skip to main content
June 2008 Archives
June 30
Red Karaoke is a free social network for music lovers, offering more than 14,000 songs for karaoke enthusiasts, and tools that enable users to record their own
video and
audio files.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 9:16 PM PST - 15 comments
Did a 'dream team' of biblical scholars mislead millions? [Chronicle of Higher Education] You may recall the curfuffle over the gnostic "Gospel of Judas"
(previously). The National Geographic's documentary premiere "attracted four million viewers, making it the second-highest-rated program in the channel's history, behind only a documentary on September 11. . . . However, it's a perfect example, critics argue, of what can happen when commercial considerations are allowed to ride roughshod over careful research. What's more, the controversy has strained friendships in this small community of religion scholars — causing some on both sides of the argument to feel, in a word, betrayed."
posted by spock at 7:48 AM PST - 142 comments
June 29
Joss Whedon's latest project is a family affair. Seems that Mr. Whedon got a little bored during the writer's strike and called up some friends and family to help him make a low-budget web-series:
The story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to. Featuring Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer, Felicia Day as Penny and a cast of dozens. Written by Joss Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, and Zack Whedon. Directed by Joss Whedon. Produced by David Burns, Michael Boretz, and Joss Whedon. Music by Joss Whedon and Jed Whedon. Lyrics by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen. Score and Orchestration by Jed Whedon.
Make sure to watch the trailer, and read
Joss' announcement. And if you're so inclined, there's an
official MySpace page, and a
fan page.
posted by vertigo25 at 3:09 PM PST - 91 comments
Canadian military to gays: Join us! They're even setting up recruiting booths at
Gay Pride events (when they are
allowed) Note that CBC moderators deleted some of the comments on that first link, but you get a hunch on what they said from the other comments. You may also have heard about two
gay soldiers who wed on a military base.
posted by SSinVan at 2:47 PM PST - 15 comments
Jean Shepherd has been mentioned
before but WFMU's
Beware of the Blog has finally dug out an mp3 of Shepherd himself telling
the story of "I, Libertine" (mp3 link) (
wiki).
I, Libertine was a literary hoax that began as a practical joke. Shepherd asked his listeners ("the Night People") to go into bookstores and ask for a book that didn't exist. Fueled by bewildered bookstore owners and distributors, I, Libertine eventually did end up as a genuine bestseller, proving his point that the process of choosing bestsellers was flawed.
posted by krautland at 2:17 PM PST - 11 comments
Nazi German Bunker in my Garden: "[...] the previous owner told us that there was a tunnel built by the germans during WW2. He said it was big enough to drive into, [...]
So I traced some WW2 reconnaisance photos of the property, which appeared to show the entrance road to my bunker. [...] And that's where the quest began....." (
Original thread here, first link is to condensed but more readable blog.)
posted by orthogonality at 1:38 PM PST - 23 comments
The
25 Greatest
Electronic Albums of the 20th Century. From the
instrument that was created by
Leon Theremin, to the
Moog Guitar that's been named after the legendary
Bob Moog (the inventor of the
Moog Synthesizer),
Electronic music has come a
long way since
its early days. YouTube [
a,
b,
(extreme caution advised: graphic images of death, destruction and 9/11 c),
d,
e,
f,
g,
h,
i,
j,
k,
l,
m,
n,
o,
p,
q,
r,
s,
t,
u,
v,
w,
x,
y]
(Previously mentioned here, here, here, here, here and here)posted by hadjiboy at 10:36 AM PST - 84 comments
Women's rights: What's in it for men? - "Women in rich countries largely enjoy gender equality while those in poor countries suffer substantial discrimination. This column proposes an explanation for the relationship between economic development and female empowerment that emphasises changes in the incentives males face rather than shifts in moral sentiment. Technological change that raises demand for human capital may give men a stake in women's rights."
[more inside]posted by kliuless at 7:48 AM PST - 29 comments
Christiane F was a 1981 German film that portrayed the life of young heroin addicts growing up in 1970's Berlin. Notable for the collaboration of David Bowie, the film became
well known for its realistic portrayal of drug use.
[more inside]posted by panboi at 5:01 AM PST - 28 comments
The New York Moon is an internet-based publication adhered to the lunar phases. It is a collection of experimental, reflective, and imaginative projects produced with every other month’s full moon. In the current issue visit the
6th Borough interactive map to discover imaginary precincts, find ephemeral street sculptures on
The Trash Map, browse sketches of the moments in between
Waiting, or redesign your neighborhood in
Blueprints.
[more inside]posted by netbros at 3:03 AM PST - 7 comments
June 28
Connecticut's
Have a Nice Life is responsible for one of the year's most
acclaimed, highly conceptual albums this year, Deathconsciousness.
The two discs (entitled The Plow That Broke The Plains and The Future, respectively) feature music spanning over five years of collaboration between the two artists, and are accompanied by a 75-page booklet on medieval Italian heretics in lieu of liner notes. Combining elements of
shoegaze,
new wave,
ambient drone,
post-rock,
experimental industrial,
avant-garde dark metal, and
electronic music, and citing references such as
My Bloody Valentine and
Joy Division to their credit, the original and only pressings sold out
within hours. Full stream of all 85 minutes available
here. Direct mp3 samples
here and
here.
[more inside]posted by Christ, what an asshole at 7:03 PM PST - 34 comments
The NHS at 60. The National Health Service is 60 on July 5th. Take a look at documents, audio and video related to the birth and growth of this "radical plan."
posted by fire&wings at 5:47 PM PST - 5 comments
Fifty Norwegian artists (including the national symphony orchestra KORK), who recorded Prince covers in honor of his 50th birthday June 7, have been slapped with a lawsuit by the short-tempered star.
For now, all 81 songs can be
previewed free on C+C Records' website, and some are also available on
MySpace in streamable medley form.
Source.posted by astruc at 11:20 AM PST - 43 comments
June 27
Whether you want to learn to lace shoes, tie shoelaces, stop shoelaces from coming undone, calculate shoelace lengths or even repair aglets,
Ian's Shoelace Site has the answer!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:47 PM PST - 22 comments
June 26
Many people are up in arms (heh) over the Supreme Court's decision regarding gun control, but rather less press is being given to another opinion handed down today:
Davis v. FEC. The issue was the constitutionality of the
"Millionaire's Amendment", which allowed for political candidates facing self-funding challengers who intended to spend more than $350,000 to raise more money from individual donors than they would otherwise be allowed to do.
In a 5-4 decision, the court found the law unconstitutional.
[more inside]posted by Bromius at 3:55 PM PST - 16 comments
"I’m Charlie Cappa floating through his nightclub in a sharp Italian suit in MEAN STREETS, Henry Hill being lead through the back door of the Copacabana to a table right in front of the stage in GOODFELLAS, or Ace Rothstein at the dead center of the frame as he walks through the Tangiers in CASINO. I’m also Michael Barnes and I am walking through Atlanta Game Factory on a summer day three years ago. Imagine the Ronettes or the Rolling Stones on the soundtrack and you’ve got a pretty good picture of what it felt like to walk into AGF at the peak of its powers. All my life I wanted to be a game store owner."
Gameshark has just posted the tenth and final installment of
the strange saga of the rise and fall of the Atlanta Game Factory.posted by arcanecrowbar at 3:50 PM PST - 13 comments
Two Current correspondents are the first American journalists to venture into Mogadishu, Somalia after the infamous 1993 incident when two U.S. military Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by Somali militia. They film one of city street gun markets to show how easy it is to
buy an AK-47, a machine gun or even RPG launcher. Their full-length video report
Mogadishu Madness reveals the country under the self-proclaimed government of the Islamic Court Union, which was later overthrown with the help of the United Sates.
posted by Surfin' Bird at 8:18 AM PST - 33 comments
In an intriguing blog entry the mysterious jasminembla muses about the man in the moon, and his relationship with thorns, linking finally to a most remarkable collection of sourced and footnoted Victorian
Moon Lore authored by a Rev. Timothy Harley, 1885. In the "
Man in the Moon" section, we learn that, indeed, the man in the moon has been traditionally linked with thorns, variously being exiled to the moon for stealing a bundle of brambles, strewing brambles on the path to church to hinder the pious, or cutting wood on the Sabbath, among other infractions - and that this folktale has existed since at least 1157, when an English abbot asks, in Latin, "
Do you not know what the people call the rustic in the moon who carries the thorns? Whence one vulgarly speaking says,
"The Rustic in the moon /
Whose burden weighs him down /
This changeless truth reveals /
He profits not who steals."
Furthermore, no less a personage than Shakespeare has mentioned the thorny situation of the poor man in the moon... and most interesting, perhaps, the rather convincing theory that the bramble-burdened man in the moon may very well be an older "Jack" of Jack and Jill fame, who did not steal, but was stolen by the moon, along with his sister.
[more inside]posted by taz at 5:46 AM PST - 19 comments
June 25
Citations on the fly. WorldCat
previously, the world's online largest catalog of library holdings, got
its own Facebook page in early 2008. That was pretty cool, but now WorldCat has upped the ante again by introducing another Facebook app called
CiteMe. Using CiteMe, Facebook users can look up any item in WorldCat (there's over 1 billion of 'em) and get its properly-formatted citation (choose from APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, or Turabian styles) instantly. For more than a few citations, you can still build a bibliography of any size in your favorite style,
directly on the WorldCat site.
posted by Rykey at 5:59 PM PST - 23 comments
A few days ago a
post appeared on the Something Awful forums noting a curious website called
Notes to Mary. The notes are a series of threatening letters from a high schooler named Robert to his crush, Mary. The goons figured out pretty quickly that they had an
ARG on their hands and went to work on solving the puzzle.
Several other forums picked up on the game. Robert began interacting with players, sending them strange messages and several series of numbers that appeared to be some sort of code. A
Flickr pool was started. Players even created an IRC channel to swap clues and information in real time. The Notes to Mary site offered a link to a login. All effort was made to crack the user/pass combo. Finally, several days after the game began, users were finally able to log in. The game was solved. The players would be rewarded for their hard work. Where did the login lead?
Here.
[more inside]posted by lysistrata at 4:07 PM PST - 35 comments
"It's somewhat fitting that a man named
Charles Bird King--a name both eminently European yet vaguely Amerindian--would depict the natives of the American East (Creek, Crow, Seminole, Cherokee, Choctaw, Iowa, Fox, Winnebago, etc) at a time when there was a semblance of parity (parody of parity?) between the Old and New Worlds. This was expressed in the dress of natives as well as many whites who lived among them: European brass gorgets and artfully knotted cravats around the neck of a men with painted faces and feathers in their hair. The synthesis is breathtaking: both fierce and fey. It's a damn pity the European influence eventually crushed the Native--this could very well have become our national mode of dress."
Lord Whimsy.
posted by vronsky at 12:56 PM PST - 8 comments
"For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that
the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable." How do you know? The renewal copyright records have traditionally been scattered and hard to access, but Google - with the help of Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly typed in every word - has just released a single database as a
freely downloadable XML file.
posted by stbalbach at 8:23 AM PST - 54 comments
Back in the 80s DiC produced a cartoon, aired in syndication and on ABC Saturday Mornings, called "
The Real Ghostbusters." Based on the popular action-comedy movie, it more-or-less continued the adventures of Ray, Egon, Winston and
Garfield Peter through seven seasons of supernatural shenanigans. It could have been a mere cash-in, but there was something more to it. It aspired to realism, at least as much as possible. It was story-edited by
J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5. (He also worked on
He-Man and
Murder She Wrote!)
This may explain the second season episode, written by
Michael Reaves and rife with Lovecraft references, in which the Ghostbusters face down the Cthulhu cult.
Part 1 -
Part 2 -
Part 3posted by JHarris at 3:29 AM PST - 64 comments
June 24
The Great Moon Hoax of 1835. During the last week of August 1835, the
New York Sun published a six-part article about the discovery - purportedly by renowned astronomer Sir John Herschel - of fantastical life on the moon, including herds of bison, blue unicorns, "a primitive tribe of hut-dwelling, fire-wielding biped beavers, and a race of winged humans living in pastoral harmony around a mysterious, golden-roofed temple." The public's reaction was a mix of credulity and skepticism. Read the full text of the serialized articles:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5,
Part 6.
posted by amyms at 11:12 PM PST - 37 comments
"One in five U.S. workers regularly attends after-work drinks with co-workers, where the most common mishaps range from bad-mouthing another worker to kissing a colleague and drinking too much, according to
a study released on Tuesday."
* And "why do workers go to happy hour? The majority (82 percent) of workers report that they attend happy hour to bond with their co-workers, while another 20 percent find it to be a great way to network. Fifteen percent of workers said they attend to hear the latest office gossip, while 13 percent only go because they feel obligated to be there. One-in-ten workers (11 percent) use happy hour as a way to bond with their boss"
[more inside]posted by ericb at 4:03 PM PST - 76 comments
The Itch: The New Yorker's suprisingly interesting Annals of Medicine article which includes the story of a woman whose scalp itched so badly she scratched through it. And then through her skull.
posted by nevercalm at 2:26 PM PST - 88 comments
Project Genesis - "It's destined to be the world's largest cruise ship—when launched next year, Royal Caribbean's US$1.24 billion
Project Genesis will be 1,180 feet long, and carry 5400 passengers (6,400 at a pinch). It's the most expensive ship in history, and it's longer, wider and taller than the largest ocean liner ever built, (
Cunard's QE II), 43 per cent larger in size than the world's largest cruise ship, (
Freedom of the Seas [previously]) and remarkably, bigger than any military ship ever built, aircraft carriers included. In a world where choice of amenities count, Project Genesis has yet another trump card—in the the center of the ship is a lush, tropical park which opens to the sky." cf.
The Lilypadposted by kliuless at 1:03 PM PST - 81 comments
"When my daughter Alison was born, in the tradition of a new parent, I began to photograph her, initially in a separate and private body of work. However, in the process of documenting Alison's growth, I developed a passionate interest in human relationships and capturing intimate moments in the lives of family and friends...." A haunting photographic essay from
Jack Radcliffe.
posted by dersins at 9:42 AM PST - 42 comments
Man fined for stuffing 13 people in a Volvo. Big news story today in Wales about a man fined and banned from driving for driving around Llandudno with 12 passengers in his Volvo. There's a handy little film attached so you can see just how difficult this is. Great to see license fee money being used for such hard-hitting investigative journalism like this, silly season's come early. Giving the current fuel costs in the UK, expect to see more of this OTT car pooling.
posted by Dio at 8:58 AM PST - 44 comments
Here
for your delectation are the Web Flash Festival 2008
finalists and winners. I know we are supposed to post the best of the web. I know we are not supposed to editorialise. But… but… CRIKEY! Even the best is execrable. What's going on in the Flash world?
[requires flash]posted by tellurian at 7:44 AM PST - 22 comments
Do you enjoy classic 2D platformers? Then boy, are you in luck! The
indie game community is thriving, and a good majority of its games are exactly that. I've spent many hours playing these unique, beautiful, and often exceptional projects, and there's quite a few - more than I can count on my fingers! - that could stand toe-to-toe with the finest contemporary games. Inside is a list of some of the greatest indie platformers, based on community recommendations and my own experience. Enjoy!
[more inside]posted by archagon at 3:28 AM PST - 48 comments
"There is no reason that the Internet should be lawless," President Nicolas Sarkozy told his cabinet, as
Culture Minister Christine Albanel presented
a new bill designed to encourage responsible use of the Internet. The legislation would set up a new administrative body that would receive complaints from the music and film industry and track down offenders through Internet service providers. An e-mail warning would be sent to suspected downloaders followed by a registered letter. After two strikes, offenders would risk losing their Internet subscription for up to a year. "We know that we are not going to eradicate piracy 100 percent, but we think that we can reduce it significantly," Albanel told a news conference.
[more inside]posted by three blind mice at 12:55 AM PST - 143 comments
June 23
The Man Without a Face -
"A Jehovah's Witness who for decades refused all surgery on his horrific facial disfigurement has been given hope by a British doctor and new medical technology." from the Telegraph.co.uk. (Possible NSFW or bad for the squeemish)
posted by blue_beetle at 9:28 PM PST - 78 comments
Philip Pullman interviewed about the ideas behind "His Dark Materials" [YT,1 hour, South Bank Show,parts
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7]. Inside, and hidden from those who don't want spoilers, are links relating to the ideas raised and about the books generally.
[more inside]posted by rongorongo at 4:40 PM PST - 85 comments
Breakdown. First-hand accounts of the impact and stigma of mental illness. Moving subject matter presented in a way that updates traditional newspaper reporting.
posted by GuyZero at 1:05 PM PST - 18 comments
A Dispatches documentary
Gaza: The Killing Zone shows the shocking reality of seemingly ordinary Palestinians caught in the crossfire between Hamas and Israeli forces. Feels almost like a sci-fi movie about some fictional totalitarian regime. Hard to believe it's their everyday life. WARNING: contains scenes of graphic violence, which you may find disturbing.
posted by Surfin' Bird at 9:45 AM PST - 65 comments
MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and they take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.
posted by FunkyHelix at 9:13 AM PST - 43 comments
Record player + video camera =
Phonographantasmascope, animator Jim LeFevre's extension of the zoetrope. "It is all live action and works by using the shutter speed of the camera rather than the rather irritating stroboscope methods other 3D Zoetropes use."
posted by nthdegx at 12:38 AM PST - 15 comments
June 22
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Example. (
via)
posted by blue_beetle at 8:54 PM PST - 27 comments
"I began to realize that "robots"-- in all their various forms-- can really be seen as a symbol of a larger relationship between people and technology." In 1988,
Frederick Schodt wrote about the Japanese fascination and use of robots in his book
Inside the Robot Kingdom, curious by the disparities between American and Japanese manufacturing processes . In 1988, the American public wasn't ready for the book, or for robots.
Today, Japan still has embraced
robotic automation in a way that arguably no other country has. For more similar topics,
Mangobot is a column that reports on Asian futurism.
posted by artifarce at 7:22 PM PST - 22 comments
Pakistan’s Phantom Border. "Pakistan is often called the most dangerous country on earth. Increasingly, its people would agree. Despite nearly $6 billion in U.S. military aid for the border region since 9/11, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and homegrown terrorist groups have eroded the border with Afghanistan, inflicting a steady toll of suicide bombings. Going where few Westerners dare—from Taliban strongholds to undercover-police headquarters—the author sees what’s tearing the country apart."
posted by homunculus at 4:55 PM PST - 24 comments
"Bishop contends that as Americans have moved over the past three decades, they have clustered in communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and in the end, politics. There are endless variations of this clustering—what Bishop dubs the Big Sort—as like-minded Americans self-segregate in states, cities—even neighborhoods. Consequences of the Big Sort are dire: balkanized communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible; a growing intolerance for political differences that has made national consensus impossible; and politics so polarized that Congress is stymied and elections are no longer just contests over policies, but bitter choices between ways of life. "
Article about the book from
the Economist. Book's
Website. A
review. posted by wittgenstein at 11:21 AM PST - 49 comments
On June 22, 1985,
Air India flight 182 left Montreal en route to Delhi with 329 passengers aboard, most of them Canadian. Four hours later,
an explosion in the baggage compartment destroyed the plane, killing all on board. Premiering tonight on CBC television,
this documentary (trailer) recounts the final hours, days and weeks before the plane disappeared off Irish radar screens. It reveals the story of how Canada’s first major counter-terrorism operation failed to thwart the conspiracy and details the errors that resulted in the world’s most lethal act of aviation terrorism before Sept. 11.
(previously on MetaFilter) [more inside]posted by netbros at 7:21 AM PST - 31 comments
June 21
Snail mail isn't that slow,
unless you use real snails.... As part of a "
slow art"
project, Vicki Isley and Paul Smith of Bournemouth University have attached radio frequency identification chips (RFID's) to three gastropods, Austin, Cecil and Muriel. The RFID's will pick up your mail as the carriers amble past an electronic reader and deliver it when (in just a few days! ...or weeks ...or months....) they slip past a second reader....
RealSnailMail!
[more inside]posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 10:37 AM PST - 15 comments
The black backs by and on which the fortunes of the New South were built:
On March 30, 1908, Green Cottenham was arrested by the sheriff of Shelby County, Alabama, and charged with “vagrancy.”... Cottenham’s offense was blackness.... [After a brief trial] Cottenham... was sold. Under a standing arrangement between the county and a vast subsidiary of the industrial titan of the North — U.S. Steel Corporation — the sheriff turned the young man over to the company for the duration of his sentence.... he was chained inside a long wooden barrack at night and required to spend nearly every waking hour digging and loading coal. His required daily “task” was to remove eight tons of coal from the mine. Cottenham was subject to the whip for failure to dig the requisite amount, at risk of physical torture for disobedience, and vulnerable to the sexual predations of other miners.... Forty-five years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing American slaves, Green Cottenham and more than a thousand other black men toiled under the lash at Slope 12.
— from the Introduction to
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II. The
book's website includes
reviews of the book, an
excerpt of the Introduction, and an extensive photo gallery that includes
disturbing images of enslaved and tortured prisoners. [more inside]posted by orthogonality at 1:12 AM PST - 94 comments
June 20
Did you happen to see those "
making-popcorn-pop-with-a-cellphone" clips that showed up at the end of last month on the toobs? Well,
WIRED wrote about it, and a kajillion copycat clips showed up in about the time it'd take to, you know, make some popcorn. Turns out it was a viral, natch, as a cursory search will reveal. But just today a clip appeared that
explains how the actual stunt was pulled off. Well, anyway, as you've probably guessed by now, this is all just an excuse to link to
Popcorn. Yep,
Popcorn.
[more inside]posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:01 PM PST - 42 comments
Mashup artist Gregg Gillis, aka
Girl Talk, is another artist to try the 'pay whatever you want' Internet release model. However, his
55-minute album consists of over 300 samples from other artists, with many current and past hits. No stranger to current controversies in copyright, Gillis also appeared in the documentary
Good Copy Bad Copy.
Previously. [more inside]posted by uaudio at 2:32 PM PST - 44 comments
Project Dalek:
Alan has deliberately 'beefed up' the dome. From a child's eye view it looks like half an inch thick battle armour but the dome is really only four millimetres in thickness. This looks more substantial when viewed from underneath - an angle from which children often see Daleks. [more inside]posted by cowbellemoo at 8:37 AM PST - 26 comments
Abrupt climate change is popularly thought of in the
movies. But
new Greenland ice core findings show two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes occured prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago, with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just 50 years. These followed a massive "reorganization" of atmospheric circulation taking just
one or two years. "We know such events are in Earth's future, but we don't know when .. we are speeding blindly down a narrow road, hoping there are no curves ahead."
[more inside]posted by stbalbach at 8:03 AM PST - 21 comments
To kick off the northern hemisphere's
summer solstice, an
old favorite from the original
Eddie Cochran,
The Who,
Van Halen,
Blue Cheer,
Brian Setzer,
T. Rex,
Bruce Springsteen, yes, even
Hanson. But wait, last but not least,
Alvin and the Chipmunks.
posted by netbros at 6:51 AM PST - 25 comments
June 19
FridayFun: This
game is absolutely ridiculous, but you'll enjoy it anyway! (
Via)
posted by P.o.B. at 9:31 PM PST - 33 comments
The Milgram Experiment Today? "Students commonly assume that, even if
Milgram’s famous experiment sheds important light on the power of situation today, were his experiment precisely reproduced today, it would not generate comparable results. To oversimplify the argument behind that claim: The power of white lab coats just ain’t what it used to be. Of course, that assertion has been difficult to challenge given that the option of replicating the Milgram experiment has been presumptively unavailable — indeed, it has been the paradigmatic example of why psychology experiments must be reviewed by institutional review boards ('IRBs'). Who would even attempt to challenge that presumption? The answer:
Jerry Burger, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University. With some slight modifications, Burger manage to obtain permission to replicate Milgram’s experiment — and the results may surprise you."
[Via MindHacks]posted by homunculus at 4:35 PM PST - 60 comments
"I've switched from building my own installations to painting ones I've found".
NewArt Tv interviews artist
Cindy Tower at one of her many makeshift studios in the industrial ruins of East St. Louis, where she's covertly creating paintings as part of her
Workplace Series. "We need to find a way to
sell more paintings so I can hire you full time", she tells her bodyguard, Edgar. Until then, most days she makes do with a dummy.
[more inside]posted by stagewhisper at 3:41 PM PST - 9 comments
I love nicely done home-built aircraft. I discovered
Mark Langford's website over a year ago but forgot to bookmark it. Thankfully, I recently found it again.
His dedication (obsession?) is obvious. I can't get over how many parts he custom built for his plane. He suffered an engine failure in his Corvair engine at one point, and I loved how he took the engine apart afterward and gave a full rundown about what happened.
posted by eratus at 2:58 PM PST - 8 comments
Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town.
posted by swift at 1:59 PM PST - 209 comments
Searchme is a search engine that displays results as images of web pages.
posted by xod at 9:10 AM PST - 22 comments
Calling your personal online radio station
the best of everything seems designed to provoke controversy. But in this case it's just one "mature consumer" taking a stand against big media and youth oriented marketing. Be sure to read the
about page.
[more inside]posted by Grod at 9:08 AM PST - 24 comments
New Kiribati "...will future climate change refugees become a new caste of service sector workers inhabiting a sort of Floating Hotel & Duty Free Mall ... ?"
Small island states are on the front line.
posted by nthdegx at 8:16 AM PST - 3 comments
"We like to play gladiator. You know what I mean? Let two gangs beat each other up without weapons, and the winner gets to deal on the corner. Or, we grab a bunch of muggers, or maybe two crews who steal cars, and tell them, “Okay, you all fight each other — the one still standing gets to avoid jail.” I know: it sounds awful, but believe me, this really works."
Cops tell Freakonomics "
the things that cops do to keep the peace that no one wants to know about.”"posted by plexi at 7:44 AM PST - 92 comments
June 18
Slangin' Liquor in the Hood From the site:
A look into the everyday dealings of a 34 year old liquor store owner and his crew in the "hood." Gangs, trailer parks, alcoholics, methheads, crack heads (yeah they still exist)....I read somewhere that this profession makes the top 5 regularly among the most dangerous jobs. But me, I ain't scurred. [more inside]posted by The ____ of Justice at 8:48 PM PST - 21 comments
R.I.P., Arizona Parking Solutions. Guy parks car without displaying his pass.
APS boots car. Guy dollies car
into his garage and invites APS to reclaim their boots. Or not; their choice: either way, they can't tow, he won't pay the fine, and he really doesn't need to be driving the car. This catch-22 upsets the owner. And eventually
APS goes off the deep end, booting nearly everyone's car in the community. The media becomes involved. And we become witness to a business owner suiciding his own business.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:55 PM PST - 129 comments
Nick Sanderson, ex-lead singer of UK art rockers
Earl Brutus, has passed away. Earl Brutus were one of the most overlooked bands of the Britpop era, Sanderson himself being a swaggering hybrid of Jarvis Cocker and Mark E Smith. If you've not heard any of their music, just listen to (and watch)
Come Taste my Mind (YT), and have a taste of the Brutus.
posted by hnnrs at 4:31 PM PST - 9 comments
H.A.R.O., or "Help A Reporter Out," is the brainchild of Peter Shankman (aka
skydiver on Twitter). Embracing the philosophy that "Everyone is an expert on something," HARO matches reporters and authors up with sources through the simple process of a sign-up form. Seems like a good match for all the experts here on MeFi.
[more inside]posted by misha at 10:39 AM PST - 47 comments
The United States Conference of
Mayors will take place from June 20th-24th in
Miami, FL. The
agenda (pdf)
includes rising energy costs, housing, water, transportation, street crime, public schools, gangs, health care quality and costs, secure airports and ports, illegal guns, drugs, and immigration with a special focus on
climate protection initiatives. Not to mention
speakers Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton.
[more inside]posted by lunit at 10:11 AM PST - 2 comments
Oops! Swiss national broadcaster SRG turned back time on Monday when, while broadcasting an Austria/Germany soccer match, it offered subtitles accompanying Germany's national anthem that mistakenly included the "Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles" lyrics, a verse popular under Nazi rule but ignored since the fall of the Third Reich. The melody,
Das Deutschlandlied, comes courtesy of Joseph Haydn, who penned the ditty in 1797.
[more inside]posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:20 AM PST - 36 comments
The King of the Ferret Leggers Reg Mellor has been a hero of mine ever since I first heard of him, maybe ten years ago. A total whack-job, it's true; a hero nonetheless. I've been a member here for a while and hadn't posted anything, thought of Reg, searched and found nothing posted here about him; I'm hoping some of the rest of you will enjoy reading about him as much as I have.
posted by dancestoblue at 1:30 AM PST - 25 comments
June 17
These "track boards," or "fix push" boards, were initially developed to be raced in the velodrome, and differ from traditional skateboards in one major way: the rider can never coast.
A brief documentary on the increasingly popular fix-push skateboard culture and its roots in San Francisco's Mission district.
[more inside]posted by whir at 9:38 PM PST - 54 comments
Pig lost! Boss say that it Grunk fault. Say Grunk forget about closing gate. Maybe boss right. Grunk not remember forgetting, but maybe Grunk just forget. Boss say Grunk go find pig, bring it back. Him say, if Grunk not bring back pig, not bring back Grunk either. Grunk like working at pig farm, so now Grunk need find pig. [more inside]posted by not_on_display at 3:37 PM PST - 37 comments
Le réseau - Starting in the late 19th century, Belgian
Paul Otlet envisioned the basics of a human powered Wikipedia and Google. He created a 12 million item database on index cards and accepted queries via mail or telegraph. The article describes his work and the Mundaneum museum in his honor. Be sure to watch the video. There is a
full documentary on Otlet as well.
posted by Argyle at 7:15 AM PST - 8 comments
June 16
Rare Kishore Kumar Songs is a website dedicated to the music of legendary Bollywood
playback singer and comic actor
Kishore Kumar. There are hundreds of songs, many with other Bollywood legends, such as Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar. There are also songs by Kishore's son Amit. All songs and videos are in Real Player format and in low quality.
posted by Kattullus at 8:07 PM PST - 9 comments
Baby Bust! After 200 years of exponential population growth, and just four decades after overpopulation doomsaying began filling the bestseller lists, the First World is suddenly gripped with underpopulation hysteria. The governments of the developed world have always maintained an interest in birthrates and procreation, but the reasons why are changing, and the ensuing demographic debates about gender, race and culture are "ideologically fraught and scientifically questionable."
posted by amyms at 10:42 AM PST - 120 comments
Forgotten Architects: In the 1920s and early 1930s, German Jewish architects created some of the greatest modern buildings in Germany, mainly in the capital Berlin. A law issued by the newly elected German National Socialist Government in 1933 banned all of them from practicing architecture in Germany. In the years after 1933, many of them managed to emigrate, while many others were deported or killed under Hitler’s regime.
Pentagram Papers 37: Forgotten Architects is a survey of
43 of these architects and their groundbreaking work.
[more inside]posted by sveskemus at 5:38 AM PST - 10 comments
June 15
You won't find
Donkeyskin in many modern fairy-tale anthologies, perhaps because it concerns a girl so beautiful that her own father wanted to marry her. But don't worry, she dresses up as a donkey and escapes! Made famous by Charles Perrault, the story has
many variants--Catskin, Allerleirauh, Thousandfurs, The She-Bear, All Kinds of Fur--and has been subject to many
interpretations. The tale was illustrated by several of the great gift-book illustrators, including
Arthur Rackham,
Kay Nielsen,
Gustave Doré, and the less well-known
R. de la Neziere. (More R. de la Neziere
here and
here.) Oh, and here's a
sexy one.
[more inside]posted by Powerful Religious Baby at 4:09 PM PST - 38 comments
Afuganisu-tan is a simple and impossibly cute manga illustrating the background and development of conflict in Central Asia. In which we learn that "Afuganisu-tan gets picked on a lot and has bad luck." Also, "Meriken is a superhero fanatic and has a tendency to think her version of justice is right for everyone."
[more inside]posted by hellopanda at 1:43 PM PST - 34 comments
Gore Vidal on The New York Times Magazine. On McCain: "Who started this rumor that he was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?". On WFB's death: "I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred".
[more inside]posted by falameufilho at 1:17 PM PST - 118 comments
Suppose you have a problem with your thinking, your mood, or your relationships. Come in, sit down, and let the internet help. Meet
MoodGym and its newer sister site,
e-couch.
[more inside]posted by sondrialiac at 11:13 AM PST - 8 comments
Photographer Zaida Ben-Yusuf (1869-1933) was an important figure in the pictorialist photography movement in late 19th and early 20th century New York. The first woman to embark on building a "gallery of illustrious Americans," Ben-Yusuf attracted to her Fifth Avenue studio many of the most prominent artistic, literary, theatrical and political figures of her day. See the first
exhibit ever on her photography at the
National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC (through Sept. 1), view the
online exhibit or read the
book.
posted by gudrun at 9:32 AM PST - 3 comments
June 14
GemCraft Flash Tower Defense goodness. Neat little rpg/upgrading touches in between maps. Lots of maps with some epic bosses thrown in every once in a while.
[more inside]posted by juv3nal at 8:39 PM PST - 32 comments
Should Michael Reagan be free to say
this on syndicated radio? Should Mark Dice be free to say
this (NSFW audio) on his website?
[more inside]posted by an egg at 11:44 AM PST - 172 comments
I Love My Life The Way It Is. A collection-in-progress of unscratched scratch-off lottery tickets, the project is the brainchild of Ali Alvarez, who hopes to collect at least 8000 tickets, enough to fill a 12x12 room from floor to ceiling. Alvarez is soliciting donations of unscratched tickets from volunteers around the world, and has posted pictures of some of the ones received so far. The idea of an unscratched lottery ticket makes some people "a little crazy," but Alvarez hopes the collection will cause people to explore the ideas of "getting your hopes high, dreaming, escaping, and then usually being let down."
Via.posted by amyms at 9:09 AM PST - 75 comments
Have you been salmoned? I just met a stranger from Denver via the process of salmoning, in which a chatbot initiates an unexpected two-way conversation between two (apparently random) nicks, giving them both aliases ending with "salmon," and leaving both parties confused.
[more inside]posted by Mo Nickels at 7:42 AM PST - 26 comments
June 13
"The pervasive narcissism and cartoon chest-thumping of young black culture no longer jibes with what's essentially a sacrificial game. Basketball hawks the individual star. Football offers glamour jobs like quarterback, running back, receiver. For baseball, meanwhile, sacrifice is an actual statistic: The best fail in 70 percent of their at-bats. 'The thing about baseball is that it's such a team sport,' Philadelphia's Rollins told Sports Illustrated. 'And when you're in the inner city, it's all about being the man, about establishing your strength as an individual. So how can you be the man? You want that ball in your hands with three seconds on the clock to take the shot, or you want the football under your arm. That's how.'
Race, class, families, fathers, and baseball:
Where Have All the Black Guys Gone?posted by mudpuppie at 4:02 PM PST - 61 comments
The Cosmic Womb: Recently published findings from researchers with the Imperial College
London’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering seem to bolster the case for
extra-terrestrial sources for the origins of life on Earth. (A PDF of the published results can be downloaded
here, if you want the technical specifics.)
[more inside]posted by saulgoodman at 12:08 PM PST - 27 comments
Earth2100.tv is a
project by ABC (video preview) to solicit ideas from the public and experts about the dangers facing world in the next 100 years. "The world’s brightest minds agree that the “perfect storm” of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results. We need you to bring this story to life."
posted by stbalbach at 8:14 AM PST - 25 comments
42 days and a
resignation. The day after the British Labour government narrowly won a parliamentary vote to extend the time that the police can hold people for questioning without charge from 28 days to 42 days, Tory frontbench MP David Davis has
resigned his seat. David Davis is a senior member of the main parliamentary opposition party - who strongly opposed the 42 day bill - and has stepped down to fight a by-election for his own constituency to start a debate over "the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government".
[more inside]posted by ArkhanJG at 4:41 AM PST - 39 comments
June 12
Taking a look through
this site, I can see why bird watching is such a popular hobby. From the
common to the
bizarre to the
downright adorable. this site has a little... no, scratch that, a whole lot of everything. I suggest starting at the family list on the lower left hand column of the main page and trounsing about for a spell; it's
good for the soul.posted by ignorantguru at 8:41 PM PST - 12 comments
Goodbye alt.* Andrew Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist. In a press release, he took credit for [Verizon's] blunderbuss-style newsgroup removal by saying: "We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers...I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry." Verizon eliminates the entire alt. subset of usenet.
Today, the alt.* hierarchy is by far the most populous on Usenet.posted by caddis at 7:07 PM PST - 143 comments
"On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School
[Oceanside, California] to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend. Classmates wept. Some became hysterical. A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving." While the school defends its actions, some students are protesting: "
Death is real. Don't play with our emotions."
[more inside]posted by ericb at 5:13 PM PST - 138 comments
RestoftheMovie.com will probably be taken offline pretty soon, since it seems like they show full (screener) versions of current movies (like
Kung Fu Panda and
Ironman) in streaming format, so you'll probably want to check it out sooner rather than later.
posted by Dave Faris at 4:02 PM PST - 34 comments
In a five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court ruled today that detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to habeas corpus review:
Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom’s first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers.[...] Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law.
Decision,
Summary,
Analysisposted by anotherpanacea at 2:54 PM PST - 118 comments
Hoping for the best for Mefites in eastern Iowa. I was CR born and raised, and just watching
the feed on KCRG is ...disturbing. It looks like the height of the Cedar River is estimated at 25.4 feet, and
it hasn't crested yet. They've
lost a railroad bridge downtown so far, and the news feed keeps tracking the rise of the river by standing outside the studio and watching the water approaching.
[more inside]posted by thanotopsis at 1:16 PM PST - 53 comments
These days, spice is integral to ideas of kimchi in both the West and Korea—it’s always a funny game trying to convince various restaurant ladies here that I can, in fact, eat kimchi without spewing two ribbons of fire from my nostrils, thereby singing the wallpaper and confirming their suspicions that we white folks are just a bunch of food pussies. “Maeun-kot” (“spicy shit!”), they say, making flamey-flamey motions with their hands; “Yes,” I say, “Maeun umshik-ul chal mogoyo” (“I can eat spicy food, no lie, please stop looking at me like I’m a recalcitrant goat who’s about to try to eat a roll of barbed wire”).posted by jason's_planet at 10:03 AM PST - 64 comments
Are you, like many others this summer, considering avoiding the costs & hassles of pricey foreign or domestic travel by having a "
staycation" at home? Daily Show commenter John Hodgman (ably backed by Jonathan Coulton on the strings)
enumerates the benefits of a "Holistay" (much better name) to help you make your choice.
posted by jonson at 9:37 AM PST - 41 comments
Blackboards were wiped after use: they were meant for immediate communication, not for record. Even as they were being used, their messages were continuously revised, erased and renewed. But when Einstein came to Oxford in 1931, he was already an international celebrity. After one of his lectures a blackboard was preserved and has become a kind of relic. It is the most famous object in this Museum.
[more inside]posted by Fizz at 7:37 AM PST - 50 comments
So you'd like to see daily photographs taken in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area? You can start with
What I'm Seeing and supplement your viewing with the following sites.
[more inside]posted by whir at 7:30 AM PST - 10 comments
It began when Mr. Klinsky threw in his two cents, a vague request that a poem he had written for and about his family be lodged in a wall somewhere, Ms. Sherry said, “put in a bottle and hidden away as if it were a time capsule.”
Sometimes when you make a simple suggestion about the remodeling of your $8.5 million 5th Ave. apartment, the designer goes a little
overboard. In an awesome way. Don't miss the
slideshow.
posted by Who_Am_I at 7:03 AM PST - 81 comments
June 11
Starshine - catch the stars with your comet by clicking on the centres of gravity at the right times. Short, relaxing, charming Flash game.
posted by divabat at 6:33 PM PST - 17 comments
[NSFW]"The following program is in living color and has been rated X by the Vietnam academy of maggots. The purpose of this program is to bring vital news, information and hard acid rock to the first termers and non-re-enlistees in the Republic of Vietnam. Radio First Termer operates under no Air Force regulations or manuals. In the event of a vice squad raid this program will automatically self-destruct." Radio First Termer was a pirate radio show broadcast by "Dave Rabbit," an anonymous USAF sergeant, for 63 hours between January 1st and 21st, 1971, out of the back room of a brothel in Saigon, gracing the dial at 69 MHz and 690 AM.
Fearing reprisal from his superiors,
Dave Rabbit then shut
Radio First Termer down and, after returning to the States, went back to living a normal life. 34 years later, while helping his son on a homework assignment,
Dave came across old recordings of his show. He's since revived
his old persona via
podcast, and has also brought Radio First Termer back to the warzone--
to Baghdad, Iraq. [more inside]posted by not_on_display at 6:13 PM PST - 11 comments
A fairly convincing website for a fake airline added to the outrage some felt in Philadelphia when newspaper ads promised airfares based passengers' weights. "Philadelphia to L.A., $2.25/pound" read the ads.
posted by polysigma at 6:01 PM PST - 90 comments
The record has finally been set for an Onion article
(video, actually) to turn into
real life. It's now a real game. You can download
it. It's free.
time: about 1 day.
The subject is MMORPGS (pronounced 'more pigs') and how popular they are.
(more inside for descriptions)
[more inside]posted by Miles Long at 12:11 PM PST - 26 comments
"I wanted to ask for survival tips in case I am unexpectedly transported to a random location in Europe (say for instance current France/Benelux/Germany) in the year 1000 AD (plus or minus 200 years). I assume that such transportation would leave me with what I am wearing, what I know, and nothing else. Any advice would help."
How to rock the Middle Ages with your bad 2008 self.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:22 AM PST - 233 comments
Colorful AllusionsThough printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In these rebus-style puzzles, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes.posted by carsonb at 7:58 AM PST - 8 comments
Death were a
proto-punk trio of black Jehovah's Witnesses based out of Detroit back in 1974. They were almost signed to Columbia, but bailed on the label when Columbia wanted them to change their name. Instead, they self-released a 7" which is now
quite a collector's item, influenced as it was by,
“Iggy and Stooges, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and The Who”.
But the story doesn't end there. Recently, Bobby Hackney, whose father played in Death along with two of his uncles, learned of the band and, lo and behold, his dad found the master tapes for their unreleased full-length in his attic. Is a new chapter in
punk rock history about to be written?
posted by stinkycheese at 7:52 AM PST - 35 comments
Lorenzo Semple, 84, has been a screenwriter for more than 50 years; his credits include "Papillion," "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor." Marcia Nasatir, 81, is a longtime agent and production executive, was the first female VP of production at United Artists, and produced films like "The Big Chill" and "Hamburger Hill." Together, they are the "
Reel Geezers," offering irresistible film reviews on YouTube. To wit:
Superbad,
Iron Man,
Sex and the City,
Lars and the Real Girl,
No Country for Old Men,
There Will Be Blood.
[more inside]posted by jbickers at 3:35 AM PST - 27 comments
What is a Munchy Box? In the west of Scotland, in the towns and villages surrounding Glasgow, there is a delicacy available in some of the more discerning fast-food outlets. It’s called the Munchy Box (sometimes just Munch Box) and it’s a sight to behold.posted by armoured-ant at 3:12 AM PST - 91 comments
June 10
With all the
crystal skulls,
nazca lines and such at the box office these days now might be the ideal time to reacquaint yourself with the theories of
Erich von Däniken. What better way to do it than by watching
William Shatners Mysteries of the Gods (
Pt. 1,
Pt. 2,
Pt. 3,
Pt. 4,
Pt. 5,
Pt. 6,
Pt. 7,
Pt. 8,
Pt. 9,
Pt. 10)
(MULTI LINK YOUTUBE SHATNERFEST)posted by Artw at 10:00 PM PST - 28 comments
Tourists black out reflective retinas in snapshots before printing them, and millions of people refer to strangers they’ve never spoken to as friends, because they’ve connected through a social-networking platform. [...] It should come as no surprise, then, that singers sometimes choose to correct recorded flaws in pitch with modern software, like Antares’s Auto-Tune.Sasha Frere-Jones on auto-tuning, in The New Yorker.
[more inside]posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:09 PM PST - 98 comments
Ariana Page Russell:
My own skin frequently blushes and swells. I have dermatographia, a condition in which one’s immune system exhibits hypersensitivity, via skin, that releases excessive amounts of histamine, causing capillaries to dilate and welts to appear (lasting about thirty minutes) when the skin’s surface is lightly scratched. This allows me to painlessly draw patterns and words on my skin, which I then photograph. Images (click skin one or skin two).
Interview.posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:45 PM PST - 33 comments
In the 1980s,
Richard Lenski hypothesized that his research team should be able to watch random mutations and natural selection taking place in a lab by observing a bacteria population over many generations. In 1988, beginning with a single bacterium, he started several replicate colonies. Recently, after 33,127 generations,
his team has observed natural selection.
posted by Tehanu at 4:36 PM PST - 55 comments
I’ve seen men in fur suits masturbating on stuffed animals. I’ve seen high heels stepping on snails. I’ve seen women farting on birthday cakes. I’ve seen guys wearing white socks in two inches of water in the bathtub. I’ve seen a tutorial on how to jack-off with a pair of Keds. And I’ve seen some weird stuff, too. Isn’t there a line of some kind, where it just stops being sexy to anyone? And the answer it seems, is no.... Because there is
sexually explicit salmon hentai. NSFW.
Via FG blog.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:41 PM PST - 87 comments
Is Google Making Us Stupid? "My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."
[more inside]posted by WCityMike at 9:37 AM PST - 85 comments
June 9
Subivor - People should have more protection than a necktie, their shirt or paper towel to cover their mouth, nose and eyes. They need Moist Towelettes too.
[via]posted by tellurian at 11:05 PM PST - 41 comments
NetClassixFilter: The next time you're standing clueless in the greeting cards section of your local drugstore franchise, you'll be wishing you'd visited the
Gallery of Unfortunate Greeting Cards instead. For all your holiday needs:
Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Weddings, 4th of July, Hallowe'
en, Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and of course,
Washington's Birthday. [via Cap'n Wacky] [more inside]posted by not_on_display at 8:33 PM PST - 18 comments
At last, a study on video games that is grounded in common sense. Two scientists say their results can best be summed up in one word: relax. It's okay for kids to play videogames. What's more, parents can enjoy gaming with their kids. The relationship between videogames and violence is anything but causal. One interesting finding: those middle school boys most likely to bully others are the ones who play
no videogames at all.
posted by misha at 1:28 PM PST - 52 comments
Boss Bitching is a user driven social content website that allows anonymous postings of stories about bosses.
posted by Fizz at 1:04 PM PST - 14 comments
Sucking CO2 out of the air has long been a holy grail for solving global warming; Richard Branson has promised $25m to anyone who succeeds. Of course it's already been done, but the amount of energy required doesn't make it net carbon positive. Now a team in Arizona, led by
Klaus Lacknet under the company of
Global Research Technologies, says it has made a
significant breakthrough that massively reduces the amount of energy required - the "project has reached the stage where it is quite clear we can do it." The planned prototype, which will be finished in two years, will cost $200,000 USD, be smaller than a shipping container and be capable of eliminating around 1 ton of CO2. Even if it works many hurdles remain but it portends a cooler future for air-capture technology.
posted by stbalbach at 6:08 AM PST - 76 comments
June 8
In Bed With Chris Needham (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7)
A BBC video-diary documentary from 1991 depicting the trails and tribulations of a teenage metal fan as he tries to knock his band, Manslaughter, into shape for its first gig, with many digressions into his philosophy of life along the way. Some NSFW swearing.
[more inside]posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:46 PM PST - 12 comments
The horrifying crimes of Joseph Fritzl shocked Austria and the world. Recently two essays explored Austrian literature in an attempt to understand what cultural conditions could foster such monstrosity. Nicholas Spice, in
Up from the Cellar, explores the work of Nobel Prize laureate Elfriede Jelinek and her dissection of male violence. Ritchie Robertson searches for antecedents in
Josef Fritzl's fictive forebears.
[via The New Yorker's Book Bench]posted by Kattullus at 10:29 AM PST - 63 comments
What Is A Species? "To this day, scientists struggle with that question. A better definition can influence which animals make the endangered list."
posted by homunculus at 12:12 AM PST - 11 comments
June 7
Paul Nicklen grew up in the Arctic, and his photography is amazing...A short, narrated presentation on the National Geographic site.
posted by HuronBob at 6:39 PM PST - 24 comments
Designers spend about 90% of their waking life in front of a computer, so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors. At their best, desktop wallpapers bring animation to often lifeless computer screens, reflecting the personality of the user and acting as a calling card for creative talent. The
Desktopography Project first arrived in 2005 as a place to download nature / topological themed wallpapers with edits from selected designers. They have just released their 2008 library.
posted by netbros at 5:01 PM PST - 40 comments
NURSE CHILD WANTED, OR TO ADOPT -- The Advertiser, a Widow with a little family of her own, and moderate allowance from her late husband's friends, would be glad to accept the charge of a young child. Age no object. If sickly would receive a parent's care. Terms, Fifteen Shillings a month; or would adopt entirely if under two months for the small sum of Twelve pounds. This kindly nineteenth-century advertisement had a hidden meaning. If a woman paid her adoption fee to a
baby farmer and handed over her infant, no one ever had to worry about that baby, ever again.
[more inside]posted by Countess Elena at 4:23 PM PST - 38 comments
The antithesis of the sexless marriage: 365 days of getting it on, and on, and on. "Let's say you and your spouse haven’t had sex in so long that you can’t remember the last time you did. Not the day. Not the month. Maybe not even the season. Would you look for gratification elsewhere? Would you file for divorce? Or would you turn to your mate and say, 'Honey, you know, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we do it for the next 365 days in a row?'" And of course, how could this be complete without books chronicling all the ins and outs of the experiments?
(NYTimes article, may require registration.)posted by Forktine at 2:23 PM PST - 70 comments
The
public shaming of Orange County billionaire Henry Nicholas continues apace. While his
financial crimes may not have drawn more than a passing reference, his drug use and other, more unsavory acts, have gotten widespread coverage -- as early as
last year. Perhaps, it's because Nicholas was
famously involved in supporting tough sentencing laws (his sister was murdered by her boyfriend in 1983.) However, some of the "tough on crime" policies he has backed as recently as
a few months ago are said to
unfairly worsen the punishment for those who commit crimes much less serious than those for which he was
just indicted.
posted by noway at 1:15 PM PST - 22 comments
Long revered for its value as a
fertilizer, and as a raw material for
explosives, guano is the dried droppings of various birds and bats. The New York Times has published an excellent account of the
Peruvian harvest of this valuable resource including a
multimedia slideshow. Guano was superseded by synthetics in the early part of the 20th century, due to the development of the
Haber Bosch process, which fixed atmospheric
nitrogen.
An attempt to harvest bat guano from a
Grand Canyon cave in the late 1950’s was beset by technical problems and was ultimately unsuccessful. The remaining structures at the canyon rim are now a
tourist attraction.posted by Tube at 12:45 PM PST - 13 comments
"
Imagine the year is 2053 and homosexuality were accepted to the point of being of no importance. Now, is the deviate allowed to continue his pursuit of physical happiness without restraint as he attempts to do today? Or is he, in this Utopia, subject to marriage laws?" The same-sex marriage debate in
ONE magazine in 1953.
[via] posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:30 AM PST - 40 comments
You'd be forgiven for thinking that the iconic American folk song
The Wabash Cannonball was written as a tribute to an actual train, but in fact, in an interesting case of life-imitates-art, the actual train name was inspired by the song. The Lake Erie, Wabash, and St. Louis Railroad Company was formed in 1852, but there was no train called the “Cannonball” when the song was first sung late in the 19th century. There
have been
many,
many,
many wonderful versions through the years, but I think
Roy Acuff pretty much
owns it, wouldn't you say?
[NOTE: See hoverovers for link descriptions] [more inside]posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:49 AM PST - 20 comments
June 6
Until 400 years ago, the Ainu controlled Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands. Today they are a small minority group of Japan. They are a hunting and fishing people whose origins remain in dispute.
Long before the people who would come to be known as "the Japanese" completed their migrations from the Asia mainland, the islands of Japan were already inhabited by a race of people known as the Ainu ("human").
On this northernmost island, (Hokkaido), in the "snow
country," there still may be found remnants of this once proud and vigorous people who roamed the Japan islands long before the Japanese themselves arrived.
More links inside [more inside]posted by dawson at 8:15 PM PST - 35 comments
As the
Seattle PI notes "Paul Allen's '
Flying Heritage Collection' of 15 planes, mostly dating from the 1930s and '40s, is noteworthy both because of its rarity -- several are the only models of their kind remaining -- and its condition -- almost all of them have been refurbished so that they can be flown."
[more inside]posted by maxwelton at 4:27 PM PST - 30 comments
New Allegations Have Surfaced that the US Is Effectively Holding Iraq's Oil Revenues
Hostage to Force through a Proposed Long-Term Strategic Alliance, Raising New
Questions about the US' Committment to an Independent, Self-Governing Iraq. The Deal,
Which in its Current Form is Said to Provide for an Indefinite American Military Presence and Blanket Immunity from Iraqi Law for All American Troops and Civilian Contractors, Is Understandably Not All That Popular with
Many Iraqi Citizens. Iraqi Lawmakers Have Also
Expressed Doubts about the Deal. (IRAQ WAR/POLITICS FILTER.)
posted by saulgoodman at 1:12 PM PST - 79 comments
Wired: "In February, a B-2 stealth bomber crashed in Guam. Now we know why. And we've got video of the scene." (good stuff starts around 1:20)
posted by stbalbach at 11:08 AM PST - 124 comments
"
The Magazineer is a blog about magazine design and print culture, written by people who love, and make, magazines."
{The most recent entry is by Jess, actually.}posted by dobbs at 10:30 AM PST - 8 comments
"'Uncle Adolf' referred to William Patrick as 'my loathsome nephew'." Willy Hitler, the son of Adolf Hitler's half-brother
Alois Hitler, Jr., is one member of
Hitler's extended family, although he wasn't easy to
track down. After WWII, he changed his name and tried to live a private, secret life in the United States. Now, his three sons, relatives of Hitler living normal, regular American lives, have decided to never marry and let their family line die with them.
[more inside]posted by Ms. Saint at 9:40 AM PST - 79 comments
June 5
"I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again. And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure," says author Frederick Forsyth. In the computer age,
people still love typewriters. BBC News Magazine examines why, with some interesting comments after the article.
Via.posted by amyms at 11:04 PM PST - 79 comments
Five years and 800,000 images went into producing a 4 gigapixel
mosaic image of the galactic plane, which when printed out is 180 feet long. But it has been made browser-sized by
GLIMPSE, the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire, the research group which, along with
MIPSGAL, created the image:
A Glimpse of the Milky Way.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 8:42 PM PST - 14 comments
"
Day Ten - Cervix low and closed. Notice blood spot near
os and brown clot near cervix (right). Possibly from vigorous intercourse earlier that day (not
mittelschmerz as I am not ovulating yet)."
First link has graphic photos that may be NSFW.posted by pwb503 at 2:30 PM PST - 110 comments
While many ailments are considered terrifying,
Lesch-Nyhan is the stuff of nightmares. An extremely rare genetic neurological disorder with no cure, it often compels its victims to self-mutilate, even when they understand that doing so causes them harm.
Richard Preston used Lesch-Nyhan as a plot device in his best-selling thriller
The Cobra Event, and went on to write a fascinating article about the disease, its sufferers, and its implications for human behavior in the
New Yorker. [PDF].
[more inside]posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 2:29 PM PST - 35 comments
For Those Who Tried To Rock is a blog about the bands that never went anywhere, for example.
Urbicide,
The Tribulations and
Only One. The band photos are usually accompanied by mp3s and short testimonies, such as this one about
Soft Option: "Flock of Seagulls owned Liverpool when we came together but we were really Depeche Mode fans. Trouble was, we only had one Synth – the Roland pictured above – so on the more complicated songs we covered like Everything Counts (see cassette below) I had to play parts on a Melodica – the small keyboard you blow into. It was my Mother's idea. We went to an all boys school, so the gigs were boys only, which meant we did not get laid but the nights we played were some of the greatest of my adolescence."
[via Carrie Brownstein's Monitor Mix]posted by Kattullus at 1:49 PM PST - 50 comments
123 mm = 12 stacked CD cases. 6 miles = 30 Eiffel Towers. 5 acres = 11 ice hockey rinks.
Sensibleunits.com converts any length, area or mass into real objects.
posted by gottabefunky at 1:19 PM PST - 34 comments
The Meaning of Box 722. Letters to Senator
Paul Douglas of Illinois in reaction to the 1966 civil rights bill, particularly the federal ban on racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. At the time, Chicago was the most segregated city in the north, with boundaries enforced by mob violence. By
Rick Perlstein, author of
Nixonland.
When I started researching NIXONLAND I knew the congressional elections of 1966 would form a crucial part of the narrative. They'd never really been examined in-depth before, but by my reckoning they were the crucial hinge that formed the ideological alignment we live in now. Via Brad DeLong.
posted by russilwvong at 11:46 AM PST - 15 comments
America's for sale. Just ask Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. With the U.S. economy in shambles, Paulson just spent four days touring the Middle East, hat in hand, looking for investors to bail us out. Specifically, on Monday, Paulson met with heads of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the world's largest "sovereign wealth fund" with roughly $875 billion in assets, and encouraged them to buy American businesses.
Mortgaging America by Eric J. Weiner (LA Times Op Ed)
[more inside]posted by ornate insect at 11:15 AM PST - 42 comments
The Safeguard system consisted of three primary components, a Perimeter Acquisition Radar, Missile Site Radar and Remote Sprint Launchers.
Boullée in
North Dakota [via]posted by xod at 10:49 AM PST - 12 comments
June 4
"In this rare documentary, Satyajit Ray talks about his films. Part
1,
2,
3.
Satyajit Ray... is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Born in the city of Calcutta into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and letters, Ray studied at Presidency College and at the Visva-Bharati University. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves during a visit to London. He directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. Ray's first film, Pather Panchali, won eleven international prizes, including Best Human Document at Cannes film festival"
posted by vronsky at 7:04 PM PST - 7 comments
Do Your Strip: A hopeful book and exhibition where 70 artists and illustrators invent a character, provide instructions on how to draw it, then create the first comic adventure. Exhibit-goers would then create additional stories with their favorite characters. All the characters, instructions, and first strips can be seen
here [pdf].
[more inside]posted by artifarce at 6:04 PM PST - 5 comments
Later this year, geophysicist Dan Lathrop's
DIY Planet Earth will be filled with liquid sodium, weigh in at 26 tons, and will be spun-up to 80mph at its equator in an effort to discover how the earth's magnetic field is generated. Currently undergoing tests, even those can be
pretty impressive.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 4:42 PM PST - 34 comments
bomomo is a fun little drawing tool that creates some pretty interesting brush patterns using a variety of physics and mouse behavior. You can even save your finest works (Firefox and Safari only though)
[via mefi projects]posted by mathowie at 1:34 PM PST - 38 comments
The Banyan Tree Foundation promised to take donations from contributors to be redistributed to worthy Canadian recipients. The foundation also gave donors inflated charity receipts for tax declarations, and donors were encouraged to borrow money to contribute even more, and did... from a company now owned by Banyan Tree president Robert Thiessen. Now,
the money has stopped flowing, and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has called the organization a "sham" and is going after Banyan donors for past charity receipts totalling more than CAD$100 million.
[more inside]posted by Shepherd at 9:02 AM PST - 12 comments
By its own admission the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001.
even 200 years ago, there was a general insistence that prisoners be charged with and convicted of a crime before they could be condemned to the lower decks of an aging naval ship.
(
prison hulks previously ).
posted by adamvasco at 3:33 AM PST - 43 comments
June 3
