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The Francesco Albano Open Ensemble performs selections from Peter Gabriel's Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ [All Music/Discogs] at Castel dell'Ovo, a 6th-century seaside castle in Naples Italy. Track list and instrumentation inside. [more inside]
posted by prinado at 11:58 PM PST - 11 comments

NeuroBollocks: Debunking pseudo-neuroscience so you don't have to.
posted by cthuljew at 10:23 PM PST - 18 comments

The Great Vigil of Easter is traditionally regarded as the most important celebration of the Christian liturgical year. However, it is a bit obscure due to the fact that it takes place at five o’clock in the morning. Traditions for celebrating the occasion vary wildly; many Christians in Egypt prayed in two dead languages: Koine Greek and Coptic. The Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican Church in Canada borrows from a wide range of traditions, and so the way they celebrate the day gives a good sample of what tradition-junkie Christians were doing this morning. [more inside]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:48 PM PST - 9 comments

The Cambridge University Library houses the world's largest collection of Charles Darwin's letters: more than 9,000 of the 15,000 letters he is known to have written and received in his lifetime. They've been posting them online since 2007 (previously on MeFi), in the Darwin Correspondence Project, where we can now read and search the full texts of more than 7,500 letters, and find information on 7,500 more -- all for free. This weekend, they added nearly all of the Darwin-Hooker letters: Over 1400 pieces of correspondence between Darwin and his closest friend, botanist Joseph Hooker. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:34 PM PST - 9 comments

Sax battle on the NYC subway [slyt].
posted by nickyskye at 7:29 PM PST - 38 comments

Low-poly art is an aesthetic in 3D modeling that works with intentionally limited resources to emulate the look of first generation three dimensional gaming, and also a response to the increasing role of mobile and web platforms as 3D game spaces (some more examples can be found in this thread). A great example of this technique is game designer and 3D artist Invader Ace. Their Tumblr has character designs, game mock-ups, and small vignette scenes. A full portfolio can be found at their website, here. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:06 PM PST - 15 comments

Polaroid Portrait Mosaics by Italian photographer Maurizio Galimberti offer intimate and compelling views of his subjects. How it's done: a portrait of Chuck Close, another portrait artist.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:00 PM PST - 2 comments

Color Spaces:

It has been known for some time that colors can be described by three numbers. If I show you light of a certain color and ask you to match it by combining lights of three other colors and varying their intensities, you'll typically be able to find a combination that looks indistinguishable. But the wavelengths you combine might be very different from the wavelengths I showed you. Light of the wavelength corresponding to yellow and light of the right combination of red and green wavelengths will look the same, even though they are physically quite different.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:57 PM PST - 26 comments

Early in the 19th century, gas lamps first illuminated city streets, not long after the potential for gas lighting was publicly demonstrated. Less than a century later, electricity was seen as the future of lighting public spaces, thanks in part to technology that was demonstrated around the time of gas lighting. Arc lamps, the predecessor to filament bulbs, were much too bright for lighting homes and businesses, but a single arc lamp could light a whole town. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 6:00 PM PST - 30 comments

Listen To Bitcoin in realtime (Chrome and Firefox 19+).
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:09 PM PST - 51 comments

SNAIL! A snail-based parody of the ubiquitous AWOLNATION song "Sail".
posted by lazaruslong at 4:37 PM PST - 31 comments

Benny Andersson & orgeln med 9000 pipor (58m, in Swedish, English, German, no subtitles that aren't from the Swedish TV source) presents the newly-built Organ Acusticum in the Studio Acusticum concert hall to Swedish television audiences. Performances include ABBA's Dancing Queen (with Benny on piano accompanied by the organ) and the premier of Benny's new composition specifically for this event En skrift i snön performed with Orsa Spelmän and choir. Lyrics can be found here (scroll down, Google Translate of lyrics).
posted by hippybear at 4:06 PM PST - 3 comments

1:42 minutes of a crow taking a bath.
posted by The Whelk at 1:57 PM PST - 66 comments

We all know that E.T. for the Atari 2600 was a terrible no-good awful game (previously, previously-er). But could it be that our received wisdom about the cartridge is just wrong? Yeah, probably not ... But to be fair, follow this in-depth guide to hacking the ET ROM and you, too, can transform the game into something far more play-worthy (and don't worry, you can still turn ET into its ninja form).
posted by barnacles at 12:47 PM PST - 66 comments

...others live in terraced houses. A very Radio 4 imagining of the diamond age. Part of the open air series (iteself part of the Artangel 'Open' initiative). The other episodes.
posted by titus-g at 12:34 PM PST - 2 comments

It's the terror of knowing / What the world is about / Watching some good friends / Screaming 'Let me out' / Pray tomorrow gets me higher / Pressure on people / People on streets / Day day de mm hm...
posted by roger ackroyd at 12:13 PM PST - 40 comments

A series of GIFs captures the difficult lives of people in infomercials.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:13 AM PST - 153 comments

The idea that men are naturally more interested in sex than women is ubiquitous that it’s difficult to imagine that people ever believed differently. And yet for most of Western history, from ancient Greece to beginning of the nineteenth century, women were assumed to be the sex-crazed porn fiends of their day.
posted by latkes at 10:58 AM PST - 75 comments

The New York Times has faced criticism after an obituary of Yvonne Brill, rocket scientist, opened with "She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said." [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 10:33 AM PST - 90 comments

How to make a Doctor Who "Bells of St. John"-style wifi name, from the BBC America Doctor Who Tumblr. (No spoilers in the article, inevitably spoilers in the comments.)
posted by Katemonkey at 8:49 AM PST - 193 comments

In 1933 political activist and champion for sexual freedom Aurora Rodriguez killed her Utopian 'project' and brilliant young daughter Hildegart. The Red Virgin is a short film about Hildegart by Sheila Pye. (all films somewhat NSFW) [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:44 AM PST - 4 comments

"Most of us are introduced to God at about the same time as we hear about Santa Claus, but over the years our views of Santa mature and change, while our notion of God often gets stuck at an infantile level."

The NewStatesman asks "After God: What can atheists learn from believers?"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:25 AM PST - 232 comments

The true secret of Easter - but are toys replacing candy (or, more awfully, live animals) as the traditional Easter gift? And is that a bad thing?
posted by Artw at 8:22 AM PST - 31 comments

"Just want to share the muslim fashionistas in the world. Who says women with hijab are not fashionable?" [SLTumblr]
posted by griphus at 7:25 AM PST - 58 comments

STREET OF THE IRON PO(E)T, A Paris Diary by Henri Cole: "Today I visited the cenotaph to Baudelaire..." Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.
posted by Fizz at 5:42 AM PST - 3 comments

As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long-Term Health Risks Fester: “The federal budget for protecting workers is less than half of that set aside for protecting fish and wildlife.″ [more inside]
posted by enn at 5:30 AM PST - 24 comments