Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have been testing the possibility that a blue food dye found in Gatorade and blue M&Ms could assist in healing spinal cord injuries, and oh who cares OMG blue rats look!
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Jul 29, 2009 - 51 comments

“Everyone knows I’m keen on love songs, so it was a perfect fit for me to write a love song for the 25th anniversary of Chicken McNuggets. " says Keith Sweat, currently the top story on 365Black.com, McDonald's website touting its 'deep roots' in the black community. "Like the unique African Baobab tree, which nourishes its community with its leaves and fruit, McDonald's has branched out to the African-American community nourishing it with valuable programs and opportunities."
posted by unSane on May 1, 2009 - 123 comments

As jazz fans know, fifty years ago on March 2, 1959, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb met at the Columbia 30th Street Studios in NYC for the first session of Miles new album, Kind of Blue. (Link goes to the 50th anniversary collector's box set edition page at amazon.) It was the touchstone for many other future recordings bearing its mighty influence and it fostered several high profile careers, and a new modal sound for jazz. Kind of Blue went on to be certified platinum, selling 4 million records, the most ever for a jazz album. Bill Evans had left the band in late 1958, but was called back by Miles for the sessions, which included his new pianist Wynton Kelly on one track only, Freddie Freeloader. The tunes they did that day, "So What", "Blue in Green" (written by Evans, though credited to Miles) and "Freeloader" all became standards as did "All Blues" from the April session. Documentaries and entire books have been written on this one album alone. The phenomenon lives on. (previously on AskMeFi, but just on Trane and Miles.)
posted by Seekerofsplendor on Mar 3, 2009 - 71 comments

The Job.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on Feb 27, 2009 - 32 comments

Pink is still the colour where little girls are concerned, no matter where they grow up - some think propensity for pink is hardwired into girls. For a stark depiction of how many pink things a five-year-old could possibly own, a Korean photographer photographed boys and girls with their possessions arranged according to colour.
posted by mippy on Jan 8, 2009 - 116 comments

Without explanation, all of Violet Blue's posts have been removed from Boing Boing, raising serious questions about ethics and revisionism that run contra to the thoughtful declarations of blogging pioneers. Is this hypocritical in light of BB's own public bouts with censorship? Or does this reflect an altogether different loss of control?
posted by ed on Jun 30, 2008 - 2553 comments

Jimmy Rodgers' blue yodel series started in 1927. He started with Blue Yodel #1 (T for Texas). My favorite covers were by the Everly Brothers and by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. There's even a hip hop cover.
posted by RussHy on Jun 22, 2008 - 10 comments

Once again, the Eurovision Song Festival has taken place this weekend, giving rise to the usual recriminations about political voting. However, it is worth noting that it is exactly fifty years since Italian singer Domenico Modugno managed only third place (out of ten contestants) with a charming little ditty called "Nel blu dipinto di blu", but better known as "Volare". [more inside]
posted by Skeptic on May 25, 2008 - 41 comments

"What is the sound of color? We asked that question of 5 musicians. We assigned each musician a different color. They wrote 5 tracks. We gave the colors and tracks that inspired them to 5 directors." The Sound of Color contains the songs and videos that were created. The site and free downloads are only available through March 15. (Via Carolina Vigna-Marú) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Feb 18, 2008 - 23 comments

Girls are pink, boys are blue. Always have been, always will be. (Or not?) (via)
posted by progosk on Feb 12, 2008 - 44 comments

The allure of blue eyes has long been celebrated. In the Odyssey, Homer gives the goddess Athena "bright blue eyes," and our fascination persists to this day with actors like Brad Pitt and Naomi Watts. Until recently, however, no one could explain the phenomena. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll on Feb 2, 2008 - 38 comments

Still lifes of dead animals.
posted by dios on Apr 4, 2007 - 39 comments

Shaq's Blue Ridge Thunder blunder just raided and attempted to ruin a Virginia farmer's life based on a "mistaken computer IP address". No mention has been made so far in the press beyond a newspaper of the town closest to the mistaken raid.
Blue Ridge Blunder and SHAQ ATTACK.

"On Saturday morning, Sept. 23, 2006, many police vehicles appeared in our driveway. Men in black with flak jackets ran to and around our house. My wife was at home alone. I drove up and asked, “What's going on?” Men ran at me, dropped into shooting position, double-handed semi-automatic pistols pointed at me, and made me put my hands against my truck. I was held at gunpoint, searched, taunted, and led into the house. I had no idea what this was about. I was scared beyond description. I feared there had been a murder and I was a suspect. My wife and I were interrogated about Internet crime. We are not avid computer users; we do not even e-mail. We knew nothing of what they were speaking. After seemingly convincing them of our computer “illiteracy,” we were questioned about our children and made to doubt their innocence. Our home was searched by a para-military search-and-seizure team. Our computers, digital camera, disposable cameras, DVD's, and VHS tapes were seized. We were held in our home under guard for five hours. Our children came home and were also interrogated. It was awful. We were accused of horrible crimes, crimes that even the mention of would ruin our reputations.
posted by unpoppy on Oct 20, 2006 - 104 comments

Martin and Elizabeth set up housekeeping on the banks of Troublesome and began a family. Of their seven children, four were reported to be blue.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Martin Fugate & his descendents, the 1982 article from Science magazine entitled "The Blue People of Troublesome Creek" is a fascinating read; a recessive gene & decades of inbreeding lead to a clan of Kentucky hill folk with deep blue skin from head to toe.
posted by jonson on Jul 10, 2006 - 57 comments

The Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City, houses paintings by Nicholas Roerich, a Russian artist, who spent most of his life on the Indian-Tibetan border, creating evocative images of night and day in the Himalayan Mountains. (more inside)
posted by nickyskye on Jun 15, 2006 - 15 comments

Black , the final entry in Adidas' Adicolor short film campaign., is seriously messed up, with a fish and a panda playing russian roulette. Also featuring Pink, Red, Blue, White, and Yellow. (via)
posted by blue_beetle on May 12, 2006 - 25 comments

"dayvan cowboy" - first video ever for the boards of canada directed by melissa olson from "campfire headphase" /and/ the upcoming ep "trans canada highway" which is launched on 06/06/06. video has sequences of previously discussed space giant leap.
posted by zenzizi on Apr 13, 2006 - 39 comments

Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: a November 2005 statistical analysis [PDF] and presentation [PDF] on the the relationship between income and voting. Republicans are richer than Democrats, "blue states" are richer than "red states," and income matters more in "red states." Recent writeup by E.J. Dionne, with a response by the paper's authors. Discussed earlier at the Washington Monthly.
posted by kirkaracha on Mar 15, 2006 - 11 comments

He liked blue. In fact, he patented his own blue. He like to claim that he could fly unaided. There was a movie. In it, he colored naked women blue and had them make a painting. The film treated this comically, and he was crushed. Two weeks after the film opened, he died of a heart attack.
posted by Astro Zombie on Feb 10, 2006 - 23 comments

"Israeli technology firm Blue Security has set up a scheme to batter spam websites with thousands of complaints. The plan is to fill order forms...offering pills, porn and penile health tonics with complaints about the products advertised for sale in junk messages." I signed up.
posted by JPowers on Jul 23, 2005 - 27 comments

It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, Jane Elliott, a elementary school teacher in Riceville, Iowa, conducted her Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise with her students, dividing them by eye color to ilustrate prejudice and racism. Since retiring from teaching in the early 1980s she's repeated the exercise for adults in corporations, at colleges, and on Oprah.

PBS's 1985 documentary A Class Divided is viewable online [Real and Windows Media], as are parts of the 2002 documentary Australian Eye [QuickTime and Windows Media]; both feature participants' reactions. (Related: different reflections by a participants in similar exercises; and a program evaluation and transcript of the exercise.)

Ms. Elliott recently said, "What is distressing is that I get the same results today with adults that I got using the exercise with children in 1968."
posted by kirkaracha on Jun 13, 2005 - 64 comments

Red vs. Blue and Political Self-Segregation:

“Republicans and Democrats joke these days that they can’t understand each other, that they feel as though they live on different planets. It’s no joke. They do. One of the reasons American politics is so bitter is that Republicans and Democrats are less likely today to live in the same community than at any time in the last 55 years.”

The Austin-American Statesman’s Bill Bishop begins a series of articles on the increasing political segregation across the US—a variety of segregation that has surprisingly increased while others (for example, racial) have declined. Timothy Noah of Slate has some thoughts. For background, it’s been discussed elsewhere that the traditional 2000 election red vs. blue state map is misleading and that a gradated county map might be more enlightening. Here’s one. Here’s an analysis with a different take on the data. And here are some other interesting cartograms of that election’s results. [Alternative Links Inside]
posted by Ethereal Bligh on Apr 22, 2004 - 90 comments

My other favorite blue and yellow web site. Yay! Mister Pants really is back one year later, just like he said he would be.
posted by badstone on Jan 9, 2004 - 6 comments

The Blue Marble ... true color global imagery at 1km resolution.
posted by crunchland on Jul 19, 2003 - 14 comments

Blue man runs for Senate Stan Jones, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana suffers from argyria, a condition in which the skin becomes stained a permanent shade of blue. How do you come down with it? You drink lots of colloidal silver. Jones started mixing his own shortly before Y2K to help boost his immune system in the antibiotic-short apocolypse he was sure was coming. No word if he is now engaged in weird behavior involving metal tubes.
posted by agaffin on Oct 3, 2002 - 27 comments

Health care and politics seem to be popular topics on MeFi; here is a story that combines them both. It seems that the Libertarian senate candidate in Montana turned himself blue with a medically questionable remedy. He seems unconcerned; however, this lady is not too happy about her experience with colloidal silver.
posted by TedW on Oct 3, 2002 - 22 comments

Feeling Blue?
posted by plaino on Jan 14, 2002 - 6 comments