The Day I Joined the KKK Was Super Fucking Gay.
posted by holloway at 6:48 PM PST - 65 comments

Culture jamming The Sims. As discussed here a couple of months ago, the much loved McDonald's Corporation has a major deal with Electronic Arts. But with hundreds of virtual burger restaurants in Simsville - what's to stop gamers turning into virtual anti-globalisation vigilantes?
posted by bwerdmuller at 6:15 PM PST - 19 comments

In the long stretch of culinary history, the creation of the menu was a notable development. In the U.S., New York is the restaurant capital, and the New York Public Library has an enormous collection of menus, many of which they are currently displaying in a third-floor gallery. If you're in NYC (or will be visiting this winter) and are interested in such things, don't miss it; it's showing until March 1.
posted by languagehat at 6:02 PM PST - 14 comments

No matter how smooth you polish this turd, the sickly stench will haunt you forever.
Hilarious shorts on auteur filmmaking. The Sequel, too. (via k10k, via natzke)
posted by cinderful at 4:30 PM PST - 33 comments

An international survey for National Geographic finds that of Americans surveyed between 18 and 24, half couldn't find New York on a map of the US, only one in seven can find Iraq on a map of the world, and one in nine couldn't find the United States on that same map. Sweden averaged 40 correct answers out of 56. The US averaged 23. What is the US doing wrong that countries like Sweden are doing right in education and world awareness?
posted by AaRdVarK at 2:59 PM PST - 127 comments

Tom Wham designed so many of the games I loved when I was a kid. Tucked away in the pages of Dragon Magazine were such classics as The Awful Green Things From Outer Space (Epilogue here), Snit's Revenge, Elefant Hunt and more. Little tiny games with little cutout paper pieces you would lose instantly, they were something to cherish.
posted by Kafkaesque at 2:37 PM PST - 13 comments

hubcapcreatures.com Beautiful creatures made from hubcaps. My particular favorite is this dragon.
posted by snez at 2:18 PM PST - 19 comments

Early tests show 100% success for cervical cancer vaccine "It appears to be the real thing,'' said Dr. Christopher Crum, a pathologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "You're looking at some very compelling evidence that this vaccine will prevent cervical cancer.''
posted by nickmark at 2:09 PM PST - 12 comments

The Ladder Theory... a theory of adult male/female interaction. While some may find this a bit offensive, it is quite interesting. It includes rating systems, attraction breakdowns, scenarios, consequences, and manifestations.
posted by darian at 1:15 PM PST - 76 comments

New Plans for the World Trade Center. Call Frank Gehry, and keep Eric Owen Moss far, far away.
posted by four panels at 1:01 PM PST - 41 comments

Mount Athos is the center of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism. It's located in the northeast of Greece and is an amazing place. If you're a man and planning a pilgrimage, make sure to read this first. And if you're a woman planning a pilgrimage, make sure to read this first. [more inside]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 10:29 AM PST - 15 comments

$0.99 song downloads are here! Universal Music Group will release 43,000 songs as digital downloads. The tracks will be available to US consumers for $0.99 for individual songs, and $9.99 for the entire album. There's only one little problem, the songs are available as either Liquid Audio or Windows Media.
posted by riffola at 10:28 AM PST - 41 comments

White House Wages Stealth War on Condoms The government is waging a covert war on condoms. Fact sheets on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus have disappeared from government sites. Right wing activists have been appointed to the the presidential AIDS panel. Government audits of AIDS activist groups who protest these policies have begun. So, apparently only evil-doers have sex outside of marriage, and they deserve to die horrible deaths.
posted by dejah420 at 10:14 AM PST - 166 comments

Seamless City is a project made possible by proliferation of gigabytes of affordable disk space, digital cameras, photo composition applications, and a lot of time. Take a 30 mile pedestrian tour of San Francisco.
posted by mnology at 10:14 AM PST - 8 comments

eddie bracken, 1940s slapstick comedian, passed on over the weekend. the star of hail the conquering hero and the controversial miracle of morgan's creek, bracken was often regarded as the onscreen alter ego of pioneering writer/director preston sturges. unfortunately, he correctly predicted that his appearance at film forum would be his last.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:40 AM PST - 6 comments

Can Mercenaries Protect Hamid Karzai? The US govt is hiring private mercenaries to do it's dirty work overseas. In short, by hiring private military contractors such as DynCorp, the U.S. government has found an effective way to conduct foreign policy by proxy and in secret. These proxies cannot be monitored, are effectively immune from all criminal sanctions, and are dangerously hard to control since they answer to corporate bosses, not military brass. (easy registration required)
posted by Coop at 9:37 AM PST - 12 comments

"I was willing to bet that there was going to be a universe, and I hit the nail on the head." The other day we had Avram Davidson, which got me thinking of Calvino's Invisible Cities, but all the recent talk about black holes made me remember that Italo Calvino is at his most charming when he's playing with physics, math, and cosmology in Cosmicomics.
posted by vraxoin at 8:17 AM PST - 15 comments

Gigposters.com is a huge gallery of band gig posters, most lovingly silkscreened by hand. It has a good collection of favorites like Art Chantry and Pearl Jam, but also recent upstarts Aesthetic Apparatus. My favorites are on the other end of the musical spectrum, as I have several of the great country posters of Hatch Show Print. What happens when these posters are left up long after the gig? Why, they only become more charming with age.
posted by Stan Chin at 8:02 AM PST - 16 comments

Salon Opens up Premium ... sort of. Salon will now let you read premium content in exchange for viewing an ad. Is this a signal that paid content isn't working for them, a groundbreaking way to bring in ad revenue (as they claim), both, or neither?
posted by risenc at 7:55 AM PST - 35 comments

100 year average shows "stock market prefers Democratic presidents to Republicans" - "President George W. Bush inherited the lousy end of the business cycle...[however]...Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. [from Slate] Meanwhile, deficit spending [NYT reg. req.] is back in fashion -Guess I'm putting my $ in gold.....
posted by troutfishing at 7:44 AM PST - 49 comments

Frightening Archaeology: Dark Passage is scarier than Infiltration; less cosy than Lost America; and more disturbing than Ruins of Detroit or any other ruination already investigated on Metafilter. In fact, it's probably the extreme incarnation of the thriving world of websites about abandoned buildings, full of spooky mental asylums, echoes of depravity and twisted archaeology - like a spaced-out online version of Brad Anderson's Session 9. Or the real thing. To make matters worse, it also falls disconcertingly into the "What's this all about?" category. Brrrrr.... [QT/WM required for the last link only - please disregard "Purchase" title and enjoy Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. Via Linkfilter.]
posted by Carlos Quevedo at 3:26 AM PST - 42 comments

Turducken: it's been discussed on MeFi before (here and here), but now it's gone mainstream: an article and recipe in the NYTimes. Anybody having one next week?
posted by josephtate at 2:49 AM PST - 21 comments

The Tulse Luper Suitcases is an extravagantly ambitious (and typically pretentious) multimedia work-in-progress by idiosyncratic writer/director Peter Greenaway. The contents of the 92 suitcases are summarised here. (Originally via memepool).
posted by misteraitch at 2:42 AM PST - 3 comments