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OOOMS is a Dutch design company with interesting products. Anti-Gravity Machine, Lo-Res Chair, Rebellious Desk and Golden Staples are among my favorites. Slightly NSFW for the very small thumbnailed image of some stylish sex toys. Via
posted by lazaruslong at 11:29 PM PST - 26 comments

The new 'Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean' site incorporates material from 14 countries through 18 exhibition sites that explore the the cultural and artistic heritage of Islamic dynasties spanning 1200 years. [via].
posted by peacay at 11:27 PM PST - 16 comments

Burmese Daze: In which the author submits to the pleasures of a transgender spirit possession festival in Burma. [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus at 10:49 PM PST - 11 comments

Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. was born into vaudeville. He quickly became a popular and controversial part of his family's stage act; an act that had his father violently hurling the "disobedient" child across the stage into scenery, the orchestra pit, or even into the audience, only to see him emerge amazingly unharmed. After the boy took an unplanned and particularly clamorous fall down a hotel stairwell, an astonished Harry Houdini cried out to the parents, "What a buster your kid took!" And thus, as legend has it, did little Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. become Buster Keaton.

At 22, Keaton made his cinematic debut with mentor Fatty Arbuckle. Afterward, he immediately founded Buster Keaton Studios, releasing a series of brilliant short (and later longer) comedies. Dozens of these are freely available to stream or download at the Internet Archive, including Steamboat Bill Jr, Convict 13, The Electric House, and his seminal The General (alt), which, despite completely failing at the box office, would be later hailed by many as one of the greatest films of all time. [more inside]
posted by churl at 7:54 PM PST - 59 comments

Back in the mid-nineties, before broadband took hold, the CD ROM was drawing considerable interest from publishers, musicians and other artists. Notable (for contrasting reasons): Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel, The Residents' Freak Show, Peter Gabriel's Xplora, The Voyager Company. Launch, Media Band, Headcandy.
posted by davebush at 6:19 PM PST - 22 comments

"Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on what you've searched for on Google and which sites you've visited." Google unveils Web History, a new feature to help you "view and manage your web activity." You can also get an idea of what sites you visit frequently, broken down by time of day, and search across the full text of pages you've visited. "If you remember seeing something online, you'll be able to find it faster and from any computer with Web History. " What could possibly go wrong?
posted by jbickers at 6:03 PM PST - 26 comments

"If you can save one life - change two people's minds then you will have done something in life." Noel Martin plans to commit suicide 11 years after a neo-nazi attack left him paralyzed.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:57 PM PST - 60 comments

Nora the cat plays piano Plus there's a sequel!
posted by parm=serial at 5:43 PM PST - 28 comments

Invasion of the TeRKs!
posted by ZenMasterThis at 5:02 PM PST - 3 comments

The demo scene is alive and well. Showing off just what can be done with your computer with tiny programs (serious hardware required, video link included). The point of this post? Sumotori Dreams. A physics based game packed into 96k. It's not the gameplay itself which is so great, it's the stumbling drunk AI characters. Play a round, then sit back and watch them stumble (youtube). Safe for work, if gales of laughter don't draw suspicion.
posted by tomble at 4:36 PM PST - 49 comments

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values are all online for you to peruse. The library consists of around 180 full text PDFs by a wide variety of authors -- Christine Korsgaard, Antonin Scalia, Jared Diamond, John Rawls, Richard Dawkins, Frans de Waal E.O. Wilson, Francis Fukuyama and the previously mentioned Elaine Scarry among them. Lots of interesting reading to be... read. Navigation is to the left. The collection is sorted alphabetically by author.
posted by cog_nate at 2:57 PM PST - 12 comments

"Let your house be a meetinghouse for the sages and sit amid the dust of their feet and drink in the whiskey that comes out of their flip -flops with thirst."
posted by kosem at 2:56 PM PST - 31 comments

Al Qaeda Strikes Back. By Bruce Riedel. From Foreign Affairs. Al Qaeda has more bases, more partners, and more followers today than it did on the eve of 9/11. Now the group is working to set up networks in the Middle East and Africa -- and may even try to lure the United States into a war with Iran.
posted by semmi at 2:41 PM PST - 33 comments

What's the deal with Jews and Chinese food? Just one gem from Jesse Brown, a legendary and entertaining contributor to CBC radio, print, and other media. Here's another one. Okay, one more. Did I mention he's the 121st Greatest Canadian of all Time?
posted by Turtles all the way down at 2:31 PM PST - 48 comments

shortwavemusic An audio blog of music and noise (and musical noise) found on the shortwave band.
posted by carter at 12:47 PM PST - 22 comments

The hagfish (YouTube) is also known as the slime eel. It can also tie itself in a knot. Designer eel skin.
posted by nickyskye at 10:52 AM PST - 31 comments

End of an Empire Sadly (for me, anyway) the Empire Rollerdrome, last roller rink in New York City, closed its doors for good this weekend after nearly 70 years in business. Although it had a checkered history of sex, drugs, and hip hop, the Empire was in recent years a much-loved family and community center in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. DJ Julio (who kept the crowd rolling at the Roxy for decades until they too closed earlier this year) maintains a fabulous archive of material about all of NYC's bygone rinks. If you want to see what you've been missing, check out the Central Park Dance Skaters.
posted by sonofslim at 10:23 AM PST - 18 comments

Your beer pong game sucks.
posted by sluglicker at 10:04 AM PST - 44 comments

The phone is ringing, and I don't recognize the number, All Caller ID says is, "NAME UNAVAILABLE". Please help me figure out who is calling and what they want (about whocalled.us) Reviews: Wired's Kevin Poulsen, Lifehacker, O'Reilly Radar's Tim O'Reilly, ZDNet's Phil Windley, BoingBoing's David Pescovitz, and Yahoo's Christopher Null
posted by acro at 9:40 AM PST - 35 comments

Torture innocents or suffer the consequences. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) expounded yesterday on the process of 'extraordinary rendition' where suspects are flown to foreign countries outside of US law, so they can be tortured for information. He's got no problem with it, even if innocents are involved. [more inside]
posted by bitmage at 9:32 AM PST - 89 comments

Hobo Expert, MeFite, Daily Show Resident Expert, and reluctant celebrity John Hodgman's recent appearance on This American Life is truly inspired stuff. "He tells the story of what happens when celebrity hunts you down and finds you...on your living room couch, pushing 40, and a couple sizes larger than you want to be." Apparently Bill Gates isn't a fan. His loss.
posted by chuckdarwin at 8:59 AM PST - 60 comments

There's Good In Evel. 70's icon (and my own personal role model at the time) "Evel" Knievel spoke on Palm Sunday at the Crystal Cathedral about his miraculous conversion to Christianity during Daytona Bike Week. Immediately, between 500 and 800 people committed or rededicated their lives to God. Found via J-Walk.
posted by ba at 8:51 AM PST - 51 comments

25 y.o. whistle-blower. Last Fall, a 24 y.o. by the name of Justen Deal, blew the whistle on what he perceived to be profligate waste by his employers. As an IT guy at Kaiser-Permanente, he'd seen a $442 million database project scrapped by the new CEO and replaced by a sweetheart deal for one of the CEO's former contractors. Internal estimates placed Kaiser's losses on this new contract at $1.2 billion dollars per quarter [more inside]
posted by vhsiv at 8:46 AM PST - 75 comments

NY Mag instructs six New Yorkers to chronicle their sex lives for a week. Results? Men under report masturbation. Married people don't have sex. Thirty-something female theater directors are where it's at ... and this gem, "If I had a boyfriend, I wouldn’t have blacked out and lost my wallet!"
posted by geoff. at 8:22 AM PST - 41 comments

China's African oil safari turns bloody again. "Before dawn this morning At 0430 AM local time in Ogaden, the 'Dufaan' commando unit of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) conducted a military operation in the vicinity of Obala, 30km North-West of Degah-Bur in in Northern Ogaden." Sixty-five Ethiopians and nine Chinese were killed in an attack of an unprecedented scale. Another seven Chinese workers are being held by the ONLF. (BBCFocusAfrica interviews ONLF spokesman (.ram streaming audio))
posted by Abiezer at 7:56 AM PST - 12 comments

A nine-year-old girl had a baby; her rapist gets twenty-five years. She is not the youngest mother: Lina Medina bore a child at age five. Other young mothers.
posted by Robert Angelo at 7:50 AM PST - 68 comments

"The average person will eat over 10,000 bars of chocolate, shed 121 pints of tears and have sex more than 4,200 times". A documentary airing tonight in the UK is attempting a new method of visualizing statistics related to an individual's impact on the environment. Human Footprint is scheduled to air on Channel 4 at 9PM GMT. There is a "calculator" you can use to get the statistics adjusted for your age (and give you a little more data behind the statistics if you can sit through a page by page flash demo).
posted by notmtwain at 7:44 AM PST - 29 comments

The last thing the Middle East's main players want is US troops to leave Iraq.
posted by reklaw at 7:42 AM PST - 11 comments

A group of enthusiasts bring you live vessel movements from around the Irish Sea (and further!) derived from AIS data. Click on the map to see the individual ships, their statistics and photos. Nice use of google maps here see who is docked and who is underway
posted by mattoxic at 5:04 AM PST - 15 comments

Win £500 from the Royal Society of Chemistry (or a place on a Chinese science undergraduate course) if your math skills are up to it.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 4:53 AM PST - 25 comments

So there are crosses, stars of David, Buddhist wheels, etc, but what do atheists get? Well, "Nothing" might be the proper symbol, but look here, there's a bunch of possibilities. Atheist, Humanist, Darwinist. BTW, the American Atheist (MM O'Hare) symbol is the one the US Army will put on the headstone of any atheist corpses they might find in foxholes.
posted by CCBC at 2:45 AM PST - 118 comments

104 year-old Herb Hamerol was the lone survivor on hand at this year's 101st memorial for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. To some people he's a celebrity. Truth is, to attend the memorial he took the day off from his long-held job as a stock clerk at Andronico's supermarket. Yes, read that paragraph again.
posted by miss lynnster at 12:00 AM PST - 33 comments