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The 1,120 words you can't say on the back of your custom NFL jersey NSFW sort of
posted by drezdn at 11:26 PM PST - 37 comments

You've seen the best album covers... but have you seen the worst? [some nsfw]
posted by Frankieist at 9:06 PM PST - 42 comments

Artstar is the latest in "reality" television. Eight artists compete for a solo gallery show put on by Deitch projects. Let's call it "Who Wants to Be America's Next Top Artist." (NYT link)
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:59 PM PST - 26 comments

Peter Jackson sues New Line. Over money, naturally. Can 'the little hobbit that could' defeat the mysterious Dark Lordliness of Hollywood's Creative Accountants? Well, it worked for Stan Lee.
posted by Sparx at 4:39 PM PST - 30 comments

Fingerbootyology
posted by srboisvert at 4:11 PM PST - 15 comments

"Pentagon Budget Blackmail" A milblog is reporting that there's some funny accounting going on with the funding that's used to pay US troops. "I think it's early May when we run out of money," reads one ominous quote. This is all tied into the supplemental funding the Bush Adminstration has requested of Congress; in a related (hopefully soon to be non-)issue, the specific request for increased death benefits seems to be on a bit of a spacewalk at the moment.
posted by alumshubby at 3:49 PM PST - 22 comments

Japanese Warning Signs: Signs. In Japanese. Warning you not to do things.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:34 PM PST - 43 comments

When is A Blog, just a blog ? Boston Sports Media Watch, a blog claiming as its purpose: "to provide a resource for Boston sports fans both locally and transplanted, who may not be able to keep up with the plethora of information available in the newspapers, on the radio and television and on-line.", has challenged the validity of Boston Dirt Dogs, another local blog's content. BSMW founder, Bruce Allen citing This Announcement, claims a relationship between Silva and Boston.com, a subsidy of The Boston Globe, which is in turn a property of The New York Times Company, and thinks Silva should be held to the same standard as mainline journalists. This came about after Boston Dirt Dogs fell victim to an email hoax concerning former Boston Red Sox superstar Nomar Garciaparra. Allen sent an inquiry to Boston.com editor Teresa M. Hanafin, who replied " Oh, Bruce, please -- spare me. It's a blog, for God's sake. Lighten up. Given some of the content on your website, you're hardly in a position to be flinging mud." But the question remains: Should a major newspaper company sponsor a blog without holding it to the same standards it tries to follow, especially if said blog blurs the line between truth and satire?
posted by lobstah at 3:15 PM PST - 18 comments

"George earns a $1 some days usually 75 cents. Some of the others say they earn a $1 when they work all day. At times they start at 7 a.m. and work all day until midnight".
Lewis Hine (1874 -1940), a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, felt so strongly about the abuse of children as workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. Hine traveled around the country photographing the working conditions of children in all types of industries. He photographed children in coal mines, in meatpacking houses, in textile mills, and in canneries. He took pictures of children working in the streets as shoe shiners, newsboys, and hawkers. In many instances he tricked his way into factories to take the pictures that factory managers did not want the public to see. He was careful to document every photograph with precise facts and figures. Hine's original photo captions are here. More inside.
posted by matteo at 3:12 PM PST - 19 comments

Robot flash thing featuring music by cylob.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 3:10 PM PST - 8 comments

How deep is your love? Experts may claim that size is meaningless; science now proves that friendship can be measured in millimeters
posted by IndigoJones at 2:33 PM PST - 17 comments

“A TUBE, A CAR, A REVOLVING FAN!” In 1870 the first subway in New York was built using a huge pneumatic tube. Alfred Beach was the inventor. The first link is to a whole book about the process, this link is to the section of nycsubway.org about Beach and his invention. And you thought pneumatic tubes were just for 1940s office fun!
posted by OmieWise at 1:27 PM PST - 11 comments

The New Hows and Whys of Global Eavesdropping [book review: for access: "legion" "legion"] Remember chatter? After 9/11, it was all over the news. For months, snatches of cellphone conversations in Karachi or Tora Bora routinely made the front page. Television newscasters could chill the blood instantly by reporting on "increased levels of chatter" somewhere in the ether. But what exactly was it? Who was picking it up, and how were they making sense of it? Patrick Radden Keefe does his best to answer these questions and demystify a very mysterious subject in "Chatter," a beginner's guide to the world of electronic espionage and the work of the National Security Agency, responsible for communications security and signals intelligence, or "sigint." In a series of semiautonomous chapters, he describes Echelon, the vast electronic intelligence-gathering system operated by the United States and its English-speaking allies; surveys the current technology of global eavesdropping; and tries to sort out the vexed issue of privacy rights versus security demands in a world at war with terrorism.
posted by Postroad at 10:51 AM PST - 19 comments

Hey Summers: Male [monkeys] more susceptible to age-related cognitive decline.
"Gay men adopt male and female strategies. Therefore their brains are a sexual mosaic".
Exotic animals on the menu: Bush/Meat ‘05.
posted by mcgraw at 9:59 AM PST - 29 comments

Mavericks: The Wave Beyond
The conditions were right and, about 30 hours ago, they announced this year's Mavericks Surf Contest was ON, the waves get as big as 50 feet and are considered "one of the most challenging waves in the world"! This isn't Hawaii, this is just off the coast of Half Moon Bay, California!
posted by fenriq at 9:53 AM PST - 37 comments

Yahoo! wants to buy you an ice cream [today only, in USA, Puerto Rico, Canada, UK, Australia and South Korea (apologies to North Korean Baskin-Robbins afficionados)]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 9:20 AM PST - 48 comments

A dictionary of old hobo slang might be a handy tool to bring along when traveling through North Bank Fred's colorful stories, photos, and chalkings of today's hobo jungles.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:20 AM PST - 16 comments

A clickable genealogy charting the lineage of visual interactive computing systems and user interfaces, by Bruce Damer. Some quirky/broken links, but plenty of interesting stuff there, too.
posted by carter at 8:28 AM PST - 7 comments

Soviet Animation On the heels of the post on Soviet music, here's a link to 10 short video clips of well-known Soviet-era cartoons. (Set your browsers to cyrillic KOI8-R encoding.)
posted by gregb1007 at 8:14 AM PST - 21 comments

Deconstructing the Chicago Skyline - the dismantling of the Sun Times building through time lapse photography. An enterprising team of co-workers (with a previously obstructed view of the city) record (16MB avi) the razing of a Chicago icon, one floor at a time, courtesy of a new Chicago icon.
posted by cbjg at 7:19 AM PST - 29 comments

Shoegazing revisited. Sanctuary Records are now releasing anthologies from the Creation back catalog, including a set this month from Swervedriver and one recent set from Slowdive. Can the mysterious My Bloody Valentine Box Set be far behind?
posted by Otis at 6:58 AM PST - 22 comments

While the Grateful Dead were pioneers in the sharing of music, it wasn't too long ago that fans had to meet in-person with other DeadHeads at taping parties to grow their library of "bootlegs." In the late 1990s when CD burners became more prominent, The Dead again led the way. They went on record to say that fans were still welcome to copy, share and trade their music as long as no money changing hands—including no advertising on web sites with downloads. Yesterday, the band again made history when they announced they are releasing the contents of their vast vault electronically (and simultaneouly) on iTunes Music Store and their very own Grateful Dead online store, the latter making the songs available in mp3 (128 and 256kbps) and FLAC .
posted by terrapin at 6:06 AM PST - 74 comments

Irark: an impressive video-mashup combining audio from Rambo and CNN footage of the Iraq war. (via boingboing).
posted by driveler at 5:26 AM PST - 9 comments

A Loosening of Ties by Willy J Spat. "For over two thousand years... the necktie... has been the most widely used, and the most multicultural of all phallic symbols." Neckties throughout the ages from invention to rebellion.
posted by nthdegx at 4:25 AM PST - 20 comments

Human Area Networking technology turns the surface of the human body into a data transmission path. A transmission path is formed at the moment a part of the human body comes in contact with a RedTacton transceiver.
posted by moonbird at 4:00 AM PST - 4 comments

British Portrait Miniatures at the V & A. 'These pages developed to compliment the Miniatures Gallery tell the story of the portrait miniature in Britain, from its first appearance in the 1520s, at the court of Henry VIII, to the height of its popularity in the early 19th century.'
posted by plep at 3:38 AM PST - 5 comments

Not hip to to new trends? Avril Lavigne's music sounding terrifyingly alien? APM ("Music Solutions for Business™") explains Punk (and other current trends), with helpful original music.
posted by Tlogmer at 3:20 AM PST - 29 comments

So, what now? Do they charge him? He's an American citizen who's spent 2½ years in custody - charged with no crime - without his lawer, access to due process, habeas corpus, etc. He has no constitutional safeguards and can be held like that because the president says he can be held like that. Who says the president has that power? The president does. Could he have even made a "dirty bomb?"
posted by Smedleyman at 1:08 AM PST - 29 comments