MetaFilter

Track your comments. Remember back before Matt gave up his day job? How we didn't have an easy way to keep up with conversations we participated in? Hate that you can't do that with other sites you frequent? Now you can.
posted by FlamingBore at 11:53 PM PST - 16 comments

The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed
posted by Tlogmer at 10:40 PM PST - 157 comments

Donald Trump Can Boost Your Book Sales. Just piss him off and watch your Amazon sales rank climb. [a new yorker link]
posted by adrober at 10:11 PM PST - 11 comments

Tayler makes handmade wooden weapons, which he then uses to stage semi-elaborate one man cosplay involving him, his cat & an Australian Shepherd. Archives of previous months stories here.
posted by jonson at 10:00 PM PST - 24 comments

Newsfilter: U.S. and Israel looking for ways to "oust" Hamas
posted by FeldBum at 9:34 PM PST - 34 comments

We've heard of outsider music, but along with this is the strange world of song-poems. ...ordinary people" respond to come-on ads on the back pages of magazines, mailing in their heartfelt but often bizarre poems to "music industry" companies that, for a fee, turn those poems into real recordings. More inside...
posted by ashbury at 8:59 PM PST - 16 comments

Watch news events happen in realtime as they get pumped into RSS-space™. In the grand if not lengthy tradition of newsquakes, vanishing point, and newsmap. Plugins and stuff required. [Visualize the hell out of the news, come here, post it, then get hauled into Metatalk for your trouble!]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:25 PM PST - 26 comments

Stonefridge - A replica of the famed megalithic monument done entirely in refrigerators by artist and independent filmmaker Adam Horowitz (not to be confused with the Beastie Boy), done entirely in Albuquerque. The sculpture is so massive that it now can even be seen on Google Earth. It has also been a backdrop for a music video. (via GoogleSightSeeing)
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 8:03 PM PST - 22 comments

The LEGO Suicides. A series of tragic deaths, built block by block. (flickr slideshow; non-slideshow link here)
posted by brain_drain at 7:51 PM PST - 22 comments

Melville's Marginalia Online. The study of Herman Melville's creative process has long been hampered by a lack of primary sources. Melville's long lost annotations (they were written in pencil and subsequently erased) to the 1839 book The Natural History of the Sperm Whale have been restored through high-tech innovations such as squinting and digital photography. The results are available here in a PDF file. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 7:05 PM PST - 22 comments

Lawyers appear to missing out on the growth of the leisure class. Despite American's growing leisure time, and despite another round of pay increases for starting associates, lawyers seem to be working more hours than ever. As long as lawyers are tied the billable hour, it seems that greater salaries for associates inevitably means longer hours for associates. Law professor Pat Schiltz argues [pdf] that the longer hours for new associates combined with the high pressures of law practice means that those lawyers often suffer from depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide at very high rates, and are often forced into unethical practices just to meet the requirements of the law firm.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 5:30 PM PST - 86 comments

The Compact "About 50 teachers, engineers, executives and other professionals in the Bay Area have made a vow to not buy anything new in 2006 -- except food, health and safety items and underwear..." And presumably gas, insurance, electricity, water, etc. Oh, and Internet service-- they have a blog and a Yahoo group. Did I mention one of them currently works as a marketer and another one is a currently a professor in marketing?
posted by keswick at 4:47 PM PST - 95 comments

British soldiers filmed beating Iraqis. A British tabloid has released footage showing British troops beating Iraqi rioters. The video, available in realplayer format or Windows Media format, was apparently taken by a British corporal, and shows at least eight British soldiers dragging four young rioters inside a British army compound, where they were repeatedly beaten with batons, boots and fists, and kicked in the genitals. Arab television and the BBC have since aired the footage.
posted by insomnia_lj at 4:01 PM PST - 72 comments

Vernon Shoo-Ins Shoo Outsiders. A little town in which 44,000 work, but only 93 live, fights against holding its first election in decades. [bugmenot for the LA Times]
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:52 PM PST - 23 comments

The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984 features, among many compelling pieces, works by Tehching Hsieh. Hsieh may be best known for his 1983-84 collaborative piece with Linda Montano, in which the two artists were tethered together at the waist with an eight foot rope -- for an entire year. [Previously mentioned here.]
posted by milquetoast at 2:23 PM PST - 3 comments

Wanna talk to a person? Gethuman.com lists cheat codes for hundreds of customer service numbers. Sweet.
posted by MrMoonPie at 2:09 PM PST - 15 comments

Proposed Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1. Proposed Rule 32.1 [.pdf] is an attempt to resolve a dispute in federal court practice over the propriety of citations to unpublished opinions. It is an argument that has been played out in academic papers and Circuit Courts. Judge Richard Arnold of the 8th Circuit, writing for the majority, held that local rules which declare that unpublished opinions are not precedent are unconstitutional under Article III. Anastasoff v. United States, 223 F.3d 898, 900(8th Cir. 2000), vacated as moot on reh'g en banc, 235 F.3d 1054 (8th Cir.2000). Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit disagreed, holding that nonprecedential decisions are not inconsistent with the exercise of the judicial power. Hart v. Massanari, 226 F.3d 1155, 1163 (9th Cir. 2001). The proposed Rule would resolve the circuit split, but the debate rages on.
posted by dios at 2:05 PM PST - 18 comments

Cardboard Geodesic Dome. A how-to on building a geodesic dome out of cardboard, a bit of wood, some duct tape and paint. Plus some rebar if you don't want the finished dome to fly like a kite. If you like the concept but not the size calculate your own then apply the concept.
posted by Mitheral at 2:03 PM PST - 14 comments

Room With A View. Has the view out of your living room window become boring and stale? No problem, build yourself a million dollar Rotating Home. A former office manager, self prclaimed "hobbyist" Al Johnstone has built quite the technological feat [PDF] despite having no engineering background, obtaining around 30 patents in the process.
posted by afx114 at 9:29 AM PST - 19 comments

CSS Trappist Monastery. Like the Zen Garden, but without any images (other than the "chosen twelve").
posted by brownpau at 9:07 AM PST - 29 comments

The Center for Cartoon Studies, nestled in the historic village of White River Junction, Vermont, will learn you up good on how to be a comic artist/graphic novelist. They operate under the charter of the National Association of Comics Art Educators; Charles Schulz's widow Jean hooked them up with funding for a library in town. When you apply for admission, don't forget to include that story about you, the snowman, and the robot. A photo tour of the Center and its surroundings can be seen here.
posted by Gator at 6:38 AM PST - 10 comments

Betty and Barney Hill's Bogus Journey: "This is one of the most well known and most historically important cases of alien abduction of all time, mainly because it's all baloney. However, it was well televised baloney, and that brought UFO abductions, and the little gray men that the Hills reported seeing, into the mainstream of popular culture."
posted by furiousxgeorge at 1:53 AM PST - 44 comments

An Australian Government Member of Parliament (MP) will be trying to amend a crucial piece of legislation which, if the amendment is successful, will make it far harder (if not impossible) for Australian women to gain access to abortion drug RU486 because of fears that making it easier for women to access the drug will lead Australia down a path of Islamisation. "I've actually read in the Daily Telegraph where a certain imam from the Lakemba mosque actually said that Australia is going to be a Muslim nation in 50 years' time. I didn't believe him at the time but when you actually look at the birthrates... we are aborting ourselves almost out of existence." Liberal MP Danna Vale said today. Has she been reading Metafilter?
posted by Effigy2000 at 1:12 AM PST - 107 comments

Last week, the Guardian posted a three-part special report by their Middle East correspondent (and former South African correspondent) Chris McGreal on the similarities between the current situation in Israel and the South African Apartheid regime. The report provoked many heated responses, a selection of which is reproduced here and here. The Guardian responded by inviting Benjamin Pogrund, former deputy editor of the famously anti-Apartheid Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, author of a number of books on South Africa and founder of Yakar, a Jerusalem center for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue to weigh in with a response.
posted by ori at 12:16 AM PST - 20 comments

Hors d'oeuvres vich must be obeyed at all times vithout qvestion!
posted by DirtyCreature at 12:01 AM PST - 38 comments