What's stranger than Madeline Kahn (who passed away 5 years ago) appearing in an upcoming animated feature for TV? Her co-star is John Candy, who's been dead for a decade.
posted by RavinDave at 10:44 PM PST - 15 comments

neo-conned
"FBI espionage probe goes beyond Israeli allegations, sources say ... The linkage, if any, between the two leak investigations, remains unclear. But they both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official."

Juan Cole pulls back the curtains on the neo-cons and Franklin here ... if you have friends or family in the US military is this the guy(s) you want calling the shots??
posted by specialk420 at 9:05 PM PST - 61 comments

Adam and His Eves. Genetic research suggests that polygyny was the norm for most of humanity's past. [Via the Intersection.]
posted by homunculus at 9:00 PM PST - 14 comments

Nicole Tran Ba Vang [NSFW] has some pretty fierce artwork. [via RileyDog]
posted by sciurus at 4:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Personal ads in the Arab world "Resident of the UAE, 28 years old, high-school diploma, looking for a veiled wife, a citizen of UAE or any other Gulf county. Will be allowed to continue working after marriage." ~ "Syrian, 36 years old, holds a government position, is interested to meet a tall, fair-skinned and green-eyed virgin, Lebanese or Moroccan."
posted by onlyconnect at 3:41 PM PST - 21 comments

Warholstars is a comprehensive guide to the colorful cast of characters that made up Andy Warhol's constellation and that Lou Reed sang about in Walk on the Wild Side...meet Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy, Jackie Curtis, and more.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:26 PM PST - 9 comments

Welcome to the Lizard Motel. Barbara Feinberg's new book is both a memoir of certain childhood memories and an indictment against the dismal state of books for young adults. Feinberg became concerned when her two children, once avid readers, became agitated at the prospect of reading the current crop of assigned literature for the upcoming school year. Curious, she started reading these books for herself, and discovered that, by and large, they were all examples of "problem literature," stories intended to educate children about the cold, harsh realities of life. Her conclusion:

"We seem to have lost sight of what children can actually process, and more important, of their own innate capacities. Instead of our children being free to roam and dream and invent on their own timetable, and to read about children doing such things, we increasingly ask our children to be sober and hard-working at every turn, to take detailed notes on their required texts with Talmudic attention, to endure computer-generated tests." Yet such books are are ever so popular with educators. Why? And what books to MeFites recall from their formative years? What makes for good reading for children?
posted by Ayn Marx at 11:19 AM PST - 55 comments

New super strain of coca plant stuns anti-drug officials DRUG traffickers have created a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine than existing plants and promises to revolutionise Colombia’s drugs industry.
posted by Postroad at 9:59 AM PST - 22 comments

Opening Hooks. You're in the bookstore, browsing the shelves for... something. You don't know what, exactly, you're looking for but you'll recognize it when you see it. Picking a book at random you open to the first page and begin to read. Two hours later you're home in bed with a mug of sweet tea, still reading.
posted by thebabelfish at 9:06 AM PST - 65 comments

What is the justice department trying to censor in the ACLU's case against the Patriot Act? Anything they feel like, apparantly, including quotes from The Supreme Court. [via boingboing]
posted by ursus_comiter at 8:55 AM PST - 42 comments

A Kind of Innocence We'd Never Seen Before: Thoughts on the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, and Collective Consciousness
posted by moonbird at 7:30 AM PST - 17 comments

Tragic Beauties: antique wax mannequins. "Unlike the frozen, lifeless mannequins of today, these European busts were posed for, many at the turn of the century, by flesh and blood women". (I'm not sure how this one found it's way in there.)
posted by taz at 3:10 AM PST - 22 comments

Was it something in her head? Singer Laura Branigan dead of a brain anuerysm. Conspiracy theorists note - actress Sunny Johnson, who ice-skated to "Gloria" in the film Flashdance, died of the same ailment in 1984.
posted by Oriole Adams at 12:33 AM PST - 16 comments