The day in posts: 10/05/2010

Randall Munroe of xkcd has created a second, updated Map of Online Communities. (His first map.) You can find MeFi Island in the Troll Bay, just off the coast of Twitter. [more inside]
posted by phunniemee at 9:55 PM PST - 132 comments

Where Young College Grads are Finding Jobs. Government has been the main hirer of young college grads over the past year . And why not? Government jobs are safer, they pay well, and have better benefits than the private sector. The next biggest hirer of young college grads is the broad category entitled professional and technical services, which includes such industries as law, accounting, computer systems design, and management consulting. These industries as a whole have not been expanding, or expanding only slow–but they have been shifting towards better-educated workers. Then comes the distressing category: Hotel and restaurants.
posted by storybored at 8:54 PM PST - 102 comments

What is the proper punishment for nearly murdering a cat for no reason? Does a man once engaged in dogfighting deserve a second chance? What is the moral way to treat the animals that become your meat? Questions of the human relationship to the animal are a touchy subject. Hal Herzog has written a new book titled Some We Love, Some We hate, Some We Eat which examines this relationship. An interview is located here, in which he discusses the grey areas of the human-animal interaction. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 8:46 PM PST - 70 comments

Everything you ever wanted to know about lighthouses - The Lighthouse Directory - "which provides information and links for more than 12,900 of the world's lighthouses."
posted by awfurby at 8:21 PM PST - 15 comments

Andre Geim has earned many awards from his peers for groundbreaking research in physics, but he's arguably only won the attention of the general public a couple times: First for levitating a frog, and then for discovering 2D atomic crystals. For these efforts he has become the first person to be a laureate of both the Ig Nobel Prize and Nobel Prize.
posted by ardgedee at 7:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Emergency Landing What's it like when your aircraft is making an emergency landing? A bit disturbing to say the least. CNN suggests that, instead of the proscribed chant that the Attendants yell, Ze might have a better idea. (previously)
posted by HuronBob at 7:38 PM PST - 23 comments

The short list for the 2010 Giller Prize, recognizing the best of Canadian fiction (short stories or novels), has been announced.
posted by anothermug at 5:54 PM PST - 10 comments

The Cornucopia Institute's Organic Egg Scorecard ranks egg producers on a scale from 1 to 5 eggs, using criteria like outdoor access, indoor space per bird, ownership structure, beak trimming and other factors [pdf]. The scorecard is part of the Institute's new report, Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture. The executive summary [pdf] provides some political context.

"Whole Foods, Walmart, A&P, Costco, Meijer, Safeway, and Trader Joe's store-brand eggs all received the lowest possible rating in Cornucopia's study."
posted by mediareport at 5:11 PM PST - 69 comments

The stately James Farley Post Office on 8th Ave in Manhattan is being converted into the long-awaited Moynihan Train Station. Almost the entire block-long building has been emptied to prepare for the conversion and Mefi's own nycscout (previously, previously, previously) was there to take pictures. [via mefi projects]
posted by The Whelk at 1:23 PM PST - 45 comments

A knee to the groin may be more Vinnie Jones than Machiavelli, but it was no less effective for Evo Morales in asserting his presidential authority.
posted by Burhanistan at 12:54 PM PST - 57 comments

Guillermo del Toro talks about vampires, movies, Lovecraft, adaptations, fairytales and art.
posted by Artw at 12:00 PM PST - 70 comments

Chabad-Lubavitch has a long history of trying to make Jewish observance fun for children, a tactic well-documented in a recent book about the history of the movement. Comic strips played a major role, and for more than twenty-five years now, one of the most popular characters has been Shpy, a detective who solves crimes and resolves holiday mysteries. His arch-nemesis is Yetzer Hora, and his assistants include Agent 613. Until now, the strip's author was unknown to the wider world. Turns out, it's Al Jaffee of Mad Magazine.
posted by gabrielsamoza at 11:10 AM PST - 35 comments

Today marks the 67th anniversary of the birth of the legendary musician Steve Miller. Born to parents with a strong interest in music, he was surrounded from an early age by such notables as Les Paul, Mary Ford and T-Bone Walker. He grew into an accomplished musician and took strongly to the blues. Miller immersed himself in the Chicago blues scene of the 1960's, but after several years became disillusioned and left to find a different inspiration. [more inside]
posted by bionic.junkie at 10:24 AM PST - 138 comments

When a Duke graduate documented her sexual hookups with a series of University baseball and lacrosse players during her time there, she thought only her close friends would see it. But the list, a PowerPoint presentation which includes names, pictures, and extremely detailed ratings of the men she had sex with, spread beyond that circle of friends and has since gone viral. A few days ago, it was posted to Jezebel and Deadspin, both part of the Gawker Media. Deadspin initially failed to redact the names or pictures of those named within to protect their privacy, prompting an angry response and leading others to speculate if this "privacy landmine" will eventually lead to lawsuits.
posted by zarq at 10:06 AM PST - 339 comments

Leave the car at home and take to the streets using your feet! Tomorrow is International Walk to School Day. Find out who and where they're walking Maybe there's a walking school bus or a bike train near you! And why not keep the momentum going and learn about Safe Routes to School in the US or Safe Routes to School in Canada [more inside]
posted by vespabelle at 10:01 AM PST - 31 comments

The Best of Bill Brett's Wedding Photos. Known as Boston's Photographer, Bill Brett shares some of his favorite wedding photos from the years. Including a civil war wedding, a romantic kiss, Old Ironsides, a street sweeper, the Oscar Meyer Wienermoble, and a third grade class.
posted by zizzle at 9:38 AM PST - 20 comments

The 2010 Best American Crime Reporting anthology is out. (Although not available for Kindle as was last year's.) The smorgasbord includes a poem by Calvin Trillin. [more inside]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:08 AM PST - 19 comments

Johnny Selman: "I will design a poster a day for 365 days in reaction to a headline on the BBC news website and update this website everyday with the poster and the accompanying news story."
posted by OmieWise at 8:17 AM PST - 37 comments

"delicious:days was launched in early 2005 and is my way of combining my passions for design and food, as well as craft tidbits about Munich, the wonderful Bavarian town we live in, our occasional travel experiences, cookbook reviews and, to cut to the chase, all things delicious."
posted by nomadicink at 8:12 AM PST - 2 comments

For most people, skunks just stink. But they also cuddle, wiggle, wrestle, stomp, pout, swim, and play. [Caution; may contain some absurd cuteness]
posted by quin at 7:33 AM PST - 72 comments

Two weeks ago, a Jewish newspaper in New Jersey, the Jewish Standard, published a wedding announcement for a same-sex Jewish couple. Now they're apologizing for it and saying it won't happen again. [more inside]
posted by Tin Man at 7:16 AM PST - 164 comments

The latest thing they're doing with Commodore 64s - Cubase 64 [more inside]
posted by azarbayejani at 6:33 AM PST - 15 comments

A photo studio roams the earth. I Am Chicago records the colorful denizens of Chicago's many neighborhoods, precisely as they are found. (via Gapers Block) [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 5:56 AM PST - 35 comments

"Teen rebels and bobbysoxers still heralded Johnnie Ray as their hero, but to parents across America, he was Public Enemy Number One. Five years before Elvis Presley evoked a similar kind of mass parental dread, Johnnie had all of button-down America shaking in their boots, fearing for the souls of their children." [more inside]
posted by MrVisible at 4:57 AM PST - 17 comments

Winnebago Man is the name given to a set of outakes from a 1987 instructional video presented by Jack Rebney. As Rebney swore, thumped and shouted his way through the virtues of said RV, the crew captured it all, and tapes circulated and eventually made him a YouTube hit. Ben Steinbauer went to find Jack, to discover what he made of his online notoriety, and eventually deliver him to his audience to see whether they were what he expected. (If you;'re in the UK, you can watch the film here.)( [more inside]
posted by mippy at 4:44 AM PST - 38 comments

Les Niqabitches stroll around Paris fully veiled from the waist up, but in hotpants and high heels waist-down, to protest the burqa ban in France. Also calling themselves Mi-putes, Mi-soumises, a pun on the admirable organization called Ni-putes, Ni-soumises, they believe the ban is unconstitutional, as calls for similar bans occur in other European countries.
posted by Azaadistani at 3:51 AM PST - 98 comments

Albert Einstein once articulated what many scholars have felt in their own work: The history of scientific and technical discovery teaches us the human race is poor in independent thinking and creative imagination. Even when the external and scientific requirements for the birth of an idea have long been there, it generally needs an external stimulus to make it actually happen; man has, so to speak, to stumble right up against the thing before the right idea comes. The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University [html][pdf] [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 12:08 AM PST - 14 comments