January 23, 2007

Upwardly Goth

Goth Life Now "They won't like me saying it, but their lifestyle, unlike the punk scene, is a middle-class sub culture.' But hasn't it always been this way?
posted by untitledalex at 10:06 PM PST - 126 comments

Pony request: Can we have anonymous posting in the blue?

Can someone wipe my butt? [more inside]
posted by emelenjr at 8:42 PM PST - 50 comments

Ah, Misirlou, magical, exotic beauty

From Rebetika to Surf Rock: Misirlou is a melody that has spanned genres, from Greek, Turkish and Jewish folk songs to the classic Dick Dale version on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack to the Black-Eyed Peas, to the obligatory Greek folk version/Pump It mash-up.
posted by costas at 8:06 PM PST - 35 comments

"Twice as nice, without the ice"

The US Figure Skating championships are this week, but though the ice skaters in Spokane and elsewhere get all the press, another group of skaters toil in near-obscurity. Roller figure skaters (also called artistic roller skaters) skate on quad (or sometimes inline) skates, do all the moves that ice skaters do (and even more -- notice the "heel" and "broken ankle" spins in this program, spins that are not possible on ice), and compete, as they have for decades, in local, national, and international events. In 1978, skating was at a peak of popularity and Time magazine wrote "skaters are hoping to be included in the 1988 Olympics"; nearly 30 years later, roller figure skating still hasn't reached the Olympics, some roller skaters like Tara Lipinski have switched to ice to get famous, and the number of clubs and participants in the US have declined precipitously, but dedicated roller figure skaters still spend many hours practicing school figures (on circles painted on the floor), dance, and free skating, for the love of their sport. Want to see more? Skating videos from RollerSportsTV.
posted by litlnemo at 6:17 PM PST - 33 comments

Politico.com Launches

Politico.com has launched. Last year the venture made news due to the high-profile departures of John Harris and Jim VandeHei from the Washington Post. About 20 reporters from major newspapers have left their jobs to work at the new Web site which is devoted solely to politics.* It’s launched by an established media company that owns several ABC affiliates - Allbritton Communications Company. They also are publishing a dead-tree version.
posted by ericb at 5:40 PM PST - 14 comments

We'll throw in the doghouse for only £100,000 extra... deal?

Wow. And I thought California property was expensive. Lordy.
posted by miss lynnster at 5:39 PM PST - 61 comments

Now we know why it had to be snakes...

Snakes off a pharaoh - possible earliest semitic text seems to involve getting those mummy-loving snakes out of King Unas' mummy-loving tomb.
posted by Flitcraft at 5:34 PM PST - 4 comments

Forget second life, get a first life

A one-pager light hearted satire of the second life. Get a first life before you get a secondlife.
posted by jacob hauser at 5:31 PM PST - 17 comments

Scooter throws Turd Blossom under the bus

Politics/PlameFilter: In opening arguments today in the Plame investigation perjury case against Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, the prosecutor portrayed Libby as an agent of a Cheney-driven media offensive. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day came from Libby's attorney, who portrayed his client as a White House-chosen scapegoat for Karl Rove's misdeeds. A conservative reporter saw in Libby's emerging defense a "dramatic split inside the Bush White House." An MSNBC host asked whether this hullabaloo could lead to Cheney's resignation. Background on the case. Liveblogging of today's arguments from an anti-administration perspective.
posted by ibmcginty at 5:23 PM PST - 16 comments

Parody or Real?

Is it a parody? That's the question on some bloggers' minds. Donnie Davies is a pastor for Love God's Way ministries, and he wants to Change Homosexuals into Ordinary People or C.H.O.P.S.
posted by Four-Eyed Girl at 5:12 PM PST - 46 comments

"more than two centuries of surveillance in America"

Tracked In America --the stories of 25 individuals who have been targeted by the U.S. government. The stories span from World War I to the post-9/11 world.
posted by amberglow at 5:11 PM PST - 4 comments

Ben Laposky, the Father of Computer Art?

Pioneering electronic artist Ben Laposky began creating his “Oscillons” – abstract artworks created by photographing Lissajous figures off a cathode-ray oscilloscope – in the early 1950’s. Some consider him the father of computer art, and the beauty and clarity of his work is astonishing.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 4:49 PM PST - 12 comments

Tiny Buildings in Austria

Minimundus is an Austrian theme park with seemingly all the major architectural wonders of the world rendered in miniature; while their primary site is woefully low on imagery, here's three pages worth of photos of their better exhibits.
posted by jonson at 3:40 PM PST - 20 comments

The I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Info Site

The I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Info Site. A huge collection of short transcripts and one-liners from the perennial antidote to panel games, organised by game and category -- including some never-before broadcast! Personal favourites are the One Song To The Tune Of Another introductions and the "while Samantha"s.
posted by chrismear at 3:40 PM PST - 24 comments

Life before American Idol.

Chomsky v. Buckley, 1969 (videofilter). The primary subject is Vietnam, but other topics abound.
posted by bardic at 2:53 PM PST - 55 comments

The Challenge of Global Health

The Challenge of Global Health is an article written in the most recent Foreign Affairs, describing how "stovepiping" health care funding towards only HIV/AIDS, the shortage of health care workers in the West, and a vacuum of international health-care experts are all causing great damage to developing countries. The article was written by Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, Betrayal of Trust, as well as a Pulitzer Prize winner for her writing on Ebola. Previously on mefi: garrett resigns, comments on world leaders.
posted by thethirdman at 2:20 PM PST - 7 comments

Code Breaking

Did Anyone Really Follow the Drinking Gourd? Were you taught that slaves in the antebellum South sang this traditional song to convey coded instructions for escaping Northward? Were you taught that quilt block patterns could be read as a map to freedom, or that quilts were hung outside safe houses as signals to escaping slaves?Though these are among the most often taught stories of the operation of the Underground Railroad, current scholarship indicates that these aren't survivals of pre-Civil War African-American folklore, but legends constructed and popularized within the twentieth century, frequently by white writers and performers. In today's New York Times, these legends battle it out with fact in debate over the proposed design of a new Frederick Douglass memorial [PDF].
posted by Miko at 1:27 PM PST - 42 comments

Andre the Giant, Greatest Drunkard of all Time

Andre the Giant, Greatest Drunkard of all Time The key to Andre the Giant is this — even as a youth he knew that his disease would dramatically shorten his life. He knew there was no cure, and lived every day with the understanding that death could shamble around the very next corner. Knowledge of this sort can darken a life. It did not darken Andre’s. He chose instead to pack his days with as much insane, drunken fun as they could hold. Instead of languishing in the darkness, he chose to walk in the sun.
posted by ColdChef at 12:38 PM PST - 96 comments

Burning our food

Tonight, G.W. Bush is expected to announce a major energy proposal, including cutbacks in gas consumption and development of alternative fuels. High on the list is the development and subsidisation of ethanol, primarily as derived from corn. The utility of corn-based ethanol in meeting energy needs is debatable: its probably weakly energy positive, but not very good in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. More immediately, the US drive towards corn based ethanol has had major effects on the price of corn, and has caused the otherwise free market leaning Mexican President Felipe Calderon to introduce price controls on tortillas. Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown: "The competition for grain between the world’s 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and its 2 billion poorest people who are simply trying to survive is emerging as an epic issue.". (This post based on a column by Barrie McKenna, unfortunately subscriber only.)
posted by bumpkin at 11:48 AM PST - 119 comments

Bill Sullivan's situational photography

Bill Sullivan calls his strict approach to taking candid shots "situational photography." Each subject in the uniformly composed photos is doing the exact same thing, like going through a turnstile or posing for a street artist. More candid street photograpy: Harry Callahan (1 2 3 4 more), Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1 2 3 4 more) ,and previously. One diCorcia photo led to a recent ruling that non-commercial street photography is protected under the 1st Amendment. 'more' links have NSFW images. The other direct links should be fine.
posted by hydrophonic at 11:37 AM PST - 15 comments

Is soccer un-american?

Georgia mayor bans soccer from local park. Georgia mayor bans soccer from local park. “There will be nothing but baseball and football down there as long as I am mayor,”
posted by wavespy at 11:31 AM PST - 162 comments

Genome visualizaion with Circos

"Circos is designed for visualizing alignments, conservation and intra- and inter-chromosomal relationships within a genome, between genomes, or between any two or more sets of objects with a corresponding distance scale." Illustrative (via).
posted by stopgap at 11:08 AM PST - 2 comments

Hi, hi, it's American Pie

Try the pie. Forget that other American ritual today, it's time to enjoy the ultimate patriotic treat. No, not this one, nor this one, but National Pie Day. So join me for a big slice. Hit the road to try one of America's best, or make one of your own. (Earlier.)
posted by twsf at 10:59 AM PST - 14 comments

XDR-TB in South Africa: A New Pandemic?

According to an article in The Guardian about this new scientific report on XDR-TB, a new kind of multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis, in PLOS Medicine, "More than 300 cases of the highly infectious disease, which is spread by airborne droplets and kills 98% of those infected within about two weeks, have been identified in South Africa."
posted by Quiplash at 10:50 AM PST - 18 comments

How Iraq and climate change threw the right into disarray

How Iraq and climate change threw the right into disarray.
posted by stbalbach at 10:48 AM PST - 43 comments

What's good for the goose.....

It's genital evolution day! Penis evolution. For my money, evolution reached it's zenith with the Argentine Lake Duck. Plenty more MeFi penis related shenanigans here , including the penis museum.
posted by lalochezia at 9:13 AM PST - 31 comments

Khmer Rocks

Ros Sereysothea and Sinn Sisamouth were two of the more famous Cambodian musicians creating amazingly inspired music in the 60s and early 70s that fused Khmer with western rock. They were both killed by the Khmer Rouge; but not before leaving a powerful legacy that has inspired a short film about Sereysothea, a documentary and a band. They are still loved in Cambodia.
posted by PHINC at 8:29 AM PST - 8 comments

How did that get there?

The origins of the vagina Only mammals have 'em. Why? (via markmaynard).
posted by klangklangston at 7:58 AM PST - 36 comments

Robin Hood 2.0

RobinHood 2.0. Make a wish - for the greater good or just for yourself. And maybe get $10,000 to make it come true.
posted by GuyZero at 6:59 AM PST - 15 comments

Microsoft Expression

Designing With Microsoft? Evidently this is Microsoft's attempt at competition with 'Macrodobe', the strange, hybrid beast (lumbering?) that is the combined Macromedia/Adobe merger. Microsoft has launched a full suite of products taking aim at Dreamweaver, (is it better?) Illustrator-Photoshop and Flash. For many designers who pretend to be developers (or vica versa) Microsoft's new "Expression" will be 3 or 4 orders of magnitude less relevant than that old Corel Suite. The central issue seems to be one of credibility: Can Microsoft escape the seemingly permanent "FrontPage" stigma, not to mention even more recent design community letdowns?
posted by thisisdrew at 6:39 AM PST - 101 comments

Like Mr. Rogers without the hipness.

Cool Stuff Being Made: Each week the National Association of Manufacturers posts a new, generally-lengthy video of something being made.
posted by Captaintripps at 5:23 AM PST - 18 comments

More than Inka Kola

We're all familiar with Peruvian ceviche/cebiche (and if you're not, you should be), but what about ají de gallina (shredded chicken in walnut-cream-chile sauce)? There's also papa a la huancaína (potatoes with spicy cheese sauce) and ocopa (the same, but with pecans and huacatay/black mint). Oh, and don't forget anticúchos (marinated beef heart skewers) or causa limeña (hard to explain, but it's like a really amazing potato salad). Peru has a substantial and long-standing Chinese population, which has resulted in Chifa (some debate on whether that's Cantonese or Mandarin), Peru's "indigenous" Chinese culinary tradition. A staple (and my comfort food) of chifa is arroz chaufa (from Cantonese "chow fan," --> "fried rice").

Peruvian cuisine is getting a boost of interest around teh interwebs, thanks in no small part to dedicated blogs in English (1, 2, 3) and Spanish (1, 2). Even Wikipedia has a substantial entry in English and Spanish (and French). And the tourism industry hasn't missed out on this either (warning, food pr0n & YouTube).
posted by LMGM at 5:15 AM PST - 37 comments

Math + eggs = yum(n^n+1)

How to boil the perfect egg. vs. How to perfectly opposite-boil an egg.
posted by loquacious at 2:27 AM PST - 36 comments

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