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The Fillmore St. Jazz Festival and the Mitch Marcus Quintet Live. via BayTaper.com
posted by semmi at 11:24 AM - 3 comments

135 or more dead, 7 blasts, terrorists to blame
posted by bmpetow at 10:03 AM - 91 comments

Daniel Raeburn's story about his daughter's still birth is one of the most depressing things I've read in a while. Thankfully, there is a much happier update to the story. (via Kottke)
posted by chunking express at 8:22 AM - 89 comments

“If you don’t apply it when it’s inconvenient,” he said, “it’s not a rule of law.”
posted by kittyprecious at 7:16 AM - 39 comments

Syd Barrett passes on. Pink Floyd founder (paid tribute to by his former bandmates in "Shine On You Crazy Diamond) who had succumbed to mental illness passes away due to complications of diabetes. RIP.
posted by jonmc at 6:39 AM - 206 comments

Pro-life blogger just doesn't get it. (via)
posted by May Kasahara at 5:09 AM - 158 comments

From cooperation to complicity. In 1988, the German chemical giant Degussa commissioned a study (by American historian Peter Hayes) on its collaboration with the National-Socialist regime. The corporation's involvement in the production of Zyklon B has been well publicised, due to the controversy over the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, but it's only one chapter of a larger story that, according to the author (PDF), "suggests that most people, when presented with opportunities or imperatives that they have every imminent or material reason to accept or accede to and only potential or moral grounds to reject, will choose the course of least resistance, internalize the arguments that legitimate it, and balk at admitting that one could or should have done otherwise."
posted by elgilito at 4:48 AM - 18 comments

A landmark rigorous study, 36 years after Walter Pahnke's Good Friday study ocuments the ability of psilocybin - the chemical in "magic mushrooms" - to trigger mystical experiences. 16 of 24 participants, who had no history of psychedelic use, rated the drug episode (after 2 months) to be among the 5 most meaningful experiences in their lifetime. A longer 40-year follow-up by MAPS on those who took LSD under the supervision of psychiatrist Oscar Janiger in the 1950s, found qualitatively the same result.
posted by daksya at 11:16 PM - 236 comments

Martin and Elizabeth set up housekeeping on the banks of Troublesome and began a family. Of their seven children, four were reported to be blue.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Martin Fugate & his descendents, the 1982 article from Science magazine entitled "The Blue People of Troublesome Creek" is a fascinating read; a recessive gene & decades of inbreeding lead to a clan of Kentucky hill folk with deep blue skin from head to toe.
posted by jonson at 10:59 PM - 56 comments

For the past three years the National Endowment for the Arts has sponsored a writing project called Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, inviting U.S. troops and their families to share letters, e-mails, poems, stories, and memoirs to be collected in a national archive. An anthology of the work, edited by the historian Andrew Carroll, will be published this fall by Random House. Here, in an audio slide show [Flash required], five servicemen read from their work, accompanied by photographs. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 9:38 PM - 5 comments

Some dark thoughts about happiness.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:39 PM - 29 comments

8=8 is a group of four programmers = four performers = four artists. We each built our own program for my Hypertable platform, then created a program that would group them together for a public performance. More videos &c.
posted by signal at 7:20 PM - 9 comments

Metal Storm Limited specializes in weapon systems featuring rapid fire electronically fired bullets, up to 1 million a minute. The weapons platform can be used to make the worlds strongest handgun as well as be used to equip unmanned drones with firepower. The most frightening of which is perhaps the "dragonfly" micro copter. Their site has a number of videos showcasing some of the various weapons applications. Metal Storm has been around for a while, without getting a product to market, but with a recent influx of funding it doesn't look like they are going to go out of business any time soon.
posted by reverendX at 6:44 PM - 50 comments

Suppose you were like this guy and you had devoted nearly a decade of your life to figuring out how to make oil from turkey gizzards. Now suppose this guy and a bunch of pencil-pushers like these guys came along and started challenging the long-term viability of carbon-based fuels (whether of the freshly-squeezed variety or not). For sake of argument, suppose they were right. How reluctant do you suppose you'd be to admit it, even to yourself?
posted by saulgoodman at 2:42 PM - 44 comments

Wrestling Bears
No, not this [NSFW].
Or this.
Sort of like this.
Or this, in a steel cage ("C'MON BEAR!").
And then there's the history.
posted by StopMakingSense at 2:38 PM - 23 comments

NES Zidane A fairly accurate recreation of the World Cup final. Also, ze headbutt explained.
posted by jcruelty at 2:18 PM - 63 comments

Dr. Peggy McIntosh wrote a paper in 1989 titled White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies (later released as White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack), which she wrote because, "...have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious." Since then the lesson she sought to teach has inspired other lists, such as The Male Privilege and now The Daily Effect of Straight Privilege.
posted by FunkyHelix at 2:17 PM - 130 comments

Max Factors: What do Tom Hanks, Patrick Swayze, and Sigourney Weaver have in common? Well, let's just say that da Vinci isn't the only code featuring Tom Hanks these days. (Previously, on MetaFilter) (Some text may be NSFW)
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:35 PM - 18 comments

For those who enjoy (or despise) the netubiquitous (Hey! A new word! Feel free to meme it for me. Thanks.) "Engrish" sites, here, via ctheory, is a more theoretical explanation of the phenomenon than you're likely to get by Googling "Engrish." (Two million hits and rising!)
posted by kozad at 1:17 PM - 15 comments

The Diamond Age has arrived, but no one will admit it. Experts chafe at the mass-production of diamonds. The leading gem analysts refuse to rate them. Duh. "If we could succeed, at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks." Capital, Karl Marx (previously)
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:57 PM - 95 comments

Then, as he escorted me to the elevator, he said, “New Yorker? How many people see that shits?” He reflected a moment. “Damn. Who needs Hot 97? I got New Yorker and MySpace.”
posted by jne1813 at 12:56 PM - 32 comments

Beat This! A Hip Hop History (BBC - 1984)
posted by vronsky at 12:23 PM - 11 comments

Some old news regarding Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Further proof that tigers don't change their stripes. Tiger Force in operated in Vietnam, led by the recently-deceased Colonel David Hackworth), with the task of out-guerilla-ing the guerillas. Their attrocities were covered up by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and James Schlesinger, who most recently headed an independent panel probing Abu Gharib. Others incidents inside...
posted by rzklkng at 11:22 AM - 63 comments

The 10th day? A day of rest. Thank goodness for Caroline Yang's TdF photos. Ever wondered why McEwan rides so hard to stay in Green? What Ukrainian joy looks like? When you can wear socks with sandals? She's also got some decent shots of speed skating (oh, and real blood sports, like weddings).
posted by OmieWise at 10:39 AM - 16 comments

As in the 2004 elections, several useful sites have sprung up to keep track of the 2006 midterms for House, Senate and state gubernatorial races. Some have a political point of view, others don't, but they don't differ significantly on the outcome at this point. One of the veterans in this game is ElectionProjection.com, which was pretty close to actual results in '04. (A creation of "the Blogging Caesar"). From the right, there's MyElectionAnalysis.com, while ElectionPredictions seems to come from a neutral corner. All of these track statewide polls as they are published; they may differ in how they weight results. For a more subjective approach, see Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball or the Cook Political Report. Overall, the consensus seems to be that the GOP will hold both houses, but with slimmer margins, and lose on the gubernatorial front.
posted by beagle at 9:54 AM - 30 comments

World eBook Fair - Project Gutenberg opens the door to even more books online for free (through Aug 4). Not just public domain stuff, but copyrighted works like Ulysses (PDF), T.S. Eliot (500 pp. PDF), and Neal Stephenson (PDF). Over 300,000 additional works online.
posted by mattbucher at 8:43 AM - 51 comments

Do stay at home moms need business cards? Apparently, yes. Ask Linda Hirshman, she'll tell you all about it. Wait -- no, she won't. But this writer probably would. Maybe Caitlin Flanagan would recommend them for nannies instead?
posted by bitter-girl.com at 7:44 AM - 118 comments

The Fifteeners: The Earliest Printed Books. Incunabula or incunables are the very first examples of books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed with moveable type in Western Europe. They range from the very first examples of the two-column Latin Bible produced by Johann Gutenberg in the 1450s to works printed through the end of the year 1500. The term "incunable" derives from the Latin word cunabula for "cradle" or "origin", hinting at their status as the earliest of all books. Incunabula are also sometimes referred to as "fifteeners" from their appearance in the fifteenth century. In 2002, the Countway Library embarked on an ambitious and long-needed project to describe and catalog fully its holdings of incunabula and make online descriptions of these items accessible to scholars and researchers for the first time. All of the books and woodcuts in this exhibit have been drawn from the collections of the Boston Medical Library and the Harvard Medical Library and have one common element—each is at least five hundred years old. The Fifteeners highlights some of the extraordinary treasures in the Countway's incunabula collection and allows the public a glimpse of these rarest of printed medical works. [Previously]
posted by sluglicker at 7:20 AM - 11 comments

Meet the bureaucrats. The unnerving similarity of bureaucrats' offices.
posted by js003 at 6:48 AM - 23 comments

A la "I Am Cuba" the folks at Caution Zero bring you a seven minute tracking shot of a vampire with bunny slippers being attacked by zombies. We've obviously done our zombiefilter tracking here, here, and here, but I figured new advances in zombie aesthetic were worth noting.
posted by HellKatonWheelz at 5:57 AM - 6 comments

Hero Tomorrow. Superman Returns had a budget of $260M. X3? $210M. So what kind of superhero film can you make for a mere $100K? Check out Hero Tomorrow, making its big screen debut next week at the San Diego ComicCon.
posted by grabbingsand at 5:49 AM - 31 comments

Geek goddesses or calendar girls? Female IT professionals have posed for a provocative calendar to try and shake off their industry's geeky image and encourage young women to consider a computing career. Yup, that'll work...
posted by Tokil at 1:18 AM - 91 comments

Hitler in a dress singing showtunes about being gay? You bet. (Embedded Quicktime link.) (YouTube link here.) (By Magic Box Films.)
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:43 PM - 14 comments

How to make your own wireless camera remote. Man buys Minolta 5-D, can't find a remote for less than $30 on eBay; can't find any that are wireless; goes to an electronics store, buys the parts; makes his own wireless remote; then takes pictures of himself skating, using the remote!
I love diy stories like this. (Warning: popups at the linked site.)
posted by Lynsey at 10:32 PM - 22 comments

The Vanishing. "Bees are in grave danger. So is our food supply. Why something so small matters so much."
posted by homunculus at 10:04 PM - 39 comments

The Thong Bikini Piano. (For Phlash non-Phriday)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:30 PM - 25 comments

Recent Shuttle Launch from Unusual Angles
+ Right forward Solid Rocket Booster camera (Windows media)
+ Right aft Solid Rocket Booster camera (Windows media)
+ Left aft Solid Rocket Booster camera (13.7 Mb Quicktime movie)
+ Left forward Solid Rocket Booster camera (13.6 Mb Quicktime movie)
+ Separation composite view (10 Mb Quicktime movie)
posted by crunchland at 5:05 PM - 41 comments

A counterfeiter and a convict. A merchant marine and a safecracker. This is Donn Pearce's story before he turned twenty. This is his story before he could grow a beard, before he wrote Cool Hand Luke, was nominated for an Academy Award, went broke, and chased bail jumpers. You'd like to think you've got stories of your own, that you've lived a full life, and then you travel up Florida's I-95 to spend the afternoon listening to Donn Pearce.
posted by thisisdrew at 3:41 PM - 9 comments

"Listen bitch, don't call in an hour & a half late and then complain you're tight on time." My favorite 80 seconds of radio so far this year, as Ann Coulter dials into the Adam Carolla show to plug her stupid book. (link goes to transcript, with MP3 available for download)
posted by jonson at 3:11 PM - 131 comments

Mud Mosques: The Black and White Prints / Various locations in Mali.via BldgBlog.
posted by signal at 2:17 PM - 11 comments

We all have to go sometime. Frank Russo has an obsession, dead ballplayers. Some died in accidents, some were murdered, some couldn't take it anymore, and some were cursed. They were all human. (via HNT)
posted by caddis at 1:45 PM - 13 comments

Dr. Schelling's neighborhood. Is segregation the holdover of a racist past or an inevitable result of simple mathematical processes? After you've read the theory, try it for yourself here, here & here. Dr. Thomas Schelling won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics for developing these ideas, but not everybody agrees that he deserved to.
posted by scalefree at 1:37 PM - 31 comments

The World Cup! This is your spoiler-free post... Don't be a dick. Don't post a FPP revealing who won!!!
posted by Cyrano at 12:59 PM - 228 comments

Richard Hell & the Voidoids play CBGB's, 1977 (youtubefilter). Check out the crowd interviews between the two songs. Also, Richard Hell tries to learn a Television song from Tom Verlaine parts One and Two.
posted by bardic at 11:15 AM - 13 comments

Hot Town, Cool City : You live in the best city in the U.S. and you want to go back to Houston, Texas? Maureen McNamara came home from San Francisco and has now produced a web "treasure map" and a film about the hidden gems of Houston. Love it, hate it, is Houston worth it?
posted by Robert Angelo at 9:50 AM - 48 comments

The Source of Europe's Mild Climate
posted by Gyan at 9:12 AM - 17 comments

Child brides of Afghanistan. A child bride is very often just that: a child, even a preteen, her innocence betrothed to someone older, even much, much older. Images by Stephanie Sinclair who's work on women's issues in Afghanistan is always eye opening.
posted by photoslob at 8:09 AM - 76 comments

"And any woman with a nature so cold as not to be aroused by the perfect execution of the waltz, is entirely unfit to make any man happy as his wife, and if she be willing to indulge in such pleasures with every ballroom libertine, she is not the woman any man wants for a wife." Fact: two-thirds of the girls who are ruined fall through the influence of dancing.
posted by sluglicker at 4:14 AM - 31 comments

The New "Science" of Siblings An amusing article from Time magazine by Jeffrey Kluger which reports that your siblings have more influece on your personality than any other group-- parents, peers, spouses, children, etc. My ex-wife thinks I'm sarcastic, combative, insensitive, etc. Do I get to blame my brothers and sisters for this now? Another article on this issue "The Science of Siblings". Apparently, they could have made me more likely to be gay too.
posted by notmtwain at 2:45 AM - 28 comments

Dutch broadcast station VPRO's website is Holland’s biggest platform for alternative music. Here's a link to a shitload of streaming live concerts and tracks. You'll have to do a bit of cut and paste once there, but it's the easiest way for me to link to the list. For the cut-and-paste-inept, there's a standard interface, but the site's not in english.
posted by dobbs at 8:57 PM - 11 comments