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Remember that Shining trailer from a few weeks back? Now they've done it with Big. (embedded WMV)
posted by adrober at 11:29 PM PST - 46 comments

Alternative methods of photography When I first saw Scott Mutter [previously linked], I was hooked, and purchased a manual focus Nikon FG. I've resisted going digital (as have many) [partial nudity] until recently, when I purchased a DSLR - as I felt that nothing could come close to an SLR. While I love it, I find myself still fascinated by the older methods [main link], and the internet has allowed for easy distribution of unusual pinhole camera plans [annoying flash interface]. But is there a place for those of us holding on to the last fragments of traditional photography, or will alternative digital methods have to suffice?
posted by MysticMCJ at 10:13 PM PST - 42 comments

Blixa Bargeld reads the Hornbach Catalog. In a series of ads, finalists in 2004 for an EPICA award, the poet and musician Blixa Bargeld, known primarily as a leader of the industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, read aloud descriptions of home improvement products. With hilarious results.
posted by jann at 9:38 PM PST - 35 comments

Finally! The link between Adolf Hitler and Julie Andrews explained! I can't believe it never occurred to me before. [via memepool]
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:25 PM PST - 55 comments

How about some pre-Friday flash fun? Nothing to win here. Just a lot of bouncing boxes.
posted by panoptican at 8:06 PM PST - 21 comments

In Europe, it's debated whether it's Suchowola Poland, the village of Krahule near Kremnica Slovakia, Dilove in western Ukraine, or Bernotai Lithuania. In Asia, there are more disputes, but Kyzyl put up an obelisk and stages tours. Various places claim that the Central African Republic is at the geographical centre of Africa, but that seems more likely based on looking at a map than measuring anything. On January 9 1956, Admiral Byrd flew over the geographical center of Antarctica. Alice Springs is pretty close to the centre of Australia. The center of North America is at latitude 48°21'19" north, longitude 99°59' 57" west in Rugby North Dakota. South America's center is officially Chapada dos Guimaraes in Cuiaba Brazil.
posted by Kickstart70 at 7:45 PM PST - 11 comments

Are we making Iraq into the country we wanted to invade in the first place? Rob Corddry has the answers (as he does so often these days)
posted by FeldBum at 7:23 PM PST - 17 comments

How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later is a speech by Philip K. Dick which he never delivered. In it he details his theory of time and reality. A complimentary speech, which he did deliver, is If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others. According to one account "people left the auditorium, it was later reported, looking as though they'd been hit with a hammer." Other essays by him in that vein are Man, Android and Machine and Cosmogony and Cosmology.

Here are some excerpts from his exegesis. Also, a collection of interviews with Dick.
posted by Kattullus at 6:16 PM PST - 119 comments

This entry from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization website is kinda creepy, especially if you download the high resolution JPEGs and look at them in an image editor.
posted by dbiedny at 6:14 PM PST - 42 comments

Are you in your early 40s? Do you resemble the God Apollo yet feel a certain dissastisfaction (like a splinter in your mind) toward photos of yourself? You are not alone: "I have enclosed below a series of pictures to show how the US government starting around 1994 went back in time with remote sensing and holographic radiation longitudinal emf and sound wave holographic energy beams as shown in the movie time tunnel to place different computer generated holographic archetypes of different Nordic, Celtic, and Aryan faces and other attributes around my body as if I were a microcosm of the center of the universe, Adam, and God, to change the genetic attributes, facial form, eye color, hair color, voice sound, and many other body attributes throughout my life year by year from my birth (1962, Jan 23 Midnight) to the present representing correlation's between the years in my life and the ages of evolution and history from the beginning of time to the present." [via Waxy]
posted by scarabic at 5:41 PM PST - 55 comments

Celebrity Mugshots in Needlepoint
posted by jrossi4r at 5:05 PM PST - 18 comments

Tryangle cannot be defined, but it's way fun. Use it to easily create angular art pieces, then share your creation with the teeming masses on the Tryangle Flickr pool.
posted by Cecily at 4:23 PM PST - 15 comments

Sixteen serious questions raised by the 1964 holiday classic Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.
posted by lola at 4:12 PM PST - 57 comments

How to use your prosthesis (quicktime). Ed Van Den Brouck hosts the first in our "how to use your prosthesis" series. apologies to Julian? Also cool architecture.
posted by alball at 2:33 PM PST - 15 comments

Double-discharge Lichtenberg figure [qtvr] : what they are and how they're made.
posted by crunchland at 1:32 PM PST - 18 comments

"[S]ave more lives" is what George Bush pledged to do in a speech today about the AIDS epidemic. With more people living with AIDS in the world than ever before, is the US's problematic stance of promoting an ABC policy and other controversial policies working? Or is it an appropriate response to a culturally touchy topic that some oddball health officials in African nations are still coming to grips with?
posted by jessamyn at 1:30 PM PST - 18 comments

Benvenuto Cellini—sculptor, untrustworthy autobiographer, convicted sodomite—was in the news recently when one of his works, "the Mona Lisa of Sculpture," made the FBI's Top Ten Art Heists list. His Saliera, or salt cellar, which he designed for Francis I while in residence at Fontainebleau, is valued at US$55 million. It was stolen in May 2003; people purporting to be the thieves demanded £3.5 million in ransom in August 2003. It's still missing. (The piece is so fragile that it's likely that it won't survive its latest adventure.) More about Cellini at Wikipedia.
posted by goatdog at 12:56 PM PST - 18 comments

Orwell: Politics and the English Language. Some timely links in the fast changing world of instant communication. Alistair Cooke Needles the Jargonauts in Assessing the State of the English Language. The Electronic Revolution by William S. Burroughs. On Wittgenstein's Concept of a Language Game. The Economist Looking for a sign. John Zerzan Language: Origin and Meaning. Hakim Bey: Aimless Wandering: Chuang Tzu's Chaos Linguistics also Chaos Linguistics. The Language of Animals. John C Lilly on Interspecies Communication. Language Log: Natural language and artificial intelligence. Natural Language Processing AI News.
posted by MetaMonkey at 12:55 PM PST - 22 comments

The Beerbelly A removable spare tire that serves a stealth beverage.
posted by ColdChef at 12:53 PM PST - 22 comments

Everybody's an expert, but does expertise promote better predictions?
posted by semmi at 12:26 PM PST - 14 comments

NewsFilter: Squirrels attack
posted by spinoza at 12:11 PM PST - 57 comments

Are soy candles better than paraffin wax candles? Yes. Soy (or Soja) "healthy candles" may be all the rave among new age hippies, but this time they've really got a point. There's no shortage of vendors, but why not keep it real and make your own?
posted by analogue at 11:56 AM PST - 21 comments

Plagiarism it's just about the most wrong thing you're told not to do in college. It seems even more wrong when one of your professors does it, but it certainly does drive up prices.
posted by nile_red at 11:47 AM PST - 63 comments

Pentagon bribery scandal -- Iraqi journalists bought out. Officials in Washington have admitted that the US military has bribed Iraqi journalists with under-the-table payoffs of up to $200 a month -- twice the average Iraqi monthly income -- for producing upbeat newspaper, radio and television reports about the war in Iraq. This follows a similar report yesterday that the military secretly paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of pro-American articles written by the US Information Operations Task Force in Baghdad. A Pentagon spokesman described the report as "troubling". "This article raises some questions as to whether or not some of the practices that are described in there are consistent with the principles of this department."
posted by insomnia_lj at 11:12 AM PST - 63 comments

Advent calendars 2005. Back when the internets were very young, people began combining a wonderful old holiday tradition, the Advent calendar, with the latest in communications, the internet, and thus it was that interactive Advent calendars were born. This one (requires Flash) was the first one I ever saw and here are some other of my favorites: Leslie Harpold's and Tibi and Beens. Want more? Check Google.
posted by Lynsey at 11:12 AM PST - 13 comments

A must for Rush fans everywhere, and those who enjoyed Reagan's Raiders and Liberality.
posted by you just lost the game at 11:05 AM PST - 39 comments

Trafficing in unsecure data? - ticket those schmucks on your network who screw your carefully planned security measures with their sloppiness.
posted by sourbrew at 10:57 AM PST - 10 comments

Iwan.com has lots of nice photos of interesting places and people and an inoffensive site layout.
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 9:40 AM PST - 21 comments

Pete Ashdown, the founder of Utah's oldest ISP, is apparently crazy enough to challenge Orrin Hatch's reelection. Ashdown descided to run when he heard Hatch propose that p2p user's computers should be required to explode (see also the INDUCE Act). Ashdown's campaign is the first to wikify its platform & strategy. Boing boing has endorsed him.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:30 AM PST - 40 comments

Remember Blogpoly? You can now play it online at Kurnik. Still no Metafilter though. (via Blogger Buzz)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:05 AM PST - 2 comments

First World AIDS Day: CBC archive A short clip from December 1st, 1988, the first World AIDS Day (with a Canadian focus). Also of interest from the CBC archives are two pages of radio and video clips (21 in all) on the early years of the disease.
posted by livii at 7:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Today is World AIDS Day around the world. Millions die from this disease every year, and I wish that we still devoted a whole day worth of links to AIDS. (You can still see it in the yearly December archives.) Also there's other info at Wikipedia. Please give a little to the effort if you can.
posted by wheelieman at 6:52 AM PST - 5 comments

"It's like putting Christmas lights up on your FEMA trailer."
posted by empath at 6:46 AM PST - 41 comments

Hel Looks. Street fashion from Helsinki, Finland. You're probably familiar with Japanese street style, and how they're dressing in Shibuya, but what are things like on the other side of the world? Some Hel fashions look familiar. Very familiar. Some recall the 'world between the wars'. Shemagh are popular, although not for the head. Sometimes just...eek! If Death Metal marries Neko Musume, in which religion will the kittens children be raised? Of course this is Helsinki: "When I dress up the most important thing is not to be cold!" [via]
posted by Slithy_Tove at 6:28 AM PST - 39 comments

RIP Wendie Jo Sperber: actress, mother, and breast cancer warrior.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:20 AM PST - 27 comments

"I would get a doll that cried or peed when you pressed its stomach, and think it was pretty lame. I'd be like, 'Mom, I don't want this. Can I return it for a camping set?'" With NSFW accessories? I guess a plain, old creepy doll is now out of the question as a gift?
posted by Rothko at 2:40 AM PST - 37 comments