MetaFilter

The Biggest Engine in the World. It's freakin' enormous. 100 000hp... yet more fuel efficient than your car. This contrasts with the smallest Wankel rotary, smallest diesels, and the smallest gas turbine engines.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:40 PM PST - 33 comments

For the Digital Art lovers out there, GFXartist.com is a gem with Elite Nominations and Elite Galleries to get a first-time visitors started on some of the more popular artwork the site offers.
posted by jmd82 at 11:02 PM PST - 5 comments

The Gross International Happiness Project. An idea inspired by Gross National Happiness, the Kingdom of Bhutan's alternative to GDP.
posted by homunculus at 8:33 PM PST - 4 comments

Turning Bangladesh's Beggars Into Businessmen. One of Bangladesh's leading micro-credit groups has launched an initiative to lend money to beggars at easy repayment rates, to wean them off the streets and into small scale ventures.
posted by tranquileye at 6:59 PM PST - 10 comments

WTF online.
posted by hama7 at 5:19 PM PST - 17 comments

Women Lose When Feminists Bash "Men generally don't like to complain. A man will endure ridicule and abuse, and then move on with his life. But abuse him once too often, and he will vote with his feet. And one day, men woke up to the fact that marriage was a losing proposition. The math was hard to refute: Half of all marriages wind up in divorce. In 85% of cases, mothers gained custody of the children. And sometimes, bitter ex-wives would try to turn the children against their father, what psychologists call Parental Alienation Syndrome. In the face of such dismal odds, men decided to go on a Marriage Strike. "
posted by SpaceCadet at 5:13 PM PST - 72 comments

US-made ultrasonic gun uses baby's scream The gun is capable of causing permanent ear damage, even death.
Makes me want to scream.
posted by Twang at 4:02 PM PST - 45 comments

The Sound of Mathematics Mathematical functions whose output have been jammed into MIDI files. The results are disturbingly musical.
posted by Mwongozi at 3:00 PM PST - 8 comments

The IT Conversations motto is "New ideas through your headphones" and offers audio interviews with well-known technology personalities. Ever wonder what Craig Newmark's or Bram Cohen's voices sound like?
posted by turbodog at 2:57 PM PST - 2 comments

Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales.
posted by zedzebedia at 2:23 PM PST - 20 comments

A few years ago a life simulation game called Creatures was released. I recently discovered that there was also a free version called Docking Station which is still available in PC and Linux versions and includes an optional on-line component which allows you to chat, send messages and share creatures with other players. And if the goodies and breeds of creatures that come with the free version aren't enough for you, there are oodles of web sites still offering free downloads to expand on the game. Or if you gain some joy from hexidecimal programming, you can even play around with their genetic coding or learn to create your own goodies.
posted by Orb at 2:14 PM PST - 3 comments

NewsFilter. I'm a sucker for treemap applications. This one is pretty neat - it gives you a good visual overview of the days' news, with a handful of filtering options, and live updating. I've had this running full-screen on a second monitor all day, and I'm digging it. (First link requires Flash.)
posted by majcher at 2:13 PM PST - 12 comments

Canadian expansionism: there's a plan afoot for Canada to annex the beautifully sunny Turks and Caicos islands. Why? "Turks and Caicos would give Canada a warm, friendly 11th province - a southern destination where the Loonie could land without breaking a wing."
posted by moonbird at 1:42 PM PST - 20 comments

Declaring the Era of the Peace Kingdom "They have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent. This resolution has been announced on every corner of the globe. Respected guests, it is now only a matter of time. Look at the world. Do you see anything that gives you real hope for the future? Sooner or later, we have to give what we have to our descendants and leave this world. What gift could be more precious than that of completing the family ideal in your family, so as to guarantee eternal peace and happiness for your children? Surely no one who has such an opportunity should hesitate to take up the task of building the peace kingdom on earth, for which God has waited thousands of years." --Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Address to the United States Congress, March 23, 2004 via Atrios
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 1:31 PM PST - 12 comments

The Republican National Committee is demanding that the Federal Election Commission issue new rules that would shut down groups that are in any way critical of President Bush or members of Congress. Under the proposed rules, nonprofit organizations that advocate for cancer research, gun and abortion restrictions or rights, fiscal discipline, tax reform, poverty issues, immigration reform, the environment, or civil rights or liberties - all these organizations could be transformed into political committees if they criticize or commend members of Congress or the President based on their official actions or policy positions.
posted by dejah420 at 1:14 PM PST - 20 comments

Origami Kaiju
Make your own Godzilla and Friends
posted by anastasiav at 12:58 PM PST - 4 comments

Technomorality: Are there more examples of this, or are the Japanese just better than us? As the potential of technology increases, isn't it just possible that the world really could become a better place?
posted by ewkpates at 12:26 PM PST - 27 comments

Time for Rice The fact and figures. It appears there is no connection to Iraq. Well, I still like Rice anyway. How 'bout you?
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 12:16 PM PST - 20 comments

How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and not Spill Your Drink (perhaps NSFW, some Robert Williams-ish illustrations)
posted by H. Roark at 12:00 PM PST - 12 comments

March For Women - because America is not a great place to be a woman. The time is right for a public demonstration of historic size in support of reproductive freedom and justice for all women. Threats to these rights have never been so systematic and coordinated, and the lives and health of women have never faced such peril. See ya there! I will be the woman in the embroidered denim jacket - the one my mom wore when she marched for the exact same rights, 40-odd years ago. sigh.
posted by kristin at 11:51 AM PST - 123 comments

While the world has been “getting greener” during the past 25 yrs, human courtesy and civility have been “changing for the worse.”
posted by mcgraw at 11:17 AM PST - 8 comments

Those towering Dutchmen The height of the average American is roughly the same as it was during the Revolutionary war. The heights of many northwestern Europeans continue to shoot up. Is this simply genetics at work, or could Bush and the Republicans possibly be at fault here?
posted by rks404 at 11:14 AM PST - 39 comments

Chuck Palahniuk (the author of such brawny reads as Choke and Fight Club) has an online writers' workshop that has monthly assignments subject to peer review, essays on writing by Chucky P., and a real smoove interface. I'm not a big fan of the guy or his work, but his "distinction essays", which are only posted to the site for a limited time, do contain the kind of solid instruction you'd hafta pay money for at a real writers workshop. The quality of the submissions varies, but seems to me to be a bit better than most online freebie writers-circle-jerk sites. Just don't choke on the ego.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:10 AM PST - 6 comments

Thecycles.com is evil and must be stopped. The proper comeuppance for a bogus content aggregator which inflates its own pagerank while spamming referrer logs? It shoots itself in the foot with its own aggregator.
posted by brownpau at 11:08 AM PST - 4 comments

Music Non Stop Create your own version of the Kraftwerk classic. Or make those silly robots dance. Lots of cute little 80s retro flash stuff.
posted by swordfishtrombones at 10:37 AM PST - 2 comments

CarpoolCheats.org If you don't want your picture taken while you're doing something illegal, don't do it in public!. I'm not sure about the ethics (or legality) of putting pictures of license plates online, but the thrust of the site is pretty cool.
posted by Ufez Jones at 9:43 AM PST - 61 comments

Google redesigns.
Got rid of their colored tabs, added Froogle and lost DMOZ on the front page, and tweaked the search result pages with a new layout (sans colored boxes) for Google's AdWords. Still using font tags and with minimal use of internal CSS.

To top it all off, Google Labs adds personalized Web search and Web alerts. Wow.
posted by docjohn at 9:36 AM PST - 35 comments

The Untitled Project is a series of photographs of urban settings accompanied by a graphical text layout. The photographs have been digitally stripped of all traces of textual information. The text pieces show the removed text in the approximate location and font as it was found in the photograph.
posted by Ljubljana at 6:45 AM PST - 28 comments

Has the US promised Kashmir to Pakistan? During his recent visit, Colin Powell named Pakistan a US ally. This move has people in India concerned about what the US is willing to give Pakistan to fight Al-Qaeda. [The site has pop-ups. Sorry.]
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy at 6:42 AM PST - 9 comments

Alistair Cooke dead at 95
in this age of savagely polluted airwaves, Cooke as still a beacon from another age - and a helluva of class act. he'll be missed.
posted by specialk420 at 6:15 AM PST - 16 comments

The Harbin Snow and Ice Festival The temperature in Harbin, China reaches forty below zero, both Fahrenheit and centigrade, and stays below freezing nearly half the year. The city is actually further north than notoriously cold Vladivostok, Russia, just 300 miles away. Rather than suffer the cold, the residents of Harbin celebrate it, with an annual festival of snow and ice sculptures and competitions. The main link actually shows the 2003 sculptures; here are some from this year.
posted by orange swan at 6:11 AM PST - 5 comments

Which abuse of the patent system are you? Take this test to find out. Now that they got it, they're beating distance learning colleges over the head with it, for money. Another obvious bit of programming turns lucrative for one company.
posted by mathowie at 4:41 AM PST - 12 comments

The funniest and most disgusting story ever. This personal story on the forums of a bodybuilding website looks like it is on the way to becoming an Internet classic (warning... SFW, but scatological). Snopes doesn't have this one... the nearest we get is this.
posted by BobsterLobster at 12:03 AM PST - 31 comments