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Auggie Wren's Christmas Story, by Paul Auster. Read by the author and brought to life in the movie Smoke.
posted by billyfleetwood at 11:48 PM PST - 5 comments

Ever admired those hard-working hackers, toiling away to get you the programs you've always loathed to have? Have you ever dreamt of exploring the innards of someone else's computer but have held back due to those pesky legalities? If you said yes to either of the above questions or just want to play an online hacking simulation, then SlaveHack is the website for you. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi at 10:31 PM PST - 9 comments

Enjoy a heaping helping of old time radio with classic Christmas specials from The Jack Benny Show. [more inside]
posted by dhammond at 10:02 PM PST - 7 comments

The Four Horsemen: Just in time for holidays, enjoy a pleasant chat between the world's most famous atheists - Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett.
posted by empath at 8:52 PM PST - 79 comments

Do You Know What I'm Going To Do Next Saturday? is a Flickr set of the pages from Helen Palmer Geisel's (Dr. Seuss's first wife) now out of print children's book that gained notoreity for its depiction of children doing fun & very dangerous things like joining the marines, playing with guns & fighting American Gladiator style.
posted by jonson at 6:22 PM PST - 34 comments

A site for artist Bas Jan Ader (wikipedia) who was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. Site includes his most famous piece, I'm Too Sad to Tell You.
posted by dobbs at 5:08 PM PST - 15 comments

Virtual Tour of Steve's Weird House. "Stephen resides in a Victorian home that is a cluttered combination of museum, library and art gallery, decorated with that old-world Addam's Family charm. Not only is every inch of every wall covered with art, but all the ceilings are also decorated." (Via.)
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:14 PM PST - 23 comments

artjob.ru is a Russian site worth exploring with some pretty awesome, eclectic galleries (some nsfw). Naoto Hattori, 134 paintings of surrealistic Mona Lisas transformed and more l Child Soldiers Dream Simply of Being Children ads for Amnesty International/photographs by Michael Lewis l Christian Lohfink's playfully mischievous and dark humor photographs l Elliott Erwitt's superb black and white photographs, many iconic l [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 2:00 PM PST - 18 comments

Robinson Jeffers: Peace Poet. [Via Hit & Run.] [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 1:05 PM PST - 4 comments

Electric Christmas Trees. [more inside]
posted by Tube at 11:22 AM PST - 3 comments

Eric Volz Freed. Following a thirty-year sentence and a later appeal, Eric Volz was set free by a Nicaraguan court. As discussed in The Blue previously. His family's statement.
posted by John of Michigan at 11:20 AM PST - 10 comments

"Wall Dogs" were sign painters that crafted ads directly on the walls of buildings (in time becoming Ghost Signs, previously posted on Mefi 1, 2, 3) and their craft is not dead.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:50 AM PST - 6 comments

Push Capitalism. Bill Moyers' interview with Dr. Benjamin Barber about the state of our modern capitalist society and how he believes capitalism threatens American democracy. PBS.org streaming video. [more inside]
posted by orelius at 10:26 AM PST - 77 comments

A YouTube Channel devoted to 3D animation student projects
posted by jlori at 9:21 AM PST - 3 comments

It's an advert for chocolate. It's a man in a gorilla suit drumming to a track by Philip Collins Ltd. It's been very popular. It's won awards. It's been spoofed. And it's been mashed-up... some bad (Metalica (sic), ACDC, Guns and Roses), some good (Bonnie Tyler, Subsource, A Skillz, Bon Jovi, Deep Purple, Nirvana) and some utterly sublime ('Enders, Bodyrockers, Cameo). But great adverts don't always equal great sales. Bonus: Monkey Drummer. (Previously)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:57 AM PST - 38 comments

Russian cold war bombers - The Tu 95 Bear and Tu 160 Blackjack, based in central Russia, which resumed long range patrols in August.
posted by Artw at 8:28 AM PST - 52 comments

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you can get what you need. [more inside]
posted by punkfloyd at 7:01 AM PST - 23 comments

Census sensitivity. The Economist takes a look at the politics of enumeration.
posted by goo at 2:40 AM PST - 14 comments

After I posted this article, many people asked me who listens to that berserk music. Well, it's most popular with Japanese girls lumped under the general term "gyaru". It is not really a fashion movement per se, as it has fractured into scores of rapidly-evolving subgroups--usually hostile to each other, even though many appear the same to the uninitiated. In fact, the book Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno, published in 2007, is already said to be out of date. This website is a bit more current. What do "gyaru" look like? There are now quite a few slideshows of gyaru on the streets of Tokyo on YouTube. Examples: here, here, and here. And for those who need to buy these "fashions", the primary bibles are FRUiTS and Egg. There is something wrong with that country.......
posted by metasonix at 2:34 AM PST - 78 comments