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Bourbonnais. No, not Bourbonnais, IL, but Bourbonnais, a historic province in France that flourished during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In this area there are hundreds of churches built in the Romanesque style.

In 2004 Stephen Murray, an art history professor, and his students recieved a $500,000 grant to document, process, and archive data from the churches into a digital database, all available online.
posted by provolot at 11:51 PM PST - 13 comments

Amazing collection of several galleries full of Japanese "urban ruins" photos, including abandoned amusement parks, refineries, apartment blocks, hospitals, schools, bowling alleys, & much more, including Battleship Island, the (previously posted) abandoned coal mining island off the coast of Nagasaki. Via.
posted by jonson at 11:04 PM PST - 34 comments

Swiss cheese company offers 500 AA air miles in every packet. Straight away the frequent flying geeks spend a ton of money on buying case loads of cheese and fondue just to get the air miles. Almost immediately the scheming cheese makers say they've run out of air miles, retrospectively cancel the offer, and try and fob off customers with a cheap swiss army knife, one per household.
posted by w0mbat at 10:54 PM PST - 41 comments

Rupert Bear has been given a makeover so that he'll have more appeal to today's audience. Invented by Mary Tourtel in 1920 and appearing in the Daily Express newspaper, he also stars in the Rupert Little Bear Library and in a long-running set of annuals - which also championed the art of paperfolding (origami). [more inside]
posted by tellurian at 10:03 PM PST - 23 comments

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was created in 1956 by the Mississippi Legislature in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The Commission's express purpose was to "do and perform any and all acts and things deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states." In other words, it was an official tax-funded agency to combat the activities of the Civil Rights Movement. Their records are now online. [MI]
posted by marxchivist at 9:50 PM PST - 11 comments

50 cent disses Oprah...says chat show host is insufficiently "street".
posted by Artw at 9:08 PM PST - 70 comments

The 50 Greatest Commercials of the 1980s. (via AdJab)
posted by Saucy Intruder at 7:44 PM PST - 52 comments

Lotta Pinata (text in Spanish) Ladies and gentleman, I introduce you to the world’s largest piñata. At 14.6 meters, that’s over 43 feet to the metrically-impaired, that is a whole lotta candy. Someone call Mr. Guinness.
posted by mannythedog at 5:59 PM PST - 6 comments

Prime Minister's Questions is a weekly televised convention in the UK started in the 1950s during which Members of Parliament get a chance to hold their leader accountable for his or her actions. Sick of boring political meetings? "PMQ" is fast-paced, hip, heated, eloquent, insulting, and sometimes hilarious. In fact, the inherant humor of it is has been well explored.

But brits aren't the only ones; "Question Time", as it's called generically, has been adapted in other countries as well. Yet the show often shocks Americans since the concept of weekly unscripted access to leaders without giving days of question prep-time seems like a fantasy. Of course, maybe the alternative (0:41) is much worse.
posted by TimeTravelSpeed at 5:48 PM PST - 63 comments

Machine beaths Man. Deep Fritz (.pdf) has beaten world chess champion Vladimir Kramnikin in Bonn.
posted by four panels at 4:20 PM PST - 68 comments

There is irrefutable proof here that relates to 9/11, judicial and prosecutal corruption, corruption in the FBI, police corruption. I am firmly convinced that the members of the evil shadow government identified on this page, and their microwaving agents have come into being to bring to this world their ruler, SATAN and that the world is in its "end times" . I believe that these evil agents of SATAN are responsible for past acts which are in part described on this page. However I do believe that people can survive these times if they are prepared.
posted by boo_radley at 4:13 PM PST - 58 comments

Juice "Test Videos"
posted by hama7 at 3:23 PM PST - 48 comments

From reviled to revered. A lot has changed since N.W.A. formed twenty years ago this month. They brought gangster chic Straight Out of Compton (NSFW Youtube) and said Fuck the Police in 1989. Then came squabbling and diss tracks. Founder Eazy E died of AIDS a decade ago. Ice Cube still raps and makes movies. Dr. Dre went on to discover folks like Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and The Game and still produces. Both are superstars. Some other former members, um, aren't (NSFW audio). Want to learn more? Their manager Jerry Heller just wrote a book. [MI]
posted by Bookhouse at 3:13 PM PST - 25 comments

Streaming episodes of Spenser: For Hire Not available on DVD, not airing on any American channel. But available at the preceding link. Spenser! Hawk! Frigging HAWK! Watch it now and thank me later.requires activex plugin for Firefox

If Spenser makes you nostalgic for 80's Boston, watch Dana Hersey drop in at the Rat and grab a slice at the Pizza Pad in a Kenmore Square that no longer exists.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:23 PM PST - 33 comments

Five go adventuring in Disneyland. Enid Blyton, beloved British children's author, created tales of child detectives Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog in the 1940s. Deemed outdated, or at times downright offensive(.pdf), stories abound that the author's work has been banned from libraries or school reading lists in the past for being sexist and/or racist. Debate sprang up earlier this year over the publisher's attempts to update the books for a modern audience (read: American), which some interpreted as a politically correct attempt at sanitisation. The Famous Five was nevertheless voted by adults as their favourite series for children in 2005.
Now owned by brand business Chorion, the historic characters are being reimagined as Cole, Dylan, Jo and Allie in a 26-episode animated series from Disney. Some are delighted, others are not amused. Pour yourself some lashings of ginger beer, and remember Kirrin Island fondly. It may be the end of an era.
posted by szechuan at 1:59 PM PST - 19 comments

Dude, there are some fucked up creatures crawling around on the ocean floor.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:52 PM PST - 66 comments

Unsung Anti-Heroes: There are a few relatively unknown individuals who have saved more lives than anyone else on the planet. Norman Borlaug is credited with saving over a billion lives by starting the Green Revolution; he later won a Nobel Prize. Simon Petrov stopped the world from being annihilated in a nuclear war, and later won $1,000 from the San Francisco Bay Civic Association. Howard Florey, more than Alexander Fleming, made mass-produced penicillin possible, saving upwards of 50 million people, while Peter Safar invented CPR, and so on. But what about the opposite? One conservative site asks "who is the anti-Borlaug?" with a mix of more or less radical results. Leaving aside those who were directly responsible for mass deaths, who does the hive mind nominate as the anti-Borlaug?[more on some of of these heroes and anti-heroes inside]
posted by blahblahblah at 11:41 AM PST - 73 comments

Make Life Better with a Sailboat-in-a-Closet. A multi-section plywood meditation for overcoming life's vicissitudes through apartment woodworking.
posted by paulsc at 10:53 AM PST - 9 comments

Dutch artist Bert Simons, suffering from a mid-life crisis, decided to clone himself to become immortal. By means of state-of-the-art computer multiplication techniques he found a way for you to build your own Bert clone! (1.2 MB PDF) He is currently in the process to clone a female specimen. (NSFW: cardboard nudity) [via]
posted by kika at 10:51 AM PST - 4 comments

TV5 is the first Mongolian TV station to broadcast over the internet. They offer a wide range of shows on contemporary Mongolian life and culture.
posted by jason's_planet at 10:42 AM PST - 17 comments

The Museum of Kitschy Stitches - A gallery of notorious knits.
posted by dobbs at 9:58 AM PST - 9 comments

Pete Goldlust creates crayon art, but it's not quite what you might be thinking. He also does playful wall installations, odd prints and other whimsical yet monstrous things.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:27 AM PST - 7 comments

What you have purchased for less than the price of a cup of coffee is arguably one of the most important "lost" music recordings out there. Record collector Warren Hill paid 75 cents at a yard sale in Chelsea, New York for an acetate in a plain cardboard sleeve. After some research, Hill's friends confirmed that the acetate disc, recorded by sound engineer Norman Dolph (who also wrote Reunion's "Life Is A Rock But The Radio Rolled Me"), was the third recording ever made by the Velvet Underground and the first album they ever did. A demo rejected by Columbia Records, the acetate is now up for auction on EBay, where the high bid is $124,640.50 and climbing, already breaking records as the most expensive LP ever sold at auction. (Bonus: see a post from a teenage eyewitness to the VU's 1966 session that produced this acetate.)
posted by jonp72 at 9:17 AM PST - 32 comments

Scared of Santa (via)
posted by gottabefunky at 8:52 AM PST - 21 comments

"'Who has this picture?' he asked, his voice rising. 'Nobody.'" He won a Pulitzer in 1980 for "Spot News Photography" , but didn't, or couldn't, take credit. (via [1] [2] [3])
posted by bardic at 6:12 AM PST - 25 comments

The story, set in the distant future, involves a group of immortal intellectuals who lives isolated from an outside reality of unbridled savagery and brutality. No, I'm not talking about Metafilter, but Zardoz. The Penis is Bad, the Gun is Good. In the future the real threat isn’t Islamofascism or rogue Kryptonians, but bored immortals who dress like Belgians and can’t get it up. Did I mention Sean Connery in red S/M short shorts? You just can't make movies this wonderfully terrible anymore. (previously on MetaFilter, in the pre YouTube era, here)
posted by Meatbomb at 6:11 AM PST - 61 comments

Grandma's Little Helper Tired of bluehairs clogging up the left lane doing 20? Apparently, there are companies who feel the same way. Aware Car has developed a computer system that tracks other cars and compensates for the losses in reflex that accompany aging. This is only one example of the new industry of providing technology to the elderly, who will reach record numbers in the next 20 years as the Baby Boomers continue to age. Pictures show GPS tracking for wheelchairs, "caller ID on steroids", and the new driving system in action.
posted by PreacherTom at 5:29 AM PST - 17 comments

What can two nerds from Chicago do about the crisis in Darfur? Donor fatigue means the marginal value of each life has effectively dropped to zero. Kill 5 people, kill 500, kill 500,000 - it makes no difference - each added fatality has absolutely no policy impact and won’t change the situation one iota. It’s not that as many as 500,000 (essentially an entire Seattle) have died in Darfur. The horrific thing is that they could kill another 500,000 and nobody will bat an eyelash.
posted by notsnot at 4:53 AM PST - 95 comments

Content Management Systems I Would Or Wouldn’t Fuck [via]
posted by feelinglistless at 3:05 AM PST - 58 comments