"Charley Patton" by Robert Crumb (recommended listening: "Down the Dirt Road Blues", "High Sheriff Blues", "A Spoonful Blues", "You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die") (very previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:41 PM - 1 comment

Excavations in Argentina have unearthed a new dinosaur with a short skull and tiny forearms: Eoabelisaurus mefi. [more inside]
posted by benito.strauss at 6:11 PM - 48 comments

Missing Foundation was an underground industrial band formed in Hamburg, Germany in 1984 and year later, in 1985, the band relocated to New York City. Formed by Pete Missing along with two members of KMFDM and Florian Langmaack they were known for their destructive shows. They were active in 1988 riot in Tompkins Square Park (attempting to start another one in 1993) and lighting the stage of CBGBs on fire and destroying their sound system. Other members include Vern Toulon, the father of kid-punk band Old Skull. One of the indelible and lasting marks of the group was their logo: inverted martini over a three pronged tally along with slogans such as "1988 - 1933" and "Your House Is Mine". The slogans were illusions to what founder Peter Missing described as society verge of collapse and that a police state was imminent. The years representative of the year the Nazi's overtook the Weimar Republic. The logo symbolized the bands personal slogan of "the party's over". Founder Peter Missing now lives in Berlin and his artwork has exhibited at The Whitney, The Getty, MOMA after riding out some tough times in the mid-aughts.
posted by wcfields at 5:04 PM - 8 comments

"Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted "Intercepted!," and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind." A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama. [more inside]
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:27 PM - 97 comments

Dominick Carpenter builds and sells miniature cannons and mortars. Sometimes he fires them. [more inside]
posted by tigrefacile at 3:11 PM - 12 comments

Look at those baby cheetahs After a touch-and go birth, The National Zoo has some new baby cheetahs. [more inside]
posted by angrycat at 2:54 PM - 19 comments

A fan asked Bill Murray for an autograph. Instead Bill gave him this. [via]
posted by feelinglistless at 2:49 PM - 25 comments

Need a blast of pure joy to start your holiday weekend? Here's Isaac's live lip-dub proposal.
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:35 PM - 20 comments

Gamer Mom is a short piece of interactive fiction about a mom who plays games, and her family that doesn't. [more inside]
posted by empath at 12:03 PM - 65 comments

Roy Buchanan - ♪ Hey Joe ♪, a grandmaster of the Telecaster lays bare the instrument's unique spectrum of tone.
posted by Ardiril at 11:59 AM - 48 comments

American cities going dark. Detroit is the poster child, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are already broken, but under a new plan half the city is going permanently dark in an effort to get citizens to move. “You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas". Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Bonus: 360-degree photo tour of abandoned rail station in Detroit.
posted by stbalbach at 11:54 AM - 93 comments

Look at Azerbaijan! But look beyond the shiny Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) which will be held tomorrow in Baku. Look at the “Dirty Secrets” [SLYT, BBC Panorama, 30 min., English] and at independent film maker Liz Mermin’s film “Glanz und Schatten in Azerbaidschan” [SLYT, 30 min. German but more informative IMHO]. Locals that voted in the music contest for a country that was not in favor of the ruling family were investigated by the police. And then there is the story of two expensive donkeys (€42,000 each) and a comedic video that landed a young man in jail. Let’s not forget the story of a journalist who was blackmailed with secretly shot sex tapes. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch often report of restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Azerbaijan. Shortly before the ESC young musician Jamal Ali fled the country. While US peace corps volunteers don’t feel like criticizing much and sing a song of their own [SLYT], we see more arrests in Baku today.
posted by travelwithcats at 11:31 AM - 12 comments

Kingdom of Loathing creator Jick and the rest of the Asymmetric crew have spent the last four years developing a new game. Next month, the beta for the game is coming out: Word Realms! Make sure to watch the video, it's full of hilarity. [more inside]
posted by Night_owl at 11:13 AM - 16 comments

Republican-sponsored New York State Assembly bill would ban anonymous online speech. "AN ACT to amend the civil rights law, in relation to protecting a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting..." S6779, introduced by Rep. O'Meara, is brief: it establishes "a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting" as a civil right, and requires that NY-based "Web site administrator[s]" remove any anonymous postings. The summary of the Assembly bill, A8688, whose text is identical, describes the bill as "a means for the victim of an anonymous posting on a website to request that such post be removed, unless the anonymous poster is willing to attach his or her name to it." [more inside]
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:10 AM - 79 comments

Fun With Models Friday: Fallout New Vegas Characters Just Love To Dance.
posted by The Whelk at 10:53 AM - 24 comments

Conservative Art Critic Brian Sewel born in 1931: "The art market is not sexist," Mr Sewell said. "The likes of Bridget Riley and Louise Bourgeois are of the second and third rank. There has never been a first-rank woman artist.... ...Maybe it's something to do with bearing children." Top contemporary Art Dealer and collector Iwan Wirth born in 1970: "..Female artists are the bargain in today's markets...It's a constant source of disappointment to see the discrepancy in prices between outstanding female artists and their male counterparts.... [more inside]
posted by snaparapans at 10:53 AM - 22 comments

Rockabilly Batman via
posted by macmac at 10:52 AM - 14 comments

The Pope's butler arrested following Vatileaks investigation. [telegraph.co.uk] Vatican police have arrested Pope Benedict XVI's personal butler following an investigation into the leaking of sensitive church documents.
posted by Fizz at 10:50 AM - 39 comments

"Fairly predictive tests for Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, depression, some malignancies, heart disease, and most of the rest of the major killers and disablers will probably be in place by 2000 to 2010. Many if not most of these ailments will be assessable in terms of a very sophisticated genetic risk profile which it will be possible to generate in infancy or childhood (or in utero)." In 1987, cryonics advocate Mike Darwin wrote about the next twenty years of medicine.
posted by escabeche at 8:55 AM - 13 comments

What Should We Call Me? (a very silly tumblr for your Friday)
posted by lunasol at 8:52 AM - 39 comments

two dimensional blobs [SLCracked-Photoplasty] Cheer-up everybody! Cracked readers show us what they think video game background characters are thinking. [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 8:49 AM - 12 comments

Are you curious how the brand of a large suite of complementary products is developed? It's more interesting than you might think. Adobe describes the decisions that went into the new icons, splash screens, and other brand elements of Creative Suite 6.
posted by gilrain at 8:47 AM - 18 comments

Wesley Brown, the first black man to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy, has died. He was 85 years old. [more inside]
posted by Rangeboy at 7:55 AM - 13 comments

The Pog A Day Blog. One man's quest to bring you a lot of pogs (although not quite every day). [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:46 AM - 30 comments

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization, the 2008 remake of 1994's Sid Meier's Colonization was met with some hostility over the concept at the outset. Trevor Owens and Rebbeca Mir, contributors to Play the Past, have been making a series of blog posts about the inherently problematic nature of the game. It started with "Sid Meier's Colonization: Is it offensive enough?", next was "if (!isNative()[returnfalse;]: De-People-ing Native Peopls in Sid Meier's Colonization?", then "Guns, Germs and Horses: Cultural Exchange in Sid Meier's Colonization" and, the latest, "Playing at Slavery: Modding Colonization for Authenticity" [more inside]
posted by griphus at 7:28 AM - 85 comments

Light and Matter has put together an excellent explanation of the Three Basics of Exposure and Photography using (mostly) eight bit graphics. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:15 AM - 5 comments

Movie Simpsons is a tumblr that juxtaposes Simpsons movie homages with the original.
posted by zamboni at 6:49 AM - 35 comments

Fifty-one years ago today, our president proposed to put Man and his towel on the moon and return it safely to the earth by the end of the decade. [more inside]
posted by tilde at 6:21 AM - 34 comments

The Boston Pops brass section reveals their warm-up techniques.
posted by swift at 6:21 AM - 16 comments

SSS is a 1988 experimental film featuring rapid-fire clips of dancers on the streets and junkyards of New York's East Village, "painstaking synched" to improvised music by Tom Cora (cello), Christian Marclay (turntables), and Zeena Parkins (harp). It's by filmmaker Henry Hills, whose official site is here. More collage films here, including Radio Adios, the quick cut-up KINO DA!, Money ("a manic collage film from the mid-80s when it still seemed that Reaganism of the soul could be defeated," with appearances by John Zorn, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Ron Silliman among others), and Gotham, one of three films Hills made for Zorn's Naked City project.
posted by mediareport at 5:55 AM - 11 comments

She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite... Hurting... Worth Dying for is a beautiful non-commercial attempt from www.sanctuaryasia.com to "highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network." (Vimeo link). [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 3:45 AM - 28 comments

In 2002, Brian Banks was a sought-after high school football phenom until he was accused of kidnapping and raping a female student. On the advice of his lawyers, he pleaded no contest and served 6 years in prison. Then his accuser recanted. That's when the Innocence Project stepped in to help exonerate Brian Banks. CA Innocence Project filing here; informative if you skip right to the "Statement of Facts" part.
posted by lalex at 12:18 AM - 137 comments

Whales have a sensory organ unlike anything we’ve ever seen, reported originally in today's issue of Nature.
posted by latkes at 10:21 PM - 50 comments

No matter how you ate them... Sam J. Porcello, the originator of the creamy filling in the Oreo cookie has died.
posted by HuronBob at 10:18 PM - 40 comments

May 25, 1977 - 2012. Celebrate 35 years of Star Wars by getting your groove on with Meco's classic Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:10 PM - 21 comments

Star Wars: The Radio Play - Seven top voice actors table read Star Wars (YouTube) at Emerald City Comicon. "Join voice actors Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell, and Rob Paulsen as they re-create the magic of the Star Wars films, albeit in their own special way!" Characters include: Fry, Bender, Batman, Yakko, Wakko, Pinky, The Brain, Morbo, Bubbles, IronHide, Dr. Zoidberg, Jake the Dog, and many impressive celebrity impressions: Shatner as C3PO, Walken as R2D2, Tony Soprano as Greedo, Twilight Sparkle as Han Solo... (via reddit)
posted by flex at 9:00 PM - 36 comments

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are a new service from U.S. weather service and FEMA. Starting in June, they will send a text message with a strange tone to your mobile device if you are in range of a Tornado Warning, Tsunami Warning or other major event (in the U.S. only). Major events include "Presidential Alerts." You do not need to sign up. Washington Post Capital Weather Gang has a few more details.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:33 PM - 56 comments

"The World's most popular game is also its most corrupt, with investigations into match fixing ongoing in more than 25 countries. Here's a mere sampling of events since the beginning of last year: Operation Last Bet rocked the Italian Football Federation, with 22 clubs and 52 players awaiting trial for fixing matches; the Zimbabwe Football Association banned 80 players from its national-team selection due to similar accusations; Lu Jun, the first Chinese referee of a World Cup match, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for taking more than $128,000 in bribes to fix outcomes in the Chinese Super League; prosecutors charged 57 people with match fixing in the South Korean K-League, four of whom later died in suspected suicides; the team director of second-division Hungarian club REAC Budapest jumped off a building after six of his players were arrested for fixing games; and in an under-21 friendly, Turkmenistan reportedly beat Maldives 3-2 in a "ghost match" -- neither country knew about the contest because it never actually happened, yet bookmakers still took action and fixers still profited." [All the world is staged: Bribed players, fake games. Criminal syndicates can fix any match, anywhere.]
posted by vidur at 8:15 PM - 34 comments

"A day after the 44th nuclear test explosion in the U.S. rent the still Nevada air, observers cautiously inspected department store mannequins which were poised disheveled but still haughty on the sand in the homes of Yucca Flat."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:05 PM - 29 comments

"Patient research work involving more than 5 thousand photographs resulted in a 1 minute film that AlmapBBDO created to advertise Getty Images, the world leading image database for creating and distributing visual contents. " [SLYT]
posted by ephemerista at 7:37 PM - 11 comments

Beautiful abandoned train stations
posted by Trurl at 7:34 PM - 11 comments

A short wordless documentary on Chris Burden's (previously, previousylier) 2008 installation Beam Drop
posted by 1f2frfbf at 6:17 PM - 14 comments

Having previously been disappointed by the information available on the topic, this is my attempt at categorizing different ways to implement 2D platform games, list their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss some implementation details.
posted by Artw at 3:20 PM - 32 comments

A relatively small group of people from Appalachian, the dark-skinned Melungeons (previously) have been a source for speculation and conjecture for many years. Exactly who where their ancestors? Portuguese? Turks? Roma? Cherokee? A recent DNA study (108 page pdf) posted in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy (site link) says otherwise (WaPo article).
posted by edgeways at 3:12 PM - 91 comments

Robert Snow, now retired, was Captain of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, who in his career was in charge of the department of the Homicide and Robbery and the department of Organized Crime. He has written numerous articles and books on police work, and considered himself a skeptic of supposedly supernatural occurrences. But on a dare, he visited a past life regression therapist, and what he experiences made him doubt his beliefs. In an hour-long session, he seemed to recall memories of a cave dweller, an altar girl in Greece, but it was his views of the life of a 19th century painter were the most vivid. In that experience, Snow recalled a number of specific memories or events, but was certain they were fabricated memories from things he had seen or heard in his life in the 20th century. In an attempt to debunk his experiences, he ended up validating his past life memories of being James Carroll Beckwith, a painter most commonly remembered not for his art, but his friendship to more renown painters like John Singer Sargent. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:47 PM - 169 comments

"The national debate over private equity so far has hinged on the question of whether experience in the field qualifies Mitt Romney, the former Bain Capital executive, for the presidency. But a more vexing, and largely unanswered, question lies just beneath the surface: How is it, exactly, that an investment company can make millions even as the company it's ostensibly trying to turn around goes bust? For that answer, we turned to what may seem like a less-than-reliable source: Tony Soprano [NSFW: language]."
posted by ericb at 2:29 PM - 53 comments

"Here’s a paper we’re working on, which argues that we should (for some purposes at least), think of markets, hierarchy and democracy in terms of their capacity to solve complex collective problems [and] makes the case that democracy will on average do the job a lot better than the other two ways..." Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi on a cognitive approach to democracy (pdf). [via]
posted by daniel_charms at 1:39 PM - 12 comments

"When your dog gazes up at you adoringly, what does it see? A best friend? A pack leader? A can opener?" Gregory Berns of Emory University decided to put a couple canines in an MRI scanner to try and find out what goes on inside their heads (adorable news footage here). The results have recently been published in PLoS ONE.
posted by Panjandrum at 1:36 PM - 62 comments

He uttered a sound much like a bull dog swallowing a pork chop whose dimensions it has underestimated. Random P G Wodehouse quote generator. That is all.
posted by unSane at 12:45 PM - 101 comments

Khan
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:44 PM - 41 comments