Stranded on the island of New Britain during WWII, Fred Hargesheimer was rescued by native islanders, who hid him for 8 months from occupying Japanese forces. Fred never forgot the kindness he received, and in 1960, he used his family's vacation money to return to the island to personally thank the people who saved him. Thus began a 48 year relationship between Hargesheimer and the people of New Britain. [more inside]
posted by The Light Fantastic on Mar 8, 2008 - 15 comments

Plus ça change... (that's a 15941x261 pixel, NSFW-ish jpg).
posted by Wolfdog on Oct 31, 2007 - 46 comments

What the World Eats A photo slide show of images taken of families around the world, and the food they consume in one week. The commentary also provides the amount of money they have to spend, and what their favorite meals are.
posted by Dave Faris on Jun 5, 2007 - 117 comments

While there have been many posts on Mefi of blogs written by those affected by the Iraq War, I have not seen this one posted. No matter your stance on the war, your opinion of American soldiers, or the amount of other Iraq war blogs you've read, all I ask is that you at least read these few entries. I've used too many words already, when the journal does more than enough to speak for itself. A Soldier's Thoughts. (via) [more inside]
posted by wander on Feb 7, 2007 - 13 comments

Panel Suggests Using Inmates in Drug Trials PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 7 An influential federal panel of medical advisers has recommended that the government loosen regulations that severely limit the testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates, a practice that was all but stopped three decades ago after revelations of abuse. Cruel and unusual punishment?
posted by Unregistered User on Aug 13, 2006 - 43 comments

The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Biology
posted by Gyan on Jun 16, 2006 - 14 comments

National Geographic has a special issue on Africa out this month. There's also their Africa resource site.
posted by Gyan on Sep 21, 2005 - 17 comments

Do the Right Thing
posted by Gyan on Sep 14, 2005 - 63 comments

The Nature of Normal Human Variety A talk with Dr. Armand Leroi (his website). "Almost uniquely among modern scientific problems [the problem of normal human variety] is a problem that we can apprehend as we walk down the street. We live in an age now where the deepest scientific problems are buried away from our immediate perception. They concern the origin of the universe. They concern the relationships of subatomic particles. They concern the nature and structure of the human genome. Nobody can see these things without large bits of expensive equipment. But when I consider the problem of human variety I feel as Aristotle must have felt when he first walked down to the shore at Lesvos for the first time. The world is new again." (via Arts & Letters Daily)
posted by Kattullus on Mar 29, 2005 - 17 comments

The World Transhumanist Association met recently at Yale to discuss the pending demise of humanity and the rise of post-human beings, and the Village Voice was there to cover it. With more and more and more media attention paid to the idea that the Singularity is a-comin', are the issues getting clearer and more interesting, or have you just had enough?
posted by AlexSteffen on Aug 1, 2003 - 13 comments

Beginnings at the Library of Congress. The origins of the Universe, humanity and society as viewed by different cultural and religious traditions; and their attempts to explain it all.
The Talk.Origins Archive presents a more scientific view of physical and biological beginnings.
posted by plep on May 3, 2003 - 6 comments

Google Compute is a distributed computing project involving users of the google toolbar. It's a light application which uses idle processor cycles to analyse data for "carefully selected charitable projects, with the guiding principle being to help humanity and advance scientific knowledge".
posted by walrus on Nov 1, 2002 - 5 comments

The Wildlife Conservatory Society has just released a new map of the Human Footprint on Earth. With this map (pdf) you can see just how much wild space isn't left. For a closer look at each continent look here. So what do we do about it? Terraform the moon? Or maybe Mars? Or is our best bet for keeping Earth habitable simply to go electric?

And just to clarify, I'm talking about the impact of humanity on the earth's natural resources, not the supposed giants humans that walked with dinosaurs.
posted by Bones423 on Oct 23, 2002 - 28 comments

Refugees denied human face. 'Taking photographs that could "humanise or personalise" asylum seekers was banned by former defence minister Peter Reith's office, the Senate inquiry into children-overboard claims was told yesterday.'
posted by kv on Apr 17, 2002 - 27 comments

CBS's Big Brother 2 is now over and it looks like a Snake v. Rat redux a la Survivor 1. This finale depressed me for its bleak depiction of humanity...
<< more inside, Spoilers >>
posted by hincandenza on Sep 21, 2001 - 9 comments

Customer gives sick waitress $1,000 tip
i love hearing stories like this, it bolsters my faith in people.
posted by bwg on Apr 27, 2001 - 13 comments

Human Evolution Will the next significant steps be biological, technical or both?
posted by PaperCut on Jun 6, 2000 - 12 comments