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Casino carpet gallery. [via scrubbles.net]
posted by mediareport at 9:47 PM PST - 17 comments

Yahoo gets social. Yahoo's new search is designed around your contact list. Save a few bookmarks with some notes and the next time anyone within two degrees of you searches on that topic, they'll see your bookmarks above random search results. Oh, and it's got tags too. Will this kill search engine gaming? What's Google going to do to compete, buy delicious and incorporate that?
posted by mathowie at 9:43 PM PST - 28 comments

Canada Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage. "We are a nation of minorities. And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights," said Prime Minister Paul Martin. "A right is a right and that is what this vote tonight is all about."
posted by digaman at 6:41 PM PST - 143 comments

Al's Morning Meeting is a smart, well-researched list of story ideas put together by Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute. Tompkins collects or develops and distributes ideas, adding comments and lots of relevant links, to journalists and others on such timely topics as hybrid cars and dangers to rescuers, interest-only home loans, seasonal jobs, runaway brides and missing adults, and the stellar pope package, offered up the day after John Paul II's death. Al's particularly good when a complex news story develops and reporters need assistance in a hurry. This is a site worth checking each day or sign up for daily e-mail delivery.
posted by etaoin at 6:23 PM PST - 3 comments

In the emotive world of child abuse, Professor Sir Roy Meadow became a celebrity in the last 25 years. He described Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy in which parents were said to have confabulated symptoms in their children in order to obtain medical treatment. Among child and health workers, Police and Social Workers, his eponymous law held that multiple childhood deaths in individual families were indicative of abuse and infanticide.
He was of course a popular forensic expert and his testimony resulted in murder convictions and removal of at-risk children from their families. But the Court of Appeal in UK has found that Prof. Meadow's statistical assertions and scientific reasonings were themselves confabulated and there have been a number of convictions overturned. He is now fighting for his professional reputation before the General Medical Council in London. [More Inside]
posted by peacay at 5:33 PM PST - 17 comments

The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.
posted by carter at 1:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Justice Souter may rue his decision on eminent domain... I can't tell how serious the backers of this hotel 'proposal' may actually be, but I know that it brought a smile to my face. Anyone else think of some good "right back at'cha" antics after controversial rulings, mandates, etc. were made?
posted by tgrundke at 1:00 PM PST - 99 comments

ITER goes to France. Amazing stuff happens at 100 million degrees Celsius.
posted by magullo at 11:25 AM PST - 19 comments

Beach Billboards "5,000 of your beach sponsoring ads coupled with "Please Don't Litter" are impressed during early morning cleaning leaving the beach manicured with your message all over it". Support-A-Beach Programs - Do you want to stroll on such clean beaches?
posted by webmeta at 11:20 AM PST - 54 comments

I am wanting, I am thinking To arise and go forth singing The Kalevala is an epic poem written by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century. Definition. Celebration. Suitable musical accompaniment. Previously mentioned here.
posted by arse_hat at 10:11 AM PST - 20 comments

Bourgie (boo-zhee) Entertaining food blog (previous mefi topic) Regularly updated and worth a look for those interested in food ;) Written from Berkeley but not region specific, sometimes recipes.

"what is a bourgie? First let's get the pronunciation down, boo-zhee, sort of rhymes with sue me. Actually, it doesn't rhyme at all. It's the truncated version of bourgeoisie, you remember middle school history, Marie Antoinette, the rising middle class. But to English speaking nations, assuming that is what you belong to, this is the class with which we aspire to belong. And with food, it's almost the intangible. That little bit of effort that brings the dreary to the divine."
posted by wuakeen at 10:01 AM PST - 26 comments

Legitimate MP3 downloads! If you like the big beat duo The Chemical Brothers, I'm sure you'll be impressed by these two excellent remixes: Flip The Switch & Believe EP. Primal Scream's deep house masterpiece is given similarly impressive treatment in Screamixadelica. Maybe you prefer the punkier electronica of The Prodigy; check out Always Outsiders, Never Outdone. BTW don't forget to donate to the nominated charities on each site if you decide to keep the tracks.

On slightly more dodgy ground, copyright-wise, are the remixes and mashups from tone396, lionel vinyl, fakeID & Go Home Productions (these are clearly only a handful of artists, but in my opinion are some of the best) - I wonder how, or even if you can, apply copyright laws to some of these kinds of hybrid productions.
posted by smiffy at 9:54 AM PST - 19 comments

The sun finally set for good on the British empire And nobody said anything.
posted by Mekon at 9:54 AM PST - 42 comments

Google Earth is out. And it's free! It's only for Windows (at least, for now) and it allows you to traverse the Earth using satellite imagery.
posted by bbrown at 9:37 AM PST - 86 comments

The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection. "From Edwin A. Abbott to Emile Zola, the 1,082 titles in the Penguin Classics Complete Library total nearly half a million pages." The weight of the books is approximately 700 pounds. Amazon is offering free shipping! I wonder how big the box would be waiting at my door. (via)
posted by clgregor at 9:32 AM PST - 32 comments

Patrick Henry, a conservative Christian college (New Yorker) with eighty-five percent of incoming freshman being homeschooled, is a vernable breeding ground for future Republicans. Take cloistered kids, teach them one message, and Mr. Rove's clone army nears completion. The article is so quotable the whole thing must be read, as it fufills all our fears, stereotypes and snide comments sounds (Common Dreams). It scares our brother's across the pond, while the homeschooled community gets all wet just thinking about it. This raises several questions, what kind of politicians will sheltered college students be and how do they have fun without binge drinking, cocaine and sex?
posted by geoff. at 9:24 AM PST - 96 comments

what happens when you put too much detergent in the washing machines... IN HELL!!! A demonstration of ragdoll physics in flash. If she gets stuck, click and drag her over the obstacle. Considering the painful contortions she ends up in, I can't help but feel a little misogynistic. [note: flash]
posted by crunchland at 9:18 AM PST - 41 comments

75 Degrees South :: blogging from Antarctica
posted by anastasiav at 6:46 AM PST - 12 comments

Norway's Ministry for Modernisation has declared for Open Source formats. Speaking at eNorge, the Norwegian Minister for Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, has said that "proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government". Although he did not mention Microsoft by name, he did say that this was the last time he would be streaming his speech using the current (WMP-based) technology.

The Ministry for Modernisation may sound quaint, but it was founded in 2004 with a broad remit, and 200 employees, not a small number in a nation of less than 5 million souls. Although Norway's spending on IT may not be great compared to the US or China, as one of the wealthiest and most technologically developed nations on Earth (not to mention the emphasis on long-distance communications robustness created by a large country with terrible weather) it sets a precedent about what a tech-savvy first-world nation might do with Open Source, not because it cannot afford proprietary formats but because it does not want them. Microsoft, meanwhile, might be wondering why it bothered to translate Office into Sami. Will this be the first domino, or can it be written off as the actions of an oil-rich rogue state that will soon be brought back into the global consensus?
posted by tannhauser at 6:05 AM PST - 18 comments

The Unofficial War: U.S., Britain Led Massive Secret Bombing Campaign Before Iraq War Was Declared

A U.S. general who commanded the U.S. allied air forces in Iraq has confirmed that the U.S. and Britain conducted a massive secret bombing campaign before the U.S. actually declared war on Iraq...Starting in late May to June of 2002 a flurry of activity began both in the United States and in the Middle East. In what appears to be an admission of covert activity, chief allied air force commander Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley divulged in a little-noticed quote in the New York Times that US/British aircraft flew 21,736 sorties between June 2002 and March 2003.

[Previously posted in a comment by ericb at 12:56 PM PST on June 27; more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 5:08 AM PST - 33 comments

The Aesthetics of Resistance. The first part of Peter Weiss's 3-volume novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975-81) has, after many delays, finally been published in a Joachim Neugroschel’s English translation: a major, though largely-unheralded literary event. The book ‘stands as the most significant German novel published after The Tin Drum.’ [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 3:54 AM PST - 7 comments

OpenCRS - easy access to US Congressional Research Service Reports
posted by daksya at 12:44 AM PST - 4 comments