I wanted to call you tonight. Predictably enough I was in one of those confusing states of mind somewhere between desperation and liberation--too wound up to do anything about my condition. So, me being me, and me being in some city where the street corners don't mean shit to me, I set off walking trying to find God in the neighborhoods or in traffic or in the laugh of some homeless guy. Mainly though, I was trying to get lost... From Letters I Never Sent, a site "for Lovers. Liars. Crybabies. Sweetheats. Strangers. Best Friends. Old Friends. Exes. Enemies. Night Owls. Loners. Inmates. Vampires. Surfers. Soldiers. Jumpers. Writers. Widows. Ballerinas. Bastards. Gods."
posted by amyms at 11:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Taking risks at really large waterfalls: Swimming at the edge of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe with video, closeups here and Niagara Falls Daredevils. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:23 PM PST - 39 comments

The things I like best about Michael Taft's Prewar Blues Lyrics Concordance, a subsection of T. G. Lindh's Web Concordances of Pre-War Blue Lyrics and Bob Dylan Lyrics, are the listings of the lyrics by singer: A - C, D - H, J - L, M - R and S - Y. And the nice thing about the blues lyrics is you don't need to ask for a log in and password. It 's all right there. Explore and enjoy. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:02 PM PST - 9 comments

Remember Wake Up Cat (or "Cat Man Do"), the animated short about a hungry kitty and his sleeping human by Simon Tofield of Tandem Films? Now Mr. Tofield has made Let Me In available for your viewing pleasure. Mrow.
posted by onlyconnect at 9:05 PM PST - 26 comments

Alberta voted on March 3, 2008. Or did it? The record low turnout of 41.3% is causing questions to be asked. [more inside]
posted by never used baby shoes at 8:11 PM PST - 68 comments

Gravityland. Interactive Web TV series. Watch weekly episodes, respond, contribute. Read blog. Add moves to music video. Play Where in the world is Gravityland? Read comic book. Build FAQ. Somehow, it's all related, and all possibility. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 7:54 PM PST - 8 comments

"Many women experience a fluid sexual desire that is responsive to a person rather than a specific gender" A description of the topic for Lisa Diamond's new book, Sexual Fluidity. While waiting to get your copy of the book, why not read some of her papers? Here's one about young women who identify as lesbians or bisexuals and then change their minds. Was it a phase? (pdf) Here's one about the development of sexual orientation among adolescent and young adult women. (pdf) Here's one containing a new view of lesbian subtypes. (pdf) There are more.
posted by wittgenstein at 6:24 PM PST - 102 comments

The Man Between War and Peace. "As head of U. S. Central Command, Admiral William 'Fox' Fallon is in charge of American military strategy for the most troubled parts of the world. Now, as the White House has been escalating the war of words with Iran, and seeming ever more determined to strike militarily before the end of this presidency, the admiral has urged restraint and diplomacy. Who will prevail, the president or the admiral?" [Via Think Progress.]
posted by homunculus at 4:59 PM PST - 50 comments

"Gaze upon my packets, ye savory, and despair." -Saucymandias The Condiment Packet Gallery has hundreds of scanned condiment packets. You can view them by type, brand, or country of origin, or just view them all at once. (Via.)
posted by cog_nate at 4:38 PM PST - 37 comments

Lift your head up high and take a walk in the sun with dignity and stick-to-it-ive-ness and you'll show the world, you'll show them where to get off! And never give up, never give up... that ship!!!
posted by wendell at 3:59 PM PST - 19 comments

The Curious Cultural Journey of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:35 PM PST - 165 comments

"I can't imagine Americans writing a song like this. It has a grim beauty. It feels pessimistic in one breath and optimistic in another." The Guardian asks musicians about the songs that define what it means to be English. The Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish each get an interview too.
posted by patricio at 1:58 PM PST - 67 comments

Over the past decade, as NASCAR's popularity has grown, and Formula 1 has expanded into new international markets, open wheel racing in the US has floundered along with 2 rival series: IRL and CART. With little sponsorship money, the loss of big-name drivers to retirement, F1 and NASCAR, this year's unification of IRL and CART was a long time coming, and may lead to a series that race fans may start caring about again.
posted by jaimev at 1:48 PM PST - 73 comments

Found via these two 1985 David Fincher music videos, but browsed because of a clear tagged interface and some great content, here's DVblog.org.
posted by cgc373 at 1:09 PM PST - 3 comments

London's Metropolitan police have a press campaign to help us inform on each other identify terrorists. How do you spot your terrorist? Well he could be the one with the camera ^pdf. Or he could be the one with two mobile phones ^pdf. Or the one with a chemistry set and a house ^pdf. Flickr folk have their alternative takes on the poster campaign. Photographer's rights in the blue previously. And the met have already gone to bat against the terrorists an innocent photographer
posted by itsjustanalias at 1:03 PM PST - 35 comments

"When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied." Kevin Kelly (previously) describes eight "generative" values that increase in value as the price tag on making copies goes down. He also has some advice for creators who want to make money off the long tail. Via
posted by ErWenn at 12:51 PM PST - 20 comments

My awesomeness. I am available for an interview. [more inside]
posted by mikoroshi at 12:48 PM PST - 24 comments

It started with some broken bones and then Austrian skier Matthias Lanzinger had his lower leg amputated yesterday.
posted by gman at 11:22 AM PST - 53 comments

Bert Stern took pictures of Marilyn Monroe over 3 sessions [nsfw] in 1962. They're called the Last Sitting as she died of an apparent overdose 6 weeks later. In February 2008, he recreates the shoot using Lindsay Lohan [nsfw]. Not willing to let a good opportunity to spoof celebrities fly by, Village Voice's Michael Musto recreates Lindsay Lohan's photo session [nsfw].
posted by Stynxno at 10:41 AM PST - 68 comments

Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas becomes the first university in the US to give out iPhones to incoming freshmen. Concept videos describing how they will be used here (social), here (academic) and here (overview).
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:31 AM PST - 26 comments

11 hours, 29 minutes... That's how long you'd have to play your instrument, if you were a 180lb musician, to work off the calories in a 12-inch Pizza Hut Super Supreme Pizza, (Regular Crust). Foodsel offers a wealth of information about the foods we eat, organized by group, manufacturer or nutrient, with visuals about the exercise needed to work off the calories, and the amount of fat and energy in 7500 different foods. [more inside]
posted by Dave Faris at 10:14 AM PST - 52 comments

The evolution of Mars imaging from orbit: Mariner 4 (1964), Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 (both 1969), Mariner 9 (1971) (all NASA), Mars 5 (1973) (USSR), Viking 1 (1975), Viking 2 (1976), Mars Global Surveyor (1996), Mars Odyssey (2001) (NASA), Mars Express (2003) (ESA), up to this spy-quality shot of an active avalanche taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2005).
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 10:03 AM PST - 11 comments

Wikipedia page hit statistics (finally).
posted by stbalbach at 8:50 AM PST - 34 comments

Fake Memoir Exposed: Margaret Seltzer, pen name Margaret Jones, wrote a critically acclaimed memoir, Love and Consequences, that was published last week. NPR's "On Point" covered the story, and she gave Penguin an interview. After seeing a New York Times feature, though, her own sister outed her as a fraud. [more inside]
posted by lunit at 8:31 AM PST - 83 comments

Gee. I think I'll uninstall my firewall and ditch the anti-virus. Malwares is pretty. via bbc.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 8:29 AM PST - 15 comments

How would the military really kill a giant monster? The excellent Danger Room blog considers the problem in a two part post. Of course, if you want to find out how giant your monster is first, you may want to consult this discussion comparing monster heights.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:59 AM PST - 36 comments

Sound Comparisons is a database of different accents in English from all over the world. It provides soundfiles and IPA transcriptions of 110 words in 110 separate dialects and Germanic languages closely related to English. Most dialects and languages are current but there are also reconstructions of older stages of English, Scots and Germanic. That makes for 12100 soundfiles that load directly into your browser. The site can be navigated either by dialect or individual word and there's also a handy Google map of all the different dialects and languages. If you've ever wondered what the difference was between a Somerset and a Norwich accent, New Zealand and Australian, Canadian and American or Indian and Glaswegian, Sound Comparisons is the site to go to.
posted by Kattullus at 7:16 AM PST - 44 comments

If you could use a great big free handbook of discrete math and algorithms, Jörg Arndt's fxtbook wants to be your friend. Plain text table of contents to whet your appetite.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:02 AM PST - 11 comments

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism is a book released last month by Tim Keller. Its faired reasonably well (NYT, login req'd), which is interesting, considering the wide success of books preaching the opposite message, as of late (Dawkins, et. al.). [more inside]
posted by allkindsoftime at 3:47 AM PST - 155 comments

Prof Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan looks at the physics of wrinkles, creases and folds - from the small to the very large (video demos), feeds his venus flytrap, then rides on his magic carpet.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:56 AM PST - 3 comments

Josh Klein is a novelist, hacker, and inventor whose Crow Vending Machine trains crows to pick coins off the ground in exchange for peanuts using Skinnerian training principles. Previously. So far, he's only succeeded with trained crows and banded crows, but he hopes to teach wild crows to use the device and collect some of the $215,000,000 in change lost in the United States each year. [more inside]
posted by arnicae at 12:36 AM PST - 48 comments

Here it is, MC5 - A True Testimonial, the controvertial documentary about 'the loudest, the baddest, the most outrageous bunch of get-down white brothers the nation had yet seen.' by David C. Thomas, in three parts. [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 12:00 AM PST - 13 comments