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Some British nurses want patients who are intent on harming themselves to be provided with clean blades so that they can cut themselves more safely.
posted by daksya at 10:04 PM PST - 57 comments

The Socratic Method: Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling Transcript of an intriguing experiment to teach binary arithmetic to third graders using the Socratic Method - only asking questions. See also a demonstration of the socratic method with a man who procrastinates. Some background, Who Was Socrates?
posted by MetaMonkey at 9:58 PM PST - 55 comments

The Tokyo skyline [Windows or Real media] drawn from memory by savant Stephen Wiltshire.
posted by tellurian at 9:26 PM PST - 38 comments

Ben Frost is a painter, performance artist and illustrator who currently lives in Australia. His work explores themes of alienation, dispossession, and perversity that exists behind the facade of contemporary western society. By subverting mainstream iconography from the advertising, entertainment and political spectrum he creates a visual and conceptual framework that is bold, confronting and often contraversial.
posted by ColdChef at 9:17 PM PST - 13 comments

Super Bowl XL Commercials
posted by jne1813 at 8:46 PM PST - 78 comments

Kelo vs. City of New London (mefi) is still getting those wacky libertarians riled up. They're trying to take the house of one of the justices (david souter) who backed the ruling. They've now got an initiative on the ballot in Souter's home town. The initiative would take souter's home for the purpose of building a hotel and set up the necessary donation funds to make it happen. That may be over now that a motion made by Board of Selectmen queen WALTER BOHLIN (light shirt gray pants) has passed. The motion will add the word "NOT" before each action item. You gotta admit, that's kinda funny. (full disclosure: i have these guys $25)
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 8:46 PM PST - 31 comments

The Steelers were 7-5, then won their final four regular-season games to secure the AFC's last playoff spot. They went to Cincinnati and won a wild-card game. They won at Indianapolis, which had the league's best record. And then they handed Denver its first home loss in the AFC championship game. And now they're the first 6th seed playoff team ever to win the Super Bowl. History made.
posted by allkindsoftime at 7:44 PM PST - 139 comments

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says President George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance program appears to be illegal. Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Specter called the administration's legal reasoning "strained and unrealistic" and said the program appears to be "in flat violation" of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
posted by bukharin at 7:39 PM PST - 47 comments

The State Department's campaign against misinformation and propaganda. Before you comment on the irony of it all, it is worth a read. Included are a careful, Snopes-like debunking of various rumors: Hugo Chavez's "Plan Balboa documents," the old 4,000 Jews and the WTC rumor, the use of chemical weapons in the Korean War, and some I hadn't heard of (the US to take over the rainforest?). Also information on how to spot disinformation, and attacks on the credibility of a few sites. Too bad that the US information services don't have the credibility they used to, but still worth reading.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:23 PM PST - 14 comments

I'm not your friend anymore. Let's go kamping. Or bungee jumping. -- A treasure trove of hilariously bizarre stop-motion Flash animations featuring little blue claymation dudes.
posted by Gator at 7:03 PM PST - 12 comments

We Are All Danes Now is a great editorial run today in the Boston Globe. Why does radical Islam suffer such a fundamental disconnect with the rest of the world?
posted by Brockstar at 4:32 PM PST - 201 comments

73% of American Teens Experimenting with the Occult Fundamentalist religious research group the Barna Group has published the results of a study with 4000 teens that shows that a third of American teenagers have used a Ouija board, 1 in 10 have been in a real seance and 1 in 12 have cast spells or made potions. Also here, here. I for one blame this guy and this girl.
posted by tranceformer at 3:20 PM PST - 77 comments

Seeing Only Evil: An Interview with Retired CIA Agent Robert Baer, Author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War Against Terrorism.
posted by exlotuseater at 2:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Notable properties of specific numbers: From Planck time to milli-millillions and myriads.
posted by Rothko at 2:50 PM PST - 16 comments

Religious Nuttery Wins Out over Scientific Fact George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times. The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the “war room” of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen’s public statements.
posted by mk1gti at 11:58 AM PST - 82 comments

Gregarious for a Day: Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird and a few essays, speaks briefly with the New York Times in what may be her first interview since a press conference and long interview in the early 1960s.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:56 AM PST - 17 comments

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (1896) (some images NSFW).
posted by feathermeat at 11:01 AM PST - 13 comments

Sue-en Wong - NSFW flash portfolio (via Internet Weekly)
NY Arts: "... self-portraiture and multiplicity within erotic contexts."
artcritical: "Wong utilizes her favorite subject, herself, to visually critique, satirize, subjugate, and exploit stereotypes of Asian women as passive, pre-pubescent, and sexually objectified."
posted by madamjujujive at 10:09 AM PST - 43 comments

Google's UK satellite photos have been drastically improved
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 7:54 AM PST - 72 comments

In Austria it against the law to make any statements denying the occurrence of the Holocaust. "But one can say anything about Islam and get away with it," observes Ehsan Ahrari of the Asia Times. As the editor of Jyllands Posten defends the publication of unflattering cartoons of the Mohammed as standing up for the values of “free speech”, laws in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland make it a criminal offence to deny the Holocaust in public. Germany's parliament passed legislation in 1985, making it a crime to deny the extermination of the Jews. In 1994, the law was tightened. Now, anyone who publicly endorses, denies or plays down the genocide against the Jews faces a maximum penalty of five years in jail and no less than the imposition of a fine. Should holocaust denial be a crime? Do laws against Holocaust denial make Western defense of freedom of speech look hollow? (Related discussion here.)
posted by three blind mice at 6:56 AM PST - 141 comments

Before the class, Crocker had told me that she was going to teach "the strengths and weaknesses of evolution." Afterward, I asked her whether she was going to discuss the evidence for evolution in another class. She said no.

A "Biology 101" class turns into a gripe session for creationists at a state school, the Northern Virginia Community College. The lecturer then whines about being discriminated against when she fails to teach the subject she's hired to teach.
posted by orthogonality at 4:55 AM PST - 80 comments

A young man's cancer fight. Let me offer my condensed summary of cancer. Maybe they could print it on a little card and distribute it in lieu of the sappy brochures: Congratulations, you have cancer! Your life is about to turn upside down. It causes a lot of stress, and many patients crash and burn horribly. Chemotherapy can save your life, but in the process it'll make you feel like you've been run over by a Hummer. Alternately, your doctors may choose to irradiate you in one of several ways, which is not altogether unlike being shoved into a microwave oven on "high" for a few minutes. Your medications probably won't make you feel better, so do yourself a favor and buy some weed. Get used to needles; you're going to be poked with a lot of them. Be strong, and you might live. Good luck! (John Reeves Hall, 1980-2005)
posted by NorthernSky at 3:20 AM PST - 31 comments