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Brains!
posted by homunculus at 11:31 PM PST - 11 comments

Randall Tobias, the former drug company executive chosen as Global AIDS Ambassador by the Bush administration, has resigned "for personal reasons" after having "no sex" to demonstrate Bush's abstinence-only AIDS prevention plan with alleged call girls from Pamela Martin and Associates.

Previously, Deborah Jeanne Palfrey outed Harlan "Shock and Awe" Ullman. Keep your eyes glued to the TV, America, she might name 10,000 others even though the feds don't want her to!
posted by jdfalk at 8:53 PM PST - 63 comments

The Fúfumal. One link. No YouTube. Behold the tale of Fúfu, a small rabbit.
posted by eriko at 8:05 PM PST - 26 comments

AtheistFilter: Excerpts from Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Excerpt two: "Was Muhammad Epileptic?" Three: "Mormonism: A Racket Becomes a Religion" (via)
posted by bardic at 5:52 PM PST - 75 comments

Amazing art by Kris Kuksi. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 5:25 PM PST - 26 comments

How to be a pirate. The first part of a book project that didn't sell.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:10 PM PST - 27 comments

It's Friday night, and us workaday schlubs deserve to fantasize about “an unconventional and extraordinary getaway,” don't we? Do you fancy an overnight stay in a 1968 decommissioned Coast Guard Sikorsky, pithily dubbed the Hotelicopter? Or maybe in the Treehouse, 35 feet off the ground and with a full bar? Winvian is a 113-acre resort in Connecticut's Litchfield Hills; dotting the grounds are eighteen cottages in whimsical themes. Like, an artist's studio, complete with blank canvas, watercolors and oils, just in case inspiration strikes. And a tomb-like structure named "The Secret Society" -- an homage to Yale's Skull and Bones temple (most of the 14 architects that designed the hotel's cottages are Yale alums). Win Smith Jr., the former Merrill Lynch exec and owner of Vermont ski spot Sugarbush, built the resort on his family's property to save it from becoming a high-rise development. No shortage of luxury-travel reviewers are salivating over Smith's "experiential retreat," just opened this spring. A daily rate starting at $1450 includes the continental breakfast nook, full breakfast, lunch, picnics, spa snacks, afternoon tea, cocktails, dinner, and after dinner petit-fours. The main building is a restored 1775 colonial with a cigar-and-brandy lounge, art gallery, and 130-variety wine cellar... and also boasts an appropriately gothic backstory. Who needs to pay the rent, anyway?
posted by pineapple at 4:18 PM PST - 12 comments

How can those skinny Japanse eaters like "Gal" Sone and Nobuyuki Shirota down so much food? CT scans show stomachs which expand to freakishly huge proportions.
posted by jaimev at 3:36 PM PST - 18 comments

There's been plenty of Bullshit! on MetaFilter before, and now there's more: Boy Scouts [1, 2, 3] ("Duty to God ahead of country, others, and self, is the credo of suicide bombers."); Wal-Mart Hatred ("Wal-Mart is one of the great anti-poverty programmes in the country."); Circumcision ("By the end of this programme, one of these three will drop their pants and show us the restored foreskin on their penis."); and The Best ("Stupid? How many of you are searching for it on the web right now?").
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 3:22 PM PST - 46 comments

The US Navy Safety office features a new Safety Yikes! Photo every week. Featuring cases such as: 12 foot Sunroof T; Are 20 splices in a 8 splice box too many?; Trust; I don't need a truck; Ladder trouble, 2, 3, 4, 5; Jack Stands; What's the amp rating on a 5/8^ths lug bolt; and the always popular Humans make good tiedowns. Special mention to this nice try.
posted by Mitheral at 2:07 PM PST - 17 comments

"Alright Joes, come with me for a strip search." [NSFW unless you work for the Bureau of Prisons] The correct way to conduct a strip search. [via]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:56 PM PST - 28 comments

Exposed: I'm not a plastic bag! Queues this week have gone around the block for a designer cotton bag designed by Anya Hindmarch available at Sainsbury's, the British grocer. The bag, which was designed to raise awareness of fair trade and ethical issues, was actually mass produced by sweatshop labor in China and is neither fair trade nor organic. Bags are selling for as much at $200 on Ebay. Anya Hindmarch herself has not apologized for the bag, saying: "We will be launching I’m Not A Plastic Bag in the US in June (in a limited edition navy blue) and in Japan in July (in a limited edition bottle green)."
posted by parmanparman at 1:21 PM PST - 36 comments

"Is Wi-Fi going to turn out to be the tobacco, asbestos or Thalidomide of the 21st century? It's looking that way." Woman choses to live in a Faraday cage to ameliorate the symptoms caused by electrosmog. It's funny that she looks so much like a beekeeper in her fancy hat, given the recent kerfuffle (from another UK paper) about mobile phones wiping out the bees. Coming soon: faraday undies. [via]
posted by scblackman at 12:29 PM PST - 85 comments

The Canadian government has released its new Turning the Corner plan for regulating greenhouse gases, setting mandatory intensity-based emission targets (18% reduction over three years) for major industrial sectors. Firms exceeding their targets will be required to pay $15/tonne starting in 2010. Expected cost: $7-8B per year, offset by an expected $6B benefit from improved health. Kyoto targets won't be reached until 2020, eight years late. Reaction from industry, Alberta, the Opposition. Previous proposal from Opposition leader Stephane Dion. Previously.
posted by russilwvong at 12:04 PM PST - 12 comments

Makibishi Comic! (possibly NSFW) A surreal-manga-find-the-ninja flash game. via writeup & interview with creator at Joystiq
posted by juv3nal at 11:44 AM PST - 10 comments

"Of 10 governments worldwide implicated in the recruitment or use of children as soldiers, nine receive US military assistance."
posted by chunking express at 11:22 AM PST - 24 comments

It's Uncle Muscle's Hour!!
posted by Tommy Gnosis at 11:19 AM PST - 32 comments

Exploding Storm Drain - It may be a single video link, but the scale blew me away.
posted by lemonfridge at 10:54 AM PST - 82 comments

Don't Tell Ryan!
posted by Addiction at 10:39 AM PST - 35 comments

Happy Birthday, Paul "Ace" Frehley.
posted by psmealey at 10:34 AM PST - 30 comments

This lip sych of Flagpole Sitta is all kinds of awesome. An old favorite made new again by the office staff of Collegehumor et al in one take. It's a little slow to start, but it hits pure joy by the end.
posted by mathowie at 9:57 AM PST - 105 comments

The artist who explored the beginning of life last year presents his meditation on the end of life, designed to teach kids about the hazards of underage drinking.
posted by rottytooth at 9:22 AM PST - 22 comments

What if Apple is bad for design? Or at least not good?
posted by Extopalopaketle at 8:51 AM PST - 83 comments

As an interesting follow-up to the excellent post about Fuck law from last year, a controversy is brewing about the article's scholarly merit. Brian Leiter issued his Most Downloaded Law Faculty Rankings and excluded Ohio State and Emory because their "presence in the top 15 was due entirely to one provocatively titled article by Christopher Fairman who teaches at Ohio State and is visiting at Emory; without Fairman’s paper, neither Ohio State nor Emory would be close to the top 15." There has been some dispute over Leiter's omission of the two faculties on that basis. Fairman weighed in on the issue with his new article Fuck and Faculty Rankings.
posted by dios at 8:17 AM PST - 37 comments

The Structure of Search Engine Law, by James Grimmelmann. [abstract inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:51 AM PST - 10 comments

Riverbend and her family decided to leave Iraq.
posted by growabrain at 7:45 AM PST - 73 comments

Feed2JS is an amazingly cool (free) service that lets you harness the wealth of RSS feeds out there for yourself (embedding them in your blog template or web page) in a very simple and highly configurable way. Style it with one of the available CSS styles, or write your own. If you like you can also download the whole Feed2JS application/script to run on your own server. (Step-by-step tutorial inside)
posted by spock at 7:16 AM PST - 27 comments

A newly released Mississippi State University study claims that kids with religious parents are better behaved than other children. Is it the spanking?
posted by Otis at 5:42 AM PST - 158 comments

Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007). Master cellist and renowned conductor, Rostropovich was one of the great artistic dissidents of the Soviet Union. He started his career as a star of the Moscow Conservatory and lived long enough to play his cello in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. More from the Associated Press and Wikipedia.
posted by ardgedee at 4:21 AM PST - 38 comments

Man in his thirties comes back from the dead on Easter Sunday. Oh oh. I'm off to confession, pronto.
posted by fcummins at 3:31 AM PST - 18 comments

'In defense of film critics' posits that 'Film critics [unlike food critics, etc] are expected to be cheerleaders.' I guess we're not supposed to think it's odd that the piece was written by paper's resident film critic. He does ask at least one good question, though: why have so many truly awful [and poorly reviewed ] films done so well at the the box office this year?
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:13 AM PST - 36 comments

Floyd Collins was a caver who became trapped in Sand Cave on January 30th, 1925 50m from the entrance by a 26 1/2 pound rock. He was found and provided with food and media attention until February 4 when a further collapse cut him off, leading to frantic tunneling attempts, but he was found dead on the 17th of February.
His body was recovered some time later, and displayed in a pay per view coffin. After his leg was stolen his coffin was removed from public display and in 1989 he received another burial under a tombstone reading "Greatest Cave Explorer Ever Known"
posted by scodger at 2:55 AM PST - 28 comments

A miniature version of the metroid-style Castlevania games. It starts off in a teeny tiny window. Try it fullscreen here.
posted by boo_radley at 1:26 AM PST - 19 comments

Paternity Discrepancy. "My little boy was there, he was up at bat, and I started yelling for him, 'Go Matthew [not his real name]! Knock it out of the park!' And another man started screaming for Matthew. Louder than me. I looked over, and I looked at him, and I was like, Who is this guy? And I looked at my son, and I looked at him … and they were identical."
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:06 AM PST - 195 comments