In How to Write a Great Novel authors such as Edwidge Danticat, Hilary Mantel, Orhan Pamuk, Junot Díaz and Margaret Atwood speak about their writing process. If you want your thoughts on writing in a longer format, you could do a lot worse than The New York Times' Writers on Writing series, which features short essays by, for example, Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow, Louise Erdrich and Annie Proulx. Should you thirst for meditations longer yet, Barbara Demarco-Barrett has on her Writers on Writing radio show interviewed a boatload of authors and it is available as a podcast [iTunes link]
posted by Kattullus at 8:09 PM Nov 11 2009 - 18 comments [50 favorites]

Soldiers return home after months abroad and are greeted by their very excited dogs. (A compilation of puppy-focused welcome-home videos for Veterans' Day.)
posted by nobody at 7:53 AM Nov 11 2009 - 57 comments [64 favorites (47 in the last 24 hours)]

Videogame voice acting at its finest.
posted by Chan at 5:35 PM Nov 11 2009 - 70 comments [29 favorites]

Beautiful data visualisations of the original Choose Your Own Adventure stories. A project by Christian Swinehart.
posted by creeky at 8:30 AM Nov 11 2009 - 31 comments [31 favorites (27 in the last 24 hours)]

"It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed." Despite efforts by Victorians to eradicate them, dialects of English in Great Britain continue to vary greatly, much to the consternation of many traditionalists. But a recently acquired archive is giving new insight into old dialects--some of which no longer exist. Recorded in a WWI prisoner of war camp on shellac disks, the archive was part of an effort by German linguists to study regional variation in the English language. A report by PRI's The World includes a brief synopsis--and a powerful rendition of a beloved Scottish ballad by a homesick soldier.
posted by jefficator at 8:04 AM Nov 11 2009 - 9 comments [33 favorites (23 in the last 24 hours)]

Theme Park Maps showcases those hand-drawn brochures that showed where the roller coasters and bumper cars were at your favorite theme park.
posted by Wild_Eep at 1:43 PM Nov 11 2009 - 23 comments [23 favorites]

Say hello to googles new concurrent programming language Compiles faster than c/c++ and runs just as fast. Garbage collection + concurrency included
posted by FusiveResonance at 9:06 AM Nov 11 2009 - 54 comments [21 favorites]

In September, Jade Ewen replaced Keisha Buchanan in the line-up of the British pop group Sugababes. Buchanan was the last original member of the group, making the Sugababes the pop equivalent of the Ship of Theseus, an ancient philosophical paradox. The switch caused acrimony, heartache and legal wrangles. But Popjustice now reveals that it also has terrifying implications for the future of human civilisation. Sunday 30 April 2265: Mutyageddon.
posted by WPW at 10:03 AM Nov 11 2009 - 31 comments [17 favorites]

Crime: A Tale of Two Cities. When "The Wire" gained popularity in Great Britain, we were contacted by a London-based journalist who proposed a job swap. Mark Hughes, a crime reporter with The Independent, a national newspaper in the United Kingdom, wanted to come to Baltimore to see if the city’s police officers, drug dealers, prosecutors and politicians bore any resemblance to those on show. We agreed to complete the exchange by sending our police reporter, Justin Fenton, to London to compare crime trends.
posted by HumanComplex at 7:54 AM Nov 12 2009 - 9 comments [16 favorites]

Lou Jing was your average 20 year old woman from Shanghai, until being on Go! Oriental Angel, an American Idol like singing competition show, had to point out the obvious. Lou Jing is half Chinese, half African- America, something China apparently wasn't ready for.
posted by djduckie at 8:37 PM Nov 11 2009 - 70 comments [15 favorites]

On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, Lieutenant John Purvis risked court-martial by taking some snapshots of the battlefield. Now his photograph album has been put online. It gives an extraordinary insight into what it was like to be an ordinary soldier in the middle of the battle, marching up to the front, resting in the forward lines, taking cover as a bomb explodes, advancing into battle, watching a shell burst, digging into freshly made trenches, or moving forward over captured ground.
posted by verstegan at 3:00 AM Nov 11 2009 - 32 comments [50 favorites (14 in the last 24 hours)]

Christopher Bird at Mighty God King has written some corkers in the past - from his ejection from Livejournal owing to his review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to his frequent conversations with Flapjacks and Photoshopping of Final Fantasy Covers (previously). He's really outdone himself this time, with Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer. Read it, and, quite possibly, weep. Bonus points to the first person who constructs a Primer-level explanation of what happened.
posted by danhon at 6:25 PM Nov 11 2009 - 35 comments [11 favorites]

The Guardian recently published a beautiful article about Danish Dynamite, the '80s Danish national soccer (football) squad. Rob Smyth and Lars Eriksen write about how the success and failure of the national team highlighted national traits that Denmark has. The writing about the matches is among the most inspired I have ever read.
posted by reenum at 9:20 AM Nov 11 2009 - 6 comments [9 favorites]

The man who killed Chuckles the Clown David Lloyd is dead. He wrote one of Mary Tyler Moore's funniest moments. He also wrote for Frasier, Cheers, Lou Grant, and Taxi, including Elaine's Strange Triangle . He also wrote and created Brothers, an early TV show to feature a character who just happened to be gay. No big deal.
posted by arse_hat at 11:46 PM Nov 11 2009 - 13 comments [8 favorites]

During the last week, a senior detective in Novorossiysk, Russia named Alexei Dymovsky had a viral hit on YouTube with a series of videos (in Russian: 1, 2. With English subtitles: 1) complaining about working conditions, accusing officers of corruption, and claiming that he and other police were ordered to stage crimes in order to put innocent people in jail. Dymovsky was promptly fired, but the Russian government has since admitted that parts of the police have been turned into criminal businesses. More here and here.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:40 AM Nov 12 2009 - 9 comments [8 favorites]

An incredibly detailed reconstruction of US Airways flight 1549, from takeoff to ditching in the Hudson. The first video is an animation of the flight, with audio from the LGA tower and a transcription of the discussion between Capt. Sullenberger and F/O Skiles. The work also includes reconstructed radar target displays, radar returns of the birds, and various audio transcripts. Based on the NTSB docket, released in June 2009.
posted by Ella Fynoe at 6:57 AM Nov 12 2009 - 22 comments [8 favorites]

Vanity Fair explores the rise of cuteness and why we love it so very much.
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:24 PM Nov 11 2009 - 45 comments [7 favorites]

The Ride Journal is a lovely mag by/about/for cyclists of all types: bmxers, fixed gear riders, road racers, tricyclists, casual riders... you name it! It's a beautiful publication--great photography, nice paper, good personal stories. However, it's a print mag. As their 3rd issue is being mailed out, they've made their first avaiable for download as a 26MB PDF.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 4:03 PM Nov 11 2009 - 4 comments [7 favorites]

Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced.
posted by kimdog at 8:06 AM Oct 8 2009 - 845 comments [269 favorites (6 in the last 24 hours)]

Peter Greenaway on Robert Ashley: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:55 AM Nov 11 2009 - 17 comments [15 favorites (6 in the last 24 hours)]