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The Druze community reside in Israel, Lebanon and Syria who've been rather overlooked as the middle-east situation complexifies. Discover (scroll halfway down) an ancient culture and it's faith that have had to adapt to an increasingly unstable climate.

They share some similarities to the Iraqi Yezidi of this thread.
posted by moonbird at 7:37 PM PST - 5 comments

"pleix is a virtual community of digital artists based in paris. some of us are 3d artists, some others are musicians or graphic designers. this website is the perfect place to share our latest creations." [note: quicktime]
posted by crunchland at 7:02 PM PST - 4 comments

Authors and journalists take note. Junglescan is a way to track the Amazon sales ranking of a book or product over time. One can follow the ranking of a novel, or CD, or you can collectively track the rise and fall of an idea, or group of items. Not everything is tracked only what it's asked to but for a free service that Amazon should/could provide it works well. See also Amazon Hacks (via Kevin Kelly Cool Tools).
posted by stbalbach at 6:41 PM PST - 1 comments

Welcome to The WalMart Wars. It appears that a backlash is underway in a number of communities against the retail giant. Do they have a cause for concern or is this just a bad case of NIMBY?
posted by EmoChild at 6:08 PM PST - 19 comments

Hemmingway did it. Ian Curtis too. But, she did it on a cold London day with her children in the other room. Since her departure in 1963 songs [audio] have been written about her, biographies (even fictional) published with the requisite controversy, (some) private journals revealed, countless articles written, theories posed, medical conditions named in her honor, and now a "mainstream" film, with everyone's favourite pseudo-english actress. What is it about this tortured and talented woman that people find so fascinating?
posted by shoepal at 1:41 PM PST - 58 comments

They Still Draw Pictures. Drawings made by children during the Spanish Civil War.
posted by plep at 12:51 PM PST - 10 comments

A Polaroid in a Polaroid in a Polaroid in a…
posted by Robot Johnny at 12:21 PM PST - 23 comments

Search for the Loch Ness Monster, one of the dozens of classic articles written by Scuba pioneer and legend Walt Deas.
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:30 AM PST - 3 comments

Last night Hosting Matters (and their related resellers) was taken down by a DoS attack attributed to Al-Qaeda. This attack not only disabled the intended target but took down some 3000 sites for a significant period of time. Is this an example of cyber-terrorism or some kid with a script?
posted by cedar at 11:26 AM PST - 48 comments

Southern Folk-Art, Outsider Art & Self-Taught Art • Ginger Young of Chapel Hill, NC who runs this eponymously named art studio, says: "Despite their lack of formal training, these artists have tapped into a powerful wellspring of creativity to render their worlds with passion, pathos, and immediacy." Truly beautiful, unfiltered, vibrant stuff. How could you go wrong with artists named Tubby Brown, Minnie Adkins, Mose Tolliver and Woodie Long? On another note: is this school of thought/art, which comes in and out of vogue every few years, as pure as it seems, or is there an air of exploitation and corniness that comes with fetishizing The Other?
posted by dhoyt at 10:46 AM PST - 14 comments

Shocked and Awed: A gallery of Iraq schoolchildren art. Interesting galleries of crayon works, some obviously have high opinions of the occupation while others may not. [via Dangerousmeta]
posted by mathowie at 10:23 AM PST - 14 comments

Meat or Accident Friday flash ... fun? A disturbing, pointless look at meat and, well, accidents. (link contains sound and flash)
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 9:53 AM PST - 13 comments

Strawberry pop-tart blow torches. Flaming pastries and exploding fruit! Anyone have other good examples of entertaining "science" projects (besides the previously discussed stinky meat and fat projects of TheSpark science)?
posted by gruchall at 9:16 AM PST - 31 comments

The Road to Serfdom, in cartoons. First published in 1944, it still seems prescient today. Here it is in rare illustrated form.[condensed printed version]
posted by insomnyuk at 9:06 AM PST - 20 comments

On October 17, 1815, following The 100 Days and Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on the Island of St Helena, where he would remain until his death (mysterious or otherwise) in 1821. Discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, St Helena had a long and interesting history before Napoleon arrived, but that history was overshadowed by the story of the Emperor's last years, living in captive exile at the simple yet beautiful Longwood House. Victorians had an insatiable interest for information about the remote island. Today, the picturesque Island is a a tiny bit of England in the South Atlantic, where coffee and tourism (indeed, what some might call pilgrimages) are the main sources of income.
posted by anastasiav at 8:53 AM PST - 3 comments

Voices of Reason
Julian Sanchez on Attack of the Dean-Leaners makes a case for libertarians supporting a Democrat in 2004. Personally, I don't see how real libertarians can have any other position, but then I'm so ancient I can actually remember why the Republican Party started pretending to be the party of "small government". ...
Cathy Young has a fairly dishonest piece called Bipartistan Coulterism ("Who's meaner, conservatives or liberals?") that tries to pretend the left has any equivalent of Ann Coulter. Of course, she finds equivalence, which works if you really think that Michael Moore's outrage about dead kids in highschools is the same as Coulter advocating killing liberals and expressing disappointment that McVeigh failed to bomb The New York Times.

I'm interested in what metafilterians (huh, what?) think of this person's opinions.
posted by nofundy at 7:53 AM PST - 36 comments

Ever wonder who is bankrolling the furor over gay bishops in the Anglican Church? Meet Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., Newport Beach recluse. Among his greatest hits: funding articles that argue gays should be stoned, and a video by Charlton Heston praising the "God-fearing Caucasian middle-class."
posted by MikeB at 7:51 AM PST - 14 comments

"Never before have so many stories been created to sell a war," says Sam Gardiner, author of a new report {.pdf, here's an html cache} that explains how the world was deceived.
posted by Domain Master 666 at 7:50 AM PST - 35 comments

Marry your pet [silly friday stuff]
posted by ginz at 7:26 AM PST - 5 comments

Damien Rice wins 2003 Shortlist Music Prize. The Irishman beat out Conor Oberst, Chan Marshall, Interpol, The Black Keys and a bunch of other hip artists to take the prize. This year's judges included Cameron Crowe, Chemical Brothers, Spike Jonze, and Tom Waits. MTV2 to air live footage of some of the nominees on Oct 24. Should be interesting.
posted by dobbs at 12:35 AM PST - 20 comments

Forget British. Define English. The perennial ex-pat and honorary Yank Christopher Hitchens may not be the best Englishman to define it - though his embarrassingly reactionary brother Peter is even less suited - but at least he has a go. For everyone else in the world, there are the Scottish, the Welsh, even the Northern Irish - all strong nationalities in their own right, each one older and more culturally solid than the slightly French, slightly German and slightly Dutch English. So why persist, in this post-imperialist day and age, in the myth of the Brit? If it is a myth. Americans, whether from the U.S. or Canada, certainly continue to buy into it. Or is it, for the rest of the world, too dangerous for the English - with devolution raging - to find their own, muddied identity? Think of those football hooligans and their grotesque politics, St.George face-masks and flags. (Via Arts And Letters Daily.)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:31 AM PST - 40 comments