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The Ward Warren Film. Gary Mack, Curator at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, is calling it "the best home movie I have seen of the Kennedy arrival in Dallas on November 22, 1963." For the first time, color film of President and Mrs. Kennedy arriving on Air Force One that fateful day is being released for public viewing. [more inside]
posted by jjray at 11:02 PM PST - 13 comments

Paul Watson's Sea Shepard Crew is at again. On the 6th Jan 2010, the Ady Gill, a $2M dollar high speed catameran was sunk after a collision (video + story) with a Japanese whaling ship in the antartic. Now, the former captain of the Ady Gill is being detained (video+story) on the exact same whaling ship after using a jet ski and cover of darkness to climb aboard and present the Japanese with a civilian arrest warrant and $2M dollar demand for damages. Diplomatic crisis builds as governments are unsure what will happen to Mr. Bethune. He may face piracy charges in Japan.
posted by Funmonkey1 at 10:25 PM PST - 131 comments

The future of web publishing, part seventeen million and six. Elizabeth Bear (guest posting for MetaFilter's own Charles Stross) writes about her experiences with the hyperfiction work Shadow Unit.
posted by brundlefly at 8:11 PM PST - 18 comments

Fly-based art.
posted by kenko at 7:20 PM PST - 14 comments

The Bolt Who Screwed Christmas is the last movie narrated by Jonathan Harris (Lost in Space). A short animated parody of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Voices also include Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright and Bill Mumy, also from Lost in Space. Nominated for a number of awards at the L.A. Reel Film Festival. Posted here at Meta because this is the only movie trailer you'll ever watch with what seems to be a naked woman (at 24 secs in this link) in a relationship with a bolt. A unique wtf moment in movie making!
posted by HuronBob at 6:54 PM PST - 8 comments

"I couldn't let these Klansmen get away with murder..." Investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell has started a blog focusing on cold case murders of civil rights workers. In this Moth Podcast, Mitchell discusses some of his investigations, the death threats he received, and the stunning redemption and forgiveness he witnessed. For his work Mitchell was recently awarded a MacArthur "Genius" grant. [more inside]
posted by bguest at 5:43 PM PST - 18 comments

Some guys in a Minneapolis basement, 1984. Rehearsing "When Doves Cry", "Irresistible Bitch", "Erotic City".... [more inside]
posted by gleuschk at 4:48 PM PST - 65 comments

R is quickly becoming the programming language for data analysis and statistics. R (an implementation of S) is free, open-source, and has hundreds of packages available. You can use it on the command-line, through a GUI, or in your favorite text editor. Use it with Python, Perl, or Java. Sweave R code into LaTeX documents for reproducible research. [more inside]
posted by parudox at 4:07 PM PST - 115 comments

In 1989, Hollywood heavy metal band Rock Sugar was stranded on a desert island. For the last twenty years, the only music they had to listen to was the 80's pop CD collection of a 13 year old girl. And now, Rock Sugar has come home. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 4:05 PM PST - 46 comments

Christina Hendricks, a perennial Metafilter favorite, shows off her curves on the cover of New York Magazine. Often described as voluptuous, Hendricks is a far cry from the waifs fashion magazines regularly showcase. So when this fashion blogger slammed her appearance at the Golden Globes, is it any wonder her husband--and over a hundred comments--came to her defense?
posted by misha at 2:58 PM PST - 251 comments

A favorite of John Cage and Gyorgy Ligeti, the latter describing his music as "so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed but at the same time emotional...the best of any composer living today," Conlon Nancarrow's musical ideas were nevertheless too complex and technically demanding for human performers, and his political ideas too radical and leftist for McCarthy-era America. Expatriated to Mexico, the Texarkana-born avant-gardeist lived most of his life in isolation, in a cluttered, dusty studio surrounded by records, piles of books, empty Vodka bottles, newspapers, cigarette cartons, and the tools of his trade: 2 old player pianos and a custom-built piano roll press. [more inside]
posted by swift at 2:55 PM PST - 16 comments

"Is beauty informed by contemporary culture? By history? Or is it defined by the surgeon’s hand?" [Some links NSFW]
posted by william_boot at 2:31 PM PST - 64 comments

The Birth Survey is a comprehensive survey of women who have given birth within the last three years. The first of its kind, it allows women to answer questions regarding their experiences with every aspect of their maternity care from the prenatal care to the birth to perinatal and post-partum care. Examples of questions include how long of wait there was between arranging the first prenatal appointment and having it, how long of wait there was for prenatal appointments after arriving at the office, what equipment was available during labor (birth ball, birthing stool, shower, tub, etc.), and if discussions regarding post-partum mood disorders took place during post-partum care. [more inside]
posted by zizzle at 1:51 PM PST - 53 comments

Speech impediments mostly afflict boys. Often with pushy fathers. Social media is giving them a voice.
posted by bobbyelliott at 1:39 PM PST - 25 comments

Space rock contains organic molecular feast Scientists believe the Murchison meteorite could have originated before the Sun was formed, 4.65 billion years ago. The researchers say it probably passed through primordial clouds in the early Solar System, picking up organic chemicals. [more inside]
posted by longsleeves at 1:28 PM PST - 19 comments

Frank O'Hara was a New York poet, even though he lived less than half of his 40 years in the city. He grew up in Grafton, MA, was a sonarman in WWII and roomed with Edward Gorey at Harvard before moving to the city he would forever be associated with. Naturally, there was am article on him in The New Yorker a couple of years ago. We're lucky enough to have a number of videos of O'Hara, including a reading of the lovely "Having a Coke with You. There's also quite a bit of audio of him, and I can't but recommend this mp3 of John Ashbery, Alfred Leslie, Bill Berkson and Michelle Elligott reminiscing about O'Hara at the MOMA, where he worked. And there are quite a few of his poems available online, as well as five of the poem-paintings he did with Norman Bluhm. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 12:26 PM PST - 16 comments

This dog is wearing a cardboard Star Trek Enterprise costume with Bud Light cans as warp nacelles. This is a sea horse. This pony has a condo. Your argument is invalid.
posted by jbickers at 12:00 PM PST - 50 comments

The Lobbying-Media Complex. The Nation explores the pervasive influence of paid lobbyists on the media landscape. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 11:59 AM PST - 21 comments

Music and the Brain The Library of Congress' Music and the Brain podcasts offer lectures and conversations about new research at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and music. Sufi rituals, Wednesday is Indigo Blue (synaesthesia), Your Brain on Jazz, The Music of Language and the Language of Music, and more.
posted by carter at 11:43 AM PST - 13 comments

Broadway, block by block, 1899. (SLNYPL) "A 19th century version of Google's Street View, allowing us to flip through the images block by block, passing parks, churches, novelty stores, furriers, glaziers, and other businesses of the city's past."
posted by GrammarMoses at 10:07 AM PST - 19 comments

Giant anteater. Skiing Batmen. Knight stirring his his cappuccino. Red devils. Snow falling on the beards of face painted gourd toting evil spirit rebukers. CARNIVAL!
posted by cashman at 9:57 AM PST - 27 comments

The New Microsoft Smartphone. Microsoft has revealed their latest Windows Mobile Smartphone, today, dubbed the Windows Phone 7 Series. Videos from the conference. They've announced the new phone will be available on most of the major carriers. [more inside]
posted by shmegegge at 9:26 AM PST - 217 comments

Doug Fieger lead singer of The Knack has died. The band's # 1 hit, My Sharona from 1979, created a critical backlash (a.k.a the Knacklash) which has softened in recent years.
posted by jeffen at 7:46 AM PST - 105 comments

Picture Book Report is an extended love-song to books. Fifteen illustrators will reach out to their favorite books and create wonderful pieces of art in response to the text that has moved them, shaped them, or excited them. From sci-fi to children’s books to fantasy to serious novels, we’ll cover them all. For three weeks out of every month there will be a new illustration every day from one of us along with our thoughts, process, anything we can come up with. Together we will try to excite readers both new and old and capture some of that magic of storytelling.. [more inside]
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 5:29 AM PST - 12 comments

BBC Interview with Phil Jones, victim of the Climategate Scandal.
posted by diwolf at 4:33 AM PST - 64 comments

B-Rhymes is a rhyming dictionary that compares words based on their sounds, making it ideal for finding near-rhymes.
posted by archagon at 2:19 AM PST - 28 comments

Due to the threat of legal action the British National Party has amended its membership policy to be open to all races. It's first non-white member, a Sikh, will soon be handed his membership card personally by BNP leader Nick Griffin. Explains Griffin:

Anyone can be a member of this party. We are happy to accept anyone as a member providing they agree with us that this country should remain fundamentally British

posted by PenDevil at 2:10 AM PST - 46 comments

SNPedia is a wiki-based database of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Here are SNPedia's Top 10 SNPs of the Year.

SNPedia runs on Semantic Mediawiki, an extension to Mediawiki, the same software that runs Wikipedia. [more inside]
posted by vostok at 1:21 AM PST - 9 comments