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An interactive map of the 174 major meteor impact craters. The largest crater we know of is the Vredefort Dome in South Africa, caused by a meteor some 10 km in diameter. Almost as large in the Sudbury Structure, located in Ontario, which contains some of the world's richest nickel and copper reserves, and has been only confirmed recently to be a crater. Third largest is the now-famous Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan, which probably killed the dinosaurs. Then take a look at an animation of asteroids near Earth [animated gif] and the list of minor planets that could hit us. Want to find out what happens when an meteor impacts in your area? Use the handy Earth Impacts Effects Program!
posted by blahblahblah at 10:47 PM PST - 13 comments

A manual for electoral apocalypse in America. Quite a bit's been written both on MeFi and other places about how bad Diebold machines are. Rolling Stone wrote an article about election fraud in 2004 that was discussed here on MeFi. Tonight, Ars posted a very thorough, very clear article about how we are completely screwed if we do not enact expensive, fundamental changes in how we handle elections in America. It's too late to do anything about the elections in a couple weeks, but perhaps steps can be taken to fix things before 2008...
posted by sparkletone at 10:41 PM PST - 45 comments

Empire Falls. "They called it 'the American Century,' but the past hundred years actually saw a shift away from Western dominance. Through the long lens of Edward Gibbon's history, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Rome 331 and America and Europe 2006 appear to have more than a few problems in common." By Niall Ferguson, whose views on the American hegemony have been discussed previously.
posted by homunculus at 9:13 PM PST - 46 comments

Celebrity Star Wars via CityRag via Egotastic
posted by geekyguy at 8:28 PM PST - 6 comments

Cheyenne Mountain base on phased retirement. The Cheyenne Mountain headquarters of NORAD (etc.), hardened to survive multiple thermonuclear impacts, is being all but abandoned for a nearby facility that's cheaper to maintain. My prediction: apocalyptic war movies are going to lose a lot of visual oomph. [via Schneier]
posted by grobstein at 4:18 PM PST - 27 comments

Japanese Pink Movies, and posters. [nudity]
posted by hama7 at 4:02 PM PST - 24 comments

Imagine a massively multiplayer music studio, connected worldwide over the Internet. Log in, and everyone sees a set of synths, effects, sequencers, or other custom patches. Everyone’s looking at essentially the same screen, and can add beats, trip out effects, slide the bpm up and down, and reprogram synths — all at once. That’s the basic idea of netpd.
posted by bigmusic at 3:41 PM PST - 19 comments

Aesopica: Aesop's Fables in English, Latin & Greek
posted by anastasiav at 1:13 PM PST - 17 comments

NJ says yes to same-sex marriage! (altho it might not be called that in the end) -- link to pdf of ruling here.
posted by amberglow at 12:26 PM PST - 139 comments

When you have a blog, and you're the Special Representative of the UN in Darfur, be careful about what you write. Jan Pronk's blog gives you a good idea in what a high level UN diplomat actually does, and how difficult it is to get anything done in a country torn by war. Oh, and check these photos out, if you just want the non-political goodness.
posted by Harry at 11:30 AM PST - 11 comments

Last week, Pride Fighting Championships had their American debut in Las Vegas. Pride FC is a Mixed Martial Arts organization from Japan that boasts a lineup of fighters arguably superior to those of other MMA groups. Their heavyweight champion for example, Fedor Emelianenko, is considered the best MMA fighter ever by most fight commentators. They are famous for their operatic production values, regularly filling out 30-60,000 seat arenas in Japan. However, many in MMA circles assert that their product is "too foreign" for the US, and that they need to "Americanize" their product for the mass market. Is this true? Given the popularity of video games, Anime and Manga in the US, they might not have to change all that much.
posted by ishmael at 10:59 AM PST - 69 comments

101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived is a book chronicling the most impactful (non-religious) fictional characters throughout history. While they only tease with the first 50 characters on the book's homepage, the hard hitting investigative journalists at USA Today have uncovered the entire 101 for your arguing enjoyment.
posted by jonson at 10:17 AM PST - 101 comments

Whipping cures depression. ”The whipping therapy becomes much more efficient when a patients receives the punishment from a person of the opposite sex. The effect is astounding: the patient starts seeing only bright colors in the surrounding world, the heartache disappears, although it will take a certain time for the buttocks to heal, of course,” Sergei Speransky told the Izvestia newspaper.
posted by cgs at 9:43 AM PST - 70 comments

Tweakers with nuclear weapons technology Exactly what the world needs in these uncertain times.
posted by empath at 8:35 AM PST - 25 comments

On 14 April 1988, the missile frigate Samuel B. Roberts was damaged by a mine in the Persian Gulf. Some 45 years before, Coxswain Samuel B. Roberts was killed when he guided his boat in front of Japanese lines on Guadalcanal in an effort to distract their fire from a rescue party evacuating wounded marines. In between was the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts, which on 25 October 1944 sailed into history in the Battle off Samar. (Long post inside for history buffs.)
posted by forrest at 8:25 AM PST - 21 comments

Illegal Art: Should artists be allowed to use copyrighted materials? Where do the First Amendment and "intellectual property" law collide? What is art's future if the current laws are allowed to stand? Questions asked by Stay Free! in their ongoing multimedia exhibit.
posted by dejah420 at 7:51 AM PST - 25 comments

Kim Jong Il's Ringtones and Wallpaper and other fine, fashionable accessories for your digital lifestyle. (via waxy.org.)
posted by loquacious at 6:49 AM PST - 20 comments

September 30th, 2002, scientists intercepted a 10 minute radio burst from the galactic center, 26,000 Light Years away. 77 minutes passed, and it repeated. And again. The signal repeated 5 times that evening.

Some think those signals are weird mysterious. Others think they are interesting mysterious.
posted by Lord_Pall at 5:44 AM PST - 63 comments

Treacherous Irish Mountains
posted by rom1 at 4:52 AM PST - 8 comments

D'oh, a deer. Deer chases, licks, boy. Video.
posted by fixedgear at 4:36 AM PST - 34 comments

SWEDEN.SE:Music gives you a selection of the best Swedish pop and rock music right now.
posted by mr.marx at 4:35 AM PST - 16 comments

Thomas Friedman:

The First Law of Petropolitics, in short, argues that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation. As the price of oil goes up in what I call petroauthoritarian states—like Iran, Sudan, Venezuela—the pace of freedom goes down. These regimes can afford to be less responsive to their people and outside pressure. And as the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up because these regimes have to open up to the world if they want to deliver for their people, and they have to empower their people more.

But how to lower oil prices and help freedom on its proverbial march? Many, from Alan Greenspan to Andrew Sullivan to Ray Magliozzi from Car Talk think the answer may be to . . . raise the gas tax? The Pigou Club is an ever-updated list of economists, politicians and others who have advocated Pigouvian (or is it Pigovian?) taxes to not only lower oil prices, but reduce greenhouse gases, fix the federal deficit and strengthen our national security. Though some remain more than a little hesitant to jump on the bandwagon and others remain skeptical that the movement is anything more than "just talk," this could be an idea whose time has come, especially since the gas tax isn't as regressive one would think.
posted by joshuaconner at 1:32 AM PST - 57 comments

Erik Mongrain is the latest artist to use extended techniques on the guitar (YouTube link 1 2), following closely (by his own admission) in the footsteps of the late Michael Hedges (YouTube link 1 2 3), although jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan is a notable predecessor, as well as Emmett Chapman. Still, no-one else quite has the tuning peg mojo of Adrian Legg.
posted by starkeffect at 12:44 AM PST - 18 comments

He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. -- Terry Eagleton on Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:23 AM PST - 206 comments