MetaFilter

That damn Paul Simon sold us short! Here are the other 45 ways to leave your lover.
posted by danb at 10:00 PM PST - 29 comments

Luther Vandross is gone. The great R&B balladeer died today, apparently due to complications from a stroke he suffered two years ago. Believers in an afterlife can hope he's enjoying a dance with his father. After all, he did believe in the "Power of Love". RIP.
posted by trip and a half at 7:31 PM PST - 45 comments

Irish man fails to set world bee record. I, too, have failed at this.
posted by jdroth at 6:55 PM PST - 17 comments

Bisqwit's NES Time attack videos site has been mentioned before, but the site and the time attack community have both grown quite a bit and the redesigned wiki-style site deserves another look. The site now has tool-assisted runs of SNES, Genesis/Megadrive, and GB/GBA games in addition to the rather comprehensive NES collection. You can now check out and vote on submissions, view works in progress, or learn the motivations and methodology, and dare I suggest, make one yourself - but be you aware, it is both difficult and addictive. For "speed runs" - as opposed to time attacks - of newer games and older games without using emulators, check out the Speed Demo Archive (runs listed here) . And you thought you could beat Contra fast...
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:35 PM PST - 16 comments

The first patent for remote control was submitted by Nikola Tesla 1899. Since then its been implemented in all sorts of ways. The most popular method is probably channel surfing made possible by Robert Adler, which you can now do on your wristwatch. Pranksters might be interested in remote flatulence or golf balls while musicians might like a remote ukulele. There's even a whole Yahoo category of devices hooked up to the internet. Someday most trains, planes, and automobiles might have remote control capability. But even as we take our remote vehicles to new worlds we have moved on to include remote insects, rats, and someday genes. In fact, the ultimate wi-fi may connect our brains. But perhaps the invention proposed by Tesla that will most change our world is Wireless Power Transmission.
posted by john at 5:37 PM PST - 7 comments

U.S. to Seize State Prison Health System The California Prison Health system kills an inmate a week due to neglect or incompetence, so a federal judge put the entire system into receivership. Thing is, that's not that half of it.
posted by raaka at 4:34 PM PST - 46 comments

Han Bennink - accomplished dutch percussionist, performed a on a drumkit made of cheese as part of a recent Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art exhibit, "Demons Stole My Soul: Rock 'N Roll Drums In Contemporary Art"
posted by tpl1212 at 3:52 PM PST - 5 comments

Basil Kirchin, 1927-2005

Who he? Kirchin began, aged 14, as a drummer in his father Ivor's jazz band. By the mid-1950s, he and his father were co-leading the most acclaimed jazz band in Britain. They backed Ruby Murray (whose name lives on as cockney rhyming slang for curry), and the great Sarah Vaughan wouldn't tour the UK without them; neither would Billy Eckstine. After disbanding the Kirchin band at the height of their fame, Basil set off around the world, a trip which ended disastrously, when Kirchin's tapes of his band's best moments (obsessively recorded, thanks to the fact that the Kirchin band was one of the first to travel with their own PA system) were accidentally dropped into Sydney Harbour. [more inside]
posted by Len at 3:32 PM PST - 6 comments

Happy birthday Canada!
posted by Bag Man at 2:27 PM PST - 18 comments

This paper outlines the major thesis of the larger work... that US foreign policy during the Cold War was not primarily about keeping the USSR out of Western Europe, but rather about promoting the global capitalist system on a worldwide stage... Three themes—strategic, economic, ideological—are introduced in support of this argument, and applied to the 30 case studies. They lead to the conclusion that in many of these interventions the US opposed leftist Third World personalities by supporting more right-wing local clients rather than centrists who were often available. These decisions almost always proved disastrous for the local societies affected, and often even were unfortunate for longer-term American diplomatic interests.
U.S. Foreign Policy in the Periphery: A 50-Year Retrospective. Related: With Our History, Spinning America's Image Isn't Enough
posted by y2karl at 2:21 PM PST - 39 comments

The Intelligence Resource Program from the website of the Federation of American Scientists is a lovely nugget of information about the intelligence field. It has intelligence budget data, threat assessments, imagery information, and more. But, in a little-known unlisted directory you can find intelligence and security related .pdf manuals for all four combat branches of the DOD and even a few others. Check it out, and don't worry because everything there is technically unclassified, it's just hard to find.
posted by mystyk at 1:43 PM PST - 5 comments

The Road Rage Quiz Take this test to gauge your ability to create rage in yourself & others. How do you deal with ragers? Here's two sites which advocate carrying & displaying Signs. This site likes the "Sorry" sign, while this site offers cards of a different nature.
posted by Mack Twain at 12:19 PM PST - 52 comments

NASA says shuttle is ready for July 13 launch, but doubts remain. With two catastrophic failures marring the Space Shuttle's safety record, many people fear that the coming launch of the shuttle Discovery could turn in to a billion-dollar fireworks display. While NASA is optimistic about the coming mission, an independent panel of aerospace executives, academics and former astronauts are not. They concluded that NASA has failed to fully implement three of the fifteen return-to-flight recommendations made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) in August 2003. While we wish the astronauts a safe and uneventful journey, serious doubts remain as to NASA's competency to continue carrying mankind to the stars. Perhaps our best hopes now lie with private ventures such as Scaled Composites?
posted by nlindstrom at 12:03 PM PST - 20 comments

Fan Death is death resulting from hypothermia or lack of oxygen, caused by the vortex that is created by an electric fan, or air conditioning in closed rooms. Strangely, it only occurs in South Korea.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 11:23 AM PST - 53 comments

Shelby Foote died on Monday. Somehow I missed this, and I assume others will have as well. Booktv will rebroadcast a lengthy interview with him July 2. Downloads available as well.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:59 AM PST - 17 comments

Friday Flickr fireworks fun for the 4th!
posted by WolfDaddy at 10:53 AM PST - 13 comments

Iraq -
On Auditing the War and Reconstruction.
A Wealth of Facts (.pdf) - worth perusing.
'World Tribunal' Findings.
via
posted by peacay at 10:00 AM PST - 44 comments

BMX Backflips. BMX Star. BMX Park. Enjoy.
posted by brownpau at 9:16 AM PST - 12 comments

Friday Flaash Fun RaidenX is a Raiden shoot-em up knock-off. Enjoy!
posted by furtive at 8:04 AM PST - 21 comments

Why do Australians hang corks around their hats? - Jim Heath tells you All About the Australian Bush Fly
posted by TimothyMason at 7:22 AM PST - 20 comments

Recycling Grinds On in Minnesota even if the state doesn't have a budget; the Star Tribune is only too happy to tell us how it works with lots of interesting information. (I'm keeping an eye on the Star Tribune since the rightwing loonies are trying to tear it down over its support for Dick Durbin). Besides, it's a good paper. No, I don't work there and never did.
posted by etaoin at 7:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Star Atlases, Mercator Globes and Celestial Sundries [more inside]
posted by sciurus at 6:44 AM PST - 8 comments

Google sued by Click Defense for click fraud. Earlier Google had sued Auction Experts for click fraud. Meanwhile Google shows profits up 600% and its shares cross $300. Will Google eat itself. What is Click Fraud and how to fight it.
posted by webmeta at 6:07 AM PST - 9 comments

Kill Lizzie. Friday freak fun. Whimsical and disturbing.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 4:30 AM PST - 5 comments

En Garde! Start your Friday with the Duel, a beautifully animated short film (with great music to boot!). Requires Quicktime.
posted by Verdant at 3:59 AM PST - 19 comments

Parabolic Heat Transference Case Mod. Full disclaimer: My brother is apparently insane.
posted by loquacious at 2:28 AM PST - 26 comments

The artist swallowed a pill-sized camera that photographically auto-documented its journey through his body, taking 65,000 photographs in seven and a half hours. (Alternate link, scroll horizontally.)
posted by crunchland at 1:14 AM PST - 39 comments

Sodarace is the online olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to design robots that race over 2D terrains using the Sodaconstructor virtual construction kit.
posted by srboisvert at 12:54 AM PST - 2 comments

Advertising sinks to new lows. But this isn't the first time that these guys have been in the news.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 12:08 AM PST - 55 comments