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"'If voters fail to return Mr. Mugabe to office...Prepare to be a war correspondent.' Mugabe's party in Zimbabwe spasms into mass repression and political violence to prevent Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change from winning power. The African Union dithers, as does the UN (as it gives Zimbabwe leadership positions). Many Chinese rationalize their government's weapon shipment. According to the government-published Herald, everything's just fine. What are the options?
comment posted at 7:58 AM on May-8-08

Questionaut is a charming flash application from the very talented Amanita. Kotaku jokingly calls it a 'Juvenile Timewaster', but how juvenile is it?
comment posted at 4:17 PM on Mar-17-08

Can't afford to get to Disney this year? Worry not: ride the rides on YouTube. There's The Haunted Mansion, The Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, The Tower of Terror, Peter Pan and plenty more. The best, though, are the ride-throughs for rides that are no longer there: EPCOT's Horizons, World of Motion and original Imagination are ones I remember vividly from my childhood. Maybe you will too.
comment posted at 1:58 PM on Jan-22-08

We Are Multicolored. Remix the flags of the world.
comment posted at 4:37 PM on Oct-25-07

The new age of ignorance. A panel of well known (UK) scientists and artists are asked some basic questions about science. Except the questions weren't that basic (since when is the Second Law of Thermodynamics considered basic knowledge?) so the results weren't surprising... although some of the answers were amusing ("The sky is blue because the sea reflects on it."). The worrying thing is that the questions could have been much simpler ("How many planets are there in the Solar System?") and I suspect the results would have been much the same. Meanwhile, ignorance marches on.
comment posted at 4:27 AM on Jul-1-07

"Dear Continental Airlines" Disgruntled airline passenger writes to customer service. Complete with hand-drawn diagrams.
comment posted at 1:52 PM on Jun-30-07

Rihanna's "Umbrella" is arguably one of the most brilliant pop songs of the year. Producing a cover of it must be a daunting dask, but indie L.A. pop duo Swivel gave it a shot. Tai Heard and Eddie Tyclus have recorded an acoustic version of the song attempting to give it their own unique spin. It is virtually impossibly to beat the quality of the original, but kudos to Swivel for having the balls to give it a try. (Click here to download Rihanna's "Umbrella" on iTunes.)
comment posted at 3:50 PM on Jun-14-07

Brass Eye is a hilarious & much missed British parody of "issue" news programs such as 60 Minutes in the U.S. It ran for one year, in 1997 (minus the 2001 special), and only six episodes were produced. Thanks to the miracle of the internets, all six (Animals, Drugs, Science, Sex, Crime & Moral Decline) are available in their entirety via Google Video. If you're unfamiliar with the series, trust me, it's not to be missed. Previous mentions on Metafilter. Discovered Via the good mr hodgman's blog.
comment posted at 5:26 AM on May-1-07

In 1957, Swiss typographer Max Miedinger invented "the official typeface of the 20th century" -- Helvetica [previously discussed here, via Arts and Letters Daily].
comment posted at 10:31 AM on Apr-21-07

Dave Sim gets a book proposal from a furry.
comment posted at 7:31 AM on Feb-23-07

?Let today - the eleventh day of the twelfth month - henceforth and forever be Backwards Day! ?Fun with Unicode
Via the wonderfully nerdy 74 68 65 20 64 69 67 69 74 61 6C 20 6D 65.??‭
comment posted at 4:13 PM on Dec-11-06

Flags of the world... with client comments. Oh, Canada :( flash video
comment posted at 4:33 PM on Dec-7-06

Cool Conversion Site Zamzar is a new Web 2.0 site that has recently launched, offering free online file conversion for documents, videos, images and music. It supports hundreds of formats whether you're converting PDF to DOC or AAC to MP3. You can upload up to 5 files simultaneously and up to 100MB of data. Overall a really useful tool for anyone needing to convert files in a hurry !
comment posted at 12:38 PM on Dec-3-06

Do not cuddle with the Giant Amazonian Centipede, no matter how strong the temptation may be. Fully grown they are as long as an adult human's forearm, and gleefully feed on small critters (youtube), going so far as to snag bats out of the air (google video) & devour them on the spot.
comment posted at 3:01 PM on Nov-21-06

Plane/Helicopter Crashes into NYC high rise. ???
comment posted at 12:09 PM on Oct-11-06
comment posted at 12:26 PM on Oct-11-06
comment posted at 12:36 PM on Oct-11-06

Google buys YouTube. $1.65 billion dollars is enough for Google to buy the number one video streaming site on the net.
comment posted at 1:59 PM on Oct-9-06

Mr. Borat Goes to Washington (YouTube video; part two) Kazakhstan's "Borat Sagdiyev" leads 50 journalists on a sprint to the White House after a press conference. "These claims are part of a propaganda campaign against our country by evil nitwits Uzbekistan, who as we all know are nosy people with a bone in the middle of their brain."
(Regret to inform that the chase isn't on the video.)
comment posted at 12:41 PM on Sep-29-06

Somedays you're the pidgeon, others you're the statue.
comment posted at 9:40 AM on Sep-25-06

On this day, five years ago, the times changed. In honor of all who perished, just leave a period in the comments, and reflect on that day to yourselves.
comment posted at 6:53 AM on Sep-11-06

Flash Friday: Reaction Effect Click the circles to try to setup a chain reaction. Via games1.org, which also features cubefeild and drift
comment posted at 10:23 AM on Sep-1-06

New airline security regulations in the UK have taken their toll on the touring musicians who used to be able to take their delicate and/or rare instruments as carry-on luggage. Many are forced to either take their chances in the cargo hold or take ferries to countries with less restrictive security guidelines. Others contemplate staying home from touring completely. (via BBC)
comment posted at 12:19 PM on Aug-22-06

Wikiwords is a collaborative project to create a dictionary of all terms in all languages.
comment posted at 10:34 AM on Aug-11-06

Google Maps flight simulator. Well, not a simulator so much. But surprisingly good fun. Flash.
comment posted at 4:18 AM on Aug-5-06

The Politically Incorrect Alphabet A is for Abortion.
comment posted at 2:54 PM on Jul-31-06

Photosynth is a new image processing technology from Microsoft that takes a collection of images (say, of a famous location), analyzes them for similarities & rebuilds the location in virtual space for the user to fly though, zooming in on details, panning around like a 3D Hockney piece. Video of how it works here.
comment posted at 10:40 AM on Jul-29-06

A splash of urban colour! A dilapidated tower block in Glasgow was the setting for a riotous splash of colour this week as Sony followed up their previous Bravia tv campaign of the bouncing balls down the streets of San Francisco with a new advert using a disused towerblock in Glasgow. Some beautiful urban explosion pics here, here, here, here and here.
comment posted at 11:01 AM on Jul-26-06

Beat This! A Hip Hop History (BBC - 1984)
comment posted at 4:32 PM on Jul-10-06

Fill in the blanks, connect the dots. We've had Star Trek special effects possibly redone, we've had Battlestar Galactica "reimagined". Now the BBC is replacing a couple of lost episodes in a live series Doctor Who DVD with animated versions, to match the soundtracks, which weren't lost. Of course, we've seen some Flash based episodes already.
comment posted at 8:52 AM on Jun-24-06

RIP. Composer Gyorgy Ligeti dies in Vienna at age 83.
comment posted at 12:08 PM on Jun-12-06

The days of needing to remember several telephone numbers, numerous VOIP or instant message identities and other points of contact for our social and professional networks are over.
comment posted at 2:39 PM on May-17-06

australian miners walk out of mine after being trapped for two weeks ... (video link, ad, ie only)
comment posted at 3:25 PM on May-8-06

The 15 Best Skylines.
comment posted at 11:40 AM on Mar-26-06

Garfield comics sans Garfield's thought balloons I find this hysterical. Reminds me of the Random Garfield strip generator that I can't seem to find anymore.

An interesting thing...if you remove Garfield's thought balloons, it goes from an unfunny comic to a rather sad, poignant story about a lonely man who has wasted his life talking to his cat. [via]
comment posted at 1:22 PM on Mar-14-06

"Desktop Earth 2.0 is a wallpaper generator for Windows. It runs whenever you're logged on and updates your wallpaper with an accurate representation of the Earth as it would be seen from space at that precise moment." The images are fantastic. Oh, and it's free. (See similar - via digg).
comment posted at 4:58 AM on Mar-11-06

Honda's last TV ad was a treat for Rube Goldberg fans everywhere. Their latest (9.4MB zipped H.264 video) is an excellent demonstration of the human voice as an instrument.
comment posted at 4:21 PM on Mar-4-06

Were you a minger, sporting a mullet, looking a bit naff when you were getting mullered while out on the pull, anytime before 1988? Or were you posh and minted, looking snazzy after spending your dosh to get a nip and tuck before 1980? If so, the Oxford English Dictionary and the BBC need you for their Wordhunt – a call to help find the earliest verifiable usages of a list of words from the past decades whose origin is still uncertain.
comment posted at 3:48 PM on Jan-9-06

New invention: A computer-based drum machine. In Microsoft Excel.
comment posted at 4:59 PM on Dec-21-05

A few years back ASCAP, the performing rights agency that collects fees on behalf of songwriters and publishers, attempted to collect licensing fees from summer camps for songs sung around the campfire by Girl Scouts. This week, PRS, the UK equivalent of ASCAP, flexed its muscles by demanding a licence fee from a guitar shop owner for customers who play copyrighted riffs while testing instruments. Jimmy Page must be rubbing his hands together.
comment posted at 12:33 PM on Dec-18-05

“They weren’t ever intended to be sexual creatures. It’s simple, Daleks do not do porn.” (NSFW)
comment posted at 3:54 PM on Nov-28-05

Newest Doctor Who David Tennant received his first showcase tonight on the BBC's Children in Need Appeal in an excellent special episode written by Russell T Davies and also starring Billie Piper. In case anyone missed it, it's available online at their website, in streaming Real format. Fantastic!
comment posted at 4:48 PM on Nov-18-05

The riots in Paris have becomes such a popular topic for bloggers that even the BBC have noticed, even going as far to produce a TV news package (H.264 video, AAC audio, in MP4 container) about blogging.
comment posted at 1:26 PM on Nov-14-05

Significance of numbers. Not to be confused with the concept of "significant figures," this page lists the significance of numbers 0 through 1000. See! "2 is the only even prime." Hear! "24 is the largest number divisible by all numbers less than its square root." Thrill! "3367 is the smallest number which can be written as the difference of 2 cubes in 3 ways." Whoa!
comment posted at 5:13 PM on Nov-11-05

TV shows that are better than the original movies. I don't agree with everything here (I liked Highlander!), but it's an interesting list. I agree with Buffy definitely.
comment posted at 1:40 PM on Nov-1-05

TGIF: Email!! [mpeg, Crude Humour (Maybe NSFW)]
comment posted at 11:46 AM on Sep-30-05

Fractal animation videos. Tune in. Turn on. Drop in on a dripping skirling-swirling pulsating orgy of self-transforming recursive math. Some with fractal music. (Non-embedded mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 files, like God intended.)
comment posted at 9:27 AM on Aug-7-05

Mouse? Trackball? One button? Two? Now, thanks to Apple, you can have all four.
comment posted at 7:40 AM on Aug-2-05
comment posted at 7:48 AM on Aug-2-05

Project C-90 is a photo collection of vintage cassette tapes • Meet Artyom, the Russian DJ who built his own cassette turntables • Last week, BBC News declared "Not long left for cassette tapes" • Mod your old cassette to make a USB flash stick.
comment posted at 11:32 AM on Jun-24-05