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Secret Santa. Previously mentioned here, a year ago. "Got your own Web site? Got an Amazon wishlist? If the answer to both of these is yes, and you like the idea of giving and receiving, you should definitely sign up." Well, it's that time of year again.
posted by crunchland at 9:07 PM PST - 14 comments

Gasp! The mask comes off.
posted by Espoo2 at 6:02 PM PST - 77 comments

Before there was McSweeney's... Phyllis Johnson published 10 issues of Aspen, a multimedia magazine in a box to which the USPS denied second-class mail rates. After a few issues that stayed close to the ski resort in terms of theme, the magazine began bringing in guest editors and addressing cutting edge art and media, in New York, Britain, Asia, and the minds of cultural critics and psychedlic drug users. Andy Warhol participated in Issue 3 and the Fluxus movement dominated Issue 8. There were 10 issues in all, the first 9 of which are featured in this new web adaptation at Ubuweb. At the risk of only posting whenever Andrew Stafford unveils another cool web-native multimedia art project, I thought a lot of Metafiltrates would appreciate this interpretation of Aspen Magazine
posted by xian at 4:56 PM PST - 11 comments

Real X-rated movies based on another movie title. And you thought you came up with "Inrearendence Day" yourself.
posted by tweebiscuit at 3:36 PM PST - 37 comments

1901 Back on it's feet again... At last it's the 1901 show!(the date not the time) and the UK Public Record Office 1901 Census is up and testing again after having crashed due to overdemand earlier in theyear. And it works! I've discovered my great grandfather was a wheelwright and that his eldest son was a labourer at the gas works (I saw my first naked girlfriend in a bedroom in the shadow of that very gasworks!) and that I had a great great Uncle Percy!
posted by terrymiles at 3:27 PM PST - 4 comments

In the late 18th or early 19th century a group of runaway slaves and serfs fled from Kentucky into the Ohio Territory, where they inter-married with Natives and formed a tribe - red, white & black - called the Ben Ishmael tribe. The Ishmaels (who seem to have been Islamically inclined) followed an annual nomadic route through the territory, hunting & fishing, and finding work as tinkers and minstrels. They were polygamists, and drank no alcohol. Every winter they returned to their original settlement, where a village had grown.

But eventually the US Govt. opened the Territory to settlement, and the ~official~ pioneers arrived. Around the Ishmael village a town began to spring up, called Cincinnati. Soon it was a big city. But Ishmael village was still there, engulfed & surrounded by "civilization." Now it was a ~slum~.

Maroons, Ramapaughs, Jackson Whites, the Moors of Delaware, Melungeons, the Ben Ishmaels--hat tip to Footnotes of History on that last--Red Bones, Brass Ankles, Turks, Lumbees, Croatans and other lost tribes and rebel slave communities.

The questions raised are what is race, tribe and family ...among others.

Included by extension are Hakim Bey, The Moorish Orthodox Church, various tribes of Black Indians, Jukes, Kallikaks, Margaret Sanger, The Bell Curve and Heather Locklear. (Step within the tent for the latter's interpetive dance)
posted by y2karl at 3:27 PM PST - 38 comments

PubScience Shut Down "Having persuaded the Energy Department to pull the plug on PubScience, a Web site that offered free access to scientific and technical articles, commercial publishers are taking aim at government-funded information services offering free legal and agricultural data."
posted by frykitty at 2:59 PM PST - 35 comments

Art from physics: it's a groovy gas. It's transonic flight. It's a pi-muon death cycle. It's a dark matter detector. It's a Super-Kamiokande with 9000 neutrino eyes. Dream on!
posted by Morphic at 1:44 PM PST - 6 comments

Sa k a prifé? With lists of Louisianan Creole grammar and vocabulary and a few real audio files, you'll be navigating your pirogue through the swamps in no time, or, at least, ordering correctly at your favorite Cajun restaurant.
posted by Katemonkey at 1:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Amazing Pencil Lead Sculptor Dante Ghetti carves intricate, tiny sculptures out of the lead of draftsman's pencils, using the pencil stub as the mount for the finished piece; amazing. I realize this post doesn't offer much in the way of vigorous debate ("I like tiny sculptures" "They suck. You suck!"), but what can I say, I think it's pretty damn cool. (from BoingBoing)
posted by jonson at 1:25 PM PST - 21 comments

Coolest sun picture ever - sunspot closeup... The Swedish Institute for Solar Physics web site has some other cool pictures. (As an aside, I wonder what equivalent shutter speed, aperture, and focal length would be?)
posted by notsnot at 1:21 PM PST - 15 comments

Diana Hsieh, a blogger in California, is being sued for suggesting that a link exists between Scientology and Front Sight, the largest firearms training facility in the country. Now another site is being threatened with legal action by Front Sight, because of negative comments posted by users on their message board. Light of Reason has some well-written entries about these events (search for "scientology" on their page).
posted by TreeHugger at 12:57 PM PST - 8 comments

It's not Just a Label, it's a Lifestyle. I really dig the Flash site for Sean "P Puffy Diddy Daddy" Comb's new clothing line. It's a fancy and somewhat restrained use of Flash, but with an UCR (unintentional comedy rating) through the roof. Choose your own sountrack while you explore the catwalk shots. "It's how you freak it baby," indeed.
posted by sixfoot6 at 12:03 PM PST - 20 comments

Propaganda - Disinformation: The Masters of the Lie What if the U.S. projected a holographic image of Allah floating over Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to rise up against Saddam, a senior Air Force officer asked in 1990? The hubris and racism of American Psyops, who knows what the military is plotting now?
posted by letterneversent at 11:38 AM PST - 60 comments

The History of the Shuar. The Jivaro are one of the few native clans in South America who successfully revolted against the Spanish Conquest, but they're more famous for their shrunken heads- this site not only has the history, but also a pretty fascinating gallery. Of course, if you're just interested in the shrunken heads, Doc Bwana's Museum of Shrunken Heads will most certainly meet your shrunken-head viewing needs. (Probably safe for work, but I wouldn't read it while eating lunch.)
posted by headspace at 11:22 AM PST - 5 comments

Who is Hans Blix? A 74 year old Swede with a long career in international law, he was recently featured as Time person of the week and is, obviously, something of a key figure in U.S.-U.N.-Iraq interaction. You can also examine his brief U.N. Bio (linked in title), a BBC Profile for an introduction, and a number of his past speeches and remarks (link to another CV on that site, too). Is he the man for the inspection job, or a a man who has and will again be fooled by Hussein?
posted by namespan at 11:20 AM PST - 5 comments

The similarity of the painting to Mickey Mouse is so astounding that the Disney concern could even lose its world-wide copyright licence.   Art historian Eduard Mahlknecht believes the similarity to Mickey is pure coincidence. He told Austrian daily Krone "St Christopher was often depicted surrounded by various animals and sea-life, and in this case something that resembles Mickey Mouse.
posted by quonsar at 11:10 AM PST - 26 comments

Amazing and hilarious found footage of LSD being tested on British troops (mpg) "The men began to relax and to giggle...One hour and ten minutes after taking the drug, with one man climbing a tree to feed the birds, the troop commander gave up...He himself then relapsed into laughter. [via the great New World Disorder]
posted by mediareport at 11:07 AM PST - 50 comments

Are newspapers becoming opinionpapers? Interesting article on the current preponderance of op-ed materials in newspapers. The papers are cutting back on news, especially international news, in favour of news lite or opinion columns. Or what's styled as opinion but is really pieces by "columnists" who are totally self-referential and whose idea of research is interviewing their own friends. The article is very Can-Con (high Canadian content) but it'll be interesting if Me-Fiers from other countries weigh in with data/observations about their own media. Canadian media doesn't probably doesn't stand alone in this trend.
posted by orange swan at 10:31 AM PST - 19 comments

Moors murderer Myra Hindley is dead The serial killer was serving her 36th year behind bars at nearby Highpoint Prison, Suffolk. Hindley and Ian Brady, 64, were jailed for life in 1966 for the sexual abuse, torture and murder of three youngsters. In 1987 they confessed to two more child killings.
posted by tomcosgrave at 10:00 AM PST - 13 comments

South African mining giant begins providing triple coctail for HIV treatment. Something optimistic for a Friday post: AngloGold along with DeBeers is offering its employees HIV Triple cocktail treatment for free. With almost 30% of some of these companies' workforce affected with the HIV virus, is this an example of merging corporate and social interests or is this a sign of honest corporate citizenship?
posted by phyrewerx at 9:43 AM PST - 18 comments

The Digital Michelangelo Project A team of 30 faculty, staff, and students from Stanford University and the University of Washington spent the 1998-99 academic year in Italy scanning the sculptures and architecture of Michelangelo. They are now working on building 3D models from the data. (more inside)
posted by snez at 9:31 AM PST - 6 comments

Collective Memory. A collection of sites which are creating collective memory on the web. A personal favourite is TimeSlips, a storytelling project with people with Alzheimer's.
posted by plep at 4:43 AM PST - 5 comments

The Voyage of Terry Waite's Clogs I first saw this a couple of days ago and the more I think about the logistics and reasoning behind this the stranger it becomes. I like the fact this probably wouldn't happen in any other country than England, but all the same you do have to wonder why it happened. For those non-Brits Terry Waite was the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy to Beirut in the 80s and was held hostage for 5 years by a militant islamic group.
posted by jontyjago at 3:47 AM PST - 10 comments

Amateurs, Mere Amateurs still make significant contributions to astronomy [The Canadian Laval group's website is typically enthusiastic] and may yet make a difference in other sciences, according to Freeman J. Dyson in this review of Steve Guttenberg lookalike Timothy Ferris's latest book [Here's an enticing glimpse of his home-made Rocky Hill Observatory.]. I wonder just how much easier it's becoming for amateurs to contribute to specific areas of scientific knowledge? Or is it, in fact, increasingly more difficult? And would it still be strictly limited to the observational sciences?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:57 AM PST - 8 comments

Shy Kids. "Each realistic Shy Kid (UK time out dolls) is lovingly hand-crafted and each one is different. Standing around 29"-34" approximately the same height as a two year old, your Shy Kid can be leant against a wall, couch or anywhere you desire."
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 12:11 AM PST - 39 comments