have finally been answered!

[boobs] first evolved as an immunoprotective gland that produced bacteriocidal secretions to protect the skin and secondarily eggs and infants, and that lactation is a highly derived kind of inflammation response. [...] Milk is actually a kind of anti-microbial snot mixed in with a lot of fat and sugar.

All vertebrates have an innate immune system consisting of molecules which are hostile to microbes. It appears that the nutritional content of the milk is a product of mutation and repurposing of these immunological molecules! Xanthine oxidoreductase, which produces natural preservatives and disinfectants is also responsible for the essential role of encapsulating fat droplets which promotes suspension in water. Lactose (sugar) "requires a specific synthetic complex consisting of β-1,4 galactosyltransferase and α-lactalbumin for its production." As it turns out, α-lactalbumin is a modified (mutated) version of an awesome little molecule that literally skins bacteria alive - lysozyme!
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 2:49 AM - 127 comments

Los Angeles artist Luke Chueh paints cute, anthropomorphic animals going through rough patches in life.
posted by jonson at 12:46 AM - 26 comments

MacSaber! Turn Your Mac Into a Jedi Weapon. I cannot explain how much fun I had slashing co-workers with a laptop today. Be careful not too get too excited. You don't want to lose your grasp on the MacBook or shake so hard you damage the hard drive. Great to try once. Or in my case, 20 minutes straight.
posted by jragon at 12:37 AM - 30 comments

Rupert Murdoch Is the CEO of Fox News's parent company, News Corp., and owns a controlling interest. So it might surprise you that he's hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. Is he simply rewarding a reliable big-business vote, Or does he see a change in the winds? He tends to support who's ever in power, including "Liberal" Tony Blair and the Chinese Government. Or maybe he's just being friendly.
posted by delmoi at 11:50 PM - 41 comments

Humans! A lovely little bit of educational animation.
posted by crumbly at 7:38 PM - 41 comments

Elephants Dream - A computer-generated movie made using open source applications
posted by growabrain at 4:09 PM - 26 comments

One of our greatest living writers died yesterday, and no one seems to care. I can't find a damn news story about it. A revolutionary teacher, thinker and critic, Sorrentino will be remembered as a "a reckless heir to Borges, Barthelme and Groucho Marx." Never read him? Start here.
posted by mattbucher at 1:52 PM - 41 comments

Canada's National Post says "Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims." (Sound familiar?) CTV says "Prime Minister Stephen Harper says news reports that Iran could require Jews and Christians to wear coloured labels in public might be true." Hmm...might be true? Montreal's AM 940 says "But independent reporter Meir Javedanfar [who runs a Middle East analysis site], an Israeli Middle East expert who was born and raised in Tehran, says the report is false." Which is it: truth or fiction? And if it's fiction, is it a malicious disinformation campaign or just incompetent journalism? Malcompetence?
posted by scottreynen at 1:37 PM - 60 comments