MetaFilter

I'm going out to get a paper... When Richard goes out for moment before dinner to pick up a paper, it seems all well and good... well, almost... two weeks later...
posted by HuronBob at 9:11 PM PST - 39 comments

In Praise of Copying. A pdf of a book by Marcus Boon. [more inside]
posted by ovvl at 8:58 PM PST - 19 comments

In the scale of its intensity, its destructiveness and its horror, Stalingrad has no parallel. It engaged the full strength of the two biggest armies in Europe and could fit into no lesser framework than that of a life-and-death conflict which encompasses the earth. - The New York Times, February 4, 1943 [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 8:25 PM PST - 65 comments

PORTRAIT-DEX! Cartoonists create Pokémon self-portraits, with all three evolved forms. Featuring, among other fine artists, Scott Kurtz (PVP), Box Brown (Everything Dies, Bellen!), Anthony Clark (Nedroid), Aaron Diaz (Dresden Codak), and Steve Wolfhard (Cat Rackham), who also runs the project.
posted by Gator at 7:43 PM PST - 13 comments

Flowcharts! Flowcharts! Flowcharts! Fast Company magazine's latest installment of "Everything Explained through Flowcharts", charts the explaination of the Internet to a 19th Century British Street Urchin.
posted by jivadravya at 5:20 PM PST - 21 comments

Billy Ruane was a fixture in the whirl/world of Cambridge and Boston music in the early eighties. Billy Ruane lived widely and wildly in the Cambridge/Boston from the 1980's till now. Most who encountered him came away with stories to tell. Interesting ones. Music was his absolute passion. He had more records than anyone. One Christmas he proudly declared that he had bought the same Slim Whitman Anthology for everyone on his list. (My roommate was sitting beside him on the train from NY to Boston and so captive to such information.)
posted by emhutchinson at 4:27 PM PST - 10 comments

With all the recent attention in the NFL to dirty tackling, head shots, and concussions, some ground breaking research from Purdue University suggests that the routine hits to the head that happen 100s of times in every football game may be just as damaging as repeated concussions. The research was conducted on high school football players. The research uncovered marked reductions on visual memory tests in the kids who had not suffered a concussion and otherwise showed no symptoms of a head injury. These kids were, for all practical purposes, walking around with brain injuries during the season. The good news is that they all were back to normal by the next fall, suggesting that their young brains can heal themselves. (We are talking about the American brand of football here, but it doesn't seem like a real stretch that too many headers in the football played with a round ball might also be a problem.)
posted by COD at 4:04 PM PST - 68 comments

American Worker Cooperatives: a library, resource centre, startup guide, and map of over 200 industrial cooperatives. [via mefi projects]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:52 PM PST - 6 comments

Wow, what a life for Dana Gillespie. At 14 she was British junior national water-skiing champion. At 15 she was dating classmate David Bowie, who taught her guitar. Had bit parts in movies by 16. She dated Donovan for a little while, and Jimmy Page produced and played on her first album. She went on to a long string of starring roles in London's West End. She has devoted the latter part of her life to the blues, hosting an annual blues festival on the island of Mustique, recently featuring fellow Mustiquian Mick Jagger. And if all that weren't enough, she has also released several albums in Sanskrit under the moniker Third Man, devoted to the years she spent living in India. Allah Ho Akhbar::Chitta Chora::Om Shakti
posted by puny human at 2:13 PM PST - 20 comments

Defaced.me is a blog all about rejoicing in spotting things that have been drawn on, torn apart, covered in stickers, or just plain sullied.
posted by antgly at 2:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Two critiques of steampunk: The Hard Edge of Empire by Charlie Stross and Stupid Things We Say by Nisi Shawl.
posted by Zed at 1:20 PM PST - 219 comments

Though the sets and music are pure golden-age horror, the villagers are coded as ’50s sitcom types, bland exemplars of suburban uptightitude. Their ranks include a young Mos Def, though he’s seldom called upon to do anything other than act scared of supernatural goings-on in a manner that would cause even Stepin Fetchit’s ghost to say “For God’s sake, man, show some dignity.”

Just in time for Halloween, the AV Club series My Year of Flops unearths the Stephen King-written, Stan Winston-directed Michael Jackson's Ghosts (2, 3, 4).
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:48 PM PST - 17 comments

Last year, Marie Claire magazine made headlines by employing a plus-sized fashion columnist, Ashley Falcon, whose blog “Big Girl In A Skinny World” was proudly advertised as “proof that fashionistas come in all shapes and sizes.” Yesterday, a different Marie Claire blogger attacked the new CBS show “Mike & Molly” for featuring overweight characters. Her post received more than a thousand angry comments and the magazine reportedly received over 28,000 emails, prompting an apology from the blogger and a defensive response from the Editor in Chief. [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:41 PM PST - 273 comments

Recent exploration drilling and 3-D seismic surveys reveal the U.S. Geological Survey's optimistic 2002 assessment of Alaska's untapped oil reserves is actually off by about 90 percent. Oil and Gas Online explains the new geologic analysis and difficulty predicting petroleum reserves.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 11:49 AM PST - 54 comments

What Should I Be For Halloween? [via mefi projects]
posted by The Whelk at 11:22 AM PST - 73 comments

DEFIANCE, Ohio - town of 17,000, a longtime stronghold of the United Auto Workers, with a Democratic majority. Why is the Democratic party now doing so badly here? 'The Obama administration’s rescue of General Motors allowed the company to keep running the giant foundry here, a mainstay of the local economy. If the recession drove joblessness here beyond 13 percent, the lengthy extensions of unemployment benefits in the stimulus package enabled struggling workers to keep their homes and keep patronizing local businesses.''Jami L. Young exemplifies the emerging politics. At the age of 31, Ms. Young runs her own insurance agency.''Like many other Defiance residents, she was pleased when Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, used federal stimulus money to build a bridge, helping to temper unemployment that had climbed to 14 percent and, despite improvement this year, remains high. Yet Ms. Young, who says that she supported Mr. Obama in 2008 as “the lesser of two evils,” now says she regrets her vote.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 10:48 AM PST - 133 comments

Los Angeles's Crooked Heart: Ever wonder why the street grid in Los Angeles tips 36 degrees from the N/S axis once you are east of Hoover? Ask the Spaniards. [more inside]
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 10:30 AM PST - 45 comments

Wisconsin Life Trip, Ephraim Trimpey's Baraboo photography from the Wisconsin Historical Society .Ephraim Trimpey recorded 20th Century life in Baraboo Wisconsin. From burning German textbooks during WWI and draftees ready to leave for training to local traffic mishaps. [more inside]
posted by readery at 10:05 AM PST - 5 comments

"Most people think that Pipe Organs are only capable of producing the classical evil growl from horror movies, but in truth, they are capable of making quite a wide variety of noises that you wouldn't normally expect to come from a Pipe Organ." YouTube user FromTheGang plays covers on the pipe organ at his church and a couple accordions. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:57 AM PST - 19 comments

The Reverse Geocache Puzzle Box is quite nifty! Here's a video interview of the inventor. Maybe you prefer the analog version? Or do you want to build your own?
posted by lioness at 9:27 AM PST - 27 comments

With her writing career clearly going nowhere, Margaret Atwood has turned to a new vocation: costume design.
posted by griphus at 7:04 AM PST - 58 comments

This is the videogame you didn't know you wanted to play until now. Artemis - The Spaceship Bridge simulator is possibly the nerdiest game ever invented. The players take on the roles of Engineering, Communication, Weapon Control, etc, while one player - The Captain - stands in front of a projection screen and barks orders.
posted by empath at 6:27 AM PST - 117 comments

These Gears Really Work? Strangely soothing video of wooden, non-circular gears lovingly crafted by Clayton Boyer (YouTube Channel), talented designer of Wooden Clocks (YouTube Video, Flickr Photo Set). Via jwz and BoingBoing. [more inside]
posted by stringbean at 6:00 AM PST - 26 comments

Short Snorters: "A short snorter is a banknote inscribed by people traveling together on an aircraft. The tradition was started by Alaskan Bush flyers in the 1920s and spread through the military and commercial aviation...When the short snorter was signed, the collector would have to produce it upon request, if not, they are bounded to give the signer a drink." Some examples: Flickr, A Hawaiian one dollar bill, A bill with some real WWII history, Scrolling Multinational Short Snorters, and a British ten-shilling note.
posted by srboisvert at 5:35 AM PST - 24 comments

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on the set of their new show, The Trip. An interesting article on the relationship between the two characters on screen and in real life. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 4:31 AM PST - 22 comments

You are reading this post thanks to the submarine communications cables that connect the continents together (except Antarctica). [more inside]
posted by bjrn at 1:33 AM PST - 29 comments