"The handover to a new president and premier has generated plenty of speculation in the press, about who the leaders are and what is will all mean, but sometimes it’s useful to go back and fill in the very basics, since China has a unique and in some ways quite confusing political system." A Primer on China's Leadership Transition. [via]
posted by spiderskull
on May 16, 2011 -
5 comments
Beastie Boys 25 years later are still fighting for their right. Starring: Jack Black, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood, Danny McBride, Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, David Cross, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Jason Schwartzman, Adam Scott, Rainn Wilson, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny, Alicia Silverstone, Martin Starr, Ted Danson and Rashida Jones.
Here's a link to the original. This may be NSFW.
posted by TheBones
on Apr 22, 2011 -
64 comments
Orange County tea party members protest and hurl epithets at a local muslim organization's relief dinner to raise money for women's shelters and raise aid for homelessness and hunger in the US
Here is the video. Watch as members of congress show their support for this extreme show of xenophobia and racism.
posted by wooh
on Mar 3, 2011 -
364 comments
The Decentralized Dance Party : The DDP is a portable, battery-powered Party System. It consists of hundreds of Party People, carrying boomboxes, and a DJ who wears a backpack, containing a powerful FM transmitter.
posted by GuyZero
on Jan 14, 2011 -
34 comments
Amidakuji, or "Ghost Leg," is a lottery party game from Japan. At the top of a sheet there are a number of spaces for people to write their names. At the bottom there are prizes. There are an equal number of each. Between them is a map obscured behind a sheet. The map is made of straight vertical lines connecting the names and prizes. Connecting those lines at random intervals are horizontal lines. When it's time to pick winners, the sheet is removed and players can follow the lines to find their prize. You follow the line from your name down until you encounter any horizontal line, which you must follow, then continue down, continuing to follow all horizontal lines you encounter, until you reach your prize. No two horizontal lines can touch. Provided that, the process is perfectly deterministic and reversable. The same ends are reached whether you follow from the top down or the bottom up. If you have difficulty visualizing this, check
the Wikipedia page.
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Dec 24, 2010 -
18 comments
Jack Conway, a
candidate for United States Senate, is catching flak from Democrats and Tea-Partiers alike, for airing an
attack ad against his opponent,
Rand Paul that brings up some
bizarre dirt published in GQ a few months back. At a debate between the two candidates Sunday, Paul refused to shake Conway's hand at the end. Today, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a
response to the
Aqua Buddha ad.
[more inside]
posted by krysalist
on Oct 20, 2010 -
68 comments
Parties haven't changed since the '70's when Phil Ochs recorded this. If you're sitting home, reading Metafilter, with no place to go... here's a party for you...you'll recognize all the guests...
posted by HuronBob
on Jun 26, 2010 -
22 comments
November 13, 2001: Musical unknown Andrew W.K.
(Previously 1, 2) releases his debut album "I Get Wet." It is a simple rock record of power chords and unabashed, un-ironic party music -- exemplified perfectly both by its first song, "
It's Time To Party," or its lead single, "
Party Hard" -- released during a month of American
depression,
paranoia, and
insincerity that borders on nihilism. The album finds mainstream success,
selling over 30K copies in its first three weeks, with songs from the record
appearing in commercials, movies, and television shows, not to mention heavy rotation on MTV and awesome appearances on
Conan and
Saturday Night Live. [more inside]
posted by Damn That Television
on Dec 30, 2009 -
355 comments
Canadian DJ bloke Tiga has a new album called Ciao.
He's made a spoof documentary to promote it.
It's really funny, even if you don't know about dance music - A bit like
Nathan Barley by the ever wonderful Chris Morris.
Part 1
Part 2
posted by debord
on Jun 4, 2009 -
20 comments
Last week when I checked my mailbox, I found that my new neighbour had left me a note stating that he was having a party and to let him know if the noise was too loud.
The problem I have with the note is not that he was having a party and didn't invite me, it was that he selected a vibrant background of balloons, effectively stating that his party was going to be vibrant and possibly have balloons and that I couldn't come.
[more inside]
posted by Ljubljana
on Feb 20, 2009 -
108 comments
"Food Party is a (would-be) TV cooking show with a spicy saigon kitchen-witch as your hostess, a cast of unruly puppets as culinary advisors, and a cavalcade of hip-hop/sports world celebrities as surprise dinner guests. Shot on location in a technicolor cardboard kitchen, each episode will instruct you on how to prepare wild gourmet multi-course meals with ingredients you probably have on hand in your kitchen already, such as pretzel rods, cheese puffs, eggs, sugar, secret ingredients, and pizza. After all, you never know who might show up for dinner."
[more inside]
posted by cog_nate
on Jul 1, 2008 -
14 comments
The International Dance Party is a complete plug 'n' play party in a box (
video). "The machine comes as a large, non-suspicious looking flightcase. Internally, it is equipped with cutting edge radar sensing technology, an ear blasting state of the art 600W sound system, tons of psychedelic light and laser effects, and even a professional grade fog machine." [
via,
via]
posted by pithy comment
on Mar 25, 2008 -
18 comments
Bay Area Yuri's Night 2007 Bay Area Yuri's Night 2007 Yuri's Night Bay Area will be held at Moffett Field in the
NASA Ames Research Center's massive
SOFIA hangar, home to the world's largest aerial observatory. Our host for the evening is pioneering space traveler
Anousheh Anasari, the first privately funded female to reach orbit. She is joined by
Dr. Chris McKay, world renowned expert in astrobiology and terraformation with the Space Science Division of NASA Ames Research Center, as they welcome you to a dazzling array of interactive art installations and science demos, interwoven with musical and acrobatic performances by some of the world's finest entertainers.
Complete write up. Partially via MeFi's own lannanh.
posted by loquacious
on Apr 6, 2007 -
23 comments
The
Pirate Party^ has become a significant voice in Swedish politics, partly due to the illegal raids on the
Pirate Bay^ and
The Bureau of Piracy (Piratbyrån)^ (which spawned both). Other Swedish political parties are now adding copyright reforms to their platforms.
The party's leader Rickard Falkvinge
^ gave an intelligent compelling
interview "today".
Note:
Virtually all major content industries today are the result of large scale piracy or flagrant patent infringement, including the American publishing industry, Hollywood, radio, and the music industry. And the anti-piracy side has essentially no historical evidence supporting its position.
posted by jeffburdges
on Jun 20, 2006 -
40 comments
The Purple Party Why can’t we have a serious, innovative, truth-telling, pragmatic party without any of the baggage of the Democrats and Republicans?
Where to draw the line is mostly a matter of common sense. Public reminders to honor one’s parents and love one’s neighbor, and not to lie, steal, or commit adultery or murder? Fine. Genesis taught as science in public schools, and government cosmologists forced by their PR handlers to give a shout-out to creationism? No way. Kids who want to wear crucifixes or yarmulkes or head scarves to those same schools? Sure, why not? And so on.
posted by frogan
on Apr 19, 2006 -
36 comments
So if you run the CD in your personal computer, by the end of it, the Minnesota GOP will not only know what you think on particular issues, but also who you are. --a cd being sent out to home by the Minnesota GOP is polling people who use the cd, sending their personal info, including name, address, and phone, among other info, back to party headquarters. No privacy policy or statement identifying what the cd does is visible anywhere:
...As far as I could tell, nothing tells you that the answers are about to be e-mailed or otherwise transmitted to the Minnesota GOP.
So you finish, and then the phone rings. "Hello, Mr/Mrs. Voters, it's Joe and I notice you support gun control and the marriage amendment, would you like to donate some money to us?" That might startle the person who may have thought he/she was viewing the presentation in the privacy of the computer room. ...
posted by amberglow
on Feb 28, 2006 -
80 comments
In science's longstanding tradition of stating the obvious, Dartmouth has just released
a study on drinking culture that confirms everything you already knew. I'm so keeping a copy of this and giving it to my brother when he goes to college so he can show the RA.
WOOOOO!
posted by saysthis
on Jul 26, 2005 -
20 comments
