Health Insurance Reform Reality Check. The White House has just launched a new site to attempt to counter concerns arising from the various factual distortions, misrepresentations and wild-eyed fears that some participants in the ongoing health care reform debate have loudly been voicing lately. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on Aug 10, 2009 - 276 comments

Now that we can dispense with trivia about the U.S. elections, it's time for everyone to get better acquainted with President-Elect Obama: 50 things you should know about Barack Obama vs. Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know. (via Buzzfeed) [more inside]
posted by Doktor Zed on Nov 9, 2008 - 112 comments

Who are Muslims? Gallup has conducted a poll "in 40 predominantly Muslim nations and among significant Muslim populations in the West. It is the first set of unified and scientifically representative views from 1.3 billion Muslims globally." They'll be parsing and interpreting this data for years, but for the time being, they've offered some of their key results online and in print. See also, the Muslim-West Facts Initiative. (via) [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea on Jul 28, 2008 - 37 comments

An old professor of mine used to ask graduating students, "What is the single most important true proposition or fact (not theory) that you learned in university?" This question has been aimed at many fields, and social scientists have long and famously struggled to find good answers, while scientists have had a large number of options, and those who study the humanities wonder if they can even answer similar questions. What is your most important (or interesting) fact?
posted by blahblahblah on Jun 19, 2008 - 98 comments

Did You Know 2.0 (Youtube 08:19) Facts about education, population, globalization.
posted by blue_beetle on Feb 13, 2008 - 6 comments

"You Don't Understand Our Audience" --what John Hockenberry (formerly of NBC, now at MIT Media Lab) learned about network news--good guys and bad guys, the "emotional center", synergy, facts, and why fewer and fewer watch nowadays.
posted by amberglow on Dec 31, 2007 - 65 comments

Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age.
posted by Soup on Dec 9, 2007 - 77 comments

Politifact is brought to you by the St. Pete Times and the Congressional Quarterly (excellent domain name, btw!) to help you sift through all the bullshit that comes out of politicians' mouths. [more inside]
posted by taumeson on Nov 1, 2007 - 15 comments

FBI 101 -- "Essentials for Writers," an "exciting and informative" interactive workshop for writers being offered to members of my union -- the Writers Guild of America, East - by the FBI Office of Public Affairs and FBI New York. ... -- Very interesting account of a workshop the FBI puts on for writers in NY. What's in it for the FBI? ...The only question we have for you is 'Will it show us in a good light?'" ...
posted by amberglow on Jun 9, 2007 - 13 comments

Discover Magazine's 20 Things You Didn't Know About... Short, interesting and occasionally witty facts about Aliens, Lab Accidents, Nobel Prizes, Meteors, Death, Sleep and more.
posted by kisch mokusch on Mar 17, 2007 - 13 comments

I did not know this site yesterday.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jan 13, 2007 - 45 comments

TriviaFilter: 100 things we didn't know last year --a roundup of the best? of the year from BBC News' 10 things weekly column. ...20. Sex workers in Roman times charged the equivalent price of eight glasses of red wine.... 57. The word "time" is the most common noun in the English language, according to the latest Oxford dictionary. ...
posted by amberglow on Dec 28, 2006 - 50 comments

US Census Bureau Facts & Figures: Holiday Edition says that more than 20 billion letters, packages and cards will be delivered this holiday season and 12 million packages a day through to Christmas Eve. Also check out the Special Edition for comparison data from 1915, 1967 and 2006, the African-American History Month Facts & Features and more data going back to 2000.
posted by fenriq on Dec 15, 2006 - 4 comments

Modern contract law, which frames and defines our modern economy, is shaped by old and rather mundane disputes. Consider some of the seminal cases: Hadley v. Baxendale (1854); Hamer v. Sidway (1891); Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. (1892); Mills v. Wyman (1825). These cases, while minor in their actual factual footprint, still shape the world of contracts over a century later. (more about the cases inside)
posted by dios on May 25, 2006 - 32 comments

Some facts about Latinos and immigration, and chances are good they haven't been mentioned at all during coverage of the "immigration crisis" . (and take a stroll down memory lane to past GOP platform statements on the issue)
posted by amberglow on Mar 30, 2006 - 110 comments

Sometimes Friday Fun doesn't have to involve Flash. Take, for example, the Random Vin Diesel Fact Page, or other existing ones, some serious, some not so serious. There's also random news generators and even random band name generators. Plenty of reloading, time-wasting fun for your Friday.
posted by twiggy on Apr 22, 2005 - 21 comments

47. A "jiffy" is 10 milliseconds in computer science terms. and 99 other things 2004 taught us
posted by tsarfan on Jan 2, 2005 - 6 comments

Learn to love cannibals, hear from a cat about pet diets, discover some facts about bottled water, or create your own tornado (flying cow included) ... all this and more at the Why Files.
posted by Orb on Aug 17, 2004 - 5 comments

As American As Apple Pie What Exactly? What food is truly American? Professor Louis Grivetti, of the University of California at Davis, provides a set of excellent, discussion-settling answers, packed with reliable and curious facts. (Be sure to click on the fascinating "Did You Know?" links at the bottom of each of the 10 classic American food groups.) How many Europeans know, for instance, that tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peppers, artichokes and lima beans all came from America? Not much supposedly ancestral Mediterranean cooking could get by without tomatoes, potatoes and peppers...
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jan 28, 2003 - 44 comments