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"Georgia Russell is a Scottish artist who uses a scalpel instead of a brush or a pen. She works with obsessive perserverance to create constructions that transform found ephemera, such as books, music scores, maps, newspapers, currency and photographs." Samples here. {via design dna}
posted by dobbs at 11:02 PM PST - 18 comments

Geni. Family Tree 2.0. [via]
posted by muckster at 11:00 PM PST - 25 comments

Eclectic is a solar, wind, and plug-in electric-powered "vehicle" making it [theoretically] energy autonomous. While solar vehicles are not new, this pioneering consumer production model may find a niche market. June 2007, priced starting at 24,000€. Summary.
posted by stbalbach at 9:05 PM PST - 15 comments

Carol Lam was the first one to receive much publicity. A federal prosecutor fired for not making guns and drugs a top priority. She was also Duke Cunningham's prosecutor. No big deal, she just hadn't prosecuted many cases during her tenure. Except that Lawyers called the firing "virtually unprecedented And FBI people claimed the firing would jeopardize cases. Then there was Daniel Bogden, a federal prosecutor in Nevada was also canned for "fostering low morale". And actually it turns out that as many as many as eight federal prosecutors have been fired in the past two months.
posted by delmoi at 8:20 PM PST - 44 comments

Elephant jokes. (And the reason some of you don't like them. Cretins.)
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 7:27 PM PST - 52 comments

There are Klingons in the Whitehouse! Er, make that faux Klingons.
posted by alms at 7:20 PM PST - 29 comments

What does 200 calories look like? (via)
posted by Kwantsar at 6:37 PM PST - 34 comments

Genius at work. Bill Strickland is the visionary creator of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation, a combination craftsmen's guild, training center and (completely amazing) school. The school comes complete with a sound stage and record label that has won numerous grammys for the music recorded there as friendly favors from jazz legends to Bill and his students. He has been profiled in major business magazines for being a master educator with the ambition to become a master franchiser by working with Ebay CEO Jeff Skoll (see, "Applying model worldwide") to go global with his approach to education. He won the Macarthur in 1996. You can also watch his famous slide show, or some live footage of his presentation on youtube.
posted by The Straightener at 6:24 PM PST - 4 comments

Chief Justice John Roberts, decrying “the personalization of judicial politics,” describes his efforts to increase comity on the Supreme Court and to decide more cases unanimously. In Roberts' first term as chief justice, “while a relatively large number of the Court’s decisions” were unanimous, “several important, closely divided cases” were decided by 5-4 votes, with Roberts joining the more conservative justices.
posted by ibmcginty at 6:09 PM PST - 17 comments

Premature, prepared, and alternative obituaries for Cuba's Fidel Castro. Time to get ready for the real thing? Conjecture and hope about Life After Fidel: Time to get to know Fidel's brother Raul.
posted by spock at 6:02 PM PST - 80 comments

Dark Darker Darkest is an essay in this week's New Republic by Christopher Benfey on the newly published Notebooks of Robert Frost (here's a more conventional book review by Mark Ford in The Financial Times). Glyn Maxwell, a couple of years ago in the same publication, wrote a short article, Beautiful as He Did It, about Edward Thomas and his relationship with Frost. Should you want more direct contact with the famous poet, you can read Richard Poirier's 1960 interview with Frost that appeared in The Paris Review (pdf) or listen to him recite a few of his better known poems.
posted by Kattullus at 5:52 PM PST - 6 comments

Ridin' Dirty Face - photos by Mike Brodie in color, black & white and some polaroids.
Also, check out the The Polaroid Photography Collective.
posted by StopMakingSense at 5:50 PM PST - 14 comments

In preparation for today's announcement of the formation of a presidential exploratory committee, Sen. Barack Obama has been giving well publicized speeches on the role of religion in American political life. Though faith remains a deeply divisive force in the American political scene, Obama seems to be positioning himself at the forefront of a major political realignment, one which has his opponents more than a little uneasy.
posted by felix betachat at 3:57 PM PST - 181 comments

Steel Belted Romeos is based on a true story. (NSFW)
posted by airguitar at 3:02 PM PST - 33 comments

Wikiseek. A better way to search Wikipedia.
posted by allkindsoftime at 12:52 PM PST - 39 comments

One of pop music's trailblazers was tone-deaf. Even if you've never heard of Joe Meek (previously), you've probably heard his 1962 single "Telstar" many times. This online compilation offers an exciting glimpse into Meek's unconventional way of composing, as he recorded and rerecorded in an attempt to communicate the music in his mind to musicians. Hear "Telstar" in various levels of completion.
posted by roll truck roll at 12:34 PM PST - 31 comments

The WSJ's Charles Murray on the problem with public education: not inequality, overcrowding or standardized tests, but kids just aren't smart enough. First in a three-part series.
posted by Lisa S at 12:06 PM PST - 203 comments

California = France? Norwegian bløgger Carl Størmer (via THE BIG PICTURE) made a U.S. map substituting the state names for other countries of equivalent GDP. Some of the substitutions are funny: Illinois = Mexico? Texas = Canada? New Jersey = Russia? Hawaii = Nigeria? Oregon = Israel? But your economic mileage will vary: apparently California no longer has the "sixth-largest economy in the world", no matter what The Governator says. Wikipedia chimes in, while some Californians don't want to be bothered with facts.
posted by wendell at 11:59 AM PST - 39 comments

Who'd have guessed? Turns out that Senator Ted Stevens was simply a man ahead of his time. The internet really is a series of tubes.
posted by Tubes at 11:58 AM PST - 30 comments

Global warming skeptic Ronald Bailey--Reason's science correspondent, adjunct scholar at CATO and CEI, and editor of the 2002 book Global Warming and Other Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death--has changed his mind.
posted by russilwvong at 10:41 AM PST - 92 comments

News Scrap (It's On!) The battle between O'Reilly and Olberman, the remix. From the always wonderful On the Media.
posted by timsteil at 10:23 AM PST - 16 comments

Saving the world’s weirdest creatures. The EDGE of Existence programme, a project of the Zoological Society of London, aims to conserve the world's most Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species by implementing the research and conservation actions needed to secure their future. [Via MoFi.]
posted by homunculus at 10:14 AM PST - 8 comments

Brief advertisement for France's Canal Plus: 00:01:07 secs.
posted by econous at 10:07 AM PST - 36 comments

Is Airborne science or snake oil ? The official website is flashy, but short on empirical evidence, and even admits that there is "no cure" for the common cold. The first doubts were from ABC News. Then David Cowan blogged about it. Now Michael Shermer from the Scientific American, and publisher of Skeptic weighs in an article called Airborne Baloney
posted by lobstah at 8:43 AM PST - 164 comments

Pickle Surprise! (youtube)
posted by bob sarabia at 7:40 AM PST - 40 comments

Still more Ferrofluid fun The artist who produced 'Protrude Flow' has a new thing: A spiral tower, presumably full of electromagnets, which pulls ferrofluid up and down and all over it in weird black spikes. That's a hopeless description, so watch the (big .wmv) videos: 1 and 2 for full amazingosity.
posted by tombola at 7:10 AM PST - 23 comments

Neanderthals & Modern Humans Interbred. Hybrid Skull Unearthed in Romania ...
... that includes features of both modern humans and Neanderthals, possibly suggesting that the two may have interbred thousands of years ago. Neanderthals were replaced by early modern humans. Researchers have long debated whether the two groups mixed together, though most doubt it. The last evidence for Neanderthals dates from at least 24,000 years ago
posted by Bodyguard at 4:38 AM PST - 62 comments

Adultery could mean life, Michigan's second-highest court reported that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison. Michigan's Supreme Court majority has held that it is for the Legislature, not the courts, to decide when the absurdity threshold has been breached.
posted by IronWolve at 2:56 AM PST - 122 comments

Panoramic World. Russian places of interest such as palaces, museums, parks, St. Petersburg and fortresses. You'll need one of these: QT or Java or DevalVR. (previous panorama posts)
posted by sluglicker at 2:19 AM PST - 3 comments