April 23, 2007

Best. Fake. Shark. EVAH.

The year is 1978. A group of 12 year-olds have decided to make a Super 8 film of their own based on Jaws. Presenting... SHARK!
posted by miss lynnster at 11:39 PM PST - 34 comments

Half-handed Casiotone

Half-handed Cloud upends the common conception of what Christian music should sound like. Part of a constellation of artists that include Brother Danielson and Sufjan Stevens, John Ringhofer crafts quirky, ramshackle indie pop songs with explicit Christian themes. Interviews: 1, 2, 3, 4. Reviews: 1, 2, 3. Videos: 1, 2, 3, 4.
posted by Falconetti at 10:59 PM PST - 65 comments

Shave, shock and humiliate a man’s genitals in three seconds flat

Torboto: The Robot That Tortures People.
posted by homunculus at 10:32 PM PST - 44 comments

Birdie, Birdie In the Sky.......

The Super Sky Cycle is a convertible gyrocopter that lets you fly at better than freeway speeds, land in 20 feet, be driven home as a motorcycle, and fit in your garage. It is available now for a mere $37K. Check out the flight vid, the cool MacGyver soundtrack is extra though.
Note, yes, "Super" and "Cycle" might be stretches in the name of this product. But it is still pretty damned cool. via
posted by fenriq at 10:26 PM PST - 33 comments

... Karl Rove, a handful of the party's most tech-savvy computer gurus and the former Republican Ohio Secretary of State, created, owned and operated the vote-counting system...

Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results --...more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors. ...
posted by amberglow at 7:44 PM PST - 68 comments

Citizen journalism is a form of fascism waiting to happen

Citizen journalism is a form of fascism waiting to happen, suggests InfoWorld columnist Ephraim Schwartz.
posted by stbalbach at 7:43 PM PST - 57 comments

IM ON UR K33Z DR33MIN MAI DR33MZ

Meme Cats. 485 reasons why we don't have images here.
posted by ewagoner at 6:38 PM PST - 83 comments

topless

A graphical dissertation of Mims' "This Is Why I'm Hot". Consider the reasoning, first, of just "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly": Mims is hot because he's fly. But it raises the question: Does being hot guarantee one's being fly? "You ain't 'cause you not" would seem to clear that up: It would appear that fly and hot are interchangable. If you are one, you are both; if you aren't at least one, you are neither.
posted by four panels at 6:33 PM PST - 33 comments

Should I save myself for later or generously give?

Make Bjork's next music video. She'd love for you to take a stab at making the video for Innocence (streaming music on her myspace page), if you're up to the challenge. Lyrics. Previously.
posted by MythMaker at 5:55 PM PST - 22 comments

RIP David Halberstam

David Halbertstam dead in tragic car accident. Experienced, eloquent, and always observant (his dim view of Patrick Ewing being a notable exception), David Halberstam was a journalistic jack-of-all-trades who was probably best known for his stinging indictment of Vietnam warrior Robert McNamara, JFK and LBJ's secretary of defense, in the classic The Best and the Brightest. A superior war correspondent before the era of CNN-televised revolutions , Halberstam was also an excellent historian and sports writer. Halberstam's dense but illuminating The Fifties is an informative and tightly written study on the Eisenhower era. And The Children offers a compelling look at eight young leaders of the Civil Rights Revolution. Moreover, Halberstam's many writings on basketball (The Breaks of the Game, Playing for Keeps) and baseball (Summer of '49, October 1964) rank among the upper echelon of sports books.
posted by psmealey at 5:02 PM PST - 54 comments

Welcome to Night Flight

Night Flight aired Friday and Saturday nights on the USA Network from 1981-1988 in the heady early days of cable. It was one of the first places to see shorts old and new, music documentaries, and conceptual, artistically-intended music videos -- not to mention MST3K-style parody, general weirdness, and 420-addled wonderfulness.
posted by Methylviolet at 3:37 PM PST - 64 comments

Shakespeare's Birthday and his Masterpiece, Hamlet

To honor the Greatest's birthday, one could consider his greatest work by reading this excellent post by matteo which touches upon the religious issues facing our confused Protestant hero, the student at Wittenberg, who doubts orthodoxy, cannot decide if he is a scourge or minister, but ultimately accedes to a belief in divine Providence. Or, if you would rather dive into an intriguing amusing royally f'ed up "unique" analysis of the play, check out this extensive theory (?) [cache] of Hamlet which corrects our accepted and flawed interpretation by explaining that a literal reading of the play tells us, among other things, that King Hamlet was never killed; that Horatio--our narrator--is the King's son and prince Hamlet's half brother; that the guy we incorrectly think of as Claudius is in fact King Hamlet; and that prince Hamlet's father is Fortinbras. Oops. Boy do we have egg on our faces.
posted by dios at 2:07 PM PST - 46 comments

The Chambers-Patterson-Bigfoot Conspiracy Revealed!

Did John Chambers fake the Patterson Bigfoot Film? If it weren’t for John Landis’ big mouth, maybe no one would have figured out that John Chambers was the man behind the monkey suit in the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. Of course Chambers denied it (and we’re still waiting to hear back from Landis).
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 1:45 PM PST - 23 comments

Horror from the Tubes

Ed Wood on Youtube: Glen or Glenda?, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Jail Bait, Bride of the Monster (from MST3k)
posted by darkripper at 1:20 PM PST - 27 comments

The Past in 3D

3-D images have a longer history than you might imagine. Stereographs were invented in the mid-1800s, and quickly became very popular. You can still view 3-D pictures of the Civil War, cowboys and Native Americans, World War I, Egypt circa 1900, small town America of the 19th century, and zeppelin wrecks(!). How do you view them? You can buy or build a viewer (like this classic), but a better way might be to learn to do it with the naked eye (try this method if you have trouble). A new technique converts stereograms into "wiggle images" [prev.] the approach has been used on this picture of a downed zeppelin and this picture from the Civil War. Free software will let you make your own wiggle images.
posted by blahblahblah at 12:42 PM PST - 23 comments

FYI, 13yo skool grl is nu US txt mssg chmpN

A 13 year old school girl is the new us text message champion. See how she crushed the competition btw her tiny thumbs.
posted by impolitic at 11:46 AM PST - 89 comments

Lone Star 92.5

Is this the future of non-satellite radio? So an old rock station flipped formats in the wee hours of the morning. "Lone Star 92.5 will not air traditional spots. Instead, the station will have 'sponsors' whose content will be integrated in throughout the hour [a la NPR]. Lone Star 92.5 will feature such artists as ZZ Top, The Old 97's, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and of course, Willie Nelson. In fact, the Red Headed Stranger will also serve as the voice of the station." This just might be the significant step it takes HD Radio to rise to the challenge of satellite radio. Those who claim to know radio cynically predict the new format will go down in flames. Maybe they just say that because it is a part of the universally reviled Clear Channel Communications.
posted by Doohickie at 11:29 AM PST - 23 comments

He said he didn't feel like he had earned it.

Thomas said he and his wife came up with the unprecedented idea to present the president with the Purple Heart over breakfast one morning a few months ago as they discussed the verbal attacks, both foreign and domestic, the commander in chief has withstood during his time in office. "We feel like emotional wounds and scars are as hard to carry as physical wounds," Thomas said.
posted by EarBucket at 11:24 AM PST - 137 comments

Homogeneity Of Heroes

"I like to think that there'll always be a place in our universe where a kid can look and see reflected in the mirror an idealized form of themselves." Hero Deficit: Comics Books In Decline is an article, by freelance journalist Brad Mackay, exploring the challenges of superhero relevancy in a diverse society. Previous comic book and superhero-related posts on Metafilter. Wikipedia also has a very informative superhero page.
posted by amyms at 10:49 AM PST - 48 comments

The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar

Remember Mingering Mike? Dori Hadar, the man who found the amazing Mingering Mike collection, has written a book about his odyssey. Here is the spiffy, fleshed-out Mingering Mike official site. And here's an interview with Hadar. [Previously 1, 2.]
posted by veronica sawyer at 9:25 AM PST - 6 comments

You Are What You Grow

Obesity and the Farm Bill. Michael Pollan continues his series of articles on the state of the American food supply by looking at the connection between the obesity epidemic and the federal farm bill (NYT, reg. required, blah blah blah). Previously.
posted by dw at 9:09 AM PST - 68 comments

Historic Machine gun for sale

Sgt. Alvin C. York was the most decorated individual US Soldier in WWI. Subject of the top grossing movie of 1941, He was credited with capturing 138 German soldiers nearly single handedly by flanking a Machine gun nest, and killing its occupants. The Machine gun in question may be destroyed because the library that owns it does not have a proper license.
posted by Gungho at 8:25 AM PST - 44 comments

“If you come back and live in my factory, you can have all the Cacao Beans you want!

Europeans love to bash American chocolate - especially Hershey's - almost as much as the like to bash, erm, America in general (apparently, it tastes like doggie treats). Recently, Big Chocolate have asked the FDA if they can stop using real cocoa butter in the chocolate-making process, which can only make it taste even worse. I often wonder how many so-called chocoholics know that most of the chocolate they eat was probably picked by slave labour in West Africa. Child slaves, even. Meh, they probably don't care: research indicates that chocolate is 'four times better than kissing'. Never trust a junkie.
posted by chuckdarwin at 8:24 AM PST - 128 comments

Oh God Yes.

Apache. The greatest song for an action movie ever made. The 1977 Disco Version? It's hard to say.
posted by Alex404 at 7:55 AM PST - 39 comments

The first-ever popularly elected leader of Russia

Yeltsin said: "I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes." Boris Yeltsin is dead. [AP story]
posted by nickyskye at 7:54 AM PST - 59 comments

marzipan.

marzipan.
posted by Dave Faris at 7:52 AM PST - 59 comments

Drastic action to save a dying planet.

Singer Sheryl Crow: "I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting." She continues: "...only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required". Sheryl also recommends we replace wasteful paper napkins with her ingenious "detachable dining sleeve". Is she pulling our leg? She must be: the BBC fell for it...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:58 AM PST - 110 comments

Donald Knuth, Computing's Philosopher King

“I wanted to try to capture the intelligence of the design, not just the outcome of the design.” “In 1977, [Donald] Knuth halted research on his books for what he expected to be a one-year hiatus. Instead, it took 10. Accompanied by [his wife] Jill, Knuth took design classes from Stanford art professor Matthew Kahn. Knuth, trying to train his programmer’s brain to think like an artist’s, wanted to create a program [TeX] that would understand why each stroke in a typeface would be pleasing to the eye.”—from a profile of Knuth in the Stanford Magazine (May '06). Salon calls him “computing’s philosopher king(Sep '99). NPR’s Morning Edition interviews Knuth as “the founding artist of computer science(Mar '05). Perhaps a MeFite somewhere has one of these? (Previously)
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:34 AM PST - 40 comments

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