Bob and Neil have a history of friendly competition. They have, on occasion, shared a stage. Neil has covered Bob. Bob has covered Neil. Neil has name-checked Bob. Bob has name-checked Neil. Neil admires Bob. Bob visited Neil's childhood home.
posted by Knappster at 10:55 PM PST - 33 comments

Your goats? Do you dance with them?
posted by vronsky at 8:59 PM PST - 34 comments

Thrill-seekers swim with crocodiles in Australia Tourists who want to get cozy with a crocodile climb into a clear acrylic cage, dubbed "the cage of death," which is about 145 mm (5.7 inches) thick and 2.8 meters (9.2 feet) high, wearing just a pair of swimming goggles and a swimsuit. [Pictures] [YouTubery] "I can understand how this might be attractive to tourists but has anyone considered the welfare of the crocodile?" [More about saltwater crocodiles]
posted by KokuRyu at 8:22 PM PST - 26 comments

SoftBoard Games: Free, Commercial, and Abandoned Computer Versions of Board and Card Games with Computer AI (Artificial Intelligence) Opponents.
posted by jbickers at 7:29 PM PST - 10 comments

"Good Guide provides the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home." Now in iPhone.
posted by one_bean at 7:21 PM PST - 7 comments

The Tibet Album: British photography in Central Tibet 1920 - 1950 [previously] via The Best of The Asian Studies WWW Monitor
posted by tellurian at 6:06 PM PST - 15 comments

Phoenix Mars Lander: This is My Farewell Transmission From Mars.
posted by homunculus at 5:57 PM PST - 52 comments

Do you have a yearning to be online? Do you suffer from difficulty concentrating or sleeping, irritation, or mental or physical distress? According to doctors in China, you might have an internet addiction.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 5:50 PM PST - 25 comments

The gift every adult will want. (via log_070329 [NSFW])
posted by parmanparman at 5:30 PM PST - 92 comments

Hundreds of Icelanders make postcards to assure British PM Gordon Brown that they're not terrorists.
posted by hermitosis at 5:21 PM PST - 77 comments

QWOP is difficult. How far can you run?
posted by boo_radley at 5:19 PM PST - 59 comments

First published in 2003, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is a reference book which provides blurbs for a list of critically acclaimed films. YouTuber matthiasheuermann has begun an ambitious, collective project to set selections from each of the films to music.
posted by 235w103 at 4:15 PM PST - 23 comments

Gilles Peterson does his thing which you can listen to weekly. Some of his mixes and podcasts are available for download. Dude even digs Obama.
posted by gman at 3:25 PM PST - 14 comments

Zilch is a nice little (flash) dice game. Via JIG.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 3:16 PM PST - 37 comments

The Great War Archive goes live today (November 11), the 90th anniversary of the Armistice. Launched by the University of Oxford in March 2008, the initiative invited members of the general public to submit digital photographs, audio, film, documents, and stories that originated from the Great War. Although the dealine for submissions is past, photos can still be added to the project's Flickr group.
posted by Abiezer at 3:11 PM PST - 19 comments

Less Than Three ... oh emm gee. [SLYT]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 3:06 PM PST - 30 comments

The Little Shop of Horrors movie was originally intended to be.... very different. Three-part YouTube link. Amazing.
posted by macrowave at 2:49 PM PST - 38 comments

Working on ADA compliance? Wondering how readers for the blind parse your webpages? Feed them into WebAnywhere, an online screen reader. Unlike other solutions, it is not a browser plugin and is free.
posted by Foam Pants at 1:57 PM PST - 7 comments

Soros on the banking crisis:
"A deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out. When I predicted earlier this year that we were facing the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, I did not anticipate that conditions would deteriorate so badly." - Soros lays out some ideas about what can be done to fix the markets ... Planet money had another nicely done piece on the debacle last Friday.
posted by specialk420 at 12:42 PM PST - 79 comments

Some strange and strangely compelling short-short stories (by a Mefite): Sometimes the sick got well, and sometimes they didn't. It was commonplace for my grandmother to inherit an entire estate, based on the words "All Left to Persis" scrawled across the back of an envelope.
posted by orthogonality at 11:58 AM PST - 22 comments

"‘Bad boy’ Cui Jian, [pronounced Sway Jen] China’s first long-haired rock icon, has pulled off another musical coup by becoming the first artist to adapt hip-hop to the mainland. His hoarse voice has long signified anger, confusion and pain, especially during the 1989 student revolt when his hit single, “Nothing to my Name”, became a veritable anthem. Despite the government’s attempts to silence his voice by routinely banning his concerts, Cui Jian carries on with the rapper’s staccato precision." EAST vs WEST – Hyper and Cui Jian collaboration, a Hyper remix of an original Cui Jian piece - with great Chinese papercut visuals.
posted by nickyskye at 11:44 AM PST - 19 comments

F.A.O. Schwartz (doesn't everybody think of that first when they hear the name?) has come up with a Design Your Own Muppet Workshop (with appropriate video intro). Limited design options (they're the "Whatnot" Muppet extras, no identifiable characters) and a $90 pricetag for a custom-made Mup, but the design process is still fun (and better than their previous Design Your Own Tutu).
posted by wendell at 11:27 AM PST - 27 comments

Pomegranate is the Answer. James Brett perhaps has an answer to Afghanistan's Opium issue: On the drive back to Peshawar I saw the same farmer in his fields harvesting his crop. I asked my driver to stop the car. On the card I had previously bought I wrote the words ‘Pomegranate is the Answer’ and ran into the field to go and talk to the farmer. My translator called after me “Don’t go in there you could get shot” but it all happened in a second and I called back to him “come on I need you to translate” . Upon reaching a surprised farmer I asked him many questions and talked to him about the affects of Heroin and also the possibilities of Pomegranates. He explained to me about his family , children, how he lived and why he grew opium. I explained how it was possible for him to change his situation working together with other farmers and how this would help the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the world. He appears to be having some success. (previously 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...) via Crooks and Liars
posted by caddis at 11:23 AM PST - 56 comments

Canadian historian Rob MacDougall, on how Americans present movements for social change as the self-evident intentions of the nation's founders:

"[Martin Luther] King went on: 'When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note … a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' And here Sancho [Panza] or Sacvan [Bercovitch] whispers to the guy standing next to him, 'Were they? Really? If we went back in time and asked the architects of the republic–Jefferson and Madison and Washington and the rest–did you mean for this to apply to your slaves too, would they agree? … Because it would have saved a lot of trouble if they’d spelled all this out in 1789.'"

(via)
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:09 AM PST - 39 comments

GOP 2.0 There's no doubt that the internet operation of President-Elect Obama was a key part of his success. While it appears that he is attempting to turn that success into an engine for keeping citizens and supporters engaged with the revolutionary Change.gov,(Previously), the other side also is looking to harness the wave of internet electioneering.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:23 AM PST - 163 comments

Long interview with Doctor Who showrunner Russel T Davies on his writing and producing career (at the BBC's Writersroom).
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:37 AM PST - 4 comments

The Loneliness Engine and other invisible games.
posted by flatluigi at 8:13 AM PST - 19 comments

'the plausible impossibility of death in the mind of cartoon characters' via
posted by cjorgensen at 8:08 AM PST - 37 comments

Miriam Makeba, 1932-2008. "Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us" -- Nelson Mandela
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:03 AM PST - 46 comments

Time to play The Game. A Flash Monday tour of the absurd.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:31 AM PST - 19 comments

Bruce Wayne "Jobriath" Campbell was mass-marketed [NSFW] to the American public as the first American glam rock singer (glam being a primarily British phenomenon) and the first openly gay rock performer. The publicity push and sexuality were too much for the American public, and his two albums seemed to sink without a trace. In recent years, a glam historian and pop singer named Stephen Paul Morrissey has helped to remaster his music and make it more readily available. Unfortunately, Morrissey's plans to have Jobriath open for him on his first solo tour were curtailed by his premature death from AIDS-related illnesses in 1983.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:14 AM PST - 37 comments

"When my friend Richard Renaldi showed me the first images from the new series Touching Strangers I was just amazed. Asking two complete strangers to not only pose with each other, but to also touch each other while doing that... And this in a culture whose discomfort with touching someone you don't know, or touching something that someone else might have touched still baffles me, even after having spent almost ten years in it!" - A Conversation with Richard Renaldi about 'Touching Strangers'
posted by chunking express at 6:11 AM PST - 23 comments

Manga fan? Then you already know about this. Otherwise, check out the list of selectables in the upper right hand corner. I think they have what you have been looking for.
posted by jimahon at 5:01 AM PST - 27 comments

Tech Columnist Andy Ihnatko takes us along for the ride. For a recent trip from Kingston, RI to the East Village, Ihnatko set up a Nikon Coolpix 6000 to take a picture every 30 seconds - out the train window, then around his neck. The result is a great time lapse journey.
posted by pupdog at 4:58 AM PST - 30 comments

Ain't It Funky is a BBC-produced documentary from 2005 with lots of great performance footage and interviews, as well as period footage from the civil rights era for some historical perspective. James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton and many of their key sidemen are featured. Highly recommended. part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. These same YT clips can also be found all together, embedded at Funk Deli. NOTE: Unfortunately, the audio and video are slightly out of sync on part 1. Parts 2 through 8 lock up just fine, though.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:44 AM PST - 18 comments