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Fourteen Places to Eat - photos from rural America
posted by Bighappyfunhouse at 10:22 PM PST - 17 comments

Should you buy a house, or rent? (caution, flash & NYT) The answer is, of course, it depends. One of the biggest factors is how well the housing market will do after you buy. [previously: 1, 2] [via]
posted by rubin at 9:21 PM PST - 104 comments

The world's second largest forest and one of the oldest on Earth, was traded for bars of soap and bottles of beer: Logging companies negotiate with local chiefs, walk away rich
posted by growabrain at 9:20 PM PST - 30 comments

(news/outragefilter): BBC reports that the new appraisal forms for Indian civil service employees require women to disclose information about their menstrual histories and any pregnancy leave.
posted by aberrant at 8:18 PM PST - 25 comments

Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84 "His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago. Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States." .
posted by landedjentry at 8:10 PM PST - 620 comments

MC5 documentary, "A True Tesimonial," one step closer to being released? MC5 (wiki) guitarist Wayne Kramer and his wife sued Chicago-based filmmakers, David Thomas and Laurel Legler, charging that the never-released A True Testimonial, in which Kramer appears prominently, used MC5 songs without permission. A court ruling by U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford last week favoring A True Testimonial filmmakers, might give fans hope. Yee-haw and kick out the jams!
posted by NoMich at 6:41 PM PST - 18 comments

Chaffee, White, Grissom & Freeman are the names of four artificial islands immediately off the Southern California port of Long Beach. From the shore, they each look like an inhabited island paradise, complete with waterfalls, interesting buildings, many palm trees and crazy nighttime party lighting. In fact, they are offshore oil wells, built on 10 acre Dubai-esque man-made islands created for the purpose of housing the oil wells, and disguised so as to comply with local aesthetic standards.
posted by jonson at 6:41 PM PST - 27 comments

Mary Uduru of Nigeria. Although we see lots of single-image representations of African poverty (usually in the form of a swollen-bellied child on the brink of starvation) it's rare to find a photo-essay like this one one, which brings us an intimate, informative and non-sensationalist view of the life of the working poor there.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:25 PM PST - 22 comments

Iranian envoy wounds 'confirmed': The head of the International Red Cross in Tehran, Peter Stoeker, says he saw wounds on an Iranian diplomat who has alleged that US forces in Iraq tortured him. There were marks on Jalal Sharafi's feet, legs, back and nose. [photos].
On 4 February soldiers from the Iraqi army 36th Commando battalion in Baghdad, considered to be under American control, had seized Jalal Sharafi, while he was carrying a videogame, a gift for his daughter. Read more about the US secret operations against Iranians in Iraq in an exclusive report by The Independent.
posted by hoder at 4:22 PM PST - 49 comments

Click trough Household Magazine, from 1951 Brought to you from the world of The Swank Pad
posted by edgeways at 4:16 PM PST - 15 comments

Two years ago, a mistake was made: The tattoo read "Chi-Tonw" instead of "Chi-Town." Now, in an act of solidarity, more people are getting tattos spelled Chi-Tonw on purpose. This fellow had it spelled that way on his neck. Chicago Tribune news and blog coverage, and audio on NPR.
posted by Mo Nickels at 4:16 PM PST - 46 comments

America's forgotten war. Are we winning?
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 3:23 PM PST - 39 comments

Hybrid: the roleplaying game. A Timecube style "role playing game." via Grand Text Auto
posted by juv3nal at 1:58 PM PST - 51 comments

Wordsworth... for the YouTube generation is a rapped version of ' Wandered Lonely As A Cloud' The squirrel is the stuff of nightmares
posted by darsh at 1:31 PM PST - 12 comments

An Introduction to Anti-Civilization Anarchist Thought And Practice What Is Primitivism? . . . Biocentrism vs. Anthropocentrism . . . A Critique of Symbolic Culture . . . The Domestication of Life . . . The Rejection of Science . . . Against Mass Society . . . Beyond Leftism . . . Rewilding and Reconnection
posted by jason's_planet at 12:06 PM PST - 221 comments

Newsfilter: The State Attorney General of North Carolina, who took over the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case and conducted his own investigation after Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong withdrew from the case when the North Carolina State bar filed ethics charges against him, has dismissed the remaining charges against the three players originally accused of first degree forcible rape, first degree sexual offense, and kidnapping. [previously discussed].
posted by ericb at 11:46 AM PST - 159 comments

The first rule of Milk Club is you don't talk about Milk Club. Some nameless neighbors of mine, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, are really in to raw milk. So much so that they risk transporting the stuff across state lines...in violation of federal law.
posted by digiFramph at 11:44 AM PST - 52 comments

Gary Stasiuk's beautiful Digital Creatures pulls the curtains on the kinematics of geometric objects, after which he plays with the mathematics and user interactivity of generative art and shows how to build the appearance of AI behaviors into Flash objects.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:16 AM PST - 14 comments

"It wasn't scary, it was just gratuitous, as if they thought, 'I know, let's have a rape,' and that made me quite angry." The question will be asked often in the coming weeks, as "Vacancy" and "Hostel 2" approach: Do modern horror films ("gorno," or gore pornography) go too far, particularly when it comes to women? Who said violent misogyny was entertaining? Is this just a retread of the exploitation wave of the 1970s/80s? (Most links NSFW, sensitive souls, people who detest violence)
posted by jbickers at 9:09 AM PST - 200 comments

Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig provides a fascinating glimpse of the people and places of 5 of the "-stan" countries of Central Asia. You can see more work and current projects on his flickr page. Noteworthy photo essays: Arsan Baths in Almatry, Soviet Roadside Bus Stops (seen here before), and his recent The Wheelbarrow Operators of Monrovia.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:32 AM PST - 16 comments

"While the West debates whether the Islamic world is ready for democracy, an equally appropriate question is whether the West is ready for Islamic democracy." Parties of God, by Ken Silverstein, is an interesting read on democracy in the Middle East.
posted by chunking express at 7:43 AM PST - 50 comments

"I curse their head and all the hairs of their head; I curse their face, their brain (innermost thoughts)..." From the 14th to 16th Century, The Border Reivers turned the border regions between England and Scotland into "a permanent battleground" or lawless area much like the American Wild West. Learn more about these strange groups or cheer for the Rugby team.
posted by drezdn at 7:39 AM PST - 16 comments

Photos and videos of the 2007 Big Wheel race down Lombard Street, the "crookedest street in America." (Or is it?) Official BYOBW page [warning: very loud music on pageload] (via)
posted by desjardins at 7:04 AM PST - 19 comments

The main problem with panorama photography is that good photo stitching software is expensive and often difficult to use. Then when you have finally managed to put together a good panorama, it's nigh-on impossible to share it with your friends. Scrolling back and forth on your screen is possible, of course, that's so un-Web 2.0!

CleVR offers a possible solution with a free, embeddable Flash viewer for panorama photographs, with some cool outdoors, groovy indoors and some downright surreal stuff already available.
posted by SharQ at 6:47 AM PST - 36 comments

Thought Chuck Norris was over and done with as far as internet memes go? Guess again, as Chris Sims presents an ad for Chuck Norris Action Jeans, "pants designed specifically to be worn while you are kicking people in the face." They'd set you back less than $20. If there's no such thing as Too Much Chuck in your life, then you may want to read Sims's review of Justice Riders.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 6:43 AM PST - 21 comments

Victim of the Brain A 'docudrama' about Godel, Escher and Bach author, Douglas Hofstadter, and philosopher Dan Dennett produced in 1988. I'm not sure how to describe it, other than incredibly strange and fascinating.
posted by empath at 5:44 AM PST - 19 comments

Kirigami is an ingenius way of cutting and folding paper, creating designs in many styles, often with a captivating simplicity. Some are like geometric lace, some are marvelous 3-D modular, while some are amazing architectural creations.
posted by nickyskye at 4:13 AM PST - 21 comments

Lightsaber Combat. Far more than you ever wanted to know. Part of the magic that is the Star Wars Portal on wikipedia.
posted by srboisvert at 1:45 AM PST - 48 comments

Shiftspace creates a collaborative layer over any website. (Tools like this have been tried before, but this is the first one with an overt Wikipedia-style public service philosophy.)
posted by Tlogmer at 1:38 AM PST - 12 comments

When the usual fanfiction fare just doesn't cut it ... there's shipping and then there's slash, with coined terms such as squick and mpreg. The usual suspects are Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the Phantom of the Opera - and then there's Kirk/Spock, Hermione/Ginny, Cloud/Sephiroth, and lots more. And it's not limited to recent works - there's also some Jesus/Judas Biblical action going on. (Mostly text, with the occasional NSFW jpg.)
posted by Xere at 12:50 AM PST - 50 comments