May 31, 2012

Can the internet be shut down? Probabally, but will it? Maybe.

ITU Power-grab, or is something else brewing behind the scenes? C-SPAN Video coverage of fascinating proposal to give the United Nations more control over the Internet. The proposal, backed by China, Russia, Brazil and India, is being examined in depth. And some folks aren't liking what they see... [more inside]
posted by RoseyD at 11:16 PM PST - 18 comments

finding the right bra size and best fit

Bratabase is a crowdsourced "bra database" made to help women find the right bra (interview with the creator). According to many studies, over 80% of women aren't wearing the correct bra size: "there's a lot of misinformation about bras out there". For instance, D cups just aren't that big ("Clearly there are a whole lot more D+ cups out there than people assume") and not all D cups are the same size ("from left to right 30D, 32D, 34D, 36D, 38D. Five different band lengths, five different cup volumes. All D Cups"). Most of these links contain photos and therefore may be NSFWish for some. [more inside]
posted by flex at 6:44 PM PST - 126 comments

James Brown's 1971 Olympia Concert

On March 8, 1971, James Brown performed at The Olympia in Paris. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 6:38 PM PST - 25 comments

Honor and Error

In a high profile gaffe President Barack Obama has recently caused anger in Poland by referring to a Nazi death camp as a "Polish death camp" during a ceremony honoring World War II hero Jan Karski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.” [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 6:14 PM PST - 160 comments

1,564 games later.

I've been dreading this day since I became manager in 1997," Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said. This day, today, Detroit Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom retired from the game of professional hockey after 20 NHL seasons. Lidstrom is considered to be one of the best defenseman ever to play the game. [more inside]
posted by kbanas at 5:35 PM PST - 28 comments

Transit of Venus

Next Wednesday's Transit of Venus (prev.) may be astronomically important, but is also a chance to reflect on a lot of important 18th and 19th century science, discovery and politics.
posted by wilful at 5:28 PM PST - 14 comments

The Prettiest Tumblr

Sword & Sworcercy fan art tumblr. (S&S previously)
posted by curious nu at 4:04 PM PST - 23 comments

"Show You A Thing Or Two"

A very special South Korean version of "The Miracle Worker" (Part 1, Part 2), featuring music purloined from the shows Bat Boy and Legally Blonde.
posted by hermitosis at 2:51 PM PST - 12 comments

What was that song in that episode of that show I saw that one time?

You're watching your favorite tv show. There's a song in the background that catches your ear, and suddenly you're desperate for a recording. Unfortunately, you don't recognize the voice of the singer. Or the sound of the band. And dammit, you can't make out enough of the lyrics to google them! Waiting for DVDs is usually no help, since they often can't use (read: afford the rights to) the original music, so you're stuck with illegal, fan-made DVDs at ridiculous prices, awful, meaningless replacement music, or a single missing song that destroys the essence of the episode (c.f. Quantum Leap episode "M.I.A." and "Georgia on my Mind;" Wiseguy episode "No One Gets out of Here Alive" and "Nights in White Satin"). What's a fan to do? [more inside]
posted by tzikeh at 2:51 PM PST - 73 comments

The Divine David

David Hoyle (born 1963) is an English performance artist, avant-garde cabaret artist, singer, actor, comedian and film director. In the 1990s he developed an extremely strange, extremely gay "anti-drag queen" character called The Divine David and produced two series for Channel 4, back when that channel was still unafraid of pushing the boundaries. These were:

The Divine David Presents (SLYT)
The Divine David Heals (SLYT)

He also appeared in the video for the last single released to date by Faith No More - I Started A Joke of course being a Bee Gees cover - which is unaccountably set in a northern English working men's club.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:26 PM PST - 10 comments

Vidz

Vidz was a late-night video review show from the late 90s, presented by Nigel Buckland and Stef Gardner and shown on Channel 4 in the UK. It concentrated mostly on reviewing low-budget, cult and foreign films. Most of the episodes can be found on this youtube channel and there's an episode by episode guide here). After a break of 12 years or so, they're back, this time in podcast form.
posted by dng at 1:34 PM PST - 14 comments

The Cup Of Coffee Club: The Ballplayers Who Got Only One Game

Of the 17,808 players (and counting) who’ve run up the dugout steps and onto a Major League field, only 974 have had one-game careers. [...] The Cup of Coffee club is filled exclusively with people who do not want to be members.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:03 PM PST - 27 comments

The Old Man of the Sea

Proteus is a beautiful game by Ed Key with no goals except admiring natural features and exploring a procedurally generated island [some spoilers in videos], modeled loosely after the open land near Key's parents' home in Cumbria. The game also features "reactively mixed" ambient electronic music (think 'chiptune Boards of Canada') composed by David Kanaga, which changes and shifts according to your physical context. Though only in v0.1, it has already won critical accolades, as well as an award for The Most Amazing Indie Game at A MAZE 2012.
posted by p3on at 11:58 AM PST - 50 comments

DOMA doomed

First Circuit Court of Appeals rules Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.
posted by klangklangston at 10:59 AM PST - 97 comments

Undercover Bosses

The Heat could've been so beautiful. Instead, they're a team for their time.
posted by Cloud King at 10:22 AM PST - 74 comments

...terminal exhaustion and a wardrobe full of expensive disguises.

Model Behavior: A Laurie Penny essay on gender presentation, anorexia, neoliberalism, capitalism, queerness, gender, drag, media, America's Next Top Model, and a few other things.
posted by latkes at 10:06 AM PST - 39 comments

I want the whole damn world to come dance with me

Edward Sharpe's new video for MAN ON FIRE goes to cheer gyms, double dutch practice spaces, and dance studios, focusing on both performers and observers, then takes the glorious action to the streets.
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:56 AM PST - 30 comments

The A-Okay Gatsby

The goons at Something Awful have a field day photoshopping downgraded and cut-rate literary classics. Part 2.
posted by The Whelk at 9:38 AM PST - 150 comments

Warning: graphic content.

Body parts suspect the focus of international manhunt. [cbc.ca] The search for Luka Rocco Magnotta, the 29-year-old suspect in the grisly slaying and dismemberment of a victim whose body parts were sent in the mail, has now spread beyond Canada. [thestar.com] Who is Luka Rocco Magnotta? Luka Rocco Magnotta dated Karla Homolka (Canadian serial killer), police confirm. [nationalpost.com]
posted by Fizz at 9:36 AM PST - 98 comments

URBANSCREEN in Sydney

Watch as some REALLY REALLY BIG PEOPLE crawl around and dance on the Sydney Opera House. Then it kinda changes colors, and then it, um... collapses.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:22 AM PST - 23 comments

Life in the mist

Tove Jansson's short stories about artistic creation are often chillingly cold. The artists she portrays have become lost in their isolated solitude, their creativity, which shuts other people out. Portraits of such loneliness are drawn in three short stories in the collection Lyssnerskan ('The listener', 1971), 'Ekorren' ('The squirrel'), 'Svart & vitt' ('Black & white') and 'Vargen' ('The wolf’), which probably frightened many readers - particularly those who knew and loved her Moomin books - away from Jansson's work. In their cosmos, warmth is unknown; their landscapes are frozen, just like the people who seek expression for their artistic dreams. [more inside]
posted by smcg at 7:25 AM PST - 19 comments

Physics Demos that are Out of this World

Science off the Sphere is a video series by Don Pettit aboard the ISS showing off the neat things you can do in zero-gravity. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:19 AM PST - 13 comments

Imagine someone of the type we call neurotic

A not-well discussed property of data: it is toxic in large quantities—even in moderate quantities. [more inside]
posted by onwords at 7:02 AM PST - 89 comments

No soda for you

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed a ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts. Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal requires the approval of the Board of Health, a step that is considered likely because the members are all appointed by him, and the board’s chairman is the city’s health commissioner, who joined the mayor in supporting the measure on Wednesday.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:47 AM PST - 351 comments

40 below is pretty cool

Minus 40 degrees is the same temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. It is also the temperature where skin freezes, and the point where water is completely frozen (and mercury too). Strangely, it's also the average temperature of the record lows for all 50 United States, though normal in Alaska.
posted by Brian B. at 6:42 AM PST - 54 comments

The 2012 Internet Problem Solving Contest

The 2012 Internet Problem Solving Contest will begin in a couple of days. Read the rules if you want to join in or perhaps just enjoy delving into the archive of past years' problems.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:52 AM PST - 14 comments

One of the best books about America I've read in a long while

Kevin Roose's The Unlikely Disciple, in which Brown attends Jerry Falwell's evangelical Liberty University for a semester (excerpt), has been featured on MetaFilter previously, but it deserves to be looked at in more detail. What distinguishes the book is Roose's determination to look at the people behind the belief rather than just lampooning the belief itself; he writes about interviewing Falwell (and he was in fact the last person to interview Falwell before his death), and about his uneasiness about finding the likable, human elements that went alongside the fanaticism. After publication, Liberty University allowed the book in its bookstore, but inserted a three-paragraph disclaimer warning readers of inaccuracies and telling them to be skeptical; Roose rebuts the disclaimer. An English professor at Liberty University offers an interesting perspective. Meanwhile, Roose runs a blog series called Meet Jerry's Kids, in which he interviews LU students, and The Jonah Project, where he encourages people who disagree politically or religiously to have reasoned, yelling-free discussions about the novel.
posted by Rory Marinich at 5:49 AM PST - 43 comments

Minecraft in Spaaaaaace!

Starforge is a game of mining, building and survival. Sound familiar? Wait until you see the video. It's free to play, and the alpha/tech-demo is downloadable right now. (Forum, sub-reddit). Notch approves. [more inside]
posted by empath at 5:49 AM PST - 38 comments

A visual history of evolution

Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution catalogs 230 tree-like branching diagrams, culled from 450 years of mankind’s visual curiosity about the living world and our quest to understand the complex ecosystem we share with other organisms, from bacteria to birds, microbes to mammals. (More trees are visible at the Google Books site.)
posted by OmieWise at 5:48 AM PST - 4 comments

I could murder a Kentucky right about now...

Stately Sandwiches: What sandwich should represent your state? [more inside]
posted by jacquilynne at 5:31 AM PST - 179 comments

"I will lead the attack!"

"First of all, we almost had no battle at all. For budgetary reasons we came very, very close to having all the action take place off-screen, the way plays have handled battle scenes for a few thousand years." - How the epic battle at the heart of the latest episode of Game of Thrones, Blackwater, written by George R. R. Martin and directed by Neil Marshall, came to be. Mentor relationships in Game of Thrones (and Mad Men). The National's Lannister song. And, perhaps sriking closest of all to the central themes of the show, Jezebel plays Game of Thrones: Marry, Fuck, Kill.
posted by Artw at 12:03 AM PST - 242 comments

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