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Soul! New York City PBS affiliate WNET have digitized 9 episodes of Soul!, a early 1970's live music program, providing a groovy video interface with chapters to break down each hour long episode. [more inside]
posted by myopicman at 11:45 PM PST - 20 comments

Erwin James: the real me. Erwin James has written about prison for the Guardian for a number of years, from the point of view of an insider: when his column began, he was serving a sentence for two murders. He completed his sentence a few years ago, but continued to write under that name, a pseudonym. Here, he talks about the crimes that he was originally imprisoned for, his time in the French Foreign Legion, how he became a writer during his time in prison, and gives his real name for the first time.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 11:20 PM PST - 19 comments

"the scale-free network modeing paradigm is largely inconsistent with the engineered nature of the Internet..." For a decade it's been conventional wisdom that the Internet has a scale-free topology, in which the number of links emanating from a site obeys a power law. In other words, the Internet has a long tail; compared with a completely random network, its structure is dominated by a few very highly connected nodes, while the rest of the web consists of a gigantic list of sites attached to hardly anything. Among its other effects, this makes the web highly vulnerable to epidemics. The power law on the internet has inspired a vast array of research by computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. According to an article in this month's Notices of the American Math Society, it's all wrong. How could so many scientists make this kind of mistake? Statistician Cosma Shalizi explains how people see power laws when they aren't there: "Abusing linear regression makes the baby Gauss cry."
posted by escabeche at 10:48 PM PST - 30 comments

The ultimate Eamesian (previously, twice) expression of systems and connections, Powers of Ten explores the relative size of things (previously) from the microscopic to the cosmic. The 1977 film travels from an aerial view of a man in a Chicago park to the outer limits of the universe directly above him and back down into the microscopic world contained in the man's hand. But in 1977, this view of the world in leaps and bounds was already 20 years old. Kees Boeke, Dutch educator and pacifist, wrote the essay Cosmic View, which provided the source for Powers of 10. The whole essay was put online 41 years later, and it's still online, if you can't find a physical copy around.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:02 PM PST - 12 comments

In the past many folk rightfully pointed out that IHOP (International House of Pancakes) didn't have a restaurant in Vermont. Times have been a changin.' Last month, Vermont became the 50^th and final state to welcome an IHOP. And, being in Vermont, "old fashioned corn syrup," masquerading as true maple syrup didn't make the grade. "The IHOP here is the only one of about 1,400 in the United States, Canada and Mexico to serve real maple syrup." The managers got permission from the company "with a special dispensation" to serve the real stuff. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 9:54 PM PST - 111 comments

Geocities may be on its way out, but you'll be glad to know the internet of 1998 it celebrated lives on in a strange mismash of bad hypertext and video of pornographic Poser 3D models at Dad-TV.com [NSFW].
posted by sp160n at 9:25 PM PST - 8 comments

Are you a guy with an iPhone? Sent anyone a hot self-pic lately? You might want to check out Guys With iPhones (NSFW) to see if anyone has added you to the pool yet.
posted by hermitosis at 7:04 PM PST - 121 comments

Here are some galleries of amazing sand sculptures. They don't have to be monochrome. Here are some tips on making your own.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:23 PM PST - 9 comments

The death of SciAm. It's no secret that print media is getting hit pretty hard, but the butchering of Scientific American seems particularly brutal. [more inside]
posted by rosswald at 5:33 PM PST - 50 comments

1980s Australian tv talent show Pot Luck, featuring -- Todd Rixon, Piffy the bell ringer, and Wenkyshafee.
posted by vronsky at 5:15 PM PST - 10 comments

Scholars at odds over mysterious Indus script. The Indus script is the collection of symbols found on artifacts from the Harappan civilization, which flourished in what is now eastern Pakistan and western India between 2,600 and 1,900 B.C. A new analysis using pattern-analyzing software suggests that the script may constitute a genuine written language. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 5:05 PM PST - 20 comments

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Geocities, we hardly knew ye.
posted by awenner at 4:17 PM PST - 111 comments

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day, when Australia and New Zealand remembers its fallen diggers who gave their lives (video link) in defence of our freedoms in the major conflicts of the 20th century. If you can, you really should try and attend one of the many dawn services that will be held at numerous war memorials located all around both countries tomorrow. Many of these memorials to the fallen have been documented and are now viewable online. Check out the war memorial pages for Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria (The Shrine of Rememberance in Victoria has its own web page), South Australia and the Northern Territory, Western Australia and the big one in the ACT, the Australian War Memorial. New Zealand has documented many of theirs online as well. Lest we forget, there's also a memorial at ANZAC Cove itself.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:15 PM PST - 32 comments

It's been only two years since the writer Jo Walton proposed a day for authors to post their writing for free online. This was in response to the resignation speech of Howard Hendrix, former V.P. of the Science Fiction Writers of America, which turned into a rant on the evil of giving away work for free on the internet. [more inside]
posted by happyroach at 2:33 PM PST - 42 comments

Lester R. Brown, of Worldwatch and the Earth Policy Institute, has an article in May's Scientific American magazine: "Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?" In the article he addresses three major food-security threats: increased demand, due to the burgeoning population and diversion of staples for energy production; water shortages due to "mining" of fossil aquifers; and topsoil depletion as a result of over-farming. The result? Civilization's demise, not through superpower conflict, but through chaos and failed states. [more inside]
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:30 PM PST - 42 comments

The Bothy Band - Ireland's finest traditional folk ensemble - rip it up in 1977. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by carter at 1:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Too much Hitler?
posted by Artw at 12:59 PM PST - 135 comments

The Vélocouture flickr pool. Over 1600 photos of stylish (and, uh, "differently-styled") bike fashion, from the hipster to the formal, the casual, the young, the old old-timey, the new old-timey, and much, much more. There's also a blog.
posted by dersins at 11:36 AM PST - 37 comments

Created "by fans for fans", the 40-minute Lord Of The Rings fan film The Hunt For Gollum, is not your average amateur fan-made production. "Adapted from elements of the appendices" and featuring some impressive production values, it debuts online May 3rd, and is also being screened at the Sci-Fi London convention. Check out the First and second trailers.
posted by namewithoutwords at 10:07 AM PST - 80 comments

Tony wants to know, is it Ghostbusters 2?
posted by piratebowling at 9:40 AM PST - 66 comments

On August 7, 1979, under cover of darkness, artist Kit Williams took a jeweled, 18-karat gold pendant in the shape of hare and buried it near the monument to Catherine of Aragon in Ampthill Park near Bedford, England. Clues to its location were hidden the text and artwork of his book Masquerade. The armchair treasure hunt sparked a worldwide craze. The end was disappointing. But 30 years later, the quest is being commemorated with a new hunt in the Cotswolds. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 9:09 AM PST - 30 comments

Elphenden — elphen things from Sergei Tretiakov, 1967-2003. In between there were big cities, isolated islands, cannabis, oceans, pain and love...
posted by netbros at 8:42 AM PST - 7 comments

The American Hologram We suffer under a mass national hallucination. Americans, regardless of income or social position, now live in a culture entirely perceived inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation and world that does not exist. Our national reality is staged and held together by media, chiefly movie and television images. We live in a “theater state.”
posted by idixon at 8:36 AM PST - 208 comments

The Pulitzer (and Polk)-winning investigation (1,2) that dare not be uttered on TV. (previously)
posted by AceRock at 7:40 AM PST - 57 comments

Build a DIY non destructive book scanner for under $300. An open source OCR package. A gratis ebook creation tool. An open source ebook library management tool and reader. An open-source Linux distribution for eink-based devices. And many, many ebook readers.
posted by bigmusic at 7:27 AM PST - 84 comments

Interested in Soviet era spying by the KGB in the United States? Bummed that you cant get into the KGB archives? Well it turns out that someone copied all the good stuff already, and you can take a peek. [more inside]
posted by shothotbot at 6:14 AM PST - 6 comments

War of the Roses These are trashy, but fun, 3-8 minute radio segments in which suspected cheaters are tricked into revealing their dirty sinful business over the phone. Typically, the DJ posing as a local flower shop tells a suspect boyfriend he has won a free bouquet of roses; will he send the roses to his girlfriend or to the dreaded Other Woman? The girlfriend waits in silence to ambush him if he gives the wrong answer. Some are sad. Some are infuriating. Most, I'm ashamed to say, are pretty funny.
posted by dgaicun at 6:03 AM PST - 91 comments