Family photos of popular Iranian actress, Hedyeh Tehrani (filmography in Farsi), without Islamic Hijab, are so hot in Iran these days. Perhaps because they have always seen her wearing the official dress code for Iranian women, either on the screen or in the streets.
posted by hoder at 11:04 PM PST - 6 comments

Test your Hidden Bias. Tolerance.org has a set of Java-based tests designed to shed light on personal hidden biases w.r.t. race, gender, sexuality, and body image. Your results may surprise you. See also this New York Times article mentioning these tests and more rigorous studies.
posted by tss at 10:29 PM PST - 37 comments

O-H-I-O! I know Metafilter's not exactly a huge group of sports fans, but this was a great (and unexpected) victory! Go Bucks!
posted by valval22 at 9:42 PM PST - 26 comments

The Lost Boys of the Sudan are a group of nearly 17,000 orphans whose parents were murdered and whose homes were destroyed by a government miltary turned against them. They marched on foot, without food or water, under attack from hungry predators & occasional strafing miltary fire for several years until settling in a squalid refugee camp in Kenya; nearly a decade later, the U.S. began a humanitarian policy of importing them, a few at a time, and resettling the lucky few in cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, and even Fargo, N.D. (NYTimes, reg req'd)
posted by jonson at 8:33 PM PST - 14 comments

Against Their Will: Forced Sterilization of the "Feeble-Minded." Rich, beautifully designed site from the Winston-Salem Journal about forced sterilization in North Carolina, which continued far later than most other states due to the influence of a small group of elitist businessmen and the complicity of newspapers, politicians and doctors. Heart-wrenching Flash interviews, an interactive timeline and original documents like poems, pamphlets and charts provide hours of fascinating reading. The state has been refusing access to these records for decades.
posted by mediareport at 3:06 PM PST - 84 comments

Padded Butt Brief. Too bad I prefer boxers.
posted by grumblebee at 3:01 PM PST - 26 comments

The cocky bastard has left the building... to be replaced with the life student. So, how are your online personaes lately?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:55 PM PST - 41 comments

Orion's Arm is "an interactive hard science space opera, a joint effort in science fiction worldbuilding and a forum for cutting edge science fiction ideas".
posted by signal at 11:51 AM PST - 17 comments

Do you know this scream? Originally labeled in studio reels in 1951 as Man Being Eaten by Alligator, the sound effect now known as the Wilhelm has turned up in dozens of films; sound designers have made a game out of sneaking it past the director's notice. This NPR feature (includes link to RealAudio file) tells much of the story of the Wilhelm Scream. Or you could just watch the best of Wilhelm, compliled in this (27MB) video compilation (read the making-of here). (By the way -- an orc in The Two Towers lets out a Wilhelm as he falls to his death.)
posted by argybarg at 11:24 AM PST - 45 comments

The Sushi Seal Family are simultaneously sushi and seals. Actually, judging by the sample movie and the episode guide, it seems more like "Barbapapa" meets Zen koans. But it's big in Japan, apparently. (Via Geegaw.)
posted by staggernation at 11:22 AM PST - 19 comments

Cultured Apes: According to a study published in today's issue of the journal Science, orangutans have been passing on a shared culture for generations (free registration required to view entire study). To what degree are animals intelligent? Are primates more intelligent than other animals? What about crows and ravens? (My favorite subject of animal intelligence studies is still Koko the gorilla.)
posted by jdroth at 10:53 AM PST - 29 comments

Inventing a new disease? Some experts are saying that the drug industry is trying lump women’s sexual problems under the term “female sexual dysfunction” to create a market for lucrative new Viagra-like drugs. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association [abstract] found sexual dysfunction is more prevalent for women (43%) than men (31%), but the jury is still out.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:41 AM PST - 54 comments

Pin-hole photography is nothing new. 300 years before there was film people were using the idea of the Camera Obscura to project images onto nearby surfaces. Using the process to capture the images onto film was a simple progression. But camera cases break, and leak light exposing the film to early.

Enter Thomas Hudson Reeve who folds his own one time only cameras with the very photo-paper he presents as his finished work. Only a simple brass plate pinhole shutter is reused and developing is done in the camera by pouring the chemicals directly in.
Go check out PaperCams for more.
posted by KnitWit at 9:10 AM PST - 12 comments

Whose Side Are You On, Mr. President? The former Dean of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas, asks the question. I didn't know there was any question about this matter.
posted by Postroad at 7:25 AM PST - 130 comments

Prosthetic Artist Robert Barron creates new noses, eyes, ears and hands for people who have lost them to disease or injury, or who never had them in the first place. His talent and craftsmanship are staggering. As an artist, the "outrageous", self-congratulatory flavor-of-the-month trends in the contemporary art world leave me completely cold. Where talent and craftsman ship are eschewed in favor of concept and impossibly complex jargon, I find myself drawing inspiration more and more from work like this: useful, socially relevant, beautiful.
posted by Scoo at 7:09 AM PST - 21 comments

Not old enough to drive a car? Get a minicar! It seems that Italy's teens have solved the problem of not having a license to drive until they are 18 years old, through the use of minicars. Supposedly, they have a governor that holds them to around 30mph (though kids say they get souped up), and they can't be over 772lbs... But the key is you can drive them if you can't see well enough for a license, have your license revoked, or are as young as 14, you can drive one off the lot right now! Some links to manufacturers are at the bottom of the Washington Post's article.
posted by djspicerack at 7:07 AM PST - 18 comments

Tolkien's Eleventy-first. Today would've been JRR Tolkien's 111th birthday. According to the Tolkien Society, the proper thing to do is to raise a glass at 9 pm and say "The Professor." Mary-Ann was not available for comment.
posted by condour75 at 6:53 AM PST - 13 comments

It's about Time this guy was recognized with accolades as the premiere whistleblower in the US. Just think of all the tax money that could be saved if everyone learned what Postol already knows!

Is NMD more theology than science? It would appear so.
posted by nofundy at 6:44 AM PST - 9 comments

NationStates.net allows you to create your own country, decide how it starts out by answering a short questionary, and then it gives you issues to solve (one per day, though you can set it to two per day). How you answer those issues determines how your country fares, the type of country it is, and many other things. You can join the UN and elect a regional representative, create your own region that you and your friends can migrate to (all new nations start out in The Pacific, which is consequentially the largest region in NationStates, but you can move wherever you want).
posted by sailoreagle at 2:59 AM PST - 51 comments

Should we think goat when it comes to saving important data? As part of a modernisation campaign the UK Parliament may ditch vellum for computerised records. But what will last the longest?
posted by quarsan at 1:02 AM PST - 20 comments