Mr. Butch, The King of Kenmore Square, was killed in a scooter accident yesterday. An excellent film portrait of the man and icon can be found here. His rich and well-lived life was the embodiement of the only recipe for anarchy I ever saw that worked: Total Freedom + Total Heart.
posted by extrabox at 10:03 PM PST - 28 comments

Orson Welles: The One Man Band - a movie that takes a look at the last years of Mr. Welles. German/English with English subtitles. Full .avi download available.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:30 PM PST - 18 comments

The Bladder Buddy. You can thank ABC's American Inventor for this.
posted by metasonix at 9:06 PM PST - 30 comments

A story of two young people. (mp3) Two Lovers (pdf) you'll never forget, two amazing secret agents. Two worlds, one love, one gangster, and the most heinous of crimes. via wfmu and previ-ously
posted by geos at 8:33 PM PST - 2 comments

I Infiltrate a Right Wing Protest Group | Cracked columnist Harmon Leon becomes chapter president of the Protest Warrior organization
posted by deern the headlice at 7:53 PM PST - 33 comments

Yucatan Living.
posted by hama7 at 7:16 PM PST - 28 comments

Myostatin is a genetic protein that affects muscle growth in humans and animals. Scientists have learned a lot about this protein from a noticeable myostatin mutation common in the Whippet dog breed. Whippets with one mutant copy of the gene are faster, so these are desirable for racing dog breeders. But selective breeding has caused increased instances of both copies of the myostatin genes mutating, which results in "double muscle" Incredible Hulk dogs!?
posted by p3t3 at 7:02 PM PST - 27 comments

Love on Campus: Why We Should Encourage an Eroticism (of the Mind) Between Professor and Student. Yale English professor William Deresiewicz argues that the newly-emerged stereotype of professors as "pompous, lecherous, alcoholic failures" is in the main due to our culture's fear of and inability to understand the true intimacy between professor and student: that of the mind. Cf. controversial Hindu teacher-student relationships, the same in Christianity, or merely observe Oscar Wilde: "I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself."
posted by shivohum at 6:20 PM PST - 51 comments

Songs You Didn't Know Were Cover Versions: Good Lovin', Mambo No. 5, The City of New Orleans, Fernando, The First Cut Is the Deepest, I Love Rock 'n' Roll, Just A Gigolo, Without You, Don't Turn Around, Let's Live for Today, Dazed and Confused, Seasons in the Sun, Pass the Dutchie, There's Always Something There to Remind Me, Gloria, Respect, Turn Turn Turn, When the Levee Breaks, Do You Wanna Touch Me, Cum on Feel the Noize, Hanging on the Telephone, I Go Blind, I Will Always Love You, Take Me to the River, Louie Louie, The Twist etc. etc.
posted by jonp72 at 6:17 PM PST - 111 comments

Some commuters are nervous about London Underground drivers filming journeys on their camera phones and posting them on YouTube. YouTube links all. BBC Story.
posted by nthdegx at 5:49 PM PST - 22 comments

Gunman bursts into party, tastes cheese and wine, gets hug, then leaves.
posted by Alex404 at 4:53 PM PST - 56 comments

Senate disrupted by jerks. Three members of anti-abortion Operation Save America disrupted the daily opening prayers of the Senate yesterday morning, which were being lead that day Rajan Zed, a Hindu priest. This was the first time a Hindu priest lead the opening prayer. Operation Save America has a small press release. Youtube link.
posted by Snyder at 4:00 PM PST - 81 comments

Do you like baseball? Or do you prefer cricket? Luke Whittaker has designed a browser-game for each.
posted by Kattullus at 3:01 PM PST - 22 comments

Who is Zack Kim anyway? Classical Guitarist? Nope. Composer for Film? Nah. How about viral marketeer! Almost all u-tube and the last one is really impressive. Many more where these came from.
posted by snsranch at 2:56 PM PST - 8 comments

Bulls on Parade: Rage against the runners. Not for the squeamish (especially the first picture).
posted by scblackman at 2:41 PM PST - 46 comments

Flash animations of lectures by Alan Watts, produced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame. (via)
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 1:08 PM PST - 64 comments

Able Seacat Simon was the ship's cat serving with HMS Amethyst during the Yangtze Incident in 1949. Despite the Captain's dislike of Simon (he would often leave "tributes" of dead rats in the Captain's bed and went to sleep in his hat) he served for over a year until the HMS Amethyst was attacked. The ship ran aground and during this time Communist-trained* rats infiltrated the ship. Despite being wounded in action by the shelling, Simon continued to carry out his duties, ridding the ship of all Communist insurgent rodents and boosting morale amongst the wounded sailors. *probably not but it sounded good.
posted by longbaugh at 12:59 PM PST - 20 comments

Feel like you've racked up too many sins to be admitted into Heaven? Fret not, my evil friend... just hire a Sin Eater to gobble them all up for you. Voila! More here.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:44 AM PST - 44 comments

Ca Plane Pour Pigloo [youtube]
posted by Stynxno at 11:12 AM PST - 12 comments

Former media baron Conrad Black has been found guilty of obstruction of justice and three counts of mail fraud.
posted by chunking express at 11:08 AM PST - 45 comments

The GTC (Great Telescope Canaries) sees first light today. Apart from the sheer size (10.4 m) of its mirror and from the science it will deliver, the GTC is remarkable by its location at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory 2426 m high at the rim of the Caldera de Taburiente in the island of La Palma. La Palma is also, for a number of reasons, also interesting for geologists. In that regard, it made headlines a couple of years back due to a paper about the risk of a collapse of the island which could cause a devastating tsunami. Oh, and it's also a really nice place for a holiday.
posted by Skeptic at 10:55 AM PST - 15 comments

"Jim has speculated in past writings as to what creature might be named the official animal of the Great Plains. Here’s a more palatable question: what food might we designate most representative of life on the plains? I nominate the bierock, or as I sometimes call it, the German-Russian answer to the burrito. The bierock is a piece of sweet dough wrapped around a filling of cabbage, onions and beef (or whatever else you want to stuff into it) and baked. The bierock is a characteristic food of Germans from Russia on the southern plains from Texas to Kansas. Germans from Russia in the states from Nebraska north consume the same item, but they call it a runsa." Text excerpted from Plains Folk. II: Romance of the Landscape.
posted by cog_nate at 10:07 AM PST - 30 comments

The mission stencil story is an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story that takes place on the sidewalks of the Mission district in San Francisco. Via
posted by jonson at 9:22 AM PST - 14 comments

Harvard professor Allan Brandt has a book out, The Cigarette Century, detailing the rise of the cigarette in 20th century America and its continuing spread worldwide. Excerpted here, reviewed here. The same title was used on a very similar work in American Heritage magazine in 1992 that is also worth a look.
posted by TedW at 8:34 AM PST - 34 comments

Artag: Augmented reality on your desktop. via Digital Urban, with a HowTo.
posted by signal at 7:40 AM PST - 11 comments

The Capitolist - Web 2.0 meets Capitol Hill The Capitolist is an anonymous BBS for Capitol Hill staffers to post to, and the rest of us to read. Anyone coming from a Hill IP can post anything they want: weird, banal, frustrated, or the occasional full-blown cry in the wilderness. There's even LOLcats here. How long will it last? How far will it go? Hit refresh & find out!
posted by scalefree at 6:59 AM PST - 31 comments

Temple of Zoom. Adding a twist on Flash-based stick figure games and physics-oriented platformers like N-Game, comes Matsushita/Panasonic's followup to Toshiba's "Tobby" line of promotional games. Collect dots Pac-Man (Java) style, in addition to powerups resembling digital viewfinder icons. Jump atop camera lenses which double as elevators, while dodging the occasional Red-Eye sensor. Your "prize", should you choose to accept it, is a bottle of soda pop coupon for the new Lumix camera. via
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:34 AM PST - 18 comments

"Splenda's advertising claims that it is 'Made from Sugar, so it Tastes Like Sugar.' What they don't tell you is that Splenda is not natural, it's a chlorinated artificial sweetener." So states The Truth About Splenda, a site devoted to saving us from this chemical menace. But who are the good samaritans behind this truth-telling campaign? Why, none other than the good people of The Sugar Association, who only want to promote the consumption of sugar as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle. McNeil Nutritionals, the maker of Splenda, fight backs with SplendaTruth.com.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:58 AM PST - 133 comments

The Mini-Penis Scandal.
posted by humblepigeon at 1:50 AM PST - 106 comments

The BBC is certainly having a mensis horribilis. First, they were fined £50,000 for lying to children, then they were exposed for doing a hatchet job on the Queen (something they claim was a mistake). Peter Fincham, the BBC One boss, has apologised for running a trailer (for a documentary) which showed the Queen "walking out in a huff" during a photo session with Annie Liebowitz. Not amusing, apparently. All this has led to a review of all programming aimed at uncovering instances of viewer deception.
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:23 AM PST - 54 comments

On the sidelines of a photography exhibition in Singapore, an collective named "A Dose of Light" was preparing to display the final set of 36 photos (flash, slow-loading), taken by "Wu Xiao Kang", a photographer being treated by schizophrenia before he committed suicide at the age of 26 (text of press release). To add to the tragedy, the photographs were now in the possession of a photographic research institute and would not be released till 2010. Maybe, if people signed a petition, the institute might be persuaded to change it's mind? [more inside]
posted by your mildly obsessive average geek at 1:17 AM PST - 8 comments