Rats process musical information. [more inside]
posted by idiopath at 10:52 PM PST - 24 comments

The Library of Congress will be archiving all public tweets ever published. They'll be doing this after a six-month delay. LOC announced this via Twitter first, naturally. Notable scholars consider some problems and open questions. [more inside]
posted by tarheelcoxn at 10:07 PM PST - 83 comments

Debuting 20 years ago, In Living Color launched the Hollywood careers of Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey, David Allen Grier, most of the Wayans family, Jennifer Lopez and Rosie Perez. The comedy might not have aged all that well, but the musical performances and parodies are still a lot of fun. [more inside]
posted by empath at 8:57 PM PST - 86 comments

Ben Wilson's Chewing Gum paintings and Slinkachu's sculpture rewards the attentive pedestrian. The former paints tiny pictures on sidewalk gum. The latter sets up tiny urban tableaus with humor and sly social critique. Pays to watch where you walk. (hat tip -- Raw Vision)
posted by cross_impact at 8:56 PM PST - 5 comments

Something of a rarity on film, Jim Henson and Frank Oz get a chance to "ham" it up without a script, when The Muppet Movie director James Frawley requests some camera tests to see how the puppets look when filmed on location. The hilarious result: Part One | Part Two
posted by evilcolonel at 5:57 PM PST - 86 comments

Henry Giroux has written a compelling article about teachers and their importance to our country.
posted by HuronBob at 5:07 PM PST - 59 comments

Platypus Comix has compiled images from around the Internet of prototype game consoles and peripherals spanning from the original NES all the way to the Sony PlayStation 3. You'll see the NES's tape recorder, a touch pad for the Sega Genesis, the infamous Nintendo PlayStation, a PlayStation Portable you can clip to your backpack ("...or whatever reckless thing they thought you'd try."), a Wii controller with just one large button, and the embarrassing PS3 "serect" button. [more inside]
posted by Servo5678 at 4:17 PM PST - 38 comments

Lionel Richie: "Hello ... is it me you're looking for?" (SLYT). This new rendition will reprogram your brain's memories of this song ... forever.
posted by WCityMike at 3:50 PM PST - 51 comments

Mass application of bacon as applied to Star Wars AT-AT Walker As interesting as this is in itself, the venemous nature of some of the comments is wide ranging and toxic, making the whole exercise another rich internet moral experience.
posted by petecart at 2:48 PM PST - 105 comments

The main goal of Project Vedos is to study and teach alternative printing processes in photography and printmaking.
posted by vostok at 2:27 PM PST - 3 comments

Robert Hodgin's Magnetic sculptures: "These forms are created with cylinder magnets, spherical magnets, and ball bearings. Magnetism is the only thing holding the forms together. They are fairly fragile and picking them up will likely crush them. All of the forms I created were variations of the 12 sided dodecahedron. This particular platonic solid seems to be the form the magnets are happiest with." [via]
posted by dhruva at 2:27 PM PST - 11 comments

DUI? Dealing Drugs? Better Call Saul! Have you or someone you know been affected by the tragedy of Wayfarer Flight 515? SAUL CAN HELP! Also related: Check out Saul's philanthropic causes. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 1:18 PM PST - 71 comments

In 2009, four Buddhist nuns (Bhikkunis) were secretly ordained in Australia - the first ever ordination of Bhikkunis in Australia, and a first for the Thai Forest tradition anywhere. London-born Ajahn Brahm, a long-time supporter of women's equality in Buddhism, facilitated the ordination. For this he was expelled from his community, the Wat Pa Phong Sangha, and his monastery's status was revoked. This video summarizes the conflict, and is possibly the first use of the Downfall meme related to Buddhism. This March, more nuns were ordained in the UK for the first time since the Australia controversy, but they're still not equal to male monks. This blog post discusses sexism, fundamentalism, and the conflict between East and West. The modern opposition to bhikkhuni ordination is no ancient Buddhist tradition. It can be traced no earlier, so far as I am aware, than the abhorrent 1928 ruling against bhikkhuni in Thailand, made by monks who thought it reasonable to arrest nuns and throw them in jail for ordaining. [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 1:10 PM PST - 76 comments

Guy Kewney was an early and prolific writer in UK technology publishing, most renowned for his ‘Newsprint’ column in Personal Computer World (Guy’s take on PCW’s history and decline & more writing for The Register). He died last week. His most recent project was newswireless, his personal blog wryly and honestly recorded his illness, and he was a respected and much missed man (Teblog has a list of the many tributes). [more inside]
posted by Huw at 1:05 PM PST - 7 comments

Following on from Jonathan Wilson's excellent column The Question (previously), Zonal Marking illustrates and explains how a football match is won and lost, often with same-day analysis and emphasis on individual players. [more inside]
posted by Errant at 1:02 PM PST - 25 comments

Echo Bazaar is a place where you can play The Greatest Game, or seek your Ambitions, or, what the heck, just Seduce an Artist's Model! Ever since London was dragged one mile below the Earth's surface -- and one mile closer to Hell -- by a huge flurry of billions of bats, finding your fortune in the city has been something of a different beast. [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 12:19 PM PST - 44 comments

The show Glee has created a remake of Madonna’s original Vogue music video, starring Jane Lynch. It's part of a promotional campaign for their upcoming (4/20) “Madonna” episode. Available at: Hulu, Fox, and Yahoo. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:46 AM PST - 111 comments

Journeys to the Internal Space Station (SLBP) [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 11:38 AM PST - 29 comments

There are lots of bullet hell shmups out there. But have you ever wished you could play one as the boss? Now you can.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:19 AM PST - 19 comments

"HERES A HANDY TIP FOR NOT FORGETTING ABOUT DRE, JUST WRITE IN YUOR MOLESKINE 'REMEMBER TO PICK UP DR DRE ON WAY HOME FROM WORK'". Confused by Twitter? Don't see the point? MeFi's own Greg Nog single-handedly validates the micro-blogging site with his #twurts. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 9:53 AM PST - 137 comments

Baltasar Garzón is a Spanish judge known for his cases on human right abuses by south american dictatorships under international law, specially the case against Augusto Pinochet. Now, after admitting a case against abuses during Franco's Era, he is facing accusations by extreme right groups of deliberately ignoring the Amnesty Law of 1977, possibly questionable under the same universal jurisdiction that gained him international renown. In a controversial decision, the case has been admitted by the Spanish Supreme Court, and so Garzón is facing the possibility of up to 20 years of suspension. [more inside]
posted by valdesm at 9:40 AM PST - 14 comments

Last US sardine cans being packed in Maine. The Stinson Seafood Plant in Prospect Harbor, Maine was the last sardine cannery in the US, packaging Beach Cliff brand sardines (the "world standard for excellence in sardines"). The cannery shuts down this week. Of course this received a fair amount of coverage in Maine, including hopes that a new owner might buy the cannery as recent as a week ago. There's an interview with one of the long-time employees as well as a time-lapse video of the canning process. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 9:13 AM PST - 57 comments

Mathematics Illuminated is a set of thirteen surveys in varied topics in mathematics, nicely produced with video, text, and interactive Flash gadgets for each of the topics.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:32 AM PST - 8 comments

Team Society League
posted by jtron at 8:28 AM PST - 10 comments

Nate Neilson is a name that is not only unfamiliar to most people, it's unfamiliar to many of his biggest fans. That's because he went by the nom-de-brick of "nnenn". Neilson was a huge presence in the online Lego community, regularly putting out amazing and unique Lego creations on a regular basis, including entire building genres. He was also the driving force behind Novvember, a month-long celebration of the "Vic Viper" (from the videogame "Gradius") in which he and others "riffed" on a basic central design to see how many interesting variations on it they could make. Sadly, Neilson passed away recently following an automobile accident. Many of his online fans only learned this way of his real name, his job as a stay-at-home-Dad with two sons, and his other artistic outlet. He was a huge presence in the online Lego community, and he will be greatly missed. There is a fine eulogy for him (along with an overview of his work and influence) over at the premiere Lego site, The Brothers Brick. (And yes, his icon was a Lego rubber band holder.)
posted by Legomancer at 7:44 AM PST - 25 comments

Finish with a flurry! (SLYT) Brad McWilliams went undefeated in over 700 street fights and shows you the secrets that will let you do the same.
posted by ignignokt at 6:58 AM PST - 60 comments

Cilantro haters, it's not your fault
posted by AceRock at 6:52 AM PST - 188 comments

Topher wants to know why Melbourne's water supply system doesn't include a gravity-fed pipeline from Tasmania.
posted by flabdablet at 5:12 AM PST - 60 comments

Zsa Zsa Gabor will probably die this year. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi will definitely die. Fidel Castro and Eli Wallach may or may not die this year. Geez, I don't want to make #1 on the Death List.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:21 AM PST - 56 comments

Tactile Mind is a pornography magazine for the blind. While porn for the blind has been done before, this is the first offering with raised pictures of naked bodies.
posted by grandsham at 12:02 AM PST - 53 comments