Qantara (meaning bridge in arabic) is a German based website looking to have dialogue with the Islamic world. Turkey is carrying out a radical revision of Islamic texts trying to define modern Islam. Through dossiers and dialogue and slideshows Qantara is helping this debate.
posted to MetaFilter by adamvasco at 11:17 AM on February 26, 2008 (9 comments)

While the dream of immortality might be as old as mankind, the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula (image) seems to be living it:

The hydrozoan Turritopsis nutricula has evolved a remarkable variation on this theme, and in so doing appears to have achieved immortality. The solitary medusa of this species can revert to its polyp stage after becoming sexually mature (Bavestrello et al., 1992; Piraino et al., 1996). In the laboratory, 100% of these medusae regularly undergo this change. Thus, it is possible that organismic death does not occur in this species!

An in-depth research paper.
posted to MetaFilter by Foci for Analysis at 12:33 AM on January 30, 2008 (48 comments)

Many, many, old computing and game magazines, free for download as pdfs, cbrs, or page scans. Computer Gaming World 1-100 ~ Atari Age and Atari Club ~ Compute! (transcribed(!)) ~ Zzap! 64 (awesome) ~ Some foreign ones ~ All the Amiga ones ~ Old Nintendo Power, GamePro, EGM, and so on (free registration required). All credit to the original poster and comments at the random Gnomes' random lair.
posted to MetaFilter by BlackLeotardFront at 8:31 PM on November 5, 2007 (27 comments)

25 Photos from a Toy Factory in China.
posted to MetaFilter by chunking express at 7:28 AM on October 4, 2007 (53 comments)

After reading a few comments, I've decided to make the soundtrack to a video game that doesn't exist.
posted to MeFi Music by tehloki at 8:10 PM on August 12, 2007 (8 comments)

Our own fandango_matt, of Metafilter design contest and multiple pissing elephant fame, has come up with his own Boy Scout inspired Metafilter safety guide.
posted to MetaTalk by Krrrlson at 10:25 AM on July 16, 2007 (188 comments)

Because sometimes playing only two Mega Man games simultaneously with the same input just doesn't satisfy. Presenting Mega Man 3, 4, 5, and 6 - at the same ding-donged time. The music alone will drive you insane.
posted to MetaFilter by BlackLeotardFront at 11:29 PM on May 23, 2007 (15 comments)

Church Locking: shattering the myth that "all churches are locked". With the aim of visiting every church in England and recording whether it is kept locked or unlocked, this ten-year-old 'side project' now has statistics by county and diocese, county maps, and a map of the country showing their progress.
posted to MetaFilter by chrismear at 12:27 PM on May 16, 2007 (29 comments)

Tvashtar in Motion. Awesome five-frame GIF of fountaining sulfuric lava on Io courtesy New Horizons as it swung by Jupiter earlier this year. Found via Planetary Society Blog (Thank you, Emily). More on Tvashtar.
posted to MetaFilter by brownpau at 2:12 PM on May 15, 2007 (19 comments)

"I looked into the faces of my executioners and saw that many of them had tears in their eyes." In 1961, Bruce Olson, a brilliant 19-year-old linguistics student, tells his parents he wants to be a Christian missionary. In disgust, his dad buys him a one-way ticket to Caracas. Without sponsors, he walks alone into the jungle looking for the Motilone natives. A Motilone arrow pierces his thigh, and he is taken back to the village where his fate will be decided. He is eventually accepted into the tribe and begins to evangelize without disrupting the culture. In 1988, Olson is captured and condemned to die by guerrillas. Investigating the story, journalist Maria Caballero ventures into the jungles to interview indigenous leaders, who testify to Olson's 30-year history of service to them and in some cases volunteer to die in his place. The president of Colombia says, “This is the first white man to be defended by the indigenous communities in our country, in Latin America.”
posted to MetaFilter by No Robots at 8:53 AM on May 11, 2007 (74 comments)

I'm looking for a movie that was possibly made in the early 80s. It had a similar feel of Jungle Book because it had a little boy in it with many animals including a kangaroo. It was part animation and part live-action, and I believe the entire movie was set in Australia. I wish I could remember more details of it, but I was quite young when I watched it and I haven't been able to find it since.
posted to Ask Metafilter by czechmate at 7:28 AM on May 6, 2007 (8 comments)

$78 Million worth of Red Tape. An amazing (and lengthy) LA Times article that provides an extremely rare glimpse into the finances of a major motion picture, with a line item dissection of the $160 Million disaster Sahara. The items include $230,000+ for bribes to local officials, $2 Million for a 45 second plane crash sequence cut from the final film, and 3.8 Million to a total of 10 different screenwriters for a movie that eventually went on to be one of the largest (in pure dollar terms - not adjusted for inflation) financial disasters in film making history.
posted to MetaFilter by jonson at 5:38 PM on April 16, 2007 (74 comments)

A Mountain of Broken Toilets (1250kb jpg). Brought to you by the relentless Recycle Guy (home of undiscovered literary gem The Brown Sheet. Previously
posted to MetaFilter by squalor at 3:43 PM on March 20, 2007 (21 comments)

An old-timey song about writer's block at the end of the world by The Scarring Party
posted to MeFi Music by drezdn at 4:39 PM on July 12, 2006 (21 comments)

Detailed images of a complete miniature city
posted to MetaFilter by deern the headlice at 6:30 PM on February 11, 2007 (41 comments)

Roman descendants found in China? DNA tests will be done in a remote Gobi village to see if the blond-haired Chinese residents are related to Crassus' lost legion of c. 53 BC, as suggested by historian Homer Dubbs in 1957 and debated since.
posted to MetaFilter by stbalbach at 11:24 AM on February 4, 2007 (33 comments)

"Everybody underestimates the kick to the groin." The venerable Bas Rutten, three time King of Pancrase, former Ultimate Fighting Championship Heavyweight Champion, and actor teaches you how to survive a bar fight and deal with jerks. Bas does not promote violence, but if anyone touches you or your family, he gives you his blessings to take him out.
posted to MetaFilter by reformedjerk at 8:45 AM on January 30, 2007 (122 comments)

The modern slave trade is thriving. The Dept of State estimates that 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are trafficked - brought across borders and forced to labor. Among them, DOS estimates, hundreds of thousands are minor children. Some of those children - as young as 5 years old - are being sold as slaves and kept in cages while they are raped and sold for sex, some servicing as many as 30 men a day. They are bought for as little as $10 from desperate parents. But all is not lost: Somaly Mam, a former child prostitute, is the Mother Theresa of Southeast Asian child prostitutes, using AFESIP as her vehicle for saving them. Glamour awarded her their Woman of the Year honor, and she has been lauded in other ways internationally. Cambodian sex traffickers weren't as happy with her, though - her opponents kidnapped her 14-year old daughter, held her hostage for days, and raped her. It's hard to be on the wrong side of this issue, but some advocates raise a few hackles by claiming legalized prostitution and porn contribute to sex trafficking and child prostitution. Sex trafficking, and child prostitution, is a sizeable problem in the US as well. Although trafficking is illegal in the US, combating trafficking is tough in part because victims often fear authorities, personal reprisals, harm to their families at home, or even deportation (although special visas - T visas - are available to them in certain circumstances). In Southeast Asia (and throughout the world), child sex tourism is even harder to stop.
posted to MetaFilter by Amizu at 2:51 PM on January 24, 2007 (41 comments)

Horse Rescue in the Netherlands--after a heavy storm in October, 100+ horses were standed on a small island. Here's how they were rescued.Google video; alternate YouTube link. Warning: Vangelis music.
posted to MetaFilter by fandango_matt at 4:50 PM on November 29, 2006 (43 comments)

Warning signs from the future. Things to look out for when you get there.
posted to MetaFilter by Brandon Blatcher at 3:50 PM on October 28, 2006 (33 comments)

Meat is Neat. We are but tiny machines. Remember the YouTube video of a funky animation of cellular activity? Here it is with a voice explanation of what's going on. Absolutely mindblowing. some sort of embedded video, dsl-quality with sound. see here for other forms
posted to MetaFilter by five fresh fish at 8:19 PM on October 27, 2006 (35 comments)

Street Use: Somewhere on a continuum shared with Umdenken and Chindogu we find Kevin Kelly's Street Use.
posted to MetaFilter by econous at 4:04 AM on October 27, 2006 (14 comments)

Is optimism enough? [via]
posted to MetaFilter by onalark at 5:31 PM on October 24, 2006 (27 comments)

The world according to Mike Tyson
posted to MetaFilter by H. Roark at 9:33 AM on October 20, 2006 (73 comments)

Confronting the New Misanthropy. "The big question is not whether humans will survive this century, but whether our faith in humanity will survive it"
posted to MetaFilter by stbalbach at 1:03 PM on August 22, 2006 (51 comments)

BULLSHIT! Penn & Teller present their rational, libertarian bent views on diverse subjects, now available for free download on Google Video ::: profanity; creationism; alien abductions; conspiracy theories; recycling; gun control; endangered species; religion; the bible; family values; the apocalypse; signs from heaven; the occult; 12-step recovery programs; exercise v. genetics; environmentalism; hypnosis; ghosts; the war on drugs; feng shui / bottled water; college; PETA; and abstinence.
posted to MetaFilter by crunchland at 9:22 AM on August 11, 2006 (114 comments)

For those who worry that the concrete pillars around U.S. Federal buildings aren't strong enough to stop a motivated car bomber in an 18 wheeler, this video should comfort you. Similarly, for those of you who are worried that the concrete shielding around our weapons bunkers is not thick enough, this video should put you at ease. And finally, for those of you that worry that dogs & monkeys are putting aside their differences to team up against mankind, this video should lay that myth to rest.
posted to MetaFilter by jonson at 11:10 AM on August 10, 2006 (38 comments)

World Leaders Were Kids Once Too
Photos of a whole bunch of world leaders as kids up through adulthood. Hey, Reagan was Teh Buff! And proof that Joe Stalin was NOT born with that mustache!
posted to MetaFilter by fenriq at 12:39 PM on July 22, 2006 (83 comments)

"You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels interconnect. What do you know about the dynamics of this larger system around you?

30 questions to elevate your awareness (and literacy) of the greater place in which you live.
posted to MetaFilter by Hartster at 5:27 AM on July 13, 2006 (31 comments)

The World's Most Amazing Dog (YouTube) A clip from Montel Williams' show about a dog born without front legs. The owner has trained it to walk upright. As my boyfriend said, "After watching this, I'll never complain about anything in my life again."
posted to MetaFilter by ArsncHeart at 3:36 PM on July 7, 2006 (57 comments)

Awesome stuff, guys. I'll represent retro/chip music: I'm involved in the niche hobby of writing new music with old videogame hardware. The music you are hearing was programmed in notepad using a TurboGrafx 16 (PC Engine). It's meant to combine Capcom and Konami videogame soundtracks of the late 80s, hence the weird title. I perform this music live in NYC, with guitars and lasers. I got awesome advice on Ask MeFi about how to get my equipment to shows, and as thanks I'll share my stuff with whoever might enjoy it. More of it is at my site, and my friends who also do this share it also.
posted to MeFi Music by jake at 12:10 PM on June 30, 2006 (24 comments)

it's a song about dirt and also bags
posted to MeFi Music by frenetic at 8:13 PM on June 29, 2006 (21 comments)

Living with half a brain - hemispherectomy, probably the most radical procedure in neurosurgery
posted to MetaFilter by Gyan at 9:15 AM on June 29, 2006 (50 comments)

I think I can, I think I can...
posted to MetaFilter by bigmusic at 12:28 PM on June 24, 2006 (18 comments)

In 1987, Canadian photographer Robin Collyer began documenting houses that aren't houses at all – they're architecturally-disguised electrical substations, complete with windows, blinds, and bourgeois landscaping.
posted to MetaFilter by signal at 7:37 PM on June 12, 2006 (31 comments)

A televised snooker 147 is the big deal for snooker professionals. The first was by Canadian Cliff Thorburn. The fastest was by Ronnie O'Sullivan. The luckiest goes to John Higgins. Also by Kirk Stevens, Mark Williams, Stephen Hendry, and Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie.
posted to MetaFilter by parki at 9:24 PM on May 17, 2006 (49 comments)

A growing crop of towers pushing 2,000 feet: though just shy itself, the much-redesigned Freedom Tower is finally under construction for completion in 2011; but there is also the stunning Fordham Spire, approved in Chicago, that will rise to 2,000 feet by 2010. Moscow is planning the tallest tower in Europe, while there are a number of sightseeing and radio towers under construction in Asia. In Dubai, two towers under construction (despite worker protests) are racing to be the world's tallest, both are keeping their final heights secret, but will likely be over half a mile in height -- the Burj Dubai and the Al Burj. As previously discussed, there are great illustrations comparing buildings both built and under construction. Bring on Frank Lloyd Wright's The Illinois!
posted to MetaFilter by blahblahblah at 8:23 AM on May 16, 2006 (63 comments)