November 10, 2012

“Manchester was dead. If I wasn’t going to do it, it wasn’t going to get done.”

William Manchester was an American author who wrote the celebrated Winston Churchill biographies: The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874–1932 and The Last Lion: Alone 1932–1940. After having a stroke in 1998 and suffering from writer’s block, on Oct. 9, 2003, Manchester asked Palm Beach Post writer, Paul Reid, to complete the third volume of Churchill’s biography. In October 2012, after nine years of writing, and 24 years after Alone, Paul Reid completed the third volume and The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm 1940-1965 was published. [more inside]
posted by Bokmakierie at 10:10 PM PST - 14 comments

Shiny!

Posters of famous movie cars (and trucks; and planes; ... a few space ships; .... the odd train.) done in the style of vintage race advertising posters.
posted by Mitheral at 9:34 PM PST - 35 comments

Seatbelts, Everyone!

The Magic School Bus: The Movie [SLYT]
posted by schmod at 2:58 PM PST - 51 comments

Ronda Rousey

Ronda Rousey - the first American woman to medal in judo at the Summer Olympics - is widely regarded as the best pound-for-pound female MMA fighter in the world. She has won all six of her professional fights - all but one of them in less than a minute - using a trademark armbar that is usually described as "devastating". [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen at 12:05 PM PST - 112 comments

...and then you strangle a giant slug with a chain.

Searching for Slave Leia fiction by Sandra McDonald. Slave Leia PSA starring Kaley Cuoco (yt), Leia's Metal Bikini, Meet the Slave Leia's of Star Wars Celebration V (yt), Slave Leia Appreciation Society, In Defense of Slave Leia , In Response to In Defense of Slave Leia.
posted by Artw at 12:01 PM PST - 78 comments

That doesn't look right!

Remember that big Red/Blue map that you kept looking at on election night? That graphic was really pretty deceptive, and maps were mentioned 117 times in our huge election thread, often because they didn't make sense or were confusing. Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, has created a neat page that represents the data from last Tuesday in a more visually accurate manner. [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 11:07 AM PST - 96 comments

Brasil profundo

A treasure trove of Brazil from the conflict between Natives and farmers to Music inspired by the bandit Lampião.
Discover writers (with a metafilter hat tip); Scary Lullabies e muito mais.
posted by adamvasco at 10:37 AM PST - 5 comments

Chuckchi Jokes

Anyone familiar with the contemporary Russian humorous folklore (jokelore, or in Russian anekdoty) knows that one of the most popular series of such jokes revolves around the Chukchis, the native people of Chukotka, the most remote northeast corner of Russia. These jokes, especially popular in 1990s and 2000s, fit the international genre of ethnic stupidity jokes . . .
posted by jason's_planet at 9:55 AM PST - 17 comments

"Who needs to read one more mediocre book?"

"At the end of his life, the boxer Joe Louis said, ‘I did the best I could with what I had.’ It’s exactly what I would say of my work: I did the best I could with what I had.” [The New Yorker] "The writer Philip Roth announced his retirement in a little-noticed interview with a French magazine [Les Inrocks] and said that Nemesis, which was published in 2010, would be his last book."
posted by Fizz at 9:28 AM PST - 30 comments

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS

Spend an hour tooling around 1920s-Era NYC via the magic of video
posted by The Whelk at 8:55 AM PST - 11 comments

Welcome to the Mannequin Shop

Come Feel Me Tremble is a is a movie about Paul Westerberg. It's a little weird.
posted by timsteil at 8:02 AM PST - 19 comments

I've been to the 'Moon of Glendale' - it's been stuck in a time loop for years

BRAVEST WARRIORS!!! From Pendleton 'Adventure Time' Ward, it's a new, somewhat more adult (mild profanity & alien relationships) sci-fi cartoon about Second Generation Heroes who are kind-of-dorks. Here's an earlier version he did for Nickelodeon's Random Cartoons, but the new series is made for Fred 'Frederator' Seibert's Cartoon Hangover YouTube Channel. If that wasn't edgy or NSFW enough for you, check out "Peepshow Therapy with Carmen Geddit" or just wait for the debut of James 'American Elf' Kochalka's "Super F***ers"
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:55 AM PST - 11 comments

"The phrase 'intergalactically stupid' appeared... and he responded."

The Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Review YouTube channel has a lot of videos of film reviews from the livestream of their BBC radio show and podcast, going back about five years. They are sorted by genre, film rating, geographic origin and one special category, Classic Kermodean Rants, which includes his reviews of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Sex and the City 2, in which he ends up sing-shouting The Internationale, and Angels and Demons, which woke a man from a coma (mp3, story starts at 5:10, and it is followed up here, beginning at 5:30).
posted by Kattullus at 7:46 AM PST - 32 comments

Human cormorants and dolphins

Tony Stark style daredevils "flying" over, under and through the water (SLYT) This video (warning: annoying music) gets off to a slow start, but then the air ballet begins and the people turn into cormorants and dolphins. Enjoy!
posted by carmicha at 7:11 AM PST - 26 comments

The strange case of The Pigeon-hole Principle

It's Saturday; why not think about the pigeonhole principle? Here are problems and more problems and what you might call a problem with the principle itself as it is often stated.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:04 AM PST - 41 comments

Soup Dumpling Burger

Burger Of The Future by Dave Arnold, Director of Technology at the French Culinary Institute in 22 steps & Voilà
posted by growabrain at 6:03 AM PST - 83 comments

Free folk/world monthly music podcast

Every month, Ian Anderson, editor of the UK music magazine fRoots, puts together a free 80-minute podcast of the past few weeks' best world music and folk music tracks. He has excellent taste - by which I mean it coincides largely with my own - and provides by far the best substitute I've yet found for Andy Kershaw's much-missed Radio 3 show. The same link has an archive offering the past four years' worth of fRoots shows for you to catch up on.
posted by Paul Slade at 5:49 AM PST - 8 comments

"This is is not assault. These two guys squared up on each other"

On the heels of last year's pepper spray incident, Phoenix Jones has once again been filmed in an altercation on the streets of Seattle. Only this time, it occurred under the auspices of the municipal "mutual combat law," and it got violent.
posted by troll at 4:11 AM PST - 112 comments

« Previous day | Next day »