October 3, 2005

willywillies

Martian dust devils (gif movies) NASA’s Mars rover Spirit has caught a bevy of dust devils racing across the surface of Mars.
posted by dhruva at 10:27 PM PST - 18 comments

Gay Germ Theory

What if being gay were a disease?
posted by missbossy at 10:18 PM PST - 102 comments

Glen Baxter's surrealist cartoons

His entire oeuvre soon began to attract the attention of the leading New York art critics: The weird world of Glen Baxter
posted by .kobayashi. at 10:14 PM PST - 8 comments

One big American family

The family trees of American politicians - There are those with very long blue blood pedigrees, and there are those with very short and unknown pedigrees. There are also some surprises, like a certain Democratic senator and possible '08 Veep pick being somewhat closely related to the current Veep, or that certain ex-mayors have family trees that were apparently a bit inbred back in the old country. Other fun tidbits: Newt Gingrich's father was illegitimate, John Kerry is related to the rabbi who created the Golem of Prague, Pat Buchanan is related to both FDR and Marilyn Manson, Wesley Clark's father was a Kohan, Martin Luther King was born Michael Louis King, and Gary Hart was born Gary Hartpence, which was in turn derived from an ancestor named James Eberhart Pence. (more non-politicians here)
posted by Asparagirl at 9:40 PM PST - 18 comments

April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005

Frederick August Kittel, known as August Wilson , passed away yesterday. The playwright wrote tremendously strong plays wining the Pulitzer Prize in both 1986 for The Piano Lesson, and in 1985 for Fences. 2005 saw the production of the finial play (Radio Golf) in his cycle of 10 plays examining African-American experience in the 20th Century in the United States. Broadway will honor him by dimming the lights tomorrow (Oct 4th). As well, on Oct 17th, the Virginia Theatre on Broadway will be renamed for Wilson. A 1990 audio program from MPR about Wilson. (RealAudio, 54 mins). Thank you Mr. Wilson
posted by edgeways at 8:18 PM PST - 9 comments

Reborn Russian car.

Video from the Lotus team. People from Lotus car design team have found a bloke who owns 6 years old Russian “Lada” and decided to give it a complete makeover.
posted by mrkredo at 7:53 PM PST - 33 comments

Jeannot's Floorboards

Plancher de Jeannot: Jeannot moved his bed to the dining room, next to the stairs, and began carving the oak floor: 'Religion has invented machines for commanding the brain of people and animals and with an invention for seeing our vision through the retina uses us to do ill...
posted by R. Mutt at 6:59 PM PST - 12 comments

Isn't that your missing Bronco, Sarge?

Are cars stolen in the US used in Iraq suicide attacks? The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched an investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq were probably stolen in the United States.
posted by soiled cowboy at 6:40 PM PST - 33 comments

I can't get the 8th one

Monday Flash Fun - A simple, but fun shell game. How quick are your eyes?
posted by knave at 6:24 PM PST - 22 comments

Putting your stomach where your mouth is

A young, average intern looking for a research project and an older, oft-ridiculed pathologist from an Australian hospital were scoffed at for a decade for daring to challenge the conventional wisdom that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and diet. It took the intern's self-promotion skills, and a extraordinarily bold move of ingesting a large quantity of the Helicobacter bacteria they believed were the dominant cause of ulcers, giving himself severe gastritis and subsequently curing it with only fairly standard antibiotics, before the medical world started taking notice. Despite the ongoing resistance of an 8 billion dollar industry in over the counter heartburn medication, the two have been finally rewarded with a Nobel Prize for uncovering the easily diagnosed bacterial cause and fairly simple cure of over 90% of peptic ulcers.
posted by DirtyCreature at 6:05 PM PST - 33 comments

From slime square to times square

Revisiting Spore (audio interview with Will Wright) - also video of Will Wright talking at GDC on content creation issues (Scroll down, and registration required for the video).
posted by ginbiafra at 5:55 PM PST - 9 comments

Rockhead

Roy Moore – the “Ten Commandments Judge” – has announced his intentions to run for Governor of Alabama. Moore has followed closely in George Wallace’s shoes both as a judge (each began court with prayer) and with attention getting antics. As The Atlantic noted recently, “In style if not in substance, Moore's religious populism is a lineal descendant of the race-baiting that propelled Wallace to the statehouse a generation ago.” Here’s hoping level heads prevail in Alabama in ’06.
posted by wfrgms at 3:47 PM PST - 52 comments

Rejoice In Delay's Misery

A second Texas grand jury has indicted The Hammer on money laundering charges.
posted by aburd at 3:45 PM PST - 51 comments

Ol' Festerpants

700 hobo names as read by John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise (accompanied by Jonathan Coulton on the git box).
posted by tristeza at 3:08 PM PST - 10 comments

They're out to Get You!

Paranoia Time!
CIA drops Big Bad Bio Bombs on anti-war protesters???
posted by squalor at 2:30 PM PST - 51 comments

Welcome to EUROBAD '74

Welcome to EUROBAD '74, an exhibition of Europe's worst interiors of 1974.
posted by atomicmedia at 2:09 PM PST - 48 comments

Polio remains a dogged foe to WHO efforts to eradicate

"It was a terrible time." (bugmenot) "50 years ago, Rhode Island suffered through its last -- and worst -- polio epidemic." [more inside]
posted by paulsc at 2:05 PM PST - 2 comments

Everything (is) illuminated.

Enluminures is a French archive of images from illuminated manuscripts. It has digital galleries covering war, eating in the Middle Ages, and the hunt, as well as several other subjects. (Note the tiny page indicators at the top of the galleries.) Most of the images are available through the search page, however, which includes not only subject, title, creator and type of decoration indexes, but also the ability to look only at one library's contributions. Other threads about illuminated manuscripts here.
[Unfortunately, this French site uses Javascript to link to images and I couldn't figure out a way to present examples here.]
posted by OmieWise at 1:10 PM PST - 8 comments

Andy Rooney on the war in Iraq

I'm not really clear how much a billion dollars is but the United States — our United States — is spending $5.6 billion a month fighting this war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into.
Andy Rooney speaks out against the war in Iraq. Transcript and embedded Quicktime video. (via BoingBoing)
posted by handshake at 9:55 AM PST - 153 comments

Symbols

✙ ☪ ◊? The addition of a third protective symbol (fourth, if you count this happy lion) will allow the Magen David Adom of Israel to join the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies after over 50 years. It might look odd, but a lot of other symbols we take for granted have interesting recent origins. ☮ was designed in 1958. ☣ was created by Dow in 1966. ☢ first appeared as a doodle in the 1940s. The symbols of the planets have many origins, but here on earth, the origins of ☺ remain so convoluted that it might take a fictional "symbologist" to sort it all out.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:54 AM PST - 44 comments

Rees Returns

Flood Patrol The hiatus is over. David Rees chimes in on Brownie and Company.
posted by MetaJohn at 7:51 AM PST - 25 comments

"the inclusion of Christopher Hitchens has already raised eyebrows in academia"

Another year, another list of top 100 intellectuals of our time from Prospect Magazine and with Foreign Policy. Self-confessedly anglocentric, but with an effort "to include thinkers from outside the west", it raises the perennial 'where are the women' question (now in good company with 'where are the scientists') and sanctions the decline of: the left, France, Europe, psychology, psychiatry and philosophy. The ever present Germaine Greer says "these lists are always so right-wing" and her inclusion is "absurd and completely unjustifiable". You can vote your 5 favourites and suggest other names.
posted by funambulist at 7:03 AM PST - 37 comments

Bush names Harriet Miers to Supreme Court

Bush nominates Harriet Miers Bush has nominated Harriet Miers to replace Justice O'Connor. The first woman elected to the Texas Bar, she was Bush's personal attorney in Texas, and has served as Counsel to the President since Feb, 2005.

Washington Post
Google News search
SCOTUS Blog
posted by gleenyc at 5:37 AM PST - 191 comments

The Religious Policeman

Conversation between two mothers in a Saudi supermarket: "Oh hello, haven't seen you for ages, how's little Abdullah?" "Little Abdullah? He's really big now. He went off to Iraq to be a suicide bomber. And little Mohammad?" "Same thing. No longer little either. He also went off to be a suicide bomber in Iraq." "There you go. Don't children blow up quickly these days?" After a spooky year-long hiatus, The Religious Policeman blog is back, now sticking it to the Saudi Arabian authorities from the safety of England.
posted by dydecker at 1:25 AM PST - 13 comments

Why Skype-eBay was the Worst Kept Secret On Wall Street.

Why Skype-eBay was the Worst Kept Secret On Wall Street. The traders on Wall Street knew way before the “tech crowd” that the acquisition was a foregone conclusion by Thursday closing. The leak might have come from a cabbie in New York who overheard the eBay Executives. And you thought they didn’t understand english….
posted by snark9 at 1:20 AM PST - 14 comments

« Previous day | Next day »