Craig Ferguson seems to have a special liking for conversation with Stephen Fry. Previously. On Wednesday night, Stephen was back on the Late Late Show as the only guest. The naturally wide-ranging discussion includes Arthur Conan Doyle, America, mortality, religion, philosophy, science, homosexuality, Wagner, and more. Enjoy. [more inside]
posted by lazaruslong at 8:05 AM - 1 comment

La Petite Mélancolie (NSFW)
Is mainly a French photo blog which has plenty of excellent timesink in it. From Hannah Hoch to Romy Schneider and from Edward Steichen to Jorge Caceres
It is difficult to describe this site which sometimes verges on the pornographic but also has many pages on surrealists such as Paul Eluard and Jacques Prevert,
as well as other avant garde people such as the Czechs Karel Tiege and Milan Kundra.
posted by adamvasco at 4:20 AM - 2 comments

Pictures from South Sudan by a UNHCR aid worker (MeFi's Own™ tarvuz)
posted by elgilito at 3:04 AM - 6 comments

Whether you love him for his role as the Sweet Transvestite in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Lord of Darkness in Ridley Scott's Legend, Pennywise the clown in the TV adaptation of Stephen King's It, Wadsworth the butler in Clue, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, his voice work for scads of cartoons, his countless theater performances, his many unforgettable, wonderfully strange guest spots on various TV shows, his absolutely amazing voice, or for (quite possibly) all of these things at once, the fact is, you love Tim Curry. Spare a thought tonight for this acclaimed, ubiquitous character actor, singer, dancer, and odd-looking, sexy little man. Tim Curry, 67, has had a major stroke at his home in Los Angeles. Early reports said that he was left unable to speak, but his agent now tells the Daily Mail that he's "doing great (...) He absolutely can speak and is recovering at this time and in great humor."
posted by Ursula Hitler at 11:05 PM - 49 comments

SLYT: "Earlier this evening [...], Will Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro (AKA Carlton) reunited on-air and took us on a stroll down memory lane. With DJ Jazzy Jeff behind the deck, watch as Smith raps The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song before he and Ribeiro dance along to 'It’s Not Unusual' and 'Jump On It'." [more inside]
posted by raihan_ at 9:57 PM - 21 comments

Call it municipal disobedience: communities like Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, are defying laws they deem illegitimate.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:46 PM - 61 comments

Although ranked tenth in "America's Favorite Architecture," compiled by the American Institute of Architects, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - sometimes referred to as simply 'The Wall' - was the at the center of political and artistic controversy and opposition from the time of its announcement in 1981. The Wall, situated in Constitution Gardens adjacent to the National Mall, is "...often referred to as the veterans 3rd battle. The 1st being survival in Vietnam. The 2nd, was dealing with the rejection experienced upon returning home from war. And, the 3rd, building the Wall." [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:18 PM - 41 comments

Catbeards is a Tumblr of beards made from cats, not cats with beards. It's new, and it's convenient, but it doesn't capture the best of catbeards. Cat-Beard.com is similar: good but not great. Mashable collected some of the best, and Buzzfeed is in on the trend, and of course, there are also dog beards. Know Your Meme covers its history.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:43 PM - 23 comments

This Roller is a chariot for the glittering Eloi, and if we’re not exactly Morlocks yet, that does seem to be the way things are going. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 7:09 PM - 56 comments

Welcome to Daily Star Wars
"2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars daily strip that was published in newspapers by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. In honor of that I've decided to start this blog where I'll be posting a new strip everyday to recreate the series original run. These strips were some of the only Star Wars stories going on at the time and generally had a more serious tone than their Marvel cousin. They're also officially recognized as part of the EU and fill in the gaps between films." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:01 PM - 12 comments

Where have you been? We've been waiting for you! He helped you sweat to the oldies, sweat and shout, and boogie down the pounds, even if you, too, were an oldie. And we know he isn't dead. But where is he? [more inside]
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:18 PM - 28 comments

James McDonald of Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, collects bikes--at least one from every era of bikemaking. "If there were 200 bicycles here," he explains, "they would have been culled down out of probably two to three thousand bicycles that I've brought home over the last two years, and those two thousand would have been culled down from maybe tens of thousands of bicycles that I've gone to look at and left behind." Check out this 3 minute video for more!
posted by MoonOrb at 5:15 PM - 14 comments

In 1942 a British forest guard in Roopkund, India made an alarming discovery. Some 16,000 feet above sea level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake absolutely full of skeletons.
posted by Renoroc at 4:52 PM - 58 comments

Augusten Burroughs got married.
posted by barnoley at 4:39 PM - 28 comments

The Final Days of 'Macho Man' Randy Savage [more inside]
posted by zarq at 2:08 PM - 26 comments

Eric Weinstein has a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard, but has spent most of the last 10 years outside academia working as an economic consultant for a New York hedge fund. Now he apparently has a new theory of everything that claims to be able to explain quantum gravity, dark matter and dark energy. Actual details have not yet been provided and some physicists are dismissive. But his work has received enthusiastic endorsement from Oxford's Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding Marcus du Sautoy, with whom he has been discussing the theory over the last two years. [more inside]
posted by leibniz at 1:51 PM - 80 comments

Giant Ants is a wall-to-wall Facebook graffiti made by two giant ants as they plan for summer, have NSFW encounters, and even answer some fan inquiries! [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:18 PM - 7 comments

Only a lucky few MeFites have the ability to view vaudevillian, commercial actor, inventor, and photographer George Mann's gorgeous vintage Kodachrome survey of Los Angeles coffee shops in 3-D as he intended.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 11:29 AM - 19 comments

Make way for the $21 Long Island Ice Tea: The trshy summer cocktail goes upscale (The Awl)
posted by The Whelk at 11:13 AM - 92 comments

Where did the formula that a dog ages 7 years for every 1 human year come from? No one knows for sure, but the BBC, using data from the UK Kennel Club and US Veterinary Medical Database, have come up with a more accurate online dog years calculator. The truth about how dogs age is more fascinating, and less straightforward, than we thought. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:18 AM - 58 comments

“We did our first show in a bar...all of a sudden, the whole room was quiet. And then we got everyone to sit on the floor cross-legged to watch our crankies.” [more inside]
posted by Miko at 10:06 AM - 10 comments

Daft Train That Friday happy place where Daft Punk overlaps the Soul Train cakewalk. SLYT.
posted by perhapsolutely at 9:57 AM - 54 comments

Khaki Dance by The NSJ Crew. SLYT
posted by catch as catch can at 9:49 AM - 12 comments

Actual conversations with my 2 year old daughter, as re-enacted by me and another full grown man - Episode 1.
posted by quin at 9:23 AM - 69 comments

Detroit Institute of Arts collection could face sell-off to satisfy Detroit's creditors Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr is considering whether the multibillion-dollar collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts should be considered city assets that potentially could be sold to cover about $15 billion in debt.
posted by R. Mutt at 9:13 AM - 81 comments

In 1997, Last Unicorn gave Zug the chance at recreating Frank Herbert's 'Dune' through a new trading card series. He was originally told to base his work off of David Lynch's film, but after complications with licensing, "they told me to avoid similarity to Lynch's visuals" says Mark Zug. Mark Zug's Dune trading cards.
posted by Artw at 9:12 AM - 43 comments

Nowadays, fortified wines are the butt of jokes. (previously) However, there was a time when they were considered mainstream and there were even a few commercials made. Of course, we can't leave out the best commercial for fortified wine ever made.
posted by josher71 at 9:06 AM - 65 comments

Eine murul / Breakfast on the Grass is a stop-motion animation answering one of Art's most enduring mysteries: why are those people sitting like that? (SLVimeo, 4:30)
posted by theodolite at 8:57 AM - 6 comments

Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony. [more inside]
posted by elizardbits at 8:41 AM - 55 comments

In April, French cartoonist Boulet (previous, more previous) was invited to go on tour in the US, courtesy of the French embassy in New York. As a good 'webcomic', he kept a diary of his impressions of New York, the language barrier and going to the MoCCaFest, and also had a book to sell, a reworked edition of his 2012 24-hours comic Darkness (previous).
posted by MartinWisse at 8:32 AM - 21 comments

A rare disease is defined as any condition affecting fewer than 200,000 patients in the United States. More than 7,000 such diseases exist, afflicting a total of 25 million to 30 million Americans.. One of them, fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), might be approaching a cure. [more inside]
posted by dmd at 7:01 AM - 21 comments

You might have heard at one time or another a 60s band called Canned Heat, who made a wee bit of a splash way back when with a little number called Going Up the Country. The song featured a simple but very catchy little flute riff between verses. If you ever wondered where that riff came from (not to mention the melodic contour of the tune itself) you need look no further than a 1928 recording by Henry Thomas, who played the flute melody on his quills, or, panpipes. The song was called Bull Doze Blues. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:14 AM - 36 comments

Tech writers and their secret shame - outdated gear.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:11 AM - 120 comments

Corporate Spirit uses stock photography to tell a deranged tale about living the corporate life.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:41 AM - 36 comments

Railroad bridge domino collapse in Lampasas County, Texas. (SLYT) No reported injuries, and the bridge dates from 1910, according to the AP. The Infrastructure Report Card, released this week (in which America received a D-), may need a small update to "8,680 of the 52,260 bridges in Texas (16.6%) are considered functionally obsolete."
posted by Erasmouse at 5:16 AM - 77 comments

Bernie "Whistling" Smith, a legendary, no-nonsense Vancouver cop was the subject of this 1975. Oscar nominated documentary. [more inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 3:52 AM - 2 comments

At age 9, Josie Romero -- born a boy but living as a transgender girl -- sought out a controversial hormone treatment that would begin transitioning her body into the opposite sex. NBC Dateline (21:48)
posted by Blasdelb at 1:32 AM - 78 comments

Research finds that same-sex unions are happier than heterosexual marriages. What can gay and lesbian couples teach straight ones about living in harmony?
posted by Long Way To Go at 11:10 PM - 46 comments

FFF: A long time ago, a child turned on a home gaming console for a little Saturday morning fun — unaware that inter-dimensional demons were using it as a portal into our world! MISADVENTURE! [via freeindiesgames]
posted by lemuring at 10:47 PM - 7 comments

Lindsey Stirling in Kenya..
posted by HuronBob at 10:37 PM - 15 comments

The Madon­nas of Sci­ence, plus selected other work (possibly nsfw) by Chris Shaw. [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 9:45 PM - 6 comments

“We’ve seen the price of food become more expensive than ever three times in five years. Normally we’d see three price spikes in a century,” said Kaufman. “And part of the reason is this new kind of commodity speculation in food markets.” In an article published Oct. 24 in Nature[subscription required], Kaufman describes what he calls “Wall Street’s thirst for water” — the push to turn water into a commodity like food, with the same instruments that produced the mortgage-backed security collapse and 2008 financial crisis.

Public or Private: The Fight Over the Future of Water [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:34 PM - 47 comments

Au revoir, Georges Moustaki. The French chansonnier, who got his start writing for Edith Piaf, and later had a lengthy career of his own, has passed away. His simple, languid, contemplative songs include "Le Métèque", "Ma Solitude", "Votre Fille a Vingt Ans" and many, many, many more. He was 79.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:12 PM - 8 comments

Ask Strax! The famed warrior from the Sontaran Empire answers questions from miniature humans for Monster Day Out.
"The last time a human called me a 'Potato Head' I simply turned and walked away calm and collected ... once I had crushed him to a pulp him with my monster fists!!"
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 4:06 PM - 45 comments

The former singer for Freshkills talks about playing in a band no one likes
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 3:27 PM - 86 comments

By a vote of 61%-38% the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America has finalized a decision to lift sexual orientation from the criteria to discriminate for youth membership. Previously and previously. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:17 PM - 99 comments

Next to a beautiful, elegant woman, between the silky spirals of her train, on the back of a chair, in a dark angle in the background, he accurately painted, although almost invisible, the animal that recalled the face of the protagonist. He thus had a series of ladies and gentlemen from the squirrel, from the lizard, from the sea horse, etc.

From "The Real Face," by Guido Gozzano, "first and finest representative of the Crepuscolari, the poets of the Twilight." [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:54 PM - 1 comment

Park Slope Family Circus: Old Family Circus panels combined with jokes poking fun at denizens of Park Slope, Brooklyn.
posted by mathowie at 2:50 PM - 61 comments

When news came through of Yahoo! buying Tumblr, everyone wanted to know what that meant for all the porn on Tumblr. But it turns out that long before Yahoo! signed a check, Tumblr had been quietly doing something about it on its own: stopping adult blogs from being indexed. [NSFW links] [more inside]
posted by themadthinker at 1:13 PM - 149 comments

"Against all probability, a device that purports to use cold fusion to generate vast amounts of power has been verified by a panel of independent scientists . . . The cold fusion device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline. Even allowing for a massively conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline — which is currently the best fuel readily available to mankind." [more inside]
posted by Just Another Entity at 12:30 PM - 135 comments