Hart Island is a tiny island in Long Island Sound, NY. Formerly the site of a prison, it contains an active Potter's Field with over 700,000 people buried in it, a ghost town, abandoned Nike Missile silos, was the site of a Civil War POW camp, and a long-abandoned sanitarium. It's the subject of a documentary, and has guest starred in at least two movies.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 8:58 AM on October 28, 2006 (19 comments)

"I am zooming in on a tight shot of the dead guy and a splash of red. Going into his khaki uniform in a pool of blood in the sand. The dead man's face is slightly gray. You are making a visual here. But inside something is screaming, "My God.' But it is time to work. Deal with the rest later. If you can't do it, get out of the game." Just two months after winning the Pulitzer Prize, South African photojournalist Kevin Carter, a member of the Bang Bang Club, a group of four incredibly brave apartheid-era South African photojournalists, got out. A film about his life and death is nominated for an Oscar.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 9:56 AM on March 5, 2006 (29 comments)

Sinister Dolls: "They lived. They died. They were raised from the grave. Sinister Dolls were once ordinary dolls". More creepy art by the same artist. Happy Hallowe'en!
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 1:51 PM on October 28, 2005 (13 comments)

Sounds Like Radio "casting you the best in new music; transcending oppressive style and genre restrictions; unleashing the world's musical underground". Sort of a music blog, presented as radio shows. There's all kinds of interesting music here, from all kinds of genres, most-all from unsigned acts. Surprisingly varied, and good.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 4:37 PM on March 3, 2005 (13 comments)

Underground French Cinema (literally) Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us." A secret underground cinema is found in the Catacombs of Paris, "You guys have no idea what's down there." Perhaps it's the work of a group of cataphiles called the "Perforating Mexicans".
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 9:31 PM on September 7, 2004 (17 comments)

It's made of fluffy silicon. Others think differently. It could explain some UFO sightings. It can be dangerous. And you can make it at home in your microwave. It's ball lightning.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 1:35 PM on August 30, 2004 (5 comments)

"There are some secrets that do not permit themselves to be revealed." Every January 19, for the past 54 years, a mysterious man dressed in black has crept into a cemetery in Baltimore to place three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 8:39 AM on January 20, 2003 (33 comments)

"Donald looked upon violence as an artist might look on paint..." Director Donald Cammell committed suicide at home on April 24, 1996. Because of the location of the gunshot wound he inflicted on himself, he stayed alive and conscious for 45 minutes. He asked for a mirror to observe his own death. Foreshadowing this, in Cammell's underrated 1987 film White of the Eye, serial killer David Keith holds a mirror up to a victim's face as she dies. Filmmaker and author Kenneth Anger said "I predicted Donald Cammell's suicide. He was in love with death." He wrote seven films and directed six, ranging from the controversial end-of-the-psychedelic-sixties counterculture gangster film Performance (starring Mick Jagger),to the schlocky Demon Seed (based on a Dean Koontz novel), in which Julie Christie is raped by a computer, to a documentary about U2. A man of unusual talent, Cammell was an enigma even to those closest to him. "Cammell knew that nothing was as ever as it looked, that there was no single, simple truth." His body of work, as diverse as it is sparse, reflects this. Three different biographers are working on Cammell projects, and a fascinating biodocumentary Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance was released in 1998. His films are well worth seeking out, taken as a whole, they present an interesting psychological picture of their creator, and taken separately, they're thoughtful and interesting examinations of perception, reality, violence, and the nature of power.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 9:07 AM on January 13, 2003 (25 comments)

Everything you ever wanted to know about sunken ships. Passenger liners from the Titanic to the Andrea Doria. Military vessels from aircraft carriers like the USS Forrestall to submarines like the Kursk. I found this site by accident and got lost in it, some of the sections are just gorgeous, even though all the stories are tragic.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 11:13 PM on October 16, 2002 (11 comments)

The Thylacine Museum is a true labour of love. Everything you could possibly want to know about the thylacine (AKA "Tasmanian tiger" or "Tasmanian wolf"). Able to open its mouth incredibly wide, sit upright on its hind legs like a kangaroo, and a foremost example of convergent evolution (extremely similar to placental mammals like wolves, yet marsupial), the thylacine was a fascinating animal. Hunted to extinction in less than a hundred years (or not), a cloning project is underway to try and resurrect it. This site has everything: videos, Java-riffic skull diagrams, pictures of mummified thylacines who died over 4,000 years ago, and pictures of Benjamin, the last captive thylacine who died in 1936.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 12:22 PM on August 1, 2002 (24 comments)

The Flo Control Project is a test project for image recognition algorithms developed by Quantum Picture. Basically, they rigged a home computer to control their cat door using image recognition software so that it would only allow cats to enter the house (and not skunks or raccoons), and then only if the cat wasn't carrying prey items (to play with in the comfort of the living room). The newest version of the experiment can differentiate between the two cats currently living in the house. Interesting stuff, not least because many people couldn't tell two cats apart simply by looking at their profiles. I suspect there are some wide-ranging non-feline applications as well.
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 1:50 PM on March 25, 2002 (19 comments)

"Don't touch our monkey, Frau Bleucher. We know the people running your server." Acme Vaporware is "Hell-bent on World Domination". The site offers (amongst other things) a Feng Shui TorpoFluxometer that "enables anyone to instantly determine which direction to orient their network for chi optimization". and an AcmeVaporware TorpOracular Tech-Tarot System that is "is incredibly rich in Data-Transport Reality-Archetype symbolism". What more does the modern network administrator need?
posted to MetaFilter by biscotti at 9:37 AM on February 13, 2002 (1 comment)