June 25, 2007

Your favorite web comic sucks

Your webcomic is bad and you should feel bad. Many of the most popular comics on the Internet aren't just weird, they're terrible. And creepy. Like Dominic Deegan, which justifies rape in a storyline. Also, Girly's creator critiques the art of several webcomics, both good and bad.
posted by clockworkjoe at 11:13 PM PST - 114 comments

Eunice Kathleen Waymon Live

Nina Simone Live

Ain't Got No...I Got Life
Mississippi Goddam
Zungo
Young, Gifted, and Black
Erets Zavat Chalav
I Put a Spell on You
See-line Woman
posted by Falconetti at 10:33 PM PST - 25 comments

Poets' Graves

Poets' Graves. An international collection of.....wait for it.....poets' graves. Fascinating bios, a forum and a nice selection of classic poetry.
posted by mediareport at 9:36 PM PST - 14 comments

Titillating treasure trove of tit torture tidbits.

Matt Nicholson's Breast Punishment Primer discusses the history of tit torture, the anatomy of breasts and the motivation for torturing one (or two), and various manners in which one might torture a tit. That and tit torture trivia. All links NSFW.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:54 PM PST - 73 comments

Chris Benoit, 1967-2007

Coming weeks after the fake (and illegal?) "death" of WWE supremo Vince McMahon, police have confirmed the deaths of Canadian pro wrestler Chris "Wild Pegasus"/"The Dyname Kid" Benoit, his wife and son. Gone too soon. Relive his greatest hits through the just-posted tributes on YouTube: [1] [2] [3] [4] .
posted by docgonzo at 7:48 PM PST - 79 comments

Electrostatic Machines

This fellow reads up on electricity generating machines in old books and then builds them.
posted by tellurian at 6:31 PM PST - 14 comments

Metafilter: essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.

Essentalist explanations. Maintained by John Cowan, this list boils down dozens of languages, real, invented, and imaginary, to their pithy essences. "Japanese is essentially 16th-century Chinese, 17th-century Portuguese, 18th-century Dutch, 19th-century French and 20th-century English with an abhorrence of consonant clusters." "Esperanto is essentially Spanish with extra 'x's and 'k's." "Klingon is essentially Arabic spoken through a set of bulky false teeth." "English is essentially a half dozen other languages locked in a small room. They fight."
posted by escabeche at 5:43 PM PST - 37 comments

The Butterfly and the Knife in Court

You've heard about MS-13. But did you expect that members of “The World's Most Dangerous Gang” would now be testifying for the prosecution? Other witnesses would be envious. The saga of The Butterfly and the Knife is in a new chapter. (Previously)
posted by Robert Angelo at 5:23 PM PST - 6 comments

The glass flowers of Leopold Blaschka

The glass flowers of Leopold Blaschka were created to provide enduring botanical teaching models. During his lifetime 4,000 models were created; a selection of 17 specimens are currently on display at the Corning Museum of Glass. MeFi has previously been treated to the splendor of the Blaschka marine invertebrates.
posted by donovan at 5:20 PM PST - 12 comments

The Small House Half-way Up in the Next Block

When people think of Old Time Radio, they usually think of the standards: Amos 'n Andy, Burns and Allen, Dragnet, etc. etc. I won't link to them because they are all over the 'net, and you can find them easily. But you almost certainly don't know about Vic and Sade ... and you should.

Read the good Wikipedia article first, to whet your appetite even more, then go listen! [more inside]
posted by woodblock100 at 4:15 PM PST - 25 comments

Virtuoso Vertiginousness

Vertigo got you spinning? The answers to your problems and more are available at the Hitchcock DVD Wiki.
posted by felix at 4:08 PM PST - 5 comments

Goodbye Tony Blair

I'm rubbish at political comedy, so I'll leave it up to Tim Ireland to properly say Goodbye, Tony Blair. (via)
posted by anonaccount at 3:50 PM PST - 17 comments

Speaking of vertigo...

Peter B. Kaplan is a New York Photographer who made his name by climbing to high locations and taking amazing super-wide angle shots since the 70's -- most notably, the Statue of Liberty restoration project. He recently had to stop after 40 years because he started suffering from vertigo. After laying off ginkgo biloba, Kaplan’s vertigo and fear of heights has apparently disappeared.
posted by Dave Faris at 3:41 PM PST - 4 comments

5. ColdFusion

The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills. "Obsolescence is a relative -- not absolute -- term in the world of technology."
posted by caddis at 3:40 PM PST - 66 comments

Ironworkers Above The City

Amazing photo sequence from the Philadelphia Inquirer on the ironworkers building the top floors (45 - 55) of the Comcast Center. Not safe for those with Vertigo. Via.
posted by jonson at 3:21 PM PST - 29 comments

I hate cilantro.

Freedom haters wail:
"Cilantro! More cilantro!"
The terrorists win.
- Dstieve
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 2:45 PM PST - 83 comments

feline family

The Private Life of a Cat, 1944, (GoogleVideo, 22 minutes), is a gem of a silent film by Alexander Hammid, about a mother cat giving birth, her relationship with her kittens and mate.
posted by nickyskye at 10:51 AM PST - 29 comments

No Pay for Lost Pants

A very big day for the District of Columbia Superior Court. In Pearson v. Soo Chung (pdf of opinion), Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled that Custom Cleaners is not liable to Roy L. Pearson for "various calculations of damages that go as high as $67 million" over "a pair of allegedly missing pants." The other shoe is yet to drop. Judge Bartnoff ruled that Pearson must pay the defendants' court costs and will consider forcing Pearson to pay the defendants' attorneys' fees. ( previously.)
posted by Slap Factory at 10:50 AM PST - 55 comments

New Supreme Court Opinions

A very big day for the Supreme Court. In Morse v. Fredrick, the Court ruled that a school could suspend a child for holding up a "Bong HiTs for Jesus" banner. (Previous post here). In Hein v. Freedom from Religion, the Court held that taxpayers lacked standing to challenged Faith Based Initiatives (previous discussions). In Wilke v. Robbins, the Court held that land owners do not have Bivens claims if the federal government harasses landowners for easements. In FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the Court held that the portion of the campaign finance law which had blackout periods before elections on issue advocacy advertising was an unconstitutional restriction of speech (other). This Thursday, the Justices will deliver their last opinions of the term, including a death penalty case and the school assignment cases. (Opinions are .pdfs)
posted by dios at 10:15 AM PST - 226 comments

Nothing to do with the open bar

Brides get trashed
posted by nuclear_soup at 9:57 AM PST - 40 comments

Hitting the Walls and Working the Middle

BYT: A lot of our readers at Brightest Young Things are young women. Is there a main thrust of Vagina Power that you want to communicate directly to them? It was just this morning, on the prompting of a friend, that I found myself examining Alexyss Tylor's Vagina Power again, including our home grown transcript of her vagina power philosophy. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but when I tuned into my favorite website about the D.C. social scene this morning, I fell off my chair. [nsfw]
posted by awesomebrad at 9:29 AM PST - 40 comments

...So the musician would have a place to put his beer.

A lovely free online text on the Fundamentals of Piano Practice. (Tuning, too.)
posted by Wolfdog at 7:36 AM PST - 18 comments

Yucca Mountain Johnny is saying goodbye

The Problem of Nuclear Waste, for kids: Imagine what your house would be like if no one EVER took out the garbage. Not only would your home be dirty and stinky, but it would also be a very unhealthy place to live. See Yucca Mountain Johnny while you can, because it looks like he won't be around much longer.
posted by cerebus19 at 6:04 AM PST - 41 comments

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace: "Hegemonic American teens (i.e. middle/upper class, college bound teens from upwards mobile or well off families) are all on or switching to Facebook. Marginalized teens, teens from poorer or less educated backgrounds, subculturally-identified teens, and other non-hegemonic teens continue to be drawn to MySpace. A class division has emerged and it is playing out in the aesthetics, the kinds of advertising, and the policy decisions being made." (Related blog post)
posted by heatherann at 5:19 AM PST - 146 comments

Everything reduced to a mathematical representation

Simulated jet colliding with the World Trade Center: Researchers at Purdue University have created a simulation to study in detail what likely happened when a commercial airliner crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. Youtube link.
posted by DreamerFi at 4:50 AM PST - 90 comments

The human network

The human network is the paradigm and the infrastructure which supports social software.
posted by zippy at 4:47 AM PST - 16 comments

Get lost

Lost Art is the fascinating site of Brazilian Mefite Ignacio Aronovich and Louise Chin. It's a deep vein of adventurous, quirky, and kinky photo essays from around the globe. Scroll down on the main page to see a text menu or browse the visual index. Much content is NSFW but - stick with "adventure" and "travel" if that's a concern - or view the SFW slide show Our Year in Pictures 2006 (with sound) or without sound.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:39 AM PST - 5 comments

Spoider Bloke

Birmingham’s iconic, 200 foot high Selfridge’s building has been scaled by an anonymous teenage equivalent of Alain Robert (previously). A friend filmed the feat and posted it to YouTube, although local (text) news (YouTube) claims it has now been removed. But has it?
posted by MrMustard at 1:32 AM PST - 43 comments

1000 Science Lecture Videos

SciTalks - from the press release [19 June]: "The site launches today with over 1,000 lectures online, and more are being added daily. Segments range from a series of hour-long lectures by the late Richard Feynman, to a short, hilarious Ali G interview with Noam Chomsky, and a fascinating talk on designing a semiconductor-based brain, by up-and-coming Stanford researcher Kwabena Boahen." [via]
posted by peacay at 1:06 AM PST - 7 comments

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