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While some people like their Kottkes all modern & full of links, I'll take mine old skool. Ladies & gentlemen, the greatest 12 string slide guitarist that ever lived.
posted by jonson at 9:27 PM PST - 47 comments

I've been wowing my colleagues by creating beautiful music from words from my head.
posted by tellurian at 9:08 PM PST - 34 comments

Mary Shelly's (awful/wonderful) Frankenstein rap. They read the book, eh?
posted by Mblue at 9:03 PM PST - 12 comments

Miniature motorcycles, made from watch parts. [via It's Knuttz]
posted by mediareport at 8:28 PM PST - 17 comments

You need a trip to Nintendoland for a crash course in knowledge! NSFW
posted by rxrfrx at 7:14 PM PST - 14 comments

Dr. Craig Venter, known for his role as a pioneer in the human genome project, has taken a major step towards creating life from scratch: transplanting the entire genome from one bacterium cell to another. Commence the ethics wars.
posted by charmston at 5:28 PM PST - 33 comments

Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 rejoice! Three of MST3K's writer/characters — Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy — have started a new venture: The Film Crew.
posted by Dave Faris at 4:47 PM PST - 48 comments

Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen: The Comic Book is coming to newsstands in two weeks, but you can see an entire 7-page Tek story at Entertainment Weakly Weekly's EWW EW.com. A little promotionally fluffy info. Of course, there has already been Tek Jansen fan fiction, but this is, like, authorized and pre-read by Stephen Himself.
posted by wendell at 4:06 PM PST - 29 comments

Chema Madoz -- photos
posted by amberglow at 1:21 PM PST - 29 comments

5 types of Chinese fish subject to temporary import ban. Melamine in farmed fish. The safety of fish farming in question. Are we risking a trade war with China over food? Some see an upside to food globalization. China's loss may be the Gulf Coast's gain. Previously on Mefi
posted by SaintCynr at 12:44 PM PST - 30 comments

A modern day Don Quixote
posted by bustmakeupleave at 11:28 AM PST - 20 comments

"Should we ever hear the space-phone ringing, for God's sake let us not answer". First we are told Space Colonisation is a stupid and expensive idea. Then that contact with space aliens is inadvisable. Maybe David Bowie was right, the government would just ruin it anyway. That's why we can't have nice things.
posted by takeyourmedicine at 10:32 AM PST - 92 comments

The Brain That Wouldn't Die is the best public domain movie I've seen all week. Abe Baker's spooky original jazz score is a staple in sci-fi B movies. The monster is played by Eddie Carmel, subject of Diane Arbus' A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y. 1970, in his first screen appearance. And I can't overlook the feminist take on this postwar gorefest. See for yourself.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 10:23 AM PST - 23 comments

Essential tones of music rooted in human speech. Original Duke University paper by Deborah Ross, Jonathan Choi and Dale Purves [pdf].
posted by nickyskye at 10:14 AM PST - 49 comments

In late March the body of Lindsay Ann Hawker was found in a bathtub on the balcony of a Chiba apartment. This week, with the help of UK officers, the Hawker family has returned to Tokyo, to seek help to find the main suspect Tatsuya Ichihashi, who has been missing since the discovery of the body.
posted by gomichild at 9:49 AM PST - 48 comments

HelpMyBabyLive.com It comes down to this. If we can't raise the $50,000 in the next 3 months, we'll have to choose abortion. And you thought Save Karyn was bad. Via
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:55 AM PST - 177 comments

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip ends tonight, and Aaron Sorkin will be leaving television production for a while. His current project is Charlie Wilson's War, a movie starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, based on the late George Crile's excellent, funny nonfic book of the same name. The movie will trace "party animal" Congressman Charles "Good Time Charlie" Wilson's (D, TX) rise from a scandal (he was caught in "a hot tub tryst with two cocaine-sniffing showgirls in Las Vegas",) to his role in the 1980's covertly funding Afghanistan guerrillas so they could expand their war with the Soviet Union. Wilson's actions would eventually help collapse the Afghan PDPA government, a power vacuum which would be filled by the Taliban. Who would have thought ending the Cold War would be so easy?
posted by zarq at 8:04 AM PST - 60 comments

German Geek website reports that the The Iphone-Killer (the Iphone for geeks), OpenMoko, starts shipphing July. Unlike Apples Iphone, OpenMoke is not closed platform. The German Website reports further that OpenMokos 2nd hardware revision will provide WiFi, 3D acceleration and 256 MB Flash (shipping starts October 2007).

Forgive me, if the post is better suited for /.
posted by yoyo_nyc at 7:31 AM PST - 76 comments

On June 13th Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., issued subpoenas to two former White House officials compelling them to provide testimony and related information as part of ongoing congressional investigations into the mass firings of well-performing federal prosecutors and the politicization of hiring and firing within the Department of Justice. Today is the deadline for handing over the requested information and the Whitehouse has stated that it will not be complying with the request.
posted by Mr_Zero at 7:18 AM PST - 105 comments

"PLASMA PONG is a variation of PONG that utilizes real-time fluid dynamics to drive the game environment. ... In the game you can inject plasma fluid into the environment, create a vacuum from your paddle, and blast shockwaves into the playing area."
posted by jbickers at 7:10 AM PST - 13 comments

Not without some controversy, the advertising industry collectively patted itself on the back again while competing for lions at the Cannes Advertising Festival last week. All the winning commercials are now viewable on-line. The Cannes Fringe provided more insight, while others attempted to distill the festival's essence via text-mining; meantime, Cannes't had its ears to the ground. One of the few alternative events: The Coney Island Advertising Festival (which could presumably feature the best illegal advertising). My personal short-list among the winning films (all .mov's): Epuron - The Power of Wind ; Pot Noodle - Intro, Italy/Wales ; Altoids - Banana Hands Allen ; Axe 3 - Crashes ; Vaseline - Sea of Skin ; Big Yellow Storage - Tide ; Discovery Channel - In A Man's Life ; as well as the Grand Prix winner Dove - Evolution.
posted by progosk at 6:33 AM PST - 18 comments

'Graffiti' even a grandma could love. (flickr flash slide show link). (Same flickr set, regular view.) Even if it isn't Pablo Picasso, my own flashlight 'drawings' never came out this well.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:18 AM PST - 25 comments

The Best Laid Plans: The Story of How the Government Ignored Its Own Gulf Coast Hurricane Plans. A new report from CREW describes FEMA's plan to respond to a hurricane of Katrina’s magnitude and its subsequent failure to implement that plan. [Via C&L.]
posted by homunculus at 12:52 AM PST - 33 comments