Comedian Chris Rock has a new documentary at Sundance Film Festival all about Good Hair. Oddly enough, the same subjects of expense, safety, and hair-race relations were discussed on the blue at about the same time he began work on the film. [more inside]
posted by Glibpaxman at 11:33 PM PST - 25 comments

Clayton Cubitt is a video artist. He does video portraits. They are disturbing, warholian, and weird
posted by The Whelk at 10:11 PM PST - 16 comments

Andrew Stantion, director of Wall-E, briefly talks about a sequel, why the female robot has a gun and the separation of animated and live action films.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:34 PM PST - 63 comments

Hawkman of the Himalayas. British falconer Scott Mason and friends have combined paragliding and falconry into the art of parahawking. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 7:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Decodeunicode.org has a useful and full-featured search for the names and glyphs for those Unicode characters that display as a plain box full of despair. It is presented by the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. Roll the dice ⚅⚄ and try it out. [more inside]
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 6:15 PM PST - 25 comments

It's National Pie Day! Whether we're in search of the best pies in the United States or have long been troubled by our personal quests to turn out the perfect pie, we should all agree: quiche is not pie. [more inside]
posted by jeeves at 5:32 PM PST - 44 comments

The death of cursive script handwriting continues to be predicted. [more inside]
posted by rmd1023 at 4:05 PM PST - 154 comments

How I Made a 1,474-Megapixel Photo During President Obama’s Inaugural Address. [more inside]
posted by googly at 1:48 PM PST - 121 comments

What do women want? A post-feminist look at female desire.
posted by desjardins at 1:37 PM PST - 149 comments

Friday Flash Fun: Scriball [Kongregate] is a game where you want to get your ball to the goal area. Your cursor creates a line that you can use to guide the ball. Mouse button makes the ball jump. Have Fun.
posted by schyler523 at 1:32 PM PST - 10 comments

Heath was great but Robert Downey Jr. should win.
posted by JVA at 12:41 PM PST - 131 comments

The Italian Job: Problem Solved
posted by Artw at 12:11 PM PST - 43 comments

Wired: Obama Sides With Bush in Spy Case. "The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants."
posted by blue_beetle at 12:08 PM PST - 87 comments

The aluminum beer can just celebrated its 50th birthday. Beer cans, first marketed in the 1930s, were originally made of tin-plated steel. Though often frowned upon by beer snobs, aluminum cans are making a comeback among some microbreweries.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:06 PM PST - 25 comments

Friday Flash fun: GROW TOWER. [more inside]
posted by Rinku at 11:02 AM PST - 45 comments

This dad draws cool pictures on his kids' brown paper lunch bags. Every day.

A new bag each day for my kids. I'm the dad. I make these during my lunch break. His kids, Dylan and Dana are getting not only kickass sacks for their lunches, but also an awesome education in pop culture. Highlights include: Mugato, Toad from Super Mario Bros. video games, Red Ryder, characters from MTV's "Daria", and more vintage-y type stuff, such as V.I.N.Cent.
posted by Rudy Gerner at 10:53 AM PST - 67 comments

"It would be naïve to identify the Internet with the Enlightenment. It has the potential to diffuse knowledge beyond anything imagined by Jefferson; but while it was being constructed, link by hyperlink, commercial interests did not sit idly on the sidelines. They want to control the game, to take it over, to own it. They compete among themselves, of course, but so ferociously that they kill each other off. Their struggle for survival is leading toward an oligopoly; and whoever may win, the victory could mean a defeat for the public good. ...We could have created a National Digital Library—the twenty-first-century equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. It is too late now. Not only have we failed to realize that possibility, but, even worse, we are allowing a question of public policy—the control of access to information—to be determined by private lawsuit."—Robert Darnton on what the proposed Google Book Settlement could mean for the pursuit of knowledge—Google and the Future of Books
posted by Toekneesan at 9:48 AM PST - 44 comments

If you're wondering why whitehouse.gov hasn't been updated since Wednesday, it's because they're still working on bringing the Whitehouse into 2009 technologically. Will it have WiFi? Hopefully they can catch up quickly to what they were used to during the campaign.
posted by yoga at 9:16 AM PST - 83 comments

Request Comics: A reader submits a theme, and Ben Heaton makes a photocomic of it. For example, one reader requests, "A duck discovers an awful, metaphysic truth." Another asks, "Teach us how to count to 46." And so on. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 8:29 AM PST - 17 comments

iBank? 25 billion in cash and short-term securities. No long-term debt. Why Apple should get into the banking sector, pronto.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:38 AM PST - 49 comments

The occasionally updated The Celestial Monochord claims to be the "Journal of the Institute for Astrophysics and the Hillbilly Blues" [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf at 7:36 AM PST - 5 comments

The Dollar Dreadful Family Library offers gripping tales of scientific adventures in matrimony, mysterious Appalachian woodsmen, macabre travels in the ether, exotic travels in distant lands, itinerant prospectors, and cunning detectives who pose as genteel dressmakers. Assorted amusements are offered in the form of downloadable PDF booklets, perfect leisure literature for "the distinguished reader or the particularly wealthy dunder-head".
posted by sarabeth at 7:15 AM PST - 8 comments

Benjamin Gump - I was just thinking this, after watching the first half of BB..."Both movies were written by Eric Roth, a man who now owes me seventeen dollars." [more inside]
posted by mrblack at 6:38 AM PST - 89 comments