Wordnik - An ongoing project devoted to discovering all the words and everything about them. [via]
posted by tellurian on Jun 22, 2009 - 15 comments

How wrong is it to use a kitten for personal sexual pleasure? Depends on whether you've washed your hands.
posted by limon on Apr 26, 2009 - 96 comments

Fivedollarcomparison.org is a collaborative photo project designed by a number of Nokia researchers to understand the buying power of 5 dollars across the world. The goal of this project is vague: to understand how culture, context and communication might change the world. Post your own example here. Sample photo.
posted by |n$eCur3 on Jul 22, 2008 - 19 comments

"A fedora hat worn by me without the necessary protective irony would eat through my head and kill me." Goodbye to George W.S. Trow, one of the strangest, wisest, disturbingest writer ever to gape at, marvel at, and love his fellow Americans. His 1980 essay "Within the Context of No Context" (which shared with J.D. Salinger's last published story the distinction of taking up an entire issue of the New Yorker) placed television, irony, and distance at the center of the new United States. He also wrote the less well-known (but equally beautiful) short story collection Bullies, along with a novel and several screenplays, helped found National Lampoon, and was a staff writer at the New Yorker from 1966 until 1994, when he quit in protest of Roseanne Barr's guest-editing stint. He died on November 24, in Naples, at the age of 63. Appreciations from the New York Observer, Slate, and Gawker.
posted by escabeche on Dec 12, 2006 - 17 comments

"[Operation Fresh Start's] mission is to use energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to reduce the human suffering and economic loss caused by natural disasters." An intiative of the Dept. of Energy, Operation Fresh Start has helped many communities rebuild after disasters. Under the case studies link you can read about four. The most fascinating is Valmeyer, IL, which moved two miles to higher ground after being destroyed in the 1993 Mississippi River floods. Here is a Context article about the Valmeyer move, and one from Smithsonian Magazine, both well worth reading. (The DOE also published Rebuilding for the future...A guide to Sustainable Redevelopment for Disaster-Affected Communities.)
posted by OmieWise on Sep 6, 2005 - 5 comments

ilor.com is an interesting way to use Google: save search results for later, &c., using a flyover context menu. Neato.
posted by mimi on May 17, 2001 - 4 comments