MetaFilter

Why death is no big deal.
posted by TiredStarling at 11:10 PM PST - 52 comments

A history of early New York gangs, a tale of one of it most brutal participants, Monk Eastman who turned out to be a war hero and a brief overview of "gonge" (gang) history.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:25 PM PST - 10 comments

Two recent provocative articles about the the male-hooker-in-the-White-House-press-corps story: An analysis from Monday's Philly Inquirer asserts the flap is "far from over" and includes a cautionary quote: "The Bush people are challenging all the old assumptions about how to work the press. They are ambitious - visionary, if you will - in ways that Washington has yet to fathom." Meanwhile, this Feb 24 blog post from lefty David Corn calls Gannon's alleged anti-gay articles "pretty tame stuff" that didn't "automatically qualify him for outing," and cautions knee-jerking progressives that "there is nothing inherently wrong with allowing journalists with identifiable biases to pose questions to the White House press secretary and even the president." [last Gannon thread] [MeTa thread about appropriateness of another front-page Gannon post]
posted by mediareport at 10:16 PM PST - 118 comments

America's Christian Values Will Be Destroyed By A Girl in a Tux Kelli Davis, a straight-A student at Fleming Island High School, will not have her picture published in her Senior Yearbook because she wore a tux. Under the principal's policy, only male students may wear tuxes in the photographs. Davis, who is openly gay, is not allowed to be pictured in traditionally male garb. In addition to banning the photograph, the school principal also fired the yearbook editor for refusing to remove Davis' picture. A photo of the betuxed Kelli Davis is available here.
posted by expriest at 9:46 PM PST - 101 comments

U2 Can B A Rock Star Prez. The president of the World Bank is traditionally an American. But in a recent editorial the L.A. Times nominated third-world debt relief activitist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee and--oh yeah--U2 frontman for the soon-to-be-vacant position. With economic tutoring from "probably the most important economist in the world", the singer/activist (and self-confessed egomaniac) has spent the last 5 years lobbying the World Bank and IMF to help African nations break the decades' old cycle of debt by combining debt relief with improved trade and AIDS assistance. After a stint as celebrity spokesmodel for Jubilee2000, then founding a similar DATA Agenda funded by Bill Gates, he's developed cred as "a serious player on Third World debt". "It's about the right to begin again," Bono says. "The right to be free of your past..." President Bono: a chance to reform the World Bank from the inside, or celebrity poser? Readers' response... [BugMeNot for the reg-only sites]
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 9:05 PM PST - 32 comments

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It questioned not only the "progressive" model of scientific history, but also bled over into other disciplines and brought into question human perception of just about everything else. (coining the questionable phrase "paradigm shift" in the process.)

One of the most interesting shifts came in the battle about the (not totally forgotten) aether. A modern day equivalent might be "dark matter," an undetected form of matter that explains some of the quirky behavior of gravity. Or, it could all be gravity leakage.
Let the battle begin! (The winner might just set the course of astrophysics for the next generation, or even lead to the holy grail.)
(see also here.)
posted by absalom at 5:10 PM PST - 26 comments

Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) on the "nuclear option." "The Senate is intended for deliberation not point scoring. It is a place designed from its inception, as expressive of minority views." As the Senate gears up for another round of contentious judicial confirmations, and as Washington gears up for all-out war following Rehnquist's imminent retirement, here's an eloquent, if Godwin-invoking, defense of deliberative lawmaking from the Senate's preeminent historian.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 4:52 PM PST - 40 comments

"Puntate. Clic." 1000Bit archives images of vintage computer adverts, magazines, manuals, and brochures, many in Italian. Also of interest: old-computers.com, the Obselete Technology Web, Rune's PC-Museum, and Dave's Old Computers. [via]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 3:25 PM PST - 10 comments

Supersized in the NFL Analyzing data from the 2003-2004 season, researchers say "more than a quarter of NFL players had a body mass index that qualified them as class 2 obesity" -- equivalent to a 6-foot man weighing between 260 and 300 pounds. Even those players weren't the biggest ones: the study counted more than 60 players -- 3 percent -- with body mass indexes placing them into class 3 obesity, with individual weights approaching 400 pounds. "I don't know what's going on in the minds of coaches", said lead researcher Dr. Joyce Harp, an assistant professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Players' growing girth "is a major concern," said Dr. Arthur Roberts, a former NFL quarterback and retired heart surgeon (.pdf file) whose Living Heart Foundation works with the players' union to evaluate heart-related health risks faced by current and retired players. More inside.
posted by matteo at 2:08 PM PST - 42 comments

This month the first batch of students will take the newly revised SAT. While the test has been modified before, an entirely new writing section will be added, and the top score will now be 2400. While parents panic, the $960 million test-prep industry is poised to teach the test that was once considered uncoachable. Not every school will be using the new writing section, but some big ones (pdf) were behind the push for its adoption. What’s a student to do?
posted by Coffeemate at 1:56 PM PST - 78 comments

The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge. How hard could it be to post a comic every day, 5 days a week. How long could you keep it up. How about for a $1000 prize? Some big names are playing. (because they axed)
posted by Capn at 1:55 PM PST - 15 comments

The Database of Corporate Commands. A project of the Institute for Extremely Small Things, part of the ikatun collective of artists and technologists. [via languagelog]
posted by casu marzu at 12:47 PM PST - 4 comments

What is going on in Dulce, New Mexico? The federal government is apparently working in tangent with several species of extraterrestrials in a gigantic underground base the size of Manhattan. This came to light with the release of the Dulce Papers, a set of documents explaining the whole conspiracy. An alleged former guard at the base has also spoken out against it and revealed more information. Of course, a lot of this relates back to the shadow government and Jesus having been genetically engineered by the Greys, but really, what doesn't these days. Want to take a relaxing holiday to Dulce Base? Well, you'll probably be shot, but there's always this nice video footage.
posted by borkingchikapa at 12:16 PM PST - 27 comments

The Geometry Center at the University of Minnesota, while now closed, maintains an awesome website with tons of math resources. I like sphere eversion, i.e. turning a sphere inside out. Link is to script of video, which explains things pretty well. Here is a clip [QT]. Also good: notes from a class on geometry and the imagination that John Conway and some friends gave awhile back. Old but good.
posted by mai at 12:10 PM PST - 3 comments

We're all going to "die". Genocratic discourse or small-scale post-millennial angst?
posted by tommyc at 12:00 PM PST - 12 comments

Gotham Comes of Age: New York through the lens of The Byron Company, 1892-1942.
posted by saladin at 11:56 AM PST - 8 comments

Senator: Decency Rules Should Apply to Pay TV, Radio. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said he disagreed "violently" with assertions by the cable industry that Congress does not have the authority to impose limits on its content. "If that's the issue they want to take on, we'll take it on and let the Supreme Court decide," he said.
posted by johnnydark at 11:03 AM PST - 39 comments

Bush Shoot Out! [note: flash, cartoon violence, animated blood]
posted by crunchland at 10:48 AM PST - 9 comments

Sometimes science has to take a back seat to art. Mark Twain's contribution to the fart joke was '1601 Conversation As it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors', a heart-warming tale of Elizabethan intrigue and fart queens.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 10:41 AM PST - 5 comments

The surrealism, science fiction gallery #y, design and the advertisement--all come from the galleries of the Babelfish translation of Perga.ru. Found it looking for Chesley Bonestell pictures... Purga is a word for snow, is it not?
posted by y2karl at 10:15 AM PST - 5 comments

The Supreme Court just ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Juvenile Death Penalty was unconstitutional. First, it was the mentally ill, now teenagers. Are we getting close to abolishing the death penalty altogether
posted by AaRdVarK at 7:34 AM PST - 146 comments

Most Americans don't know their left wingers from their right wingers. And no, its not about hockey or chicken parts.
posted by phirleh at 6:58 AM PST - 33 comments

English Cut. the website of thomas mahon, bespoke savile row tailor, london.
posted by srboisvert at 6:54 AM PST - 9 comments

School stories (long out of print in English) of Frigyes Karinthy. Short, funny, and occasionally bittersweet; favorites include The Good Student and The Bad Student Tested, and Hanging From the Apparatus.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:46 AM PST - 2 comments

Ann Coulter Runs Her Mouth, Universal Press Syndicate Shoves an Eraser in It - It would appear that Ann Coulter's love of all people non-white reared its blonde, anorexic head again in her February 23rd column, with a racial remark about columnist Helen Thomas. However, because of some editing on Universal Press Syndicate's part, you wouldn't know it. Maybe Annie's just upset that Ms Thomas isn't a fan of her boy Dubya.

Found via the ever-entertaining Wonkette.
posted by secret about box at 5:54 AM PST - 67 comments

Complacency Kills by Joe Sacco. Sacco is the best journalist working in comics today (previous MeFi discussion), and he was sent to Iraq recently by The Guardian. Complacency Kills is his powerful account of the choices that both troops and civillians have to make every day. It's a 36MB PDF file I'm afraid but worth every bit.
posted by Hartster at 4:38 AM PST - 22 comments

Sony will copy-protect most of its new releases by the end of the year. Sony VP Jordan Katz cites a consumer study when claiming the market is ready for this development. Closer analysis of said study shows that the facts do not support this. Some interpretations of that analysis are also not supported by the facts.
posted by Captaintripps at 4:35 AM PST - 35 comments

Happy 10th Birthday "What? is Music".

This year's the 10th time around the block for Australian festival "What? is Music", which showcases new (and not so new), unusual, fascinating and strange directions in contemporary music and sound exploration.

Starting today such outfits as The Residents, Dead C., Black Dice, Chicks on Speed, and members of Boredoms and Sun City Girls tour Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Labels like Last Visible Dog, Touch, ElectrO-CD and Corpus Hermeticum are represented, and last year's festivities saw Whitehouse and Merzbow rip up the stage.

So MeFites, what other events are there out there like this that have tickled your collective pickles? Which festivals or bands have unduly influenced your aural development and/or rearranged your head musicwise?
posted by soi-disant at 3:01 AM PST - 16 comments

Mahabalipuram and the tsunami gifts
posted by magullo at 2:59 AM PST - 3 comments

we have talked about darknets before. The motivation exists. Some solutions exist, speculation is prevalent. What would it take for you to become faceless.
posted by sourbrew at 2:40 AM PST - 6 comments

The Citizen Journalist Starter Pack! $19.95 + S&H
posted by Tlogmer at 1:57 AM PST - 2 comments

Ryan, the Oscar winner for Best Short Film, is a canadian 3d and 2d animated masterpiece. I wish I could provide more than the material already provided by Andy Baio, but I just felt like you all should see this. It's the true story of Ryan Landis, a brilliant artist devastated by the real world. It's also the story of his impact on the director. That really doesn't do it justice. Please just click. apology inside
posted by shmegegge at 12:06 AM PST - 21 comments