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In the tropics one must before everything keep calm. Some backstory on the making of Apocalypse Now, originally published June of 1977. [more inside]
posted by nevercalm at 10:54 PM PST - 48 comments

For their 43rd anniversary issue, New York Magazine chose "to explore, across time, one of the things that has most defined New York life for centuries and has become a unit of measurement for our successes and failures: The Apartment: A History of Vertical Living" / Sardine Life: What a century and a half of piled-up housing reveals about us. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:00 PM PST - 33 comments

Reactor shutdowns nine months away: Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced Sunday that it will take six to nine months to complete a cold shutdown of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, while the United States proposed a daring plan to use a remote-controlled helicopter and cranes to pluck out their spent fuel rods... If all goes well, displaced residents from the evacuation zone should know within six to nine months whether they will be able to go home, trade minister Banri Kaieda said. [Previously] [Open MeFi pro vs. con nuclear policy thread] [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 8:19 PM PST - 505 comments

In 1946 Charlie Wohlford, leveraging his reputation for repairing Canadian loggers' boots to better than new, founded Dayton Boots. The company emphasized quality and grew largely on word of mouth. In 2010 they hired Rethink Canada for an ad campaign. The result was interesting.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:42 PM PST - 81 comments

Farewell Good Brothers "An off-beat, irreverant and often hilarious documentary about the making and the makers of a modern myth - the widespread belief in flying saucers and alien visitations. Combining strange and unusual archive footage from the 1950s with several contemporary interviews, the film focuses on a few people who helped to pioneer such beliefs; the so-called ‘contactees’ and on one leading researcher who believes in them." (1991, 77 mins.)
posted by puny human at 6:23 PM PST - 13 comments

Retrospace (previously) gives us a series of cards from lounge acts that appeared at the Biltmore Motor Hotel in Union City, Tennessee, sometime in the Seventies. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:02 PM PST - 12 comments

Cathy's House [SLYT]
posted by Fizz at 6:00 PM PST - 36 comments

As he travels the highways of America, courthouselover stops in every county and parish along the way to snap a photo of its courthouse. "From the Prairie-style courthouses in the Dakotas to the antebellum beauties of Alabama, and from the Romanesque masterpieces of Central Texas and Indiana to the Mission style structures of New Mexico, they are all national treasures." [more inside]
posted by SpringAquifer at 5:54 PM PST - 33 comments

Is Star Wars sexist? Cracked examines the lack of strong female characters in Star Wars.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:52 PM PST - 125 comments

A dramatic and surprising magnetic effect of light discovered by University of Michigan researchers could lead to solar power without traditional semiconductor-based solar cells.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 4:48 PM PST - 19 comments

Bill Moyers interviews David Simon "Again, we would have to ask ourselves a lot of hard questions. The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It’s the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. As we said before, economically, we don’t need those people; the American economy doesn’t need them. So as long as they stay in their ghettos and they only kill each other, we’re willing to pay for a police presence to keep them out of our America."
posted by bitmage at 3:46 PM PST - 70 comments

"Despite promises that the 43rd Parliament would be kindlier and gentler, it has been characterised by vitriol in question time, a Prime Minister labelled a liar - and outside Parliament, a bitch - and an Opposition Leader called an extremist. Both sides complain the other is mean." [So much for kinder, gentler politics]
posted by vidur at 1:58 PM PST - 35 comments

Fareed Zakaria: Are America's Best Days Behind Us? - "We have an Electoral College that no one understands and a Senate that doesn't work, with rules and traditions that allow a single Senator to obstruct democracy without even explaining why. We have a crazy-quilt patchwork of towns, municipalities and states with overlapping authority, bureaucracies and resulting waste. We have a political system geared toward ceaseless fundraising and pandering to the interests of the present with no ability to plan, invest or build for the future. And if one mentions any of this, why, one is being unpatriotic, because we have the perfect system of government, handed down to us by demigods who walked the earth in the late 18th century and who serve as models for us today and forever. America's founders would have been profoundly annoyed by this kind of unreflective ancestor worship." [for/against]
posted by kliuless at 1:23 PM PST - 95 comments

Author Greg Mortenson who wrote Three Cups of Tea is facing claims that key stories in the book are false. "It's a beautiful story. And it's a lie," author Jon Krakauer is quoted by CBS as saying.
posted by woodjockey at 10:50 AM PST - 73 comments

They created a home together that catches the eye, and their story of love and art is even more captivating, despite tragedy and loss.
posted by batmonkey at 9:54 AM PST - 7 comments

Walking While Black is still more of a problem to the NYPD than Biking While White. [SLYT] This recent incident, caught on video, demonstrates in real time the ways that law enforcement frequently ignores enforcing the law in favor of teaching a lesson to the law-abiding smart aleck. [more inside]
posted by whimsicalnymph at 8:54 AM PST - 217 comments

Big dust up about kin selection. Biologists E.O. Wilson, Martin Nowak, and Corina Tarnita publish a paper attacking kin selection, the idea that the reproductive success of a gene is influenced not only by its effects on its carrier, but also by its effects on related individuals (kin) carrying the same gene. 130 some odd other biologists respond. Richard Dawkins weighs in. Some talking bears offer a summary. [via]
posted by AceRock at 8:18 AM PST - 46 comments

How Rogue Ended Up On The Sofa - a look at the descendants of the classic game, including MeFi's own 100 Rogues.
posted by Artw at 7:36 AM PST - 52 comments

What MeFite doesn't like a good niche museum? We've had posts about the great overview site Museum of Museums [previously], Patrick Acton's Matchstick Marvels [previously and previously], cat museums [previously] and even a mention of Velvetaria, the Museum of Velvet Painting [previously] - sadly now closed, awaiting new digs. I'd like to add a new one. May I present The Hendrikje Museum of Handbags and Purses? [more inside]
posted by likeso at 5:21 AM PST - 30 comments

In Defense of Offensive Art - What the hell does Odd Future's music mean?
posted by azarbayejani at 4:20 AM PST - 46 comments

Pizza Island is a cartoonist collective in Brooklyn. Each cartoonist has a workspace unique to their style and workflow: Kate Beaton, Domitille Collardey, Sarah Glidden, Meredith Gran, Lisa Hanawalt, and Julia Wertz.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:59 AM PST - 25 comments

The Birka Jazz Archive is a treasure trove of record jackets from all eras of jazz. American releases are grouped by label (for example, Columbia, Blue Note, Atlantic, etc.) with, in some case, further sub-categorization by designers or visual artists (such as the amazing David Stone Martin). European releases are sorted by country (France, Sweden, Germany, etc.) and it all adds up to a fabulous online resource for jazz fans and graphic design fans alike.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:10 AM PST - 9 comments