A year-by-year archive, from 1930 to the present, of every poignant, creepy, tacky, tragic, goofy, beautiful and, yes, kinda slutty cover of the magazine that started out as Astounding Stories of Super Science and became Analog, with lots of changes in between. [via the horse's neck]
posted by mediareport at 11:23 PM PST - 35 comments

(relatively) cheap fuel-cell cars.
posted by js003 at 8:44 PM PST - 19 comments

Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case and TIME: A lawsuit to be filed on Nov. 14th in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski… has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: “It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ”. . . . Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Previously: Chain of Command, (May 9, 2004); Interview with Abu Ghraib general, (November 8, 2005)
posted by spock at 7:09 PM PST - 67 comments

With malice towards all, Khushwant Singh has been one of the most ascerbic tongues in the English language, particularly in his editorship of the venerable yet now deceased Illustrated Weekly of India. Filled with Goan cartoonist Mario Miranda's stunning illustrations, short stories, photojournalism, scholarly articles and humor, I miss the touch of Indian society it kept for desis abroad.
posted by infini at 5:33 PM PST - 3 comments

The Google Book By V.C. Vickers, 1913. FAR! FAR away, the Google lives, in a land which only children can go to. It is a wonderful land of funny flowers, and birds, and hills of pure white heather.
posted by caddis at 5:02 PM PST - 38 comments

Boris Plotnikoff's Gasmask Collection, Heavy Rubber.
posted by hama7 at 3:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Don't let your kids use Easy Erasers or Magic Erasers...
posted by konolia at 2:14 PM PST - 123 comments

The Washington Stock Exchange. A stock exchange for political junkies.
posted by matkline at 1:46 PM PST - 22 comments

The Great War in the Air is a 69-part video project, clearly a labor of love, by one Jan Goldstein, a musician, painter, and publican. Overwhelmed? Here's a representative sample: Part 7, on the French ace Georges Guynemer. Please note: extensive use of YouTube. Many of the images seen in the film may be perused at earlyaviator.com.
posted by mwhybark at 1:16 PM PST - 12 comments

The Toriton Plus A new electronic music interface using water and light. (YouTube). Make your own. From Little-Scale, which is chock-full of cool and wonderous stuff.
posted by loquacious at 12:48 PM PST - 8 comments

The Bohlen-Pierce scale is a musical scale which has thirteen notes spread evenly across one and a half octaves, so that the highest note is three times the frequency of the lowest. Compare with the western twelve-tone scale, which has twelve notes spread evenly across one octave, where the highest note is twice the frequency of the lowest. Both are tempered scales, and both have close approximations to 'just intonations', meaning you could play the scales by plucking a string clamped at certain ratios like 1/2, 1/4, 5/3, etc. One of the independant co-inventors of the scale, John Pierce, was also a famous electrical engineer best known for inventing the communications satellite. You can listen to Pachelbel's Canon(midi link) rewritten in this scale.
posted by PercussivePaul at 12:46 PM PST - 46 comments

Genuine Home Made Brass Goggles Inspired by the brass goggles blog.
posted by delmoi at 12:28 PM PST - 18 comments

Are you tonedeaf? Take the (6-minute) test. via
posted by aberrant at 12:27 PM PST - 71 comments

Microsoft Firefox! (It's better now... like seriously!)
posted by AstroGuy at 12:08 PM PST - 24 comments

“Treating you with respect and honesty are the cornerstones of our reputation.” --unless you're gay, that is, for a Houston landscaper. Step 1: Turn down 2 gay customers. Step 2: Watch furor ensue. Step 3: Profit (to the tune of $40,000 in new business)
posted by amberglow at 9:18 AM PST - 144 comments

When Jack Williamson published his first story, Isaac Asimov was eight years old. Seventy-three years later, his novella, "The Ultimate Earth," won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Easily the longest career in science fiction, and one of the most distinguished, came to a close yesterday: Williamson died at the age of 98. (Boing Boing, Locus.)
posted by mcwetboy at 9:09 AM PST - 21 comments

Now that he's left the Ministry of Defense, he wants to warn us how very concerned he is about that huge triangular UFO police and military personnel (and hundreds of civilians) witnessed flying over RAF bases in Shropshire in 1993.
posted by Twang at 12:47 AM PST - 75 comments

was there just a second ago... Cop Watch LA, a police watchdog group, posted the video on YouTube, said organizer Joaquin Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos said the video was shot by a neighbor of Cardenas with a cell phone camera. The neighbor gave it to Cardenas' family, who then gave it to Cop Watch, according to Cienfuegos.
posted by Bravocharlie at 12:40 AM PST - 84 comments