Japanese Tolkien fans angered over translation issues. Relatively old news, but I believe not that well known. Do the technical difficulties involved excuse the loss of important meaning in dialogue? Film translation seems to suffer from much less prestige than literary translation, though that too has its controversies. In the US, anime fans replay the loose vs strict translation debate daily, also protesting cuts and edits. Is it really impossible in the rush to make money off the geeks and off the masses to stay relatively true to the original material?
posted by e^2 at 9:59 PM PST - 21 comments

"After all Law & Order has done for us, I feel it's the least I can do for Law & Order" Well it's about damn time! Yes, it's Law & Order:Artistic Intent. I dare say that Jerry Orbach hasn't looked this good since Dirty Dancing. Don't leave your kids out, they'll have a great afternoon with the Law & Order Coloring Book. I eagerly await a similarly themed L. A. Law or Hillstreet Blues exhibition.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:55 PM PST - 27 comments

The August 9, 2003 edition of the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi featured an interview with Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq who, together with a group of Egyptian expatriates in Switzerland, is preparing an enormous lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world."
For material stolen from the Pharaonic Egyptians during the Exodus ...
(link via The Daily Grail)
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:38 PM PST - 36 comments

Ja Man! Jamaica becomes car exporter. First it was sugar, rum and reggae- 'At Last, the first hand built Jamaica automobile. Cruise the Islands with the “Island Cruiser”' - Damn, you know I've been waiting for this!
posted by kodas at 4:39 PM PST - 10 comments

Tom Feelings, an African-American illustrator, author, and historian, has passed. "I had used the functional form of a narrative without words, it is open to all people, especially those who have difficulty visualizing what Black people describe as racism from the past and its lingering presence in the present."
posted by moonbird at 3:06 PM PST - 2 comments

Janis Ian, Nashvillian, society's child and author of this fine article on music downloading (and this follow up) was married on Wednesday to her partner, Patricia Snyder, in Toronto. Congratulations all around.
posted by mikrophon at 2:36 PM PST - 20 comments

Anekee, Anekee, I'm so confused. (WARNING: no nudity but probably NSFW and a Flash-only-site.)
What's going here? A beautiful (18+) teenage girl sell memberships to her site, presumably with the promise of revealing skin. Nothing new, right? But wait, what she really wants to do is Free Your Mind.™ Could her mission possibly be be true? (<< that link is definitely NSFW)
posted by danOstuporStar at 2:35 PM PST - 28 comments

Prisoner Inventions. The craftiness of the confined. [via boingboing.net]
posted by srboisvert at 1:49 PM PST - 4 comments

A gallery of photos showing celebrities with and without make-up.
posted by crunchland at 11:41 AM PST - 58 comments

Dante's Inferno Test. On which level of hell will you burn? (via Memepool)
posted by pooligan at 10:55 AM PST - 43 comments

Austin Postcard. Photographs, postcards, history and ephemera related to Austin, Texas.
posted by plep at 10:01 AM PST - 21 comments

TerraServer USA. Can you find your own house? I drove myself mad looking, until I finally resorted to using the address finder. I can see my road, but I can't make out which house is mine. Can you find your home, or even your neighborhhod, in a satellite photo of the country?
posted by archimago at 9:38 AM PST - 18 comments

Alastair Campbell quits. Downing Street media chief Alastair Campbell is to step down, it has been announced. His resignation is said not to be related to the Hutton inquiry into the death of government weapons expert Dr David Kelly.
posted by MintSauce at 9:23 AM PST - 12 comments

'Punk' Catfish Among New Species Found in Venezuela : Scientists studying an unspoiled jungle river wilderness in Venezuela on Thursday announced the discovery of 10 new fish species, including a red-tailed tiddler, a "punk" catfish with a spiky head and a piranha that eats fruit as well as flesh, says The Associated Press.
A little more Here.
Other new species found recently include Baffling 'Mystery Apes' [More on them], some gross, weird things, and even some Odd Critters that thrive without oxygen, growing in salty, alkaline conditions, and may offer insights into what kinds of life might survive on Mars. But it's not just little critters, Pseudoryx nghetinhensis was the first of the new mammal species discovered in quite some time, and even A New giant squid.
Like this stuff? A New Theory says many of the ecological patterns we see can be more simply and often better explained if competing species are treated as if they were essentially identical.
posted by Blake at 4:57 AM PST - 12 comments

Three short flash animations from the excellent satirical comedy Monkey Dust. Check out Internet (bottom right) and find out what really happens when you connect to the net.
posted by grahamwell at 4:51 AM PST - 8 comments

Anyone smell a conspiracy? London and the South East gets hit by a massive power cut in a similar way to New York and the surrounding areas. Complaints from authorities in both cities of "under-investment in the National Grid " and talk of "antiquated infrastructure" strangely mirror each other and it's odd that these two extremely rare events have happened so close together. Was this a deliberate test of our emergency infrastructures, terrorism or just plain coincidence?
posted by andyHollister at 1:45 AM PST - 31 comments