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While the nonpartisan Pew Research Center normally focuses on US domestic issues, such as the recently and narrowly failed flag-burning amendment, the Pew Global Attitudes Project takes a wider view with reports such as The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other and 16-Nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey, with results that are parts obvious, non-obvious, foreboding, hopeful and contradictory in how the two societies seemingly feel about themselves and each other. [mi]
posted by Mr. Six at 11:10 PM PST - 8 comments

Henry Porter is the British Editor of Vanity Fair. In the current issue he attacks what he describes as "[Tony] Blair's campaign against rights contained in the Rule of Law". The article follows a series of columns for The Observer and an extraordinary exchange of email between the two men, and has resonance in probably all countries in the Western world.
posted by Neiltupper at 10:08 PM PST - 37 comments

Reverse Color Blindness Test "normal vision humans have a lower degree of color contrast detection in the red spectrum. A colorblind person shouldn't be burdened by that lowered contrast sensitivity and should be able to see the object immediately by picking out the change in contrast at the objects edges" A small oddity that takes but a few seconds of time. (via The Presurfer)
posted by caddis at 8:14 PM PST - 53 comments

David Brooks gets fact-checked by Sasha Issenberg, who finds that Brooks appears to have invented some of his red-state reporting. ... Brooks acknowledges that all he does is present his readers with the familiar and ask them to recognize it. Why, then, has his particular brand of stereotype-peddling met with such success? From April 2004. Via Brad DeLong.
posted by russilwvong at 3:54 PM PST - 39 comments

Faith In America asks a simple question: Is using religious teachings to deny equal rights to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people any less wrong than using religious teaching to discriminate against people of color, against equality for women or against people of different cultures wanting to marry? (check their ad campaign too--some great ones) Meanwhile, clueless elected officials like Barack Obama continue to buy into the GOP lies that all people with faith are conservatives/Republicans, and that Democrats are hostile to people with religious beliefs.
posted by amberglow at 3:40 PM PST - 116 comments

All You Need Is Love. Sometimes, love is all you need. Or maybe aerosolized MDMA
[via longbough]
posted by Freen at 1:19 PM PST - 45 comments

The Supreme Court rules that state legislatures may redistrict at any time, while not harming minorities. The ruling is heavily influenced by Vieth v. Jubelirer, a Scalia opinion based on the premise that there is no objective way to draw a district (How the Census Bureau is trying to help make one). This ends a saga including amid-decade redistricting and subsequent rebellion in the Texas Statehouse.
posted by Captaintripps at 1:16 PM PST - 43 comments

Even after the bad PR brought about by the new balls used in this year's World Cup, the NBA announced today (Draft Day!) a new official game ball to be used starting next season (ESPN coverage). The new ball designed by Spalding is the first official game ball change since 1970 and only the second change in the last 60 years. Vegans will be happy to hear that it's no longer made of leather. Mark Cuban will surely weigh in with an opinion on this...
posted by pwb503 at 12:55 PM PST - 45 comments

Ever wondered what old amounts of money would be worth today? Or what you could buy with your current salary if you went back 200, 400, or 600 years? Now you can find out with a tool that converts English currency from 1270 onwards into today's prices. Based on Treasury records, it tells you that Mr Darcy's £10,000 a year would now be worth nearly £350,000, or that your house would only have to be worth the equivalent of £500 now to qualify for the vote after 1832.
posted by greycap at 11:56 AM PST - 22 comments

A Week of Kindness is an online sketch comedy group; among their bits, I found Nature Footage: The Musical to be the most amusing (albeit, a bit of a one note symphony).
posted by jonson at 10:47 AM PST - 11 comments

Jill Greenberg is a Sick Woman Who Should Be Arrested and Charged With Child Abuse. The "End Times" exhibit in question. And then there is Ms. Greenberg and her husband's response(s). Somebody's over-reacting.
posted by spock at 10:08 AM PST - 270 comments

Great photography... critiqued by pros noobs. via MeCha and matteo.
posted by loquacious at 9:33 AM PST - 40 comments

Mark McCutcheon's book is a Top Science Bestseller at Amazon.com (currently #28, ahead of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. The reader reviews are overwhelming five star. In other news, the correct value of PI is 3.125 and the wheel has been reinvented. You may find this simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics useful when considering these ideas.
posted by unSane at 8:59 AM PST - 48 comments

How Doctors Got Into the Torture Business
An Interview with Steven Miles: The torture-endangered Society
posted by y2karl at 8:47 AM PST - 59 comments

Comparing Apples and Oranges. Which can you eat faster, onions or cheesecake? ROIs from (some) IFOCE records plotted together. The beginning of Sabermetrics for competitive eating? Of course, we can't ignore the Takeru Kobayashi effect. (See also earlier MeFi on International Competitive Eating.)
posted by skynxnex at 7:51 AM PST - 14 comments

Flesh Shoe (via SpoFi)
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:39 AM PST - 35 comments

On this day in 1863, George Meade replaced Joseph Hooker as commanding General of the 100,000 strong Army of the Potomac, confirming what Meade himself had complained as “the ridiculous appearance we present of changing our generals after each battle.” Earlier in the day, J.E.B. Stuart and 5000 Confederate cavalry crossed the Potomac entering Maryland at Rowser’s ford. Stuart's lengthy absence had made him desperate to execute the order given to him by General Robert E. Lee to “take position on General Ewell’s right, place yourself in communication with him, guard his flank, and keep him informed of the enemy’s movements.” Stuart, whose cavalry was the “eyes and ears” of the 80,000 strong Army of Northern Virginia (warning: awful music), had been out of touch for several days, leaving General Lee ignorant of the enemy’s movement and position. When Stuart finally caught up with his army at Gettysburg, he had missed the first day and most of the second of one of the greatest battles in American history. There are those who say that Stuart violated Lee's orders to him concerning his role for the proposed campaign. Others think that those orders gave him leave to operate as he did. In either case there can be little doubt that his absence from his accustomed place, screening the Army's movements, and scouting its routes, was keenly felt by Lee during the campaign, and played a major part in bringing on the meeting engagement at Gettysburg.
posted by three blind mice at 5:23 AM PST - 66 comments

Utopian Modernism In London: A Series Of Drifts... is a tour of modernist landmarks, tying architectural practice to politics and movements in art. Author Owen Hatherley also keeps a weblog chiefly concerned with art and utopianism in Weimar Germany and the early Soviet Union. Photographer Ludwig Abache's site contains more architectural imagery, from London and beyond. (via newthings)
posted by jack_mo at 3:47 AM PST - 13 comments

It's official. Microsoft-verified. Mefites are predominantly teenage males. 85% of eBay users are female. Most people who search for Britney Spears are 30 year old females. Real men don't use YouTube and no male would be caught dead using Google. Oh and a million other things you're never going to believe about the web.
posted by zaebiz at 1:52 AM PST - 65 comments