March 23, 2012

"There are times you realize how small the place you're from really is."

Kate Beaton, on loss and home. [more inside]
posted by kagredon at 11:22 PM PST - 41 comments

The voice of reason... in Washington, DC?!

Organized irreligion! This weekend , Washington, D.C. will be invaded by the voice of reason. A free rally featuring Tim Minchin, Paul Provenza, Richard Dawkins, Eddie Izzard, Adam Savage, James Randi, Bad Religion, and many others, in what is anticipated to be the largest gathering of non-believers in America.
"If we don't organize, we will be the only ones not organized. Religion will be organized. We won't be organized. That means we lose... and they win."
posted by markkraft at 11:17 PM PST - 500 comments

I've got your "Physician outrage" right here!

Where is the physician outrage? Metafilter's own jscalzi played host to an anonymous post by an outraged physician who put forth a five point plan for civil disobedience in the face of legislators demanding that physicians prescribe transvaginal ultrasounds to women who may choose to abort.
posted by ChrisR at 10:57 PM PST - 81 comments

The Iced Coffee Economy

Why iced coffee costs so much more than the hot stuff.
posted by reenum at 8:12 PM PST - 82 comments

Found in the Hy-Lo in 1970

Photo set: drugstore shelves (1970).
posted by jjray at 7:04 PM PST - 38 comments

The Internet never lies!

Maria Dmitrienko, a member of the Kazakh national shooting team, won a competition in Kuwait. At the medal ceremony, the organizers played the fake Kazakh national anthem from the movie "Borat", which praises Kazakhstan for its potassium exports and claims that it has the cleanest prostitutes in the region. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:49 PM PST - 40 comments

The happiness in my heart was as deep as the sea.

The true story of a lost child who never forgot his home, a mother who never gave up hope, and google earth.
posted by Kerasia at 4:37 PM PST - 35 comments

http://yungja.ke/e.m-bed.de/d/ (live experience screen video)

Yung Jake, who also has a great song about datamoshing, drops a new track on internet fame as a means to acquiring internet fame. It appears to be accompanied by some sort of internetface http://e.m-bed.de/d that isn't loading. Maybe if you stopped clicking on the link it would work...
posted by zachhouston at 3:35 PM PST - 10 comments

Dandelions and bellwomen and eyehands, oh my

Opeth's 'I Feel the Dark' juxtaposed with Dali/Disney's 'Destino', pairing a sound lush enough to match the visuals. [more inside]
posted by FatherDagon at 2:49 PM PST - 15 comments

Machines vast and sinister

We've discussed subblue/Tom Beddard and Mandlebulbs before, but two months ago L'Eclaireur Sévigné asked him to create a few animations for their 147-screen exhibition. And here are the hypnotic, terrifying results.
posted by The Whelk at 2:45 PM PST - 11 comments

Pungle up, unless your pockets are full of flug.

In the late fall of 1965, lexicographer Frederic Gomes Cassidy dispatched a fleet of Word Wagons from a Madison, Wisconsin parking lot. His team of graduate students and volunteers, armed with Cassidy's 1,847-item questionnaire were attempting to compile and decipher all regional dialects and idioms found in America. Cassidy passed away in 2000, but colleagues continued on, and the fifth volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) has been completed. [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 2:41 PM PST - 18 comments

Fact and a Photo

From Dan Lewis, the same guy who writes Now I Know, the daily e-newsletter of interesting stories ("Every morning, I share something interesting I’ve learned over the last few weeks. It began in June of 2010. As of January 1, 2012, 35,000 people are subscribed." Previously. Archives.), comes the nascent Fact and a Photo tumblr. Already, there's a picture of a swimming pig.
posted by not_on_display at 2:22 PM PST - 9 comments

Michael Mann's "Thief"

Michael Mann's "Thief" is a film of style, substance, and violently felt emotion, all wrapped up in one of the most intelligent thrillers I've seen. - Roger Ebert [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 1:27 PM PST - 52 comments

Dissecting OV's 103, 104 and 105.

Orbiter Autopsies "What NASA will learn from dissecting Space Shuttles Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour" before they transition into retirement. (From the May 2012 issue of Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine.)
posted by zarq at 1:10 PM PST - 14 comments

"I heard human blood boils in space..."

Humanity’s long war with the nefarious space-cat Kilrathi has been revived in the fan made Wing Commander Saga : The Darkest Dawn! [more inside]
posted by stratastar at 12:54 PM PST - 36 comments

Roads & Kingdoms

The newly launched Roads & Kingdoms describes itself as an online journal of food, politics, music and travel [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:32 PM PST - 6 comments

The Big Split: Why the hedge fund world loved Obama in 2008—and viscerally despises him today.

If you’re elected president,” asked one guest at a 2007 hedge fund managers event for Obama, “what will you do to the taxes on the people in this room?” “I’ll raise them,” Obama fired back. The managers, who share social circles and an educational background with Obama, approved of his style. These days, however, the bloom is off the rose. In The Big Split, Alec MacGillis investigates the souring of a 20 year relationship between Democrats and high finance, and surmises that it's the administration's rhetoric more than its policy that has upset the masters of the financial universe.
posted by the mad poster! at 11:50 AM PST - 84 comments

O'Keefe's accomplice defects after harassment

Nadia Naffe describes herself as a former accomplice to James O'Keefe (oh so Previously) but last year filed a harassment claim against him, which was dismissed in December. Now she is telling all on her blog: [more inside]
posted by waraw at 11:20 AM PST - 53 comments

The return of Whit Stillman

“A trio of girls set out to change the male-dominated environment of the Seven Oaks college campus, and to rescue their fellow students from depression, grunge and low standards of every kind.” After a 14-year absence, director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco) returns with Damsels in Distress (trailer on site), opening April 6 in New York and Los Angeles. The New York Times Magazine did a story on Stillman’s return on March 16. (Previously)
posted by Clustercuss at 10:39 AM PST - 51 comments

(◡ ‿ ◡ ✿)

The Fungarium & The Millenium Seed Bank Partnership:
A Pair of 5-minute Documentaries on the Research Institutions at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. (Previously 1 , Previously 2)
posted by lemuring at 10:31 AM PST - 4 comments

Do you miss Four Loko the same way I do?

Faux Loko
posted by josher71 at 10:04 AM PST - 87 comments

Instruments from the Inside

Näher an der Klassik (Closer to the Classical) is an advertising campaign for the Berlin Philharmonic which features macro photographs that turn the inner spaces of musical instruments into lovely, cathedral-like spaces.
posted by quin at 9:44 AM PST - 9 comments

Dartmouth Idol

Can your Partners in Health co-founder college president World Bank president do this?
posted by lukemeister at 9:00 AM PST - 36 comments

With algorithms subtle and discrete / I seek iambic writings to retweet.

Not satisfied with his previous attempt at generating sonnets randomly, mefi's own moonmilk has created a twitter bot that searches for lines of iambic pentameter, and a site where the results are assembled into sonnet form. [more inside]
posted by kenko at 8:34 AM PST - 57 comments

"Rule 100: Cleanse not your teeth with the tablecloth."

By George by Maira Kalman [NYTimes.com] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:16 AM PST - 5 comments

The Mouse's New Clothes, er, Groove

The Sweatbox "the documentary Disney doesn't want you to see" (95-minute SLYT), was made when Sting wrote songs for "Kingdom of the Sun" and his filmmaker wife Trudie Styler got insider access to the production. What? You say there was no Disney movie "Kingdom of the Sun"? I meant "The Emperor's New Groove". Rarely has the decline of an Institution been better documented.
This may or may not be Disney property and may or may not be taken down any minute, but it has survived on YouTube for over 48 hours after getting blogged-about a dozen times.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:11 AM PST - 98 comments

Doug Aitkin's Song 1 at the Hirshhorn

Artist Doug Aiken's projection installation, Song 1 on the façade of the donut-shaped Hirshhorn Museum in DC opened last night. The work is a looped video installation of many people singing "I Only Have Eyes for You." It's very atmospheric and finally brings some art that enlivens the somewhat strange shape of the museum's exterior. I heard him speak and then got to see the installation. It's beautiful. If you're in DC definitely come down to the National Mall after dusk (projection runs nightly until midnight).
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 8:11 AM PST - 6 comments

It's the freakin' weekend, baby, I'm about to have me some fun

Young the Giant's excellent cover of R. Kelly's Ignition (Remix) kicks off this season of A. V. Club's Undercover series in some style. The song has been covered extensively since it came out, in styles ranging from bedroom ukulele to ivy a capella to basement indie. It was also covered by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and inspired Dave Chapelle's pisstake. John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats has been a long-time fan, usually adding a minute of the song as a coda to his cover of The Boys Are Back in Town. Darnielle, and some friends, gave us 100 Reasons Why "Ignition - Remix" Is So Damned Great.
posted by Kattullus at 8:08 AM PST - 43 comments

We Love You - Iran & Israel

To the Iranian people. To all the fathers, mothers, children, brothers and sisters. For there to be a war between us, first we must be afraid of each other, we must hate. I'm not afraid of you, I don't hate you. I don t even know you. No Iranian ever did me no harm. I never even met an Iranian...Just one in Paris in a museum. Nice dude. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 8:05 AM PST - 76 comments

I'd Like Some More Mondelez with Cheese, Please!

Legendary Food Company Plans to Rebrand Itself
posted by Renoroc at 7:44 AM PST - 148 comments

Large Heavy Vegetables and Rap Music

In September 2011, Welshman Ian Neale, claimed to have grown the world's heaviest swede. This bold claim caught the eye of Snoop Dogg who invited him via youtube to attend his gig in Cardiff so they could chat about horticultural matters. [more inside]
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 7:12 AM PST - 50 comments

"Bad books" and how to spot them.

"The world is full of 'bad books'; not just uninteresting, or ill-informed, or morally repugnant books, but books that set out to present or defend positions that are insupportable in logic….Often these bad books become quite popular, and frequently gain a wider audience than good books on the same subjects. In discouraging my students from relying on such bad books, I began to wonder why they are popular." [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:05 AM PST - 135 comments

Frustro: The Impossible Typeface

Hungarian designer Martzi Hegedűs has created a single typeface, titled Frustro, on the sole premise of making it impossible.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:02 AM PST - 21 comments

Go face to face with your ancestors.

The Turkana Basin Institute and the Kenya National Museums are digitizing their fossil collections. Look around their virtual laboratory and collections and get up close and personal with some of paleoanthropology's most important fossils. There are over 20,000 specimens that are housed in the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi as well as in the laboratories of the Turkana Basin Institute to the east and west of Lake Turkana. These range in age from 28 million years to several thousand years in age and have been recovered over the past six decades of exploration of the fossil rich deposits around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:43 AM PST - 3 comments

But did it keep Mathematica quiet while it looked?

How do I find Waldo with Mathematica?
posted by OmieWise at 6:15 AM PST - 10 comments

Superman the Asshole

17 Vintage Comic Book Covers Where Superman is a Complete Sociopath.
posted by marxchivist at 5:57 AM PST - 40 comments

The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis

Bill Moyers' scathing 1987 special report on our secret government.(SLYT)(via)(trigger warning: pictures and video of dead bodies) It includes an in-depth look at the Iran-Contra Affair and much, much more. Note: sound cuts out for a couple of minutes during the intro because of copyrighted song. Sound returns around 3:20.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:23 AM PST - 19 comments

Security theatre theatre.

In the latest (ongoing) Economist debate (run Oxford-style), security expert Bruce Schneier and architect of the TSA Kip Hawley are facing off to respectively defend and attack the motion "This house believes that changes made to airport security since 9/11 have done more harm than good." Overview. Opening statements. Rebuttals. (Surprisingly cogent) comments from the floor.
posted by unSane at 5:20 AM PST - 32 comments

Jeunesse

40 vintage European posters
posted by mippy at 5:17 AM PST - 9 comments

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