Twenty years ago in Berlin a wall came down. But at a free concert last night given by U2 in front of the Brandenburg Gate, MTV Europe decided to put a wall back up.
posted by jefficator on Nov 6, 2009 - 66 comments

Wall Street's Near Death Experience
posted by SeizeTheDay on Oct 6, 2009 - 31 comments

You've heard of Dark Side of the Rainbow? Now there's Another Brick in the Wall·E. So sorry about the quality of the video.
posted by litterateur on Jul 22, 2009 - 72 comments

Moments in Time 1989/1990 - The Fall of the Wall and reunification. Films and photos from private collections. With woodpeckers.
posted by tellurian on May 26, 2009 - 8 comments

They are known as “quants” because they do quantitative finance. Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money. "They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street." [spoiler inside] [more inside]
posted by dersins on Mar 10, 2009 - 38 comments

The End of the Wall Street Era. “We always asked the same question,” says Eisman. “Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.” He called Standard & Poor’s and asked what would happen to default rates if real estate prices fell. The man at S&P couldn’t say; its model for home prices had no ability to accept a negative number.

The author of Liar's Poker on the collapse of the subprime industry.
posted by bitmage on Nov 11, 2008 - 57 comments

A sanitized look at the use of UAVs 1.9 miles above Sadr City, Iraq. [print version] [more inside]
posted by odinsdream on Nov 9, 2008 - 36 comments

What is a "trash-out?" When you see this, you feel like this. And some music to go along. After Monday, bunker or hunker ?
posted by wallstreet1929 on Oct 5, 2008 - 37 comments

Paulson: Foreign Banks Can Use US Rescue Plan. Treasury Fact Sheet, "broader eligibility" if Paulson decides. Pressure builds at Morgan, Goldman. You Decide (kinda), probably no one listens.
posted by wallstreet1929 on Sep 21, 2008 - 200 comments

Tunnels no Minasan no Okage Desu is a Japanese game show where contestants strike poses to fit through cutouts in pink foam walls. International reproductions of this game show reveal much about national character; reproductions exist in Italy, Russia, France, Denmark, Hong Kong, Korea, and Australia. [more inside]
posted by Alison on Aug 13, 2008 - 20 comments

MUTO - Seven minutes of wall-painted animated joy by blu (previously)
posted by Blazecock Pileon on May 13, 2008 - 50 comments

Wall stickers to stick on your wall (or furniture, or other stuff).
posted by nthdegx on May 13, 2008 - 33 comments

A most succinct explanation of the current problems facing Wall Street.
posted by Lord_Pall on Feb 8, 2008 - 26 comments

Is foreclosure right for you? Walking, a click away.
posted by wallstreet1929 on Jan 29, 2008 - 32 comments

Israel vs. Palestine: Against the Wall is a six-part series on VBS.tv about the separation wall which divides Israel from the West Bank. [more inside]
posted by ludwig_van on Dec 16, 2007 - 12 comments

This isn't 1998. There's no model for what's happening now in the housing and mortgage industries. 116 mortgage lenders have imploded since 2006. 11 hedge funds have imploded in just the last couple months. Time to warm up the helicopters?
posted by wallstreet1929 on Aug 11, 2007 - 126 comments

Newsfilter: Murdoch Buys The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones After some protests from editors about what sort of control News Corp. would have over the paper, a deal has been reached with the Bancroft family that runs the paper to sell for $5 billion. Murdoch gave up some demands for editorial control but still has the ability to hire and fire editors at will, making this the same sort of fig leaf agreement he made with the Times of London.
posted by destro on Jul 6, 2007 - 53 comments

Wall Street Journal owners officially considering joining the Borg
Minority owner Jim Ottoway vehemently opposed. One wonders what the opinion of a Senator from New York is?
posted by specialk420 on May 31, 2007 - 27 comments

The Wall of Death. Celebrated in song and art, the act of riding a motorcycle on the vertical wall of the inside of a cylinder, was a popular carnival attraction, mid-century. Although on the wane since the 70's, there are still a few practitioners, some of whom have better websites than others.
posted by Devils Rancher on Dec 31, 2006 - 9 comments

Iraqi peacekeepers sent to the Scottish border... 1600 years ago. The Notitia Dignitatum, the Roman equivalent of an organisation chart for the imperial bureaucracy in the fifth century, contains a reference to soldiers from the Tigris stationed at Hadrian's Wall. More on the Notitia here; more on Hadrian's Wall here, including a 3D tour of a fort near the Wall, and tablets discovered at another fort (including a request by a commanding officer for "more beer").
posted by greycap on Aug 19, 2006 - 8 comments

What do you do if it's 1979 and you are a sixteen year old in East Germany? Your Mom and her boyfriend, an officer in the intelligence service, have decided to defect. If you are Thomas Wagner, you wait twenty-odd years, and then you post the whole experience to your blog.
posted by mwhybark on Jul 25, 2004 - 14 comments

Brazil Wants to Build a Wall Social and economic problems out of control? No problem. Brazil plans to literally build a 10 foot wall to separate the haves from the have nots.
posted by muppetboy on Apr 12, 2004 - 27 comments

Le mur des je t'aime. 'In a world marked by violence and dominated by individualism, walls, like frontiers, are usually made to divide and to separate people and to protect them from one another. On the contrary, le mur des je t'aime (The Wall of I love Yous) is a link, a place of reconciliation, a mirror which reflects an image of love and peace. '
A Montmartre wall of calligraphic 'I love you's in 280 languages.
posted by plep on Jan 4, 2004 - 5 comments

Israel calls it a Separation Fence. Others refer to it as the Apartheid Wall. Whatever one calls it, and however one justifies it, there is no doubt that this barrier swoops many kilometers into the West Bank, claiming valuable water sources and arable land for Israeli settlers, destroying Palestinian homes and communities in the process.
posted by Ty Webb on Jun 24, 2003 - 18 comments

Before the Berlin Wall, there was Hadrian's Wall, one of the most successful attempts ever to keep noisy neighbours at bay. It's still an impressive sight, even though most of its stone has been recycled over the centuries. Nothing beats walking it in person, but thanks to the web you can see a 3D VRML model of one of its forts, read about the digital imaging of thousands of written documents unearthed at another, and even read a 2000-year-old request to "send me some cash as soon as possible".
posted by rory on Sep 19, 2002 - 9 comments