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An informative, gossipy and surprisingly engaging 6-page exploration of the life of Charles Dickens, including his up-and-down relationship with the U.S. press, his inexcusable behavior during his messy and very public separation from his wife, the "histrionic flair" of his performance career, and, of course, his works, including the one George Bernard Shaw called "a more seditious book than Das Kapital." Lots of interesting images, too.
posted by mediareport at 9:47 PM PST - 17 comments

Black hole mystery on Mars If a future earth ever needs a place to send convicts, the high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have found it a few nights back. (via crikey.com.au)
posted by mattoxic at 9:39 PM PST - 65 comments

Public libraries with Online Content: Residents of Missouri can get a free account at the Kansas City Public Library that will let them access digital databases including the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and downloadable audiobooks. Residents of the Empire State can get a digital library card at the New York Public Library to access a wealth of digital databases. (The rest of us can get a NYPL card for $100.) And the Boston Public Library will give digital access to most of the above, plus JSTOR and (sigh) the Early American Imprints collection of nearly everything printed in North America to 1820. Unfortunately you have to show up at a branch of the BPL and prove Massachusetts residence to get your card. Your turn--what other public libraries offer access to subscription online information databases?
posted by LarryC at 9:36 PM PST - 31 comments

A new wonder drug? Once used in a failed attempt to treat epilepsy, electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve now shows promise in treating severe depression. Billed as a Brain Pacemaker, it's making people happy. Or something: "Doctors began to suspect it held potential for treating severe depression when patients clung to the device, even when it wasn't helping their epilepsy."
posted by IronLizard at 9:02 PM PST - 51 comments

Since 1867, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps have been used to assess fire insurance liability in United States cities. With their high level of detail and color-coding to indicate the materials used to construct the buildings, the maps have since become invaluable tools to historians, urban planners, preservationists, and genealogists. A few collections of cities and states have been digitized and made available online: Utah, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to name a few.
posted by marxchivist at 8:15 PM PST - 16 comments

Excerpts from and pictures of Ronald Reagan's diaries while president, with a brief intro from historian Douglas Brinkley.
posted by ibmcginty at 7:51 PM PST - 15 comments

A group of Mennonites at the University of Waterloo has come under fire for inviting a fundamentalist Iranian cleric to speak at a religious-studies conference. Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, who has openly supported human-rights violations in Iran, once lovingly declared: "If anyone insults the Islamic sanctity, Islam has permitted for his blood to be spilled, no court needed either." While Iranian-Canadians are up in arms, academic dean Jim Pankratz defends the invitation: "We really do believe it's important to talk to those who take opposing, even hostile, views." Persian bloggers see it quite differently.
posted by Menomena at 7:43 PM PST - 20 comments

The Global Terrorism Database is now available online. It includes information on more than 27,000 bombings, 13,000 assassinations, and 2,800 kidnappings. With 2D and 3D georeferences for some incidents. The interactive map isn't working for me though.
posted by tellurian at 6:29 PM PST - 18 comments

Bowie Vs Cher.
posted by sgt.serenity at 5:50 PM PST - 58 comments

The 41-year-old recognized and accepted his inclination when he was just 12 years old. It was then that he fell head over heels "into an emotionally and physically very complex and deep relationship, which lasted for years." His partner back then was a Hammond organ—he has now been in a steady relationship with a steam locomotive for several years. via
posted by cgc373 at 5:40 PM PST - 44 comments

Being the virile demigod I am, sometimes the average chastity belt isn't enough to keep me from having sex. Fortunately, the kindly metalworking folks @ Permanent Bondage have created a series of full body wire cages to help me contain my savage lusts. A couple more photos here. Oh yeah, some of these links may be perceived as NSFW.
posted by jonson at 5:32 PM PST - 42 comments

Was American Idol's Sanjaya a fraud? Graduate art student Bill Vendall claims that he created the American Idol character "Sanjaya" as an art project. He claims the character is "a symbol for the self referencing nature of progressive evolution." This is being debated around the internets.
posted by MythMaker at 5:27 PM PST - 48 comments

Facebook to open their API. Online networking site Facebook is adding third-party app support to their API. Adding a new app (which can include ads) broadcasts it to your contacts. Innovation, or recipe for disaster? But can MySpace even be beaten? And if Facebook can poach MySpace's users, do they really want them? For that matter, is MySpace even the juggernaut some claim? Anyone have any ideas for new Facebook app mashups?
posted by spiderwire at 3:59 PM PST - 46 comments

MyFreeImplants.com hooks up women who want breast implants with benefactors who want to help them pay for their breast implants.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 3:51 PM PST - 63 comments

Ohmygodimonfire and other Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club fan videos. (post contains:1)fire 2)Mario 3)Wikipedia biography 4)music page 5)downloadable discography 6)cat robots 7)battling noodles)
posted by pantsrobot at 3:09 PM PST - 12 comments

For your lunchtime (or teatime, or bedtime) wooing pleasure: In which William and Conan are inadvertently embroiled in something much sillier than they will ever comprehend. [warning: WooTube]
posted by oneirodynia at 12:23 PM PST - 26 comments

Little Ritchie Petrie has something he really wants to tell us. You go girl.
posted by miss lynnster at 12:19 PM PST - 40 comments

$15 microwave -- this is why I'm hot. Via. $15 microwave -- this is why I'm hot (break it down now)
posted by parmanparman at 11:39 AM PST - 23 comments

Enlighted: This is a difficult piece to describe. Part bra, part sculpture, part social disturbance. As a vague description, we'll call it the 'nerve' bra, but it's really so much more.
posted by ozomatli at 11:19 AM PST - 43 comments

Requiem for a Bat Girl. Three years ago, writer Anne Ursu started a blog devoted to the Minnesota Twins. Pretty much immediately she was lauded as one of the best baseball bloggers. And then came the Lego reenactments. (Favorites: 1, 2, 3) And the Boyfriends. Yesterday, she ended the blog to spend more time with her young son. She will be missed.
posted by dw at 11:09 AM PST - 16 comments

Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena was born in October, 2006 to help fight the good fight against the overwhelming majority of noise in the media supporting useless alternative medicine systems, psychics preying upon the vulnerable, the erosion of science education in the classroom, xenophobia of advanced energy and food production methods, and generally anything that distracts attention and public funding from scientific advancement. Episodes feature such prominent MeFi discussion material as organic food myths, blood for oil, chiropractics, and SUVs. Links are to podcast transcripts. Full episode guide.
posted by arcticwoman at 10:27 AM PST - 38 comments

Gonna free fall out into nothin' YouTube has several videos of Joe Kittinger's skydive from a balloon at 102,800 feet. Earlier this year Colonel Kittinger described the jump at a meeting of the Athanasius Kircher Society (Named after this guy.) [via; more inside]
Previous post with more info.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:16 AM PST - 29 comments

Uncle Bobby dies at 82 If you were a kid in Toronto and surrounding area in the '70's, then you watched The Uncle Bobby Show every day at lunchtime, right before the Flintstones. Previously mentioned in these threads about kids' TV shows from the past.
posted by chococat at 10:14 AM PST - 20 comments

The Other Side - A funny short film by Mikhail Aldashin, one of the most talented Russian contemporary animation directors.
posted by vronsky at 10:08 AM PST - 10 comments

Sentencing has begun in the largest eco-terrorism sting to date. Is a recent string of arsons in Portland related?
posted by valentinepig at 9:59 AM PST - 238 comments

SUV sales are up. In spite of higher gas prices and concern about global warming, Americans still want bigger cars. It might not be enough to save the Hummer H2, though.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:01 AM PST - 136 comments

"Even LG Electronics Inc., maker of the handset Elmi uses, initially didn't believe her photos originated from its LG8100 phone when she asked the company to sponsor a recent gallery exhibit of her camera-phone art." (news, gallery works)
posted by mathowie at 8:31 AM PST - 34 comments

...Rembrandt's last self-portrait, for instance, shows an old man having a good laugh at the ways of the world, even as he is about to leave the stage. The Western world may be ageing, then, but, far from this amounting to a 'dying of the light', a case can be made for the very opposite, certainly where Bob Dylan's renaissance as an artist is concerned. Neither should age be confounded with a heavier tread. For while a perception and characterisation of the surreal nature of much of human life was a defining quality of Bob Dylan's first golden creative period in the 1960s, it's also a delightful characteristic of his artistic renaissance in the 'noughties' of the new millennium.

Bob Dylan and the ageing of the West
In other news, May 24th is International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day

Of course, he was 23 in 1965, the year when he recorded Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, but, gosh darn it, he's still writing songs and touring and he still isn't dead yet..."
posted by y2karl at 8:05 AM PST - 38 comments

It's official. On May 9th, Bush issued NSPD 51, an "explicit embrace of what has been since 9/11 an implicit but fairly clear set of assumptions," i.e. George is the Decider and he has decided to strengthen the National Business Continuity Policy within the next 90 days.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 7:16 AM PST - 111 comments

"Bling Ballz" is a song by The Bassturd featuring MC Keef and Hermes. It is about the fine art of testicular enhancement through the application of "bling." [One-link YouTube Post / More songs on MySpace]
posted by beaucoupkevin at 6:38 AM PST - 14 comments

Medical Video Repository. Educational Videos for Medical Students and Doctors.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 5:14 AM PST - 14 comments

How To Deal With Negative People. "They are like human black holes which suddenly come out of nowhere and just suck the life out of you." Via The Presurfer.
posted by amyms at 12:41 AM PST - 132 comments