"And I Refuse To Forget," the three-minute sci-fi thriller from 21-year-old director Nuru Rimington-Mkali, has won the grand prize in the Filmaka feature film competition. Judges include Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Neil Labute and many others. For his efforts, Rimington-Mkali wins the director's chair of his first feature film, to be produced by Filmaka. (Lots of other great stuff on Filmaka, too.)
posted on Apr 30, 2008 - View this thread

Ubuntu 8.04's Hardy Heron has recently perched on millions of desktops worldwide, but what does the future look like for the darling of the open source world? Now entering a new 2-year art developent cycle, Ubuntu's continuing quest for "pure, unadulterated, raw, visceral, lustful, shallow, skin deep beauty" has begun again in earnest. Bleeding edge desktop effects [youtube, music] are already creeping into the official distribution and the community is eagerly awaiting the new graphical look, promised as a ground-up re-imagination in the next release, Intrepid Ibex. Watch this space.
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

A hirsute appendage of the upper lip, with graspable extremities. The perfect moustache grows only on the upper lip. You may choose a pomade of wax to assist in daily maintenance. In the early stages of growth, before the moustache is properly trained, you may choose to use a moustache cup in polite soup-eating company. After months of patience, you will be entitled to join the brotherhood, compete at national and international level, raise money for charity and serve your country in the most difficult circumstances.
posted on Dec 29, 2007 - View this thread

Layer Tennis. Head-to-head graphic artist competition!
posted on Oct 24, 2007 - View this thread

The Solar Decathlon is a just-completed competition in which 20 teams of college and university students competed to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. View a photo gallery or take video tours of the homes. Inhabitat has been blogging the event - here's their view of Germany's winning entry.
posted on Oct 21, 2007 - View this thread

Sports Acrobatics Spellbinding gymnastics feats.
posted on Jul 12, 2007 - View this thread

Evan M. O'Dorney, a 13-year-old speller from Danville, Calif., won the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, with the final word "serrefine". Here is an interesting interview with the winner. Did you say my name wrong?
posted on Jun 7, 2007 - View this thread

Peak Performance is a website featuring dozens of articles on just about every aspect of sports science, including large sections devoted to cycling, swimming and sports psychology. Some of my own favorites deal with the beneficial effects of Omega-3 fatty acids, the Chinese government’s plan to dominate the Olympics, Veronique Billat’s 30-30 running workouts and how to increase growth hormone levels naturally.
posted on Apr 30, 2007 - View this thread

Win £500 from the Royal Society of Chemistry (or a place on a Chinese science undergraduate course) if your math skills are up to it.
posted on Apr 25, 2007 - View this thread

Make Bjork's next music video. She'd love for you to take a stab at making the video for Innocence (streaming music on her myspace page), if you're up to the challenge. Lyrics. Previously.
posted on Apr 23, 2007 - View this thread

In September 2006 the largest known prime number, a 9.8 million digit number, was discovered. If you find one over ten million digits you can win US$100,000 (of which you get to keep $50,000). No maths is required - just download the software and you're away. Warning: it takes about a month to run one primality check so some patience is required. Look out though Cooper and Boone look like they might beat you to it.
posted on Apr 12, 2007 - View this thread

NASCAR as an example of a meritocracy with equal opportunity for all. While frequently maligned for it's relatively primitive technology (excluding safety ), the total lack of mechanical resemblance (other than appearance) of the "stock" cars to the brand they represent, soap-opera-slash-professional wrestling story lines, and being ripe political target for both the right and the left as well as marketers, it is a strong cultural force. The entrance of Toyota (likely to surpass GM as #2 US automaker in the near-future) into NASCAR (with the hopes of "winning on Sunday and selling on Monday" in the heartland) and the cheating scandal currently unravelling highlight an important concept woven into NASCAR's culture. [more]
posted on Feb 15, 2007 - View this thread

The Harvard University Worklife Wizard , created by an international team of journalists, economists, and statisticians, is Barbara Ehrenreich's wet dream. It's also a fantastic resource that has flown pretty much under everyone's radar. The Worklife Survey drives the constantly-revised, constantly-refined Salary Comparison Tool, which is always hungry for more data about employment from around the world. And when they say they want data from everyone, they mean it-- there's even a VIP Salary Checker that pits the wages of the Yankees against those of the Red Sox. (Plus if you take the survey, you can apparently earn a chance to win a trip to South Africa). Personally, I love the Workplace Horror Stories (and there's a competition there too). I can't look at a nail clipper the same way now.
posted on Nov 20, 2006 - View this thread

Baseball Race. "[A]n online application that allows you to view any Major League Baseball season, split by league or division (even wild card races), as an animated, date-by-date race between the various teams you choose."
posted on Sep 11, 2006 - View this thread

It's the Privacy International Stupid Security Competition 2006. Human rights group Privacy International (who also hand out annual Big Brother awards have launched the 2006 Stupid Security Competition. Following on from 2003's awards (also here) where everyone from T Mobile UK, the Australian Government to Philadelphia International Airport won with displays of idiocy, what will the results of the past three years of press and government hyperbole and lies, amongst many other things bring?
posted on Aug 28, 2006 - View this thread

Much like synchronized swimming or a standard drill team, a book cart drill team requires coordination and panache and is complicated enough to warrant its own manual. This year at the 2006 American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans, the winners of the “golden cart” in the Second Annual Book Cart Drill Team Competition were the city’s very own Tulane University “Booked on New Orleans”, (YouTube video, no sound) who had only started rehearsing 6 weeks prior and had practiced in the formerly flooded basement of the library.
posted on Jul 5, 2006 - View this thread

The 2006 winners and nominees in the first International Color Awards offers a broad sampling of work from some of the world's finest professional and amateur color photographers. View more from Erwin Olaf, Photographer of the Year in the professional category.
posted on Jun 10, 2006 - View this thread

The World Challenge aims to find individuals or groups from around the world who have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level. It could be you or someone you know. ( via bbc)
posted on May 31, 2006 - View this thread

The Catseye - similar to Botts' Dots, [Wikipedia talk] is in the final 10 for the Great British Design Quest.
posted on Feb 27, 2006 - View this thread

23. It's like Flickr, a lot like Flickr--and maybe better. Better at some things. Stories. Upload limits. The layout. Ordering prints. They are doing things from the beginning that Flickr worked a couple years to figure out in the first place. Flickr of course is way ahead of 23 in numbers (people and money). Does it make sense to challenge that lead? (And to do so with an overt knock-off?) If 23 provides a better service, should they lose out for being second to the party? How can they pay their debt of gratitude to Flickr for being the obvious inspiration and an open-book instruction manual, and should they? When does the flattery of imitation become legitimate--or illegitimate--competition? Notice in the terms they claim ownership of the concept and the design. Can 23 apply for any of the street cred Flickr may have given up in favor of being Yahoo!ed? Is it reasonable to expect better work from a scrappy upstart than a happy sell-out? Can two successful photo sharing sites co-exist, or join forces? Is there enough community to support more than one good one?
posted on Nov 26, 2005 - View this thread

The Times Higher Education Supplement's World University Rankings [link to PDF]
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - View this thread

Art of Science Competition 2005 - A gallery of images celebrating the aesthetics of research at Princeton University. (via Amygdala)
posted on Jun 5, 2005 - View this thread

One key games. Retro Remakes, a reverse-engineer gaming siteand One Switch, an accessibility site, have launched a competition for the best game that can be played with a single key. There's still time to enter, and some entries have already been posted to the forums.
posted on Apr 21, 2005 - View this thread

Competition gave rise to the robber fly, to trap-weaving tree ants, an ‘homosexual’ fungus, robot jockeys, logic-checking software, and to custom-made brass knuckles.
posted on Apr 21, 2005 - View this thread

The 2nd Annual Greatest Story Never Told Contest: a multimedia storytelling competition whose name speaks for itself. Some of the entries are shockingly depressing (QT link here.) Others are disturbing, yet funny. Some are just cute, and some have seen the blue before.
posted on Feb 20, 2005 - View this thread

Mustaches For Kids - the 6th Annual NYC Mustaches for Kids Holiday Mustache Growing Contest and Fundraiser is back. Exciting fundraising competition. (see also Seattle chapter)
posted on Nov 19, 2004 - View this thread

101 years in 101 words
posted on Oct 19, 2004 - View this thread

Miss Plastic Surgery There is now a beauty contest in China where those who have had augmentation can compete for a prize. Will the losers end up on the Internet(s)? This is more main stream with TV shows around the profession (Nip / Tuck). PLay the Nip/Tuck game. No worries, reality TV is here for us so we can then we can compete to be cut up.
posted on Oct 14, 2004 - View this thread

Fused space. Exploring the impact mediascapes - the mobile phone and wireless networks - will have on the ways we inhabit localities.
posted on Sep 15, 2004 - View this thread

My cattle grazing grounds are not my idea and vice versa. But thanks to laws I can "own" the idea as if the idea was a cow ; link goes to a interesting university-level paper [PDF]. The author makes some interesting analysis and points attention to the fact that current intellectual property laws can go against well established economic theories at the expense of free market competition theory, technical innovations and society-as-a-whole best interest.

Recommended to people with economic theory experience , but also to everyday public-goods-privatization opposers as the paper isn't (intentionally) way too technical.
posted on Sep 10, 2004 - View this thread

the mile of the century Fifty years ago today, Roger Bannister, the first man to break the 4-minute mile, and John Landy, who beat his record a month-and-a-half later, squared off in Vancouver BC to determine who was the fastest runner in the history of the world, in what is arguably the most dramatic sporting event of the 20th Century. The record for the mile has gone down astonishingly through the years, but are there limits on how low it can go? (View video of the historic Bannister vs. Landy matchup here.
posted on Aug 7, 2004 - View this thread

Un-Fold. (quicktime clip) City Magazine asked 9 designers, from 9 cities across the world to design a chair in 90 days. Oh, and it had to fit in a FedEx box. Pics and more about the designers and the project.
posted on Jun 18, 2004 - View this thread

GUI Olympics! several corporate sponsors (ATI, nVidia, and others) are offering up $15,000 in prize money for the best GUI skin any designer can come up with for a few applications. while i think it's great to push for newer and better user interfaces, who do so many of the designs seem to be pushing complexity over useability? wouldn't a better use of a GUI design prize be to encourage people to improve on a design rather than make it unintelligible? maybe the people pushing the designs need to take this quiz.
posted on Apr 23, 2004 - View this thread

What makes for a great champagne chair? Design Within Reach sponsored a holiday contest to design a chair constructed from the cork and wire cages of champagne bottle. Judges had a difficult time deciding from the 400 entries that poured in. (via Buzz.)
posted on Jan 19, 2004 - View this thread

New York City Lights Design Competition (via Gothamist). What are the existing examples of urban illumination that impress? Are there unused designs or interesting ideas from art and movies floating around?
posted on Jan 6, 2004 - View this thread

Wal-Mart as Leviathan. "The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?"
posted on Nov 14, 2003 - View this thread

Chickenhawk Down The Daily Kos challenges readers to come up with a new name for the CIA-Wilson-Plame business that doesn't include the term "gate." Many amusing suggestions have been logged in comments. Entries include The Plame Game, Intimigate, FrogMarch, Novack-aine, and Karl's Bad. Whatever your political persuasion, the name game can be fun. Surely MeFi wags can come up with a few witty ideas.
posted on Oct 1, 2003 - View this thread

Ouch! Kurt falls to the dirt, surely hurt, while a clown on the alert wearing a skirt made of shirts, attempts to distract, to divert, a raging bull, ...one of many documented attractions at the Valley Center Western Days Rodeo.

My particular favorites are the "man vs steer", the stalemate, and nothing describes kids on sheep better than "mutton busting".
posted on Aug 8, 2003 - View this thread

Google: the God that failed? is the title of the article on MSN Slate. All of us know Microsoft is working on a new search engine technology. Till date everyone considers Google to be the Guru. MS obviously doesn't like that, so what it is doing? Well, the same thing it always does - to survive competition, eliminate it. The reasons being given by the article are pretty silly and more aimed at 'faming down' Google.
posted on Jul 22, 2003 - View this thread

Ethics cost money - The Los Angeles Times discusses the effect of Levi Strauss's ethical standards on their place in a competitive marketplace. Can a company succeed when they place their morals ahead of their money?
posted on Jun 26, 2003 - View this thread

Cheese rolling Of all the weird and wonderful things I've read about this week, this really takes the cheese.
posted on May 30, 2003 - View this thread

So you think you can BBQ? But could you be a contender? How good is your powerkraut?
posted on May 16, 2003 - View this thread

Although the haiku as meme has fallen on hard times here at MeFi, there are still some practioners lurking about in the wilderness, no doubt. If you still feel the urge to get freaky with the 5-7-5, and you think you've got what it takes, you might want to try your hand at competitive haiku over at The Guardian, where quality haikuing will score you 20 lbs worth of Penguin Books. Damn, that's a lot of paperbacks!
posted on Feb 24, 2003 - View this thread

National Engineers Week begins February 16, and this year, students everywhere will be competing to design Future Cities or the ever popular egg drop devices for competitions all over the country. They also plan to profile 50 engineers in honor of their 50th anniversary, and welcome submissions. Did you ever participate in egg drops or other cool engineering projects while in school?
posted on Jan 31, 2003 - View this thread

Is Bill Gates behind the times? (NYT link - reg req'd) Microsoft today introduced designs for "a new class of watch" which can "provide weather information, text messages and other data." The simplest versions "will cost less than $150," the story says.

But Timex currently offers its own, cheaper version: the Internet Messenger Watch for only US$50, and a year's free service, for almost the same features.

Is Microsoft actually behind the times with their 'innovation'? Is this embarrassing for the software giant?
posted on Jan 9, 2003 - View this thread

Why Does Dan Savage Owe Katie a Hitachi Magic Wand? It all started when Dan Savage informed his readers that he liked to fantasize about Brad Pitt coming on Ashton Kutcher's face. He was later inspired to have a contest in which readers sent in their sexual fantasies. He said that readers whose sexual fantasies were selected for publication would receive five dollars. I sent in a fanstasy I had when I was six years old (you'll read about it later). In a subsequent column, he canceled the contest, saying that all the fantasies he had received were boring. I shrugged it off, until...
posted on Nov 27, 2002 - View this thread

High School Girls Basketball team destroys opponent 115-2. Is sportsmanship about to go the way of the dodo? More and more teams are pushing for winning (and winning by a lot) more than just playing well. Is it the coach's fault? Could it be that the players are just too good and they couldn't 'help' crushing their opponent by over 100 points? (I say that, of course, in jest)
posted on Nov 21, 2002 - View this thread

Captionistas Wanted: This year's New Yorker cartoon competition, slightly more challenging than last year's is now online, awaiting witty captions until November 20.
posted on Nov 4, 2002 - View this thread

So Long As It Doesn't Frighten The Martians: The already quite spaced-out Tate Museum [Shockwave permitting, check out Anish Kapoor's enormous new sculpture in the Turbine Hall] is now seeking new premises in Space.[More inside]
posted on Oct 11, 2002 - View this thread

Winners of The 5K Competition revealed. Remember the thread about the call for entries back in May? Well, there were many fine entries, but finally the winners have been announced. Check out the Editor's picks for the cream of the crop. My favorite is Wolfenstein 5K, which ones have you enjoyed? Of course, 'real men' do it in 256 bytes instead ;-)
posted on Aug 8, 2002 - View this thread