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"I'm going to just come right out and say this... I've been trying to avoid this, to avoid telling this, because if you know this you'll fucking hate me or at least think less of me... I know I'm not a slut, I mean, maybe I am, perhaps I am! but does that matter? ... I've become a prostitute." [nsfw]
posted by tranquileye at 7:52 PM PST - 71 comments

Scientific American to stop reporting science, more creationism. There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming...But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 6:58 PM PST - 208 comments

Average accessories for your laptop computer. But I suppose Proporta has been expanding its target demographic lately with this device.
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:11 PM PST - 19 comments

Breakfast Brawl is some very fun Friday Flash Fun Mike Tyson's Punch-Out style. This is a direct link to the .swf...if you'd like to play the original (small and full of ads) hit it up here.
posted by gren at 1:38 PM PST - 25 comments

Meet the NSP It was a long time ago, you understand. 1957-58, if you will. One of the best 27mb movie files you will see this year. the real story is somewhat different.
posted by yonation at 1:06 PM PST - 22 comments

A tool that turns English into computer code? Maybe someday. Metafor is a code visualizer from researchers at MIT which produces non-executable (but meaningfully-structured) code out of natural language. Here is a quicktime demonstration of what it looks like in action. Here's the paper as a PDF.
posted by Hildago at 12:35 PM PST - 26 comments

Chicken Payback [WMP streaming video; Real Player stream here.] At first, this music video from The Bees [Flash site] seems like a quick, harmless Friday diversion. Not for me, though. For me, it’s rapidly becoming a truly painful earworm, and worse: is there such a thing as an “eyeworm?”
posted by Man O' Straw at 12:24 PM PST - 12 comments

Social Explorer. "Social Explorer is dedicated to providing demographic information in an easily understood format, data maps. We serve hundreds of interactive data maps of United States. Here, you can visually analyze and understand the demography of the U.S., explore your neighborhood and learn about the people that live around you."
posted by jokeefe at 11:26 AM PST - 14 comments

Nicaragua and El Salvador, Tres Santos, Honduras, Peru , that Geoff Watts guy can write about coffee.
posted by jonah at 10:30 AM PST - 2 comments

Paintings Inspired by the Music of Frank Zappa. The cynical and humorous representations of show business appeared to be reflected in the music they were listening to at the time - the music of Frank Zappa - which led to the next series of paintings, inspired by and celebrating the music and lyrics of Zappa.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Consolidated B-24 Liberator nose art archive. Signs of the zodiac, dirty jokes, self-fulfilling prophecies, and stumpers. (Some questionable content [NSFW-ish] and site design)
posted by breezeway at 9:47 AM PST - 7 comments

TORK! For your friday flash fun, a game about...linguistics? Learn a language, have some fun. Now if only I could figure out how to work that damn oven....
posted by jearbear at 9:15 AM PST - 31 comments

Friday flash fun.
posted by panoptican at 9:13 AM PST - 14 comments

A foundation has been established to help the Iraqi orphans that survived the January shooting (earlier Mefi thread) by American forces. There's also more recent information about the shooting in this Newsweek article. Check out this BoingBoing post to read an e-mail from the photographer that witnessed the shooting and is now establishing this foundation.
posted by exhilaration at 8:41 AM PST - 8 comments

"In the end, it's the audience that counts." Imax theater chains take imaginary sides in the pretend controversy over evolution.
posted by all-seeing eye dog at 7:29 AM PST - 126 comments

Peak Oil discussed in the US Congress. Roscoe Bartlett (Rep. 6th District, Maryland - R) delivers a presentation on Peak Oil to the 109th United States Congress. More here and a backup of the full text with a bit more of an introduction by Rep. Gilchrest here (PDF)
posted by loquacious at 7:23 AM PST - 48 comments

The World Expo 2005 opened doors to visitors today. Attractions include robots, a mammoth, and participating countries from Australia to Zimbabwe. Some think that in the age of the Internet and intercontinental travel, world expos are becoming obsolete; others think the Aichi Expo might spawn a new industry: industrial tourism. The last Expo in Japan was held in Osaka in 1970, and brought us arguably the world's ugliest artifact.
posted by sour cream at 6:13 AM PST - 7 comments

The New York City Department of Education has recalled 3rd-7th grade basic math prep materials after finding multiple errors. Like what? Multiplication errors, addition errors, poorly worded questions, and incorrectly spelling Fourth on the cover of the Fourth Grade Book. "The fact is, if third- or fifth-grade students made the mistakes made in the test prep materials, they would be flunked and no one would be asking them for an explanation."
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:53 AM PST - 46 comments

Pretty and pretty interesting: unrooted haplotype networks -- diagrams showing the relation and mutational distance between different sets of DNA, with haplotypes represented by circles proportional to haplotype frequency, joined by lines proportional to mutational difference between haplotypes -- in cichlid fish (on page 3 ) [pdf], in stone loach fish ( on page 3) [pdf], in lesser prairie chickens (on page 6) [pdf] and in a ring species! (on page 2) [pdf]
posted by orthogonality at 4:26 AM PST - 14 comments