The Royal Randwick Racecourse has been locked down. At least 8 horses have tested positive for equine flu. It is predicted that 700 horses will contract the virus. [more inside]
posted by gomichild at 11:58 PM PST - 32 comments

The man got lit up early. Culprit out on bail. LOLCATS on the case.
posted by jcruelty at 11:45 PM PST - 137 comments

Dampcats.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats moist, or why.
posted by landis at 11:29 PM PST - 37 comments

The Pinky Show takes on some tough issues. Is the Iraq War legal? (24 minute video.) Cats with guns. (6 minutes.) Viet Nam. (40 minutes.) Did Thomas Edison hate cats? (2.5 minutes.) Or just browse the archives.

Oh wait. Did I mention it's hosted by a cartoon cat with an annoying monotone voice? Well it is.
posted by The Deej at 11:26 PM PST - 22 comments

Astrona - Space & Astronomical Art Journal : "specialising in space and astronomical art, science fiction art, visions of future worlds, design and visualization of technologies for living in space, space exploration, spaceships, starships, space colonies, etc."
posted by peacay at 10:29 PM PST - 6 comments

Eco Porn. "Fuckforforest is an erotic non-profit eco organization. By showing the beauty of love and nature we wish to direct attention to and collect money for the earth’s threatened nature, with help from sexually free people." (NSFW)
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 10:04 PM PST - 25 comments

Do you want your next president to be an unintelligent, corrupt, incompetent liar? Of course you don’t. Neither does Russ Feingold. (And oh by the way, the next president must also be a Dylan fan. More about the video)
posted by growabrain at 9:40 PM PST - 34 comments

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - an overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, and literature. It is designed to prepare K-12 teachers to approach this sensitive topic. The content is presented from three perspectives: Timeline, People, and The Arts. Produced by the University of South Florida.
posted by netbros at 9:22 PM PST - 7 comments

American Elf is a daily diary comic by James Kochalka. The latest strip is always free but the archives are subscription only. He also a musician, his most famous song being Hockey Monkey, and he has number of songs up for free on his site. [via Eddie Campbell who says: "Beginning in 1998 Kochalka took the form of daily strip and imbued it with a life that has been missing from it for a long time. Since then he has made sure his daily round is not finished until a strip is done. Another thing I like about it is the way he carefully avoids any taint of 'continuity'. There is no story here, just the eternal incidentalness of life as it is lived."]
posted by Kattullus at 8:39 PM PST - 21 comments

i:wound
posted by hama7 at 8:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Like the US, the UK, and Canada before it, Australia has recently announced that, as part of its new citizenship guidelines, prospective citizens must pass a test with questions relating to Australian history, society, and culture. Not everyone is a fan of the test, though, or the information on it, and today The Age has released its own suggestions for a citizenship test. Could you pass it?
posted by mosessis at 7:31 PM PST - 70 comments

Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success. Interesting article on the work of psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski. [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus at 4:45 PM PST - 68 comments

"It so often happens that I receive mail - well-intended but totally useless - by amateur physicists who believe to have solved the world. They believe this, only because they understand totally nothing about the real way problems are solved in Modern Physics...It should be possible, these days, to collect all knowledge you need from the internet. Problem then is, there is so much junk on the internet... I know exactly what should be taught to the beginning student...I can tell you of my own experiences. It helped me all the way to earn a Nobel Prize. But I didn't have internet. I am going to try to be your teacher. It is a formidable task."
posted by vacapinta at 4:22 PM PST - 47 comments

Ian Brown, the former lead singer with The Stone Roses has a new single out. Illegal Attacks is an anti-war song featuring Sinead O'Connor urging the US and UK governments to "bring the soldiers back home". The striking thing about the song, to my mind, is its scarcity value. The War in Vietnam brought us anti-war songs by Glen Campbell (Galveston); Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Ohio); Edwin Star (War!); Donovan (The Universal Soldier); Steppenwolf (Draft Resister); Billy Joel (Goodnight Saigon); Bruce Springstien (Born in the USA); Jimmy Cliff (Vietnam) Nina Simone (Backlash Blues) and many, many more . Why have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are as deeply unpopular, not generated a similar body of work?
posted by MrMerlot at 3:46 PM PST - 86 comments

Today's post of tenuously related audio brings you ten historic radio broadcasts, 529 eternal questions in popular music, and one mildly amusing black metal band prank call.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:24 PM PST - 11 comments

Six feet long, eight feet wide, bicycle tires all around, and 0 to 60 in four-and-a-half hours. Have any MeFites the courage to admit they owned one of these horrors of engineering?
posted by bwg at 3:11 PM PST - 122 comments

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. This Saturday will mark this article's four year anniversary. Frankly, I was mildly surprised not to have found it mentioned before in MeFi. It's a good read about a sad state of affairs; how our government is turning its own people into outlaws, because freedom has been traded in for an illusion of security. ...but then we already knew that. Don't we?
posted by ZachsMind at 1:22 PM PST - 113 comments

show them to me (nsfw)
posted by vronsky at 12:33 PM PST - 165 comments

Jail Guitar Doors is an independent initiative set up by Billy Bragg with the aim of providing musical equipment for the use of inmates serving time in Her Majesty’s prisons. With Mick Jones and in memory of Joe Strummer. It seems to be working. Here's an interview, a Guardian article, and the original.
posted by Alec at 10:51 AM PST - 18 comments

Is College Worth the Cost? In strict dollar terms, is that degree going to be worth the parchment it's printed on?
posted by blue_beetle at 10:13 AM PST - 134 comments

The fight to free Burma has been making noise lately. Protests are picking up in Burma, international activists are putting pressure on the UN to step in, and Jim Carrey has joined as yet another celebrity to try to bring public attention to the effort. Burma is an amazing place and the Burmese people are some of the warmest, most hospitable, beautiful, and silliest people I have ever encountered. The people of Burma deserve a better world. Is the tide shifting? Will this be a turning point for Burma? I hope so.
posted by crawfishpopsicle at 10:13 AM PST - 36 comments

The origin of the peace sign. Various histories of designs, top 10 tools for artists and designers, hilarious pencil attachments and other cool stuff at designboom (previously).
posted by nickyskye at 10:01 AM PST - 16 comments

Illicit Ohio has a wide range of photos and essays of abandoned places in Ohio, from the Cincinnati subway system (yes, there really is was one, and it's been discussed here before), to various and sundry prisons, government installations, hotels, hosiptals, houses and more. And don't miss the old vs. new galleries, either.
posted by dersins at 9:07 AM PST - 20 comments

Om Nom Nom Nom via adorablog
posted by ozomatli at 8:59 AM PST - 42 comments

Minsky Meltdown ahead? Named after Hyman Minsky, an economist who was known for his research concerning financial crises, specifically asset bubbles based on credit cycles. [much more inside]
posted by umop-apisdn at 8:56 AM PST - 79 comments

Test your facial, verbal and object memory.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:53 AM PST - 56 comments

M.Baryshnikov - G.Kirkland - Don Quixote - Coda 2/2.
posted by chunking express at 8:42 AM PST - 18 comments

Artist Tessa Farmer sculpts nightmarish scenes of winged insects being attacked, harnessed & even ripped apart by tiny skeletal faries. Partially found via.
posted by jonson at 8:26 AM PST - 16 comments

The abstract Polaroid photography of Grant Hamilton.
posted by nthdegx at 6:58 AM PST - 15 comments

Animated population pyramids project a steady increase in the median age. England and Wales. United States. Canada. China. Japan. "The number of older persons has tripled over the last 50 years; it will more than triple again over the next 50 years." [pdf] There will be a shortage of workers to support the retired and disabled. The looming crisis has been predicted for years. Proposed solutions include robots and immigration. [previously, previously]
posted by desjardins at 6:49 AM PST - 39 comments

Hilly Kristal has died at age 75. First the club, now the man.
posted by kimdog at 6:45 AM PST - 35 comments

The Law Library of Congress’s Guide to Online Law includes legal information from over a hundred different countries and all fifty states. The Legal Information Institute has guides to 130 different areas of law. The Armed Forces Legal Assistance site is also a great resource for basic legal information, aimed at service members, but often generally helpful, on topics including consumer law, family law and trusts and estates. Your State’s Bar Association may also offer information specific to your jurisdiction.
posted by ND¢ at 6:27 AM PST - 20 comments

China bans reincarnation without government permission.
(Coming soon: right to exist first requires government permit.)
posted by PsyDev at 6:18 AM PST - 39 comments

Invite Share. I've seen some invite sharing on MeTa, but this is another cool way to perhaps bump up your chances of getting an early invite to the latest exclusive, invite-only website a little sooner than later.
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:35 AM PST - 24 comments

Rakshabandhan
posted by hadjiboy at 4:02 AM PST - 16 comments

The looming food crisis is already upon us. The Institute for Food and Development - Food First - whose Policy is to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger is joined by Green Horizon talking about a global food crisis emerging. By promoting biodiesel as a substitute, we have missed the fact that it is worse than the fossil-fuel burning it replaces. As a result the line between the food economy and energy economy has become blurred. In the United States and Canada, governments are manipulating the market in the biofuels industry.
posted by adamvasco at 12:34 AM PST - 76 comments