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The results of the second annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge are out and include some dazzling imagery of a feeding tick, a volcano, and movies of a bat in action, an overview of the 2002 European floods, and a presentation on RNA interference.
posted by euphorb at 11:20 PM PST - 2 comments

Three Notes and Runnin' has decided to protest the recent court decision that cited N.W.A. with illegally sampling a snippet of Funkadelic's Get Off Your Ass and Jam that had been modified to the point of unrecognizability. So in the tradition of online civil disobedience such as Grey Tuesday, Downhill Battle has issued a challenge to sample-based artists to create 30-second remixes that consist of nothing but the disputed 1.5-second Funkadelic sample.
posted by jonp72 at 9:43 PM PST - 10 comments

Massacre of Civilians in Fallujah -- "Aw dude!" A war crime in Iraq.
posted by Postroad at 7:56 PM PST - 45 comments

The Conference Bike - It's not just a bike. It's a party on wheels.
posted by dobbs at 7:23 PM PST - 16 comments

Who Was Abused ? There are several ways to view the small white house on Center Street in Bakersfield, Calif. From one perspective it's just another low-slung home in a working-class neighborhood, with a front yard, brown carpeting, a TV in the living room. Now consider it from the standpoint of the Kern County district attorney's office: 20 years ago, this was a crime scene of depraved proportions... [and] this time, through Ed Sampley's eyes. Twenty years ago he was one of the boys molested in the house where sex abuse was part of the weekend fabric. That's what he told Kern County investigators. That's what he told a judge, a jury and a courtroom of lawyers... Now for the first time in 20 years, Sampley is back in the driveway of that small white house. ''It never happened,'' he tells me. He lied about Stoll, an easygoing divorced father who always insisted the neighborhood kids call him John rather than Mr. Stoll and let them run in and out of his house in their bathing suits, eat popcorn on the living-room floor and watch ''fright night'' videos. More Inside
posted by y2karl at 6:24 PM PST - 46 comments

SmartKlamp "Do it Yourself" home circumcision.
posted by ColdChef at 5:28 PM PST - 17 comments

Andrea Armstrong wants to play basketball. She is also a muslim, and wishes to observe traditional muslim attire for a woman of the faith. Intolerance ensues. (A link from my local paper to an Orlando Sentinel story, in that this woman is from Oregon.)
posted by Danf at 3:53 PM PST - 69 comments

When I first saw it I thought, it was fad-freaky Toyko or perhaps fashionably trendy LA, but it's NYC.Let's see... Walk several blocks possibly through a mucking huge park, or park in a expensive pay lot, or take a bus/train/taxi take an elevator to the umpteenth floor of the Empire State Building to take a 25 minute MetroNap in a overgrown egg chair during your lunch hour. Not to mention paying what ever it took to get you there you'll shell out $13 more to take a nap. And no, that's NOT with the optional lunch, or even in a private cubicle. City folk, more money than sense. What ever happend to sleeping under your desk? If it's good enough for George Castanaza, it's good enough for me!
posted by Dome-O-Rama at 2:34 PM PST - 9 comments

The full wealth of the world's religious knowledge has been collated into the quite extraordinary "God FAQ". A valuable resource indeed. [via b3ta]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 2:21 PM PST - 95 comments

Black widow pop. "With tATu, Ivan Shapovalov took the media's obsession with paedophilia, and spun it into a chart-topping lesbo-schoolgirl pop act. Now he's trying to do the same with Islamic terrorism. On Sept 11 in Moscow, he launched nATo, a 16-year-old girl who dresses in a Burqua, much like the Black Widow suicide bombers who are currently terrorising Russia. With the Beslan massacre only a week old, Nato's launch - complete with invitations designed like plane tickets - was not a huge success... Mindful of the dire consequences of being a dissenting voice in Putin's Russia these days, Shapovalov is planning to launch nATo properly in London later this year, and get a recording contract here." stolen from popbitch
posted by mr.marx at 1:58 PM PST - 19 comments

Time-lapse car trip from LA to New York. A (QuickTime) video by Lacquer directed by Michel Gondry. (via Cult of Mac)
posted by Armitage Shanks at 1:22 PM PST - 29 comments

PS2 Vibrator for Her Pleasure (NSFW, suggestive pictures)
Friday Fun: A new add-on for the PlayStation 2 does pretty well nothing but give your girlfriend something to enjoy while you waste hours killing pixelated beasts.
A review by Game Girl Advance gives it a very big and satisfied thumbs up. via As I Lay Laughing
posted by fenriq at 12:14 PM PST - 14 comments

Maths puzzles and more problems. Found whilst searching for the fiendish the Monty Hall Problem. A Tangled Tale, indeed.
posted by plep at 11:27 AM PST - 6 comments

Love in a cage. All Iranian filmmakers working in their homeland have to face the trials of the censor, but if the subject matter includes abortion, adultery and lesbianism, the chances of gaining official approval in the Islamic republic are all but zero. Actress Mania Akbari, the lead of Abbas Kiarostami's "10", explores this territory in her first feature film as a director, "20 Fingers", which unspooled in the new "Digitale" section at the Venice Film Festival (.pdf file) and won the first prize as Best Movie Shot On Digital. The film's use of digital video was also invaluable in getting around censorship: the only way to shoot in Iran on 35mm is to hire equipment from the central authorities, which means script approval and a government minder attending the shoot. Shooting on digital video requires script approval, but no minder is sent along. So 29-year-old Akbari, in an amazing display of courage, gained approval for one script and then duly shot another (she could now be barred from working or from screening her films or from even leaving the country, but she insists on working in Iran, to challenge the system from there and not from abroad). The film is coming soon at the Vancouver Film Festival. More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:09 AM PST - 5 comments

It's the latest buzz to sweep the internet--free iPods for signing up and referring five of your friend. There was plenty of skepticism at first, but when positive reports started coming in, the popularity of the site took off. But like any pyramid scheme, the people who are only signing up now are getting burned. And of course, won't someone think of the children?
posted by turaho at 10:16 AM PST - 13 comments

SPREE: An Escape from Reality - music by Ethan Persoff, made from old records, bizarre noise instruments, circuit bent toys and other unusual sounds.
posted by Peter H at 9:22 AM PST - 1 comments

Sebastian Horsley - a man who's slept with more than 1,000 prostitutes - gives a controversial and candid account of his experience of paying for sex
posted by zeoslap at 9:16 AM PST - 40 comments

Watch out, Best Buy. The Goatse Rescue Floppy is in town. (Page is SFW)
posted by angry modem at 9:10 AM PST - 13 comments

A man and his rocket car. As documentaries enjoy an unprecedented level of popularity and financial success, it's high time that an obscure Canadian National Film Board doc from 1981 was (re)discovered. The story of Ken Carter, who spends several years and millions of dollars of other people's money in the single-minded pursuit of one goal: jumping a jet-powered car across the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the United States. What is it with Canadians and insane dreams?
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:03 AM PST - 10 comments

(Danger! Danger! Silly .gif images ahead!) A little something to file under "wacky web": ballOOns Museum German web site, featuring classic paintings and sculpture with a dollop of goofy animation thrown in for fun. After you enter, click "Gemälde" and "Skulpturen" in the new window to view the galleries.
posted by taz at 7:41 AM PST - 4 comments

Once the stuff of academic and corporate experimentation, ubiquitous computation (or "ubicomp") is gearing up for its commercial debut in the very near future. Along the lines of ostensibly "nanotechnological" pants, the reality of ubicomp as made manifest in consumer products may fall somewhat short of the prognostications: buying a personal communicator designed to work seamlessly within a ubicomp context is not the same thing as living in and with a truly pervasive network.

But already there are signs that the ubiquitous visions beloved by the corporate players and enshrined in their hype are coming into being. So which do you think it'll be? Guardian angel or inescapable, panoptical prison? Neither? Maybe both? I have a sinking feeling we're going to find out, one way or another.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Streamor.com: Streaming Surgical Education 'Featuring the World's First SurgeonCam and The Digital Endoscopy Fellowship. A Digital Window to the OR for Physicians, Trainees, and Patients.' Clips are free, and are available in Real Video & Windows Media formats. "Surgery is an inherently visual art. It must be seen to be understood." (via The Eyes Have It).
posted by misteraitch at 4:40 AM PST - 2 comments

Google News Bias. How second tier websites are gaming the Google News Enging.
posted by srboisvert at 4:17 AM PST - 23 comments

Pressure Groups and Censorship in Israel/Palestine. "I suspect that the causes are complicated and multi-factorial. I suspect that I and others like me – who remained ignorant and negligent on this issue for so long – bear much of the guilt. I suspect that others whose emotional ties to Israel served as blinders on this subject share in our culpability. I suspect that still others who knew the truth and refused to speak of it, or who participated in its cover-up, bear a significant portion of this awful responsibility. I suspect that the career damage and death threats that often result when one begins to speak out on this issue played a part."
posted by acrobat at 3:20 AM PST - 33 comments