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Historical anatomy models were a marriage of art and science. From about the 13th to the 19th centuries, exquisite wax models were the state of the art. Florence's La Specola anatomical wax museum houses the works of master artists, such as Ercole Lelli, Anna Morandi, and Clemente Susini. The later years of wax models tended towards the grotesque: moulage and depictions of pathological conditions and physical anomalies. Due to the labor required and delicacy of wax models, papier-mâché became the favored production method in the 19th century, partly due to the ability to dissect the models. Over time, models became more stylized to protect the delicate sensibilities of the public. Today, models are again shocking the public with extreme realism.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:56 PM PST - 18 comments

Riding the rails in Russia And I thought my guitar took up some space on the bus...
posted by persona non grata at 11:01 PM PST - 17 comments

Is Canada ready for a gay prime minister? How about a hockey player? Or a former Harvard professor? After Paul Martin flamed out and took the Liberal Party with him, the Liberals have to choose a new party leader in December from a rather eccentric list of candidates. Place your bets, eh?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:35 PM PST - 47 comments

Cathrine Chalmers creates photographs that explore our uneasy relationship with nature. Caterpillars devour a tomato. A praying mantis snacks upon one of those juicy worms, and then becomes a meal for a self-contented frog. Of course, praying mantises have their own curious cycle of life. Cockroaches masquerade as their more aesthetically pleasing cousins, or are sent to their deaths in grim mockeries of criminal executions. Short interview here. Not for the squeamish.
posted by hydrophonic at 10:30 PM PST - 8 comments

An open letter to John Warnock. "Please consider releasing eight to twelve core fonts into the public domain. The amount of revenue lost from a small core set of fonts surely can’t have a significant impact on Adobe’s bottom line."
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:11 PM PST - 53 comments

Katrina: Money for Nothing? The United States received hundreds of millions in foreign aid last year, after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. But what happened to the money?
posted by js003 at 9:38 PM PST - 28 comments

Some kids under the "protection" of DSHS in Washington state have been murdered. Others have been sexually abused. DSHS doesn't want you to know this, and if you do, they want you to know that it's not their fault.
posted by leftcoastbob at 7:38 PM PST - 23 comments

Musicast turns your iTunes (mac only) into a music sharing server that conveniently spits out a podcast feed for your friends to subscribe and download all your mp3s from. Download this quick before the RIAA kills the server something might happen to this wonderful app.
posted by mathowie at 6:23 PM PST - 37 comments

Mandership is mostly concerned with graphic and industrial design, interface engineering, typography, semiotics, and visualization, but it's more. Learn about how the Declaration of Independence wound up in the Ukraine (did it?) a short history of telephone numbers, book spines, and of course simplicity of design. From the same folks who brought you the Optimus keyboard. (previously)
posted by jessamyn at 5:35 PM PST - 7 comments

I know who brought Leonardo's greatest drawings to Britain. I may not be a Harvard professor of religious symbology or know much about the bloodline of the Magdalene, but I do enjoy a mystery and so I set out to solve this one. And I succeeded. Final proof is elusive, always, but in this case the circumstantial evidence is so overwhelming, I think I've got my man."
posted by Len at 3:59 PM PST - 9 comments

Look Around You is an insanely funny BBC parody of 1970's educational programs filled with pure nonsensical lies clothed as facts & pitch perfect mimicry of the style of governmental approved childrens education television. Each of the entire first season's worth of 8 10-minute episodes can be viewed here and is highly recommended.
posted by jonson at 3:48 PM PST - 66 comments

Meet The Bloggers. New BBC Radio Four series begins this week which interviews prominant bloggers about their craft. First up Anna of little.red.boat and Annie of Going Underground. Full first programme and unedited interviews here. I think this is the first time a major network has dedicated a whole series to the topic and treated it with such seriousness and intelligence -- I particularly like the moments in which the prose is sonically illustrated.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:49 PM PST - 12 comments

That's Punksploitation!! Can punk rock episodes of old TV shows kill? Check out punk episodes from Quincy, CHiPs (Part 1 and Part 2), 21 Jump Street (Part 1 and Part 2), as well as the appearance of the Dickies on the Don Rickles sitcom, CPO Sharkey. Other prime vintage examples of media cluelessness on punk rock include a fashion show and a scaremongering Time magazine article, although a recent cookie commercial may revive the punksploitation genre.
posted by jonp72 at 1:35 PM PST - 55 comments

"Life is wise to deceive us," he once wrote, "for had it told us from the start what it had in store for us, we would refuse to be born." --Naguib Mahfouz, RIP --and more from when he won the Nobel in 1988
posted by amberglow at 1:15 PM PST - 20 comments

My Boy Jack. A heart wrenching story: "For Rudyard Kipling, the most famous author of the age, the carnage at Loos on the Western Front in September 1915 plunged him into inner darkness. His only son, John, for whom he had written his best-loved poem, If, had been killed in the action just six weeks after his 18th birthday." [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 1:14 PM PST - 18 comments

The new GOP buzzword: Fascism. President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq. Donald H. Rumsfeld in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City said [of his critics, they are] trying to appease "a new type of fascism."

Before it was "cut and run", which was tested using a focus group. On the Senate floor, Sen Hagel earlier decried the tactic: "Focus Group-Tested Buzz Words…Like ‘Cut and Run’…Debase the Seriousness of War." What will they come up with next?
posted by ArunK at 1:00 PM PST - 138 comments

Lie by Lie. The first installment in Mother Jones' timeline of the Iraq War (Warning: big Flash file, with instructions).
posted by kirkaracha at 11:47 AM PST - 38 comments

Sunrise, sunset. A recent Political ad for Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman (CT-CTFL) includes a few stock video clips featuring a sunset. After it receives a fairly negative response, however, his campaign manager seeks to define the ad differently. "It's actually a sunrise," Gerstein said. "It's very much a sunrise."
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 11:43 AM PST - 50 comments

Chris Creamer's sportslogos.net is a vast archive of current and historical sports logos from leagues large and small, brand new or defunct. Some of my favorite retro logos involve mascots (often anthropomorphized) performing sports-related activities. Of course, some were retired for good reasons.
posted by kyleg at 11:37 AM PST - 14 comments

Weirdest Instructional Music Video Ever. He is the chicken-picking, pop-locking, nunchuking avant-garde guitarist that is part giant robot and part Michael Myers. In his 15-year recording career, he has released over forty albums with the likes of Bootsy Collins, Bill Laswell, Iggy Pop, and Viggo Mortensen. His work under a pseudonym inspired William Gibson. He toured with Guns 'n' Roses and was offered a job by Ozzy but refused to perform without the bucket. His best conventional work may have been with Praxis, but his solo work is not to be ignored. His real name is Brian, but you can call him Buckethead. For your consideration 1 2 3 4.
posted by Pastabagel at 11:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Seventy-one-year-old enemy combatant released.
posted by EarBucket at 9:13 AM PST - 147 comments

Two Formula One builders are teaming up to build what will no doubt be the fastest hybrid on the planet. I was saving for a Prius, but I think I'll hold out for this one!
posted by jacob hauser at 8:59 AM PST - 29 comments

Winky-Dink and You is considered to be the world's first interactive television show. Originally broadcast from 1953 to 1957, show watchers drew items directly on the TV screen to help Winky-Dink out of jams. The show also introduced us to Mr. Bungle (but not this Mr. Bungle, who gave us this Mr. Bungle).
posted by Otis at 8:51 AM PST - 9 comments

Heck of a Job, Tommy! State Department investigators have found that Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the State Department office that oversees foreign broadcasts misused his office for personal and political gain. Mr. Tomlinson’s position at the broadcasting board makes him one of the administration’s top officials overseeing public diplomacy and puts him in charge of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
posted by dejah420 at 8:24 AM PST - 21 comments

"'It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.'" Louis Menand on the mercurial nature of Bob Dylan's interviews.
"Dylan's sound [is] 'very much like a dog with his leg caught in barbed wire.'" Nat Hentoff's profile of Dylan for the New Yorker from 1964.
posted by OmieWise at 7:27 AM PST - 32 comments

Forgotten vocabulary. Words and phrases from an earlier era, the early Nineteenth century. Some slang too. (via the Presurfer)
posted by caddis at 7:16 AM PST - 41 comments

There's a big storm in the pacific. They're calling it a Super Typhoon. It has winds of 160-185 miles per hour, and it's expected to completely submerge Wake Island. Happy Katrinaversary.
posted by 1-2punch at 7:15 AM PST - 38 comments

Now we're faced with a supposedly democratic Russia where the opposition parties are established, crushed, united, their leadership changed, all at the behest of the president. China, now clearly a capitalist state, albeit one without the democratic trimmings, still calls itself communist. Vietnam has gone much the same way.

Some things remain the same, though. America's still meddling in Latin America, just like it did during the Cold War. The US Army is also fighting a guerilla resistance in Iraq, its leaders apparently ignorant of the lessons of history, yet accusing others of exactly that. It's just like the 60s, when it was just as obvious who had learnt lessons and who hadn't.
posted by imperium at 2:00 AM PST - 48 comments

The Sole Survivor — Allen Boyd [Real Player interview] is the sixth and last surviving member of his family: the other five committed suicide. Is suicide genetic?
posted by cenoxo at 1:00 AM PST - 30 comments

Some folks really like it sweet. Some will start a six-year campaign to get it. Some blame Canada and France for not getting it, when it was perhaps better to blame the Swiss. Some want it healthy while others want the romance back. Some make it part of higher education, while others just want to get higher. Even vegans want in on the gooey action.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:49 AM PST - 20 comments

Doctor Larry Brilliant (mentioned before) spoke at TED this year, calling himself the "luckiest man in the world." He played witness to the last case of Smallpox, and played a significant role in making it the last case. Inspiring/terrifying video here, long, with some graphic images of smallpox.

Back in 1974, Brilliant's technique for early detection in India was to take graphic photos door to door, asking if anyone inside looks like this. Now, as head of Google's philanthropic efforts, he's advocating systems for "early detection, early response." Unsurprisingly, Google, etc, are an important piece of that system: can we detect what's happening before it can spread?

One of the first responses to Brilliant is up already, a means for doctors to immediately text epidemiological information straight into a global spatial database. It's a rough and promising start, and its fascinating that it's coming from the bottom up, instead of NGOs like the Red Cross.
posted by cloudscratcher at 12:24 AM PST - 17 comments

Humans are educated stupid because they are really dumb and cannot even comprehend the Gamecube programming code when our god Miyamoto explains it to them. $1,000.00 to one disproving the Gamecube. $100.00 for 1 MIT student found not playing Gamecube Cube. $500.00 for 1 MIT professor eating Gamecube. To be awarded after dessert.
posted by Effigy2000 at 12:07 AM PST - 34 comments