MetaFilter

The music of the People's Temple. Five years before Jim Jones coerced 900 of his church members to commit suicide in Guyana, the People's Temple cut an album.
comment posted at 11:44 AM on Aug-7-08

He's no longer riding the escalator of life. RIP Robert, it was a good ride.
comment posted at 4:24 PM on Aug-6-08

“I’m ashamed to say that there were folks even in the medical department who said, Over my dead body will American civilians see this”
comment posted at 7:09 PM on Aug-5-08

LOBBING HAND GRENADES: REMARKS ON BARRY FLANAGAN by J.P. Donleavy
comment posted at 11:10 AM on Aug-4-08

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died. ( BBC ) The great author and opponent of totalitarianism lived to see the end of Communism in the Soviet Union and almost everywhere else. He survived WWII as a commander in the Soviet army before being put into gulags where he spent 20 years. He went on to write the Gulag Archipelago and win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
comment posted at 8:23 PM on Aug-3-08
comment posted at 5:58 AM on Aug-4-08
comment posted at 7:07 AM on Aug-4-08
comment posted at 9:45 AM on Aug-4-08

Close Harmony is one of the most distinctive sounds in traditional country. Hank Wangford's A to Z of Country and Western looks at the Louvin Brothers music in this style.
comment posted at 7:29 AM on Aug-3-08

According to Aviation Today and Universe Week, the US President has been briefed on the discovery of "something more compelling [than the confirmation of water], completing another piece of the puzzle in the search for the correct conditions for life as we know it to survive on Mars". It's not life, or evidence of past life, but it's something. Via Jasohill.
comment posted at 3:36 PM on Aug-2-08

Eighty one years ago to the day, barber, banjoist and balladeer B.F. Shelton travelled from his home in Kentucky to take part in a recording session in Bristol Tennessee. Now referred to as the "Bristol Sessions", these recordings are widely viewed as some of the most important and influential in American music history. The four songs Shelton recorded that day, stark, simple and immensely powerful in their unadorned honesty, can all be heard here. After Bristol, Shelton never recorded again.
comment posted at 4:47 AM on Jul-29-08

Who are Muslims? Gallup has conducted a poll "in 40 predominantly Muslim nations and among significant Muslim populations in the West. It is the first set of unified and scientifically representative views from 1.3 billion Muslims globally." They'll be parsing and interpreting this data for years, but for the time being, they've offered some of their key results online and in print. See also, the Muslim-West Facts Initiative. (via)
comment posted at 6:48 PM on Jul-28-08

Noseybonk Returns. This is not horrifying news unless you know who he was. Then it becomes endearingly nightmarish. As with V, the man in the mask is Noseybonk.
comment posted at 2:05 PM on Jul-27-08

The Clown Walk (also known as the C-Walk) refers to a modern dance style, usually done to hip hop music. It is a variation of the Crip walk, a gang related dance. Clown Walking, however, was created to distance the relationship between the dance style and the Crips gang. PimpMyWalk.com is a site where you can learn how to C-Walk. (language and lyrics NSFW). Step-by-step video instructions teach you how to do the V, the shuffle, and when you're really gangsta, the wiggle walk. More than a dozen tutorial videos plus expert samples.
comment posted at 8:14 AM on Jul-27-08

These Beatles clips from a 1965 NME show are straight off the mixing desk, so the voices are way up front. Man, those vocals are so loud you can hardly hear Ringo! But let's back it up just a year, to Holland in 1964, and catch one of the rare performances without Ringo. Aside from his brief stint as a Beatle, session drummer Jimmy Nicol also played with zany Swedish instrumental surf rock band The Spotnicks. So, there you have it: Jimmy Nicol, a lucky fella who got to play with two of the greatest bands in the world! [NOTE: see hoverovers for link descriptions]
comment posted at 8:43 AM on Jul-27-08

Harp And Rythmn Train Time Soundscape + The Mermaids Return ...v "What Conrad Praetzel and Robert Powell have done (again), no one has done."
comment posted at 5:39 AM on Jul-26-08

"A friend confessed to me that she didn't need to build credit. If the need for a loan ever arises, she told me, she can go to her parents or—as she secretly hopes—a husband who will take care of it."
A generation of twenty-somethings ponder when, or if, they will begin their financial independence from their parents.
comment posted at 4:37 PM on Jul-25-08

Medpedia is coming. "In association with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School and other leading global health organizations, the Medpedia community seeks to create the most comprehensive and collaborative medical resource in the world." Apply to contribute content.
comment posted at 2:45 PM on Jul-25-08

You are beautiful.
comment posted at 3:47 AM on Jul-24-08

Cops on Segways From Kevin Kelly. Criminals beware!
comment posted at 7:50 PM on Jul-23-08

In January of 2004, Disney shut down their Florida animation studio, part of their decision to move away from 2D, or cell-shaded, animation for good. Two years later, as part of the new deal with Pixar, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull were brought in as heads of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, and promptly declared that 2-D Animation would thrive again on their watch. For their first new project, the team wanted to show support for the still-struggling New Orleans, and simultaneously introduce Disney's first Black Princess in "The Frog Princess" (Or The Princess and the Frog, as it is now known), a fairy tale set in 1920's Jazz-era Louisiana, with Randy Newman providing a period-specific score. Much response to the project has been quite positive, but as with all things, the devil is in the details.
comment posted at 6:50 PM on Jul-22-08

The future of classical music lies in China. Chinese enthusiasm for Western classical music is deep, says New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, but traditional Chinese music is older and more classical than anything in the West.
comment posted at 2:52 PM on Jul-22-08

Prvi svetski rat - Gritty and poignant Serbian postcards from the First World War. Just one of the seriously interesting (e.g. check out the collection of 78s) holdings at the Digital National Library of Serbia.
comment posted at 6:44 PM on Jul-20-08
comment posted at 9:19 PM on Jul-20-08

How did this man end of with a copy of the most iconic book in the English language? He says he got it from a friend in Cuba, but the Folger Library has identified it as the copy of Shakespeare's First Folio stolen from Durham University in 1988. Turns out that stealing the book is much easier than selling it.
comment posted at 6:52 PM on Jul-20-08

Dino Valls (NSFW) (large format slide show of his work) is a self-taught Spanish artist who studied Italian and Flemish masters of the 16th and 17th centuries. Use of egg tempera and oil is one of his favorite painting techniques, requiring great mastery but affording rich color and tone. His works are beautiful, disturbing and surreal.
comment posted at 12:27 PM on Jul-20-08

Flying derbys! Revolving revolvers! Ladders to nowhere! It's Hans Richter's wonderful Vormittagsspuk (or, Ghosts Before Breakfast), certainly one of the most playful and entertaining of all the Dada film experiments of the 1920s. Presented here with a nicely done soundtrack by Donald Sosin. .
comment posted at 8:48 AM on Jul-20-08
comment posted at 8:56 AM on Jul-20-08

Most people are familiar with welding metal, but it’s entirely possible to weld plastic. There are a surprising number of ways to weld plastic, but first you will need to identify what kind it is. The smell of burning plastic is a particularly effective diagnostic. This man is welding with hot air. Many instructional videos are made by companies whose products are featured in the video, like this somewhat surreal demonstration of speed tip welding. Perhaps the most low-tech method is with a soldering iron.
comment posted at 3:29 PM on Jul-19-08

Early Twentieth Century Russian Drama and From the Ends to the Beginning: A Bilingual Anthology of Russian Poetry are both products of Northwestern University Slavic Department. The former is devoted to Russian theater from the 1890s through the 1930s and focuses on the visual aspect of theater, with images of costumes, set designs and photographs of stagings. The latter is a collection of 250 poems, both in Russian and English translations ranging from the 18th Century to the modern day. There are some amazing images from the history of Russian drama, such as Kazimir Malevich's designs for Victory over the Sun and a quicktime video of actors doing Meyerhold's biomechanical exercises. The Listening Gallery of russianpoetry.net has over 75 recitals of poems, including Vladmir Mayakovsky reading his own And Could You? and a reading of Velimir Khlebnikov's famous Invocation of Laughter.
comment posted at 3:42 PM on Jul-19-08

The žižkov television tower in Prague was pretty weird looking to begin with, since 2000 it's gotten much stranger...
comment posted at 3:50 PM on Jul-19-08
comment posted at 8:20 AM on Jul-20-08
comment posted at 7:00 PM on Jul-20-08

If the Tiber rises so high it floods the walls, or the Nile so low it doesn't flood the fields, if the earth opens, or the heavens don't, if there is famine, if there is plague, instantly the howl goes up, "The Christians to the lion!" What, all of them? To a single lion? So wrote Tertullian. In the huge intellectual project that was the foundation of the Christian Church he was the great wit, most powerful rhetor and finest writer. Starting out as a pagan delighting in adultery and gladiator combat he became a great champion of martyrdom, defender of Christianity against its malefactors and heretics. His most famous contribution to our culture is undoubtedly the doctrine of the trinity. Towards the end of his life he threw his lot with a small group of hardcore ascetics called Montanists and was denounced as a heretic. Ending his life among the defeated of ecclesiastical history he was forgotten for a millennium until rediscovered during the Renaissance. The Tertullian Project collects all his extant writing and information about his lost texts as well as biographical information, selected quotations and much more.
comment posted at 3:26 AM on Jul-16-08

In the introduction to his close friend's "Best of" DVD, Jack Lemmon says, "Ernie Kovacs was the funniest, wildest, zaniest man I ever knew. Ernie thought so, too, and so did millions of happy people. Ernie was all over television on one network or another from 1950 until he died in 1962. He had an unpredictable and illogical view of the world. He played with the medium of television in a way no one ever had before. And he created a batch of cockeyed characters that have become classics. So, slow down your internal clock; it was a more leisurely time, you know. Here's Ernie Kovacs."
comment posted at 3:34 AM on Jul-16-08

The Great Scarf of Birds -- John Updike
comment posted at 7:05 PM on Jul-15-08

ArtMagick is a collection of art and poetry that roughly dates from after the Enlightenment but before Modernism. While the poetry section is extensive the main draw is the sites extensive art collection, which can be browsed by artist, art movement, title, theme or albums created by the site's users. So, forget the summer heat with some chilly pictures of winter, check out famous objects of devotion or search the archive.
comment posted at 7:31 PM on Jul-14-08

Land of the Free, home of the geek. Steven Schofield takes photos of british sci-fi fans, dressed in character in their homes. He treats it as 'found' photography, which seems to illustrate the subjects vulnerability. The title of the work is Land of the Free - and illustrates how American culture infiltrates, with the ironic edge of questioning the idea of the freedom of choosing to copy the look of these fictional characters. via kottke
comment posted at 4:21 AM on Jul-14-08

"The New Yorker says it's satire. It certainly will be candy for cable news." The cover illustration (by Barry Blitt) of the magazine's July 21^st. issue depicts Barack Obama in tribal African dress, fist-bumping his wife "in full revolutionary garb, an enormous afro making her look like a millennial Angela Davis, holding an automatic weapon and wearing military pants" in the Oval Office. On the wall -- a portrait of Osama bin Laden; in the fireplace a burning American flag.
comment posted at 7:54 PM on Jul-13-08

Paris under the Occupation, in color.
comment posted at 1:04 PM on Jul-12-08
comment posted at 1:39 PM on Jul-12-08
comment posted at 3:10 PM on Jul-12-08
comment posted at 3:44 PM on Jul-12-08

Dr. Michael E. DeBakey died last night a few months shy of 100 years old. The father of modern cardiovascular surgery, he extended the lives of thousands through multiple surgical innovations.
comment posted at 12:48 PM on Jul-12-08
comment posted at 1:37 PM on Jul-12-08
comment posted at 3:20 PM on Jul-12-08

Slovenian compositions, mainly performed by solo singers (with piano or orchestra accompaniment) and by different orchestras and smaller vocal groups. The tracks are listed here. Might I suggest you start with Vinko Vodopivec and see if this the sort of thing you like?
comment posted at 5:27 AM on Jul-11-08
comment posted at 8:33 AM on Jul-11-08

Psychotherapy in the Age of Obscene Wealth
comment posted at 8:23 PM on Jul-9-08

"Several songs on the instrumental album were voted Best in Genre, and then shortly after that I was flown out to Los Angeles and nominated Independent Artist of the Year by the Association of Independent Artists." Until age 40, he'd never played piano. Then he suffered a concussion.. Also, cavemen sang -- and maybe echo-located. Where? Where they painted their cave art.
comment posted at 3:58 PM on Jul-4-08