March 19, 2012

V: Very Amber

"I just love Old Milwaukee. That’s my official answer." Over the past few months, Will Ferrell has been creating local-market commercials for Old Milwaukee beer. [more inside]
posted by roll truck roll at 11:15 PM PST - 69 comments

"What I want for dinner is a bass fished in Lake Huron in 1920" -William Burroughs

Classic seafood and fish recipes, from a time when it was cheap and plentiful, and often cured in salt.
posted by Brian B. at 9:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Moving pictures

Stereographic drawings from Dain Fagerholm.
posted by unliteral at 9:07 PM PST - 21 comments

I don't even...

OneTinyHand.com - Not safe for sanity.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:15 PM PST - 45 comments

No Mortgage, Underwater Anyway

Live in America? Find out if your house will be underwater in 2100 and plan your sandbag purchasing well in advance.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:53 PM PST - 46 comments

The Strange Art of Picking a TV Title

How TV show titles are picked, aka why "Friends" wasn't named "Across The Hall".
posted by reenum at 6:19 PM PST - 74 comments

How David beats Goliath

Substituting effort for ability turns out to be a winning formula for underdogs in all walks of life: Malcolm Gladwell on how unconventional strategies and effort can beat the odds.
posted by latkes at 6:18 PM PST - 55 comments

Video of aurora from orbit

Auroras Underfoot is a short documentary about auroras by NASA, which uses high-definition images taken by International Space Station science officer Don Pettit of aurora from orbit. Pettit writes about the difficulties of taking photographs from orbit and other subjects on his blog.
posted by Kattullus at 5:03 PM PST - 8 comments

"Streets ahead" is a goddamn phrase already, Dan Harmon

Why don't you like Community? "Community isn’t a hit under the usual means, but it’s a big fish in a new TV comedy ecosystem, one where the way you make money isn’t by attracting the largest audience, but the most passionate one. " A point-counterpoint from the Onion AV Club.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:32 PM PST - 131 comments

Oregon Trail meets Fallout meets Nethack

NEO Scavenger is a hex-based, turn-based scavenging/survival/mystery RPG. Dig through abandoned buildings! Punch a looter to death! Get eaten by a Dogman! Contract cholera! Die of cholera! Flash-based browser game, under active development; the current demo lets you explore the landscape and play with the game's mechanics at length. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 4:25 PM PST - 23 comments

Murphy Ranch: the faded dreams of a Nazi Shangri La, just outside of Hollywood

About 2 miles into the park... things start to get strange. A forbidding padlocked wrought-iron gate, surrounded by a low lying stone wall sits nestled on the edge of the trail.... Strange rusted debris starts to appear on the side of the paths. What looks like an old water filtration system, broken pieces of farm equipment, half buried sinks, strange concrete slabs with graffiti . A lovely little steam appears and makes delightful background noises, lizards and birds scatter about your feet. And then you see it. A burned-out overgrown concrete building completely covered with graffiti. Cartoon of Hitler? Check. Declaration of undying teenage love? Check.... The bunker of the building is exposed and filled with trash; a metal cage sits menacingly in the corner, and outside a series of stone steps wind up to what seems to have once been a sustenance garden. The steps then continue all the way to the top of the canyon (3,000 steps in all) and ghosts of America Nazis patrolling the wilds fill your head. Baby, we aren't at the Grove anymore... We are at the Los Angeles Nazi Compound! Well, it's actually the ruins of a small community built by Nazi sympathizers, in the hills outside of greater Los Angeles. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:40 PM PST - 50 comments

Got The Space Station Blues, with apologies to musicians everywhere

Learning his return to Earth from the International Space Station might be delayed for possibly up to two months, NASA astronaut Ron Garan sings the blues from the Soyuz spacecraft that will take him home. Eventually. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:11 PM PST - 62 comments

Oops, I may have added a few zeroes

“I bought into this idea for a long time that it was superior labor productivity that caused most manufacturing job losses,” said Rob Atkinson, of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. “Then I began to dig into the numbers.” An upcoming report argues that the price savings that U.S. factories have realized from outsourcing have incorrectly shown up as gains in U.S. output and productivity. This bias may have accounted for as much as half of the growth of U.S. manufacturing output from 1997 to 2007. (sl Wash. Post link to print version so everyone can read it.)
posted by Benny Andajetz at 1:04 PM PST - 27 comments

I'm going to have to disagree

A beautiful proposal from one hockey fan to another. Unfortunately, the first commentator felt the need to rain on their parade... (SLJezebel) [more inside]
posted by Slackermagee at 12:09 PM PST - 32 comments

the self care of insects (grooming, mlyt)

Listen to the Bug Bytes episode Scrub a Dub Bug, then head on over to youtube where you can see various insects cleaning themselves: Lacewing, bumblebee, probably a bee, praying mantis, parasitic wasp
posted by oonh at 11:47 AM PST - 8 comments

"We wanted a word that was short, memorable and impossible to mispronounce."

Alphabet Soup: Restaurant names are becoming more complicated and enigmatic. Christopher Hirst asks the experts what’s going on.
posted by Fizz at 11:43 AM PST - 52 comments

A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On.

A Fascinating Representation of Earthquake Data From 2011 (SLYT)
posted by 4ster at 11:12 AM PST - 28 comments

The pleasure of the gods

French hospitals have rooms where medical students (internes) can rest, lunch and vent off steam between calls, but these salles de garde are not your usual staff room. They are brightly decorated with lively mural paintings showing the current internes, the doctors and other hospital staff engaging in very (very) explicit sex acts. The frescos are done by the students themselves or commissioned from local artists, and are replaced on a regular basis. Here are some choice examples (sorted by hospital): Ambroise Paré, Cochin, Widal, Louis Mourier, Saint-Louis, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Institut Gustave Roussy (ibid) (ibid), Lariboisière, Robert Debré, Saint-Cloud, Tenon. Many other images can be seen on the website of an association of former internes. [Totally NSFW unless you're a medical student training in France] [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 10:40 AM PST - 203 comments

Imagine a dinosaur in sneakers stomping on Whoopi Goldberg's career... forever.

"A futuristic buddy cop movie costarring Whoopi Goldberg and a dinosaur? How could that possibly go wrong?" Theodore Rex: The Best of the Worst. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 9:43 AM PST - 105 comments

Oi! What you looking at, you little rich boy?

Some have said the protest song is dead. However UK rapper Plan B looks set to change that by releasing 'ill Manors' raging against the demonisation of the young urban poor. Ill Manors is also the name of a film Plan B had directed under the name of Ben Drew. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:40 AM PST - 26 comments

Stars, Galaxies and Lasers

Astronomer’s Paradise - A beautiful time-lapse video of Paranal Observatory in action.
posted by quin at 9:33 AM PST - 6 comments

States of American Corruption

You'll never guess which State is least corrupt in the USA!
posted by Renoroc at 8:22 AM PST - 115 comments

Slavery's Last Stronghold

Although officially abolished in 1981, slavery still exists in Mauritania. CNN Special Report includes a twenty-two minute video and offers a look inside a country where an estimated 10 - 20% are still enslaved.
posted by gman at 5:49 AM PST - 61 comments

The Iron Man

UK Prime Minister David Cameron unveils plan to lease motorways in England. David Cameron will clear the way for a multibillion-pound semi-privatisation of trunk roads and motorways as he announces plans to allow sovereign wealth funds from countries such as China to lease roads in England. Guardian liveblog.
posted by panaceanot at 5:36 AM PST - 128 comments

M.A.R. Barker 1929-2012

Role Playing Game pioneer Mohammed Al Rahman Barker died last week (PDF). Inspired through playing dungeons and Dragons, M. A. R. Barker created what is possibly the world's second RPG, Empire of the Petal Throne, set in the world of Tekumel, a world he would continue to keep building for the rest of his life. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 5:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Having Twins With a Surrogate — in India

Having Twins With a Surrogate — in India
posted by wondrous strange snow at 5:20 AM PST - 29 comments

Eurovision

Rambo Amadeus - Euro Neuro, Montenegros rapping donkey-riding entry to the 2012 Eurovision Contest. "Euro skeptik, analfabetik, try not to be hermetic. Euro Neuro don’t be skeptik, hermetic, pathetic, analfabetic forget old cosmetic you need new poetic, estetic eclectic, dialectic."
posted by dabitch at 1:27 AM PST - 62 comments

Attacking the DC Internet Voting System

Attacking the Washington, D.C. Internet Voting System (PDF). "When we inspected the terminal server’s logs, we noticed that several other attackers [from Iran, New Jersey, India, and China] were attempting to guess the SSH login passwords." J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, describes how thoroughly he and his team were able to penetrate a pilot Internet voting system run by the District of Columbia, as part of an open public test in 2010. An earlier report on the attack. Via comp.risks. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 12:43 AM PST - 56 comments

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