October 14, 2009

Women Veterans Historical Collection

Jean M. Fasse (Red Cross during WWII, and later the Special Service). Shirley Ann Thacker (WAVE). Just two of the interviews from the extensive collection of material (photographs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, oral histories and posters) at the Women Veterans Historical Collection.
posted by tellurian at 10:01 PM PST - 5 comments

Project Censored 2010

The ever-oddly dated Project Censored has released its list of undercovered and ignored stories for 2010.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:44 PM PST - 37 comments

The Mad Men essay you probably should read.

Mad About Mad Men: The flaws in Mad Men's period detail and the show's greater triumphs. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla at 9:23 PM PST - 82 comments

Design with Currency

"If the Swiss can do it on a regular basis, why can't we North Americans too." The Dollar ReDe$ign Project believes its time for the United States to switch from the old to something new in the field of American currency. As a result, a contest was developed and submissions accepted. They range from the cultural to the cynical, and a salute to American space achievements to update designs to the present content.
posted by Atreides at 6:21 PM PST - 126 comments

IT'S ALL (natural gas) PIPES!

Does your tap water taste funny? Have you tried lighting it on fire? [more inside]
posted by Sys Rq at 4:43 PM PST - 49 comments

Erotic Alice

Erotic illustrations of Alice in Wonderland by Marvel legend Frank Brunner (Doctor Strange, Silver Surfer, Johnny Quest). Color versions here: Title page ll Alice and Dragon ll Mad Tea Party ll Humpty Dumpty ll Looking Glass ll Mirror ll Jabberwocky ll White Knight ll Hookah ll Alice
posted by vronsky at 4:34 PM PST - 62 comments

Sniffer Bees

Inscentinel uses trained bees to sniff out drugs, explosives, and spoiled food.
posted by contraption at 2:58 PM PST - 38 comments

A Cult of Personaility

Living Colour, the pioneering African-American funk rock band, released a new album last month. Perhaps the band's most poignant moment was at their comeback show in 2001 when they played American Skin (41 Shots) to protest the shooting of Amadou Diallo, a black man shot by the NYPD. In addition, they are responsible for one of the most seriously shredding guitar solos of all time.
posted by elder18 at 2:48 PM PST - 82 comments

What's the deal with the kids on the balcony?

Thomas Dolby's account of meeting with Michael Jackson, recorded at the Moth (SLYT)
posted by docpops at 2:42 PM PST - 25 comments

How People Count Cash

How People Count Cash (via)
posted by nam3d at 2:11 PM PST - 35 comments

Captain Lou Albano, 1933-2009

Captain Lou Albano, legendary wrestler and entertainer, died today at the age of 76. He and Cyndi Lauper raised $4 million for Multiple Scleriosis causes, while at the same time ushering in the age of Rock and Wrestling. He was also Mario ... C'mon, let's do the Mario! Also, he was the only one on TV with a rubber band in his beard. Long Live the Captain!
posted by not_on_display at 2:06 PM PST - 59 comments

Is someone trying to tell us something?

Is The Large Hadron Collider Being Sabotaged from the Future? A couple of distinguished physicists posit that this indeed might be the case! [NYT Article]
posted by sk381 at 2:03 PM PST - 128 comments

Obama gets tough with Arpaio

"America's Toughest Sheriff", Joe Arpaio, has been stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests. (Previously)
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:02 PM PST - 57 comments

Raise Thumb. Close One Eye. Squint.

The eyeballing game: compare your best attempts at several instinctive everyday tasks - determining a point of convergence, bisecting an angle, finding the midpoint of a line - against mathematical certainty. In a more financial mood? Play Chartgame: given a random historical stock chart of an unnamed S&P 500 company, choose to buy and sell as time advances to see if you can beat the market.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 2:01 PM PST - 22 comments

October is American Archives Month!

October is American Archives Month. From Alabama [pdf] to Wyoming, New England to the Rocky Mountains and points in between, archival repositories across the United States will celebrate by offering workshops, open houses, and behind the scenes tours. Pretty complete list here. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 1:37 PM PST - 8 comments

Blackface?

French Vogue accused of publishing blackface photos of Lara Stone? [more inside]
posted by pwedza at 1:14 PM PST - 144 comments

Food for the Soul

The other side of Islam - Abida Parveen (last.fm) sings verses by the Sufi saint Bulleh Shah. and here is Main Nara-E-Mastana and Mast Qalandar. She is sometimes called the natural sucessor of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan though there is also his nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
Begum Abida is associated most closely with the verses of the Sufi saint Shah Abdul Latif, (wiki) some of whose illustrated veses are shown here. She has also sung the verses of other Sufi saints, including Amir Khusrau, Bulleh Shah, Sachal Sarmast, Sultan Bahu, and others such as Kabir and Waris Shah.
More about Qawwali (Related: - kosem's outstanding post [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 12:31 PM PST - 5 comments

Confused, hurt, and ashamed

After 10 years of silence, Susan Klebold, mother of Columbine shooter Dylon Klebold, discusses her experience and her son in a new essay in O Magazine (abstract/Napstered). [more inside]
posted by dgaicun at 12:24 PM PST - 87 comments

Feeling 'Selfy' ? Regarding 'The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind, and the Myth of the Self' by Thomas Metzinger

Natasha Mitchell: So it's not a little man or woman inside our heads...

Thomas Metzinger: ...that looks at pictures. But the experience of looking, of being directed to one's own feelings or to one's sensory perceptions of the outside world, this is itself an image. There is nobody looking at the image, it's like the camera is part of the picture or the viewing is itself a part of the process of viewing. This is how a first-person perspective emerges in our own case, the question is, okay, if it's not a thing, if it's not something in the brain, what kind of a process is it?
[more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:15 PM PST - 62 comments

A bunch of brainless, pretty, zombies walking around hollywood?

A document has recently surfaced online, published by an Adelle Dewitt, asking all of the employees of the Los Angles branch of Rossum inc. to please, for the love of god, buckle down and bring in more clients. The only problem? Rossum has denied that Dewitts department even exists. Which is why Sen. Perrin is threatening to call down the thunder. [more inside]
posted by tylerfulltilt at 12:12 PM PST - 88 comments

The Monster at the End of This Beer

Last month, the makers of Monster Energy Drink (Warning: Flash, Ads) sent a cease and desist letter (PDF) to Rock Art Brewery, makers of The Vermonster beer. Brewer Matt Nadeau plans to fight back, even though such a fight would be nasty, time consuming, and very, very expensive. [more inside]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:18 AM PST - 79 comments

Does the (Flu) Vaccine Matter?

In Does the Vaccine Matter?, Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer discuss the history of vaccines and explore why "some flu experts are challenging the medical orthodoxy and arguing that for those most in need of protection, flu shots and antiviral drugs may provide little to none." In a related story (which condenses and provides a point-by-point summary of the original (with obvious bias)): "Flu vaccines revealed as the greatest quackery ever pushed in the history of medicine."
posted by torquemaniac at 9:41 AM PST - 91 comments

Matt Helm

Matt Helm is a fictional character created by author Donald Hamilton. He is a U.S. government counter-agent—a man whose primary job is to kill or nullify enemy agents—not a spy or secret agent in the ordinary sense of the term as used in spy thrillers. ... The character appeared in 27 books over a 33-year period beginning in 1960... A movie series was made in the mid-to-late 1960s starring Dean Martin... the series bore no resemblance at all to the character, atmosphere, or themes of Hamilton's original books, nor to the hard-edged action of Bond. One reason was the attitude of the filmmakers that the only way to compete with the Bond films was to parody them. - Wikipedia (links may be mildly NSFW) [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 9:37 AM PST - 17 comments

A story of a thousand tweets begins with a single twit

One day ago, Neil Gaiman wrote the beginning of a story, which was retweeted by BBC Audiobooks America as the first of a thousand or so tweets that would compiled and edited to become an audiobook. People are still contributing, and BBCAA's blog has four scenes compiled (1, 2, 3, summary of scenes 1-3, and 4), for a total of 175 tweets. When 1,000 or so tweets are logged, they'll be edited into a script, and produced in a studio to make the final audiobook, which will be released for free on BBCAA's website. This isn't the first game of exquisite corpse played via twitter that made a piece to be refined and presented in some way. The first Twitter opera was one of a few recent "gimmicks" to garner attention for the Royal Opera House (twitter opera feed, ROH twitter feed, ROH blog). The result, Twitterdammerung, was given a decent review by opera critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:35 AM PST - 32 comments

Tex Avery: a Documentary

John Needham's 1988 documentary on the life and work of animation legend Tex Avery [part 1 2 3 4 5]. Some representative work, much of which is covered in the documentary: Porky's Duck Hunt (1937, first appearance of Daffy Duck) || A Wild Hare (1940, first appearance of Bugs Bunny) || Dumb-Hounded (1943, first appearance of Droopy) || Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) || Bad Luck Blackie (1949) || The House / Car / TV / Farm of Tomorrow (1949, 1951, 1953, 1954) || Symphony in Slang (1951) || I'm Cold (1954, Tex's first Chilly Willy)
posted by milquetoast at 9:24 AM PST - 11 comments

Vivian Maier's Photography.

Vivian Maier's Photography. "This [site] was created in dedication to the photographer Vivian Maier, a street photographer from the 1950s - 1970s. Vivian's work was discovered at an auction here in Chicago." [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 8:46 AM PST - 35 comments

Do oil-exporting nations deserve compensation for carbon taxes?

"If wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers." Previously.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:44 AM PST - 81 comments

Fans of Spinal Tap, take note.

Fans of U2 have probably already seen concert footage from their current tour of the giant elliptical LED screen that morphs into a 7-story high cone-shaped structure, enveloping the band as it extends. But what you may not know is that it was designed (in collaboration with Barco) by Chuck Hoberman, inventor of the Hoberman Sphere. [more inside]
posted by albrecht at 7:25 AM PST - 47 comments

They even pay postage.

Notary fee: $3; County Clerk Recording Fee: $16; Protecting your land from abortionists forever? That'll cost ya $77. [more inside]
posted by fontophilic at 7:20 AM PST - 68 comments

A frightened man?

Ralph Nader appraises Obama's first 9 months as president (guess how he feels). Warning: video starts automatically (with bizarre illustrative clips occasionally thrown in). [more inside]
posted by leibniz at 3:02 AM PST - 190 comments

The doctrine of the strenuous life

Depending on how permanent Sharpie markers really are, I may have managed to confuse anthropologists years from now, who will surely wonder how it is that hermit crabs on Jabonwod are numbered.US Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ) spends a week alone on an uninhabited island in the Kwajalein atoll.
posted by blasdelf at 2:34 AM PST - 45 comments

Mystery Google

Mystery Google gives you what the person before you searched for. {via}
posted by Ljubljana at 1:12 AM PST - 95 comments

Because you need to know more about Michael Jackson

The posthumous career of Michael Jackson began at midnight (Eastern time) Sunday with the release of a new single, This Is It. Shortly thereafter, Paul Anka reminded them that the song was the same song he cowrote with Jackson called I Never Heard, which was recorded by Safire. Anka was promptly given his share. Now nothing stands in the way of our seeing Michael Jackson's posthumous last concert.
posted by twoleftfeet at 1:04 AM PST - 25 comments

when hip hop arrived

It was 30 years ago today... October, 1979: Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang was released. A few days later, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five gave us the tighter and catchier (IMHO) Superrappin'. Hip Hop had arrived. Here's a charming interview with a New York City paramedic who, as a very young photographer on the South Bronx scene back in the day, was the unofficial photo-documentarian of the birth of hip hop.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:31 AM PST - 32 comments

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