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In 2006, the United States Air Force declassified part of one of its secret programs: Constant Peg, the 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron, which flew MiGs. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:55 PM PST - 37 comments

Food writing’s shameful secret, wrote John Thorne his seminal essay, “Cuisine Mécanique”, is its intellectual poverty. John himself is a notable exception. He is one of those rare authors who have the gift of transporting us into a world of their own creation which we are happy to occupy for a while in preference to any other. They are Virgils to our Dante, showing us around the territory and introducing us to the natives. In these magic realms, strangers speak to us immediately as old friends; arriving unexpectedly at dinner time, we find a place already set for us. [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen at 7:45 PM PST - 26 comments

Legends of Localization: The Legend of Zelda is a comparison of the Japanese and American versions of The Legend of Zelda. It highlights differences in music and SFX, why the intro story is in English in both versions and why Pols Voice supposedly hated loud noises, what some of those cryptic hints originally said and how Testitart became Manhandla. [more inside]
posted by shirobara at 6:35 PM PST - 10 comments

The world has gone mad today ¹ And good's bad today ² And black's white today ³ And day's night today ⁴ When most guys today ⁵ That women prize today ⁶ Are just silly gigolos ⁷

And though I'm not a great romancer, I know that I'm bound to answer when you propose, Anything Goes ⁸ [more inside]
posted by roger ackroyd at 6:21 PM PST - 39 comments

NASA Astronaut Don Pettit uses his off-duty time to practice his microgravity yo-yo skills.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 5:47 PM PST - 39 comments

Kind of, sort of, "holograms" have been popping up on election night and (previously) have resurrected famous musicians. The next step may be the pre-boarding kiosk. The only questions that really remains is how close are we to having a time-traveling, Victorian era Guy Pearce in our midst?
posted by sendai sleep master at 2:54 PM PST - 28 comments

Batman faces The Joker and Bane in this stop-motion animation with toys
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:40 PM PST - 13 comments

Dog Steal Cabbage
posted by griphus at 1:38 PM PST - 79 comments

Daniel Amen and the use of SPECT imaging in clinical psychiatry. Daniel Amen's clinics grossed $20 million last year, using SPECT imaging to tailor psychiatric treatments to individuals. The psychiatric establishment is skeptical: "'In my opinion, what he's doing is the modern equivalent of phrenology,' says Jeffrey Lieberman, APA president-elect, author of the textbook “Psychiatry” and chairman of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons."
posted by OmieWise at 12:58 PM PST - 42 comments

Racetrack is a game with very simple rules which nonetheless does a surprisingly good job of simulating the acceleration, braking, and handling of a race car. It can teach not only about inertia and kinematics, but also about optimal racing lines. Racetrack can be played with nothing more than a piece of graph paper and a pen, but there is also an online implementation called Vector Racer.
posted by 256 at 8:05 AM PST - 42 comments

How to light a fire with your pee (and some plastic wrap). [slyt]
posted by quin at 8:04 AM PST - 52 comments

Hugh MacDiarmid was born 120 years ago today. Best known for his long, comic, dark, epic, complex poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, he was a central figure in the Scottish Renaissance. He was the type of guy who would get kicked out of the Scottish National Party for being a communist and get kicked out of the Communist Party of Great Britain for being a Scottish nationalist. [more inside]
posted by feckless at 7:46 AM PST - 30 comments

Team Ireland is celebrating its first gold medal at London 2012, thanks to boxer Katie Taylor, but the Irish also had an unlikely part to play in another, very special Olympic victory on Thursday. Kenyan middle-distance runner David Rudisha joins notable alumni from Saint Patrick's High School, a 500-student boy's school started by Irish missionaries in 1963, in Iten, a town in Kenya. Brother Colm O'Connell, though no longer teaching at the school, is still a highly regarded coach in one of the world’s great running capitals. The school plants a tree in honor of record-making alumni, though some of the more recent alumni are getting shrubs, to save space. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 6:57 AM PST - 8 comments

One for the javascript geeks: Transform any javascript program to use only the ()[]{}! and + characters.
posted by zoo at 6:54 AM PST - 23 comments

NASA’s lunar lander crashes, ignites massive explosion (+video). The spider-like spacecraft called Morpheus was on a test flight at Cape Canaveral when it tilted, crashed to the ground and erupted in flames.
posted by cenoxo at 6:26 AM PST - 58 comments

Ein Totentanz (1922), by Walter Draesner, is a book of astonishing papercut silhouettes showing death's visits to different kinds of victims. Some of the more spectacular ones are Death and the aviator, Death on the railway, and Death and the soldier. (A previous Totentanz FPP, and another with a link to an English language description of the phenomenon) [more inside]
posted by barnacles at 5:56 AM PST - 24 comments

Paul Ryan. Seven-term congressman for Wisconsin's 1st District. Chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee. Architect of the controversial Ryan Budget -- a "Path to Prosperity" [PDF - video - CBO] that would slash trillions from the federal budget, sharply curtail taxes on the wealthy, and transform Medicare into a private voucher system. Proponent (vid) -- and renouncer -- of Ayn Rand 's Objectivism. Social Security beneficiary. Hunter. Weinermobile driver. And as of this morning, the 2012 Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States of America. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:18 AM PST - 1568 comments

Time, CNN Suspend Zakaria After He Admits "Terrible Mistake" [slate.com] "The columnist was caught passing off large chunks of a New Yorker essay as his own."
posted by Fizz at 5:10 AM PST - 106 comments

Jake Warga photographs convention attendees - from cat show to furries.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:26 AM PST - 21 comments

Kim Dotcom: suddenly a portly, shady, German entrepreneur becomes a New Zealand folk hero. Or does he? As it becomes clear that there was something dodgy(pdf) about those search warrants, and the charm offensive bears fruit, questions arise. [more inside]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:52 AM PST - 51 comments