November 16

America’s First Cannabis Cafe Opens (at 4:20). [Via]
posted by Burhanistan at 10:07 PM - 22 comments

Behind the growing Steven Pinker vs. Malcolm Gladwell feud (Pinker criticizes Gladwell, Gladwell snarkily replies) is a debate over the value of IQ, specifically, and intelligence, broadly, in success. Recent research has generally shown little link between intelligence and success within fields, and that there are multiple kinds of intelligences that drive achievement. On the other hand, scholars of psychometrics claim the opposite, showing that IQ at an early age can predict achievement, and no amount of study will help. Maybe everyone is right, with enough caveats.
posted by blahblahblah at 9:03 PM - 23 comments

“A deep political crisis of the Afghan society is obvious… The coalition of social forces continues to change in favor of the counter-revolution.The state regime is not capable of stopping the counter-revolution on its own.” CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen recently hosted a televised debate over Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan. Afghanistan: Noble Fight or Lost Cause?
posted by acro at 8:55 PM - 1 comment

Gabriel García Márquez's romance with power. During the youth of García Márquez’s grandfather, Colonel Nicolás Márquez Mejía, who was born in 1864 and died in 1936, a number of presidents and government ministers--almost all of them lawyers from the conservative camp--published dictionaries, language textbooks, and treatises (in prose and verse) on orthology, orthography, philology, lexicography, meter, prosody, and Castilian grammar. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 8:31 PM - 3 comments

Can an obscure disease from Guam explain the explain the appearance of neurological disorders near Marscoma Lake in New Hampshire? The only people thought to contract Lytico-Bodig were Chamorros born before 1961 and related or married to particular familes living near the village of Umatac in Guam. It was theorised that it came from eating cycad seeds, but why were there no documented cases before the 1900s, and why are there no new cases on the island today? The popular author and neurologist Oliver Sacks visited the island and has continued to study the disease. He suggests that the cause is biomagnification of a toxin produced by cyanobacteria and concentrated twice - first by the cycads, and a second time in the flesh of the fruit bats. There are no new cases, he says, because the fruit bats have been nearly hunted to extinction.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:06 PM - 6 comments

Sky News Australia political editor David Speers interviewed Rupert Murdoch earlier this month, and covered a number of topics, including search engine access to news content under the Murdoch umbrella. In short, Rupert Murdoch is looking to a day when Google won't search News Corp. stories, and people will pay for their news (again). Murdoch's views of Google aren't new, claiming Google is stealing from News Corp. Murdoch's Google gambit set the internet buzzing, as briefed on The Opinionator. But Rupert Murdoch isn't the only one looking for Google to fall, with Mark Cuban proclaiming that Google can be taken down (again, or is that still?)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:54 PM - 28 comments

Ken Ober, host of MTV's Remote Control, dead at age 52.
posted by Lucinda at 7:11 PM - 36 comments

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is a survey that rated the 50 states of America from most to least happiest, based on things like emotional health, job satisfaction, and healthy decisions. The top states may surprise you.
posted by Taft at 3:51 PM - 88 comments

All You Haters (Suck My Balls) (slightly NSFW) by LA- and Denver-based short-film makers Nix Bros
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:29 PM - 44 comments

Devil's Tuning Fork is "a first-person exploration/puzzle game in which the player must navigate an unknown world using visual sound waves" and was made by a group of students in 6 months to compete in the Independent Games Festival. Unfortunately, it appears to be windows only, but the trailer is worth checking out anyways. It is pretty.
posted by juv3nal at 2:57 PM - 15 comments

Doll Kind :: Dolls of the 20th Century - A Celebration in Pictures and Histories
posted by anastasiav at 1:31 PM - 20 comments

Last month the United Steelworkers entered into an agreement with the successful Spanish cooperative Mondragon to work toward establishing worker-owned manufacturing coops in the US. [more inside]
posted by enn at 12:13 PM - 26 comments

Two months & three thousand photographs later: here is a fascinating YouTube video of the making of Abigail Uhteg's new art book The Complex of All of These. [more inside]
posted by OmieWise at 11:57 AM - 6 comments

Anthony Howe is a sculptor. Click on each work to see it in action.
posted by bearwife at 11:40 AM - 8 comments

Arkansas 5th grader refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance until gays and lesbians have equal rights. CNN and The Huffington Post pick up the story.
posted by Daddy-O at 11:32 AM - 244 comments

Sixteen workers are killed a day "Every eight hour workday, two people are killed on the job. Most companies are never prosecuted for negligence, even after repeated warnings that their workers were in danger. Meanwhile, workers who blow the whistle face threats and retaliation at the workplace." In a short video examining several cases of worker deaths, David Uhlmann suggests the sanction for an offense that results in a worker's death should be as great as the sanction for killing a deer out of season.
posted by shetterly at 10:52 AM - 95 comments

The first four issues of Stray Bullets set the world on fire when they came out. Paper burns, you see, and a comic book as inflammatory as Stray Bullets just had to be burned. The religious right burned them. The Godless left burned them. The people in the middle felt left out and burned them too. Only a few copies survived and are probably worth millions by now. Inaccessible to the common man, the wonders of the digital universe have finally arrived to allow you—the average Joe—to see what the fuss was all about.
posted by Artw at 10:52 AM - 32 comments

'Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!'
posted by chronkite at 9:28 AM - 96 comments

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell [more inside]
posted by Miko at 8:10 AM - 56 comments

In Cold Blood, 50 Years On : The Guardian takes a look at Holcomb, Kansas 50 years (to the day) after the crimes depicted in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 8:04 AM - 10 comments

RIP Edward Woodward, star of Callan, The Equalizer and The Wicker Man. Edgar Wright, who directed him in Hot Fuzz, pays tribute. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:55 AM - 71 comments

It's an awesome feeling.
posted by SinisterPurpose at 7:10 AM - 35 comments

Hear the Bible come alive in Dramatic Audio Theater! Jim Caviezel as Jesus (again). Lou Diamond Phillips as Mark. Malcolm McDowell as Solomon. Luke Perry as Judas. Max von Sydow as Noah. (warning: auto-playing video) The Word of Promise Audio Bible features over 1000 voice actors, a 150-piece orchestra, an iPhone app, 98 hours of recorded audio, and more. Meet the cast. Hear samples.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:02 AM - 24 comments

Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again — A generation of British Islamists have been trained in Afghanistan to fight a global jihad. But now some of those would-be extremists have had a change of heart. Johann Hari finds out what made them give up the fight.
posted by netbros at 6:59 AM - 15 comments

Kiva transparency commentary: "I suspect that most Kiva users do not realize this." The controversy is summarized by the NY Times. [more inside]
posted by kmennie at 4:43 AM - 77 comments

Speak like a 1950s hipster.
posted by mippy at 4:21 AM - 29 comments

October 29, 2009 marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Welcome To The Pleasuredome, by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, kicking off the short rule of Frankie over reality. oh so much [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:37 AM - 42 comments

November 15

In a hot lab in the center of Lyon, space-suited virologists want to create a superflu as contagious as H1N1 and as lethal as H5N1. Why? So nature doesn't get there first.
posted by drdanger at 11:06 PM - 51 comments

Been hypnotized lately? Anthony Burril's video for Acid Washed's "General Motors, Detroit, America" is pure eye candy.
posted by flatluigi at 11:00 PM - 8 comments

Charles Van Schaick was a photographer in Black River Falls, Wisconsin in the late 19th and early 20th Century. His work was made famous by Michael Lesy in the book Wisconsin Death Trip in which the photographs were juxtaposed with local newsreports of murder, suicide, disease, insanity, animal mutilation and other calamities plus the occasional non-morbid event. Flickr set of photos used in Wisconsin Death Trip. Some of the texts from Wisconsin Death Trip. Robert Birnbaum interviews Michael Lesy about Wisconsin Death Trip and other things. Over 2500 photographs by Charles Van Schaick owned by The Wisconsin Historical Society. [Warning: Some of the photographs are of deceased infants]
posted by Kattullus at 10:22 PM - 20 comments

Open Letter to the Sudoku community and the organizers of the Sudoku National Championship about the potential cheating of Eugene Varshavsky during this Saturday's tournament. An unknown "man in a hoodie" shows up late and unregistered to the 2009 Sudoku National Championship in Philadelphia, and wins third place despite skipping the first two rounds. Second-place finisher and 2007 World Champion Tom Snyder accuses him of having a radio transmitter concealed underneath the hood, feeding him computer-generated solutions. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Varshavsky, wearing a stocking cap, defeated a grandmaster in the 2006 World Open chess tournament. Has competitive puzzling lost its innocence?
posted by escabeche at 6:36 PM - 90 comments

“I think sometimes that being overly type-sensitive is like an allergy,” : The New York Times on the perils of being a font nerd.
posted by The Whelk at 6:02 PM - 95 comments

Sin Sisamouth, the king of Cambodian pop. Klen Kloun Noun Srey::Bopha Thy Moy::Kom Sman Bong Phlech::Ah Snae Meas Bong::many more here::(previously, from the mighty mighty flapjax)
posted by vronsky at 4:59 PM - 13 comments

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty". Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year. [more inside]
posted by Jakey at 4:04 PM - 131 comments

Hong Lauwai ('Red Foreigner') sings along with patriotic Red Chinese songs on various sites like YouTube. Alleged to be a New Yorker and stock trader, his true identity isn't known at this time. Since he appeared shirtless in his first performances (Without the Communist Party, There would be No New China; The East is Red), there was some doubt of his sincerity, and consternation among hard-liners in Beijing -- what if he was singing totally nude? [more inside]
posted by Rash at 3:47 PM - 16 comments

History of a New York Block. A nearly complete record of the life cycle of Eldridge St between Stanton/Rivington. Click on the buildings for details. [more inside]
posted by minkll at 2:29 PM - 21 comments

Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. The <center> cannot hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML together in the same conceptual space will destroy your mind like so much watery putty.
posted by spiderskull at 1:31 PM - 123 comments

Olympic Flame Burns for Icy Relay
Canada is launching its countdown to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics by boldly sending the Olympic flame farther north than it has ever gone before.
posted by kliuless at 1:01 PM - 22 comments

She is the Young Republican who "stung" ACORN. And he is her "pimp". Together they brought down ACORN. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 11:48 AM - 96 comments

You’d have to be blind to drive a bobsleigh. At least if you want to finish first, second, or third nine times in seven years. Since 2001, U.S. bobsleigh pilot Steven Holcomb has dealt with a degenerative eye condition that left him with 20/500 vision. He drove a sled hurtling down an ice track anyway, often winning. Now that his vision has been restored via an experimental operation, he fuzzes over his helmet visor so it’s just like the olden days. Bobsleigh, it seems, is all about feel. [more inside]
posted by joeclark at 11:43 AM - 3 comments

Doug Sahm was a country music prodigy. [more inside]
posted by dortmunder at 10:22 AM - 22 comments

Get a glass of Harvey's Bristol Cream, put on some funky 1970's music, sit back, and feast your eyes on some glorious Wood Porn! (SFW) "Oh, baby, you got some great vascular cambium!" "Yeah, that is some hard oak, drill me, baby!"
posted by Drasher at 8:12 AM - 34 comments

How should math be taught? The Kumon Math curriculum provides a simple and clear description of one possible sequence of skills. Hung-Hsi Wu decries the bogus dichotomy of basic skills versus conceptual understanding (PDF, Google Docs). David Klein provides a detailed history of US K-12 math education in the 20th century. The NYT describes the 2008 report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (full text as PDF). [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 7:28 AM - 64 comments

Star Trek fans know that there was a second, unaired pilot episode of Where No Man has Gone Before. That version has been found by a collector in Germany, and is going to be released.
posted by pjern at 5:09 AM - 28 comments

November 14

STEP 1 Buy 100 pieces of crap from thrift stores and garage sales.
STEP 2 Get 100 authors to write a fiction about pieces of crap.
STEP 3 ???
STEP 4 Profit!
Significant Objects hosts the stories for all 100 pieces of crap/art, but the last six are still available for bidding: Blue Vase by Lauren Mechling, Umbrella Trinket by Bruce Holland Rogers, Lighter Shaped Like a Small Pool Ball by Rob Agredo, Bar Mitzvah Bookends by Stacey Levine, Geisha Bobblehead by Edward "ed" Champion, and Missouri Shotglass by Jonathan Lethem.
posted by carsonb at 10:28 PM - 12 comments

I have no idea what you're talking about, so here's a French magneto-lamp.
posted by boo_radley at 9:43 PM - 30 comments

Singer, beatboxer, electric ukelele player Merrill Garbus says "It was about a woman selling her child to the butcher," referring to her puppet show that led to her first written songs. Her one-woman band Tune-Yards (24:59 video) is like Imogen Heap's live performing, mixed with some Phoebe Snow and Nina Simone. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 6:54 PM - 8 comments

It's snowing in China. Who's responsible? [more inside]
posted by up in the old hotel at 5:59 PM - 25 comments

In 2010, Obama will have a miserable year, NATO may lose in Afghanistan, the UK gets a regime change, China needs to chill, India's factories will overtake its farms, Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum, the stimulus will need an exit strategy, the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2", African football will unite Korea, conflict over natural resources will grow, Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled, the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable), technology will grow ever more ubiquitous, we'll all charge our phones via USB, MBAs will be uncool, the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so the Tens begin.

The Economist: The World in 2010. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:09 PM - 60 comments

Belle de Jour reveals herself. She's Dr Brooke Magnanti. She's real and once wrote this column about autopsies.
posted by feelinglistless at 4:51 PM - 71 comments

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