"In Massachusetts, a young woman makes genetically modified E. coli in a closet she converted into a home lab. A part-time DJ in Berkeley, Calif., works in his attic to cultivate viruses extracted from sewage. In Seattle, a grad-school dropout wants to breed algae in a personal biology lab. These hobbyists represent a growing strain of geekdom known as biohacking, in which do-it-yourselfers tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes." They might be discovering cures for diseases or developing new biofuels, but are their experiments too risky? Via. [more inside]
posted by amyms on May 19, 2009 - 101 comments

Play the life simulator. [more inside]
posted by idiopath on Apr 11, 2009 - 34 comments

Are plasma crystals alive? Cosmic dust can, in the presence of plasma, creates formations known as plasma crystals. An international team of researchers published a study in the Aug.14, 2007, issue of the New Journal of Physics (PDF here, abstract here) that indicates that these crystals may be more sophisticated than anyone realized. In simulations involving cosmic dust, the researchers witnessed the formation of plasma crystals displaying some of the elementary characteristics of life -- DNA-like structure, autonomous behavior, reproduction and evolution. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Mar 26, 2009 - 48 comments

A Life Well Wasted is a new podcast about video games and the people who love them, created by freelance writer Robert Ashley. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave on Mar 18, 2009 - 20 comments

What if you were one of the Rohingya people, and you faced death in trying to escape, or were expelled from your Homeland. Would you wait for others to help, or would you try and do it yourself...
posted by hadjiboy on Feb 28, 2009 - 6 comments

Sparks of Life. "That the electric 'spark of life' figured prominently in debates over the nature of life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is well known. Less well known is the fact that prior to this period, gunpowder was often identified with the substances that were necessary to life, if not as a vitalistic spirit, then as an essential element in the animation of the body. The idea of a spark of life went back to ancient times, likening living beings to the glowing embers of a fire. In the Old Testament, for example, the wise woman of Tekoah begs for the life of her son, pleading 'they will stamp out my last live ember.' But from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this vital flame was often equated with gunpowder. There was fire in the blood: not electric, but pyrotechnic fire."
posted by homunculus on Feb 20, 2009 - 11 comments

F*** My Life. Grouphug for the Twitter generation.
posted by nasreddin on Feb 3, 2009 - 69 comments

What real-life bad habits has programming given you? "This has actually really happened to me. I was trying to hang a glass picture frame on the wall and accidentally dropped it. And in the shock of the moment, I loudly yelled 'Control Z!' Then the glass hit the floor and smashed."
posted by grumblebee on Jan 30, 2009 - 170 comments

Why Google Employees Quit
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jan 18, 2009 - 141 comments

You're going to die.
posted by loquacious on Jan 8, 2009 - 101 comments

Do you have something to say, but never had the chance to? Founded in late 1997 and originally published August 15th, 1998, So There has stood as a testament to your daily lives for over five years.
posted by cjorgensen on Jan 5, 2009 - 26 comments

Story From North America. A boy learns to appreciate life in all its forms via song.
posted by ludwig_van on Jan 5, 2009 - 8 comments

My Day Yesterday. A Flickr set of short (under 90 seconds) videos which describe... a person's day. The instructions, as outlined by Garrett Murray, who started the group with this video: "Shoot video throughout a day in your life, then put it together and upload it the next day. Don't add any music or sound effects, just use what the camera recorded." Some favourites: Delphine Gilbert in Cordoba, Dean Allen in France, and Piotr/presentday in Florence.
posted by jokeefe on Jan 2, 2009 - 25 comments

Here's Razorhawk a superhero who also wrestles and makes suits for other superheroes. This is Master Legend who recently had an article published in Rolling Stone about him. Meet Superhero who patrols the streets of Clearwater, Florida in his custom Corvette. They call themselves real-life superheroes. A documentary film featuring them has the first 10 minutes free online at google video. [more inside]
posted by flipyourwig on Dec 31, 2008 - 17 comments

Death and Life: Madison New Life Band bid farewell to Bishop Daddy Madison in Washington, D.C. Stooges Brass Band plays in New Orleans [second line].
posted by ferdydurke on Dec 29, 2008 - 2 comments

Here’s the thing about Pottersville that struck me when I was 15: It looks like much more fun than stultifying Bedford Falls — the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times go on all night. If anything, Pottersville captures just the type of excitement George had long been seeking. A different take on a classic movie.
posted by dersins on Dec 19, 2008 - 71 comments

Source Of Geysers On Saturn's Moon Enceladus May Be Underground Water. Earlier this year the Cassini spacecraft detected organic material in the geysers of Enceladus. The question now is, how's the fishing?
posted by homunculus on Dec 10, 2008 - 53 comments

"This is one of the greatest damn gifts you could ever give to anybody." The EDAR (Everyone Deserves a Roof) is a mobile sleeping shelter for the cold homeless in refrigerator boxes.
posted by four panels on Dec 10, 2008 - 58 comments

Alone Together. In American lore, the small town is the archetypal community, a state of grace from which city dwellers have fallen.

Yet the picture of cities—and New York in particular—that has been emerging from the work of social scientists is that the people living in them are actually less lonely. Rather than driving people apart, large population centers pull them together, and as a rule tend to possess greater community virtues than smaller ones.
posted by plexi on Nov 25, 2008 - 90 comments

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google. Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Go.
posted by chunking express on Nov 18, 2008 - 28 comments

Daughter of a slave casts vote for Obama. As the centenarian looks forward to turning 110 later this year, let's all take a moment to celebrate centenarians... and, of course, try to work out just how on earth they made it this far. High levels of vitamins A and E seem to play a role, or of course you could just be lucky enough to be from Okinawa or Sardinia. Whatever the reason, they sure know how to live. And as we've seen previously, they're fascinating people.
posted by showbiz_liz on Oct 27, 2008 - 35 comments

In 1953 a student named Stanley Miller did an experiment showing that the simple chemicals present on the early Earth could give rise to the basic building blocks of life. Miller filled a flask with water, methane, hydrogen and ammonia—the main ingredients in the primordial soup. Then he zapped the brew with electricity to simulate lightning, and, voila, he created amino acids, crucial for life. Now, scientists have reanalyzed this classic experiment, and found that the results were even more remarkable than Miller had realized.
posted by Mr_Zero on Oct 17, 2008 - 49 comments

Doctor assisted suicide for the terminally ill, or those in chronic pain, is an issue that some find themselves opposed to. Dan Savage, of Savage Love fame, writes about the death of his mother and the implications of religious opposition to such measures.
posted by sotonohito on Oct 10, 2008 - 99 comments

Beyond the Reach of God. Thought experiments involving the God-universe and the Nature-universe, the Turing-complete Game of Life, and a lot of insightful back-and-forth in the comment section, to boot. One of the most interesting and thought-provoking essays I've read on the Internet in a very long time, by Eliezer Yudkowsky on his blog, Overcoming Bias (via).
posted by WCityMike on Oct 9, 2008 - 64 comments

A photo-essay of life in a Cambodian Aids Ward. [images are distressing] [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy on Sep 23, 2008 - 7 comments

Martin Parr is a celebrated English photographer who has a reputation for being both preoccupied and inspired with notions of consumerism, foreign travel and tourism. Now you can actually go on holiday with him. The School of Life, a maverick cultural institution in London, is offering a weekend away with the sardonic snapper in the Isle of Wight. [more inside]
posted by MrMerlot on Sep 16, 2008 - 6 comments

Is life possible even in the coldest depths of space? If so, this tough little guy has long been thought to be a good candidate. Now, finally, analysis of the Tardigrades (a.k.a. "water bears") exposed to open space as part of the TARDIS project is finally complete. So what's the verdict? [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on Sep 9, 2008 - 39 comments

So Open it Hurts. Web 2.0 visionaries Tara Hunt and Chris Messina blogged and twittered about their romance to all of geekdom as if it were one of their utopian open-source projects. Sharing their breakup has been a lot harder. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Jul 29, 2008 - 53 comments

Randy Pausch, who became famous for his "last lecture" after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, has died at 47. (previously) The last lecture video went viral in late 2007. Pausch became a minor celebrity and made a commencement address at Carnegie Mellon which also gained media attention. Homepage (currently being overwhelmed) and Wikipedia.
posted by brassafrax on Jul 25, 2008 - 75 comments

Festooning The Tree Of Life. Carl Zimmer describes new research on lateral gene transfer which makes the Tree of Life look more like a Gordian Knot.
posted by homunculus on Jul 20, 2008 - 15 comments

MeFite scrumtralescent thought it would be fun to interview people who dared to take a chance and do something cool or exciting, like leaving their jobs to travel for a year, picking up an unusual hobby or starting their own business, and then share these interviews via a website for all to enjoy. So she did, and the result was 'The Life Less Traveled: How Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things…And How You Can, Too!' [via mefi projects]
posted by Effigy2000 on Jul 5, 2008 - 13 comments

"If I make enough money now, I can quit and do what I really love later." "If I just think hard enough, I'll finally figure out what I want to do with my life." "I know people in this career path lose their souls, but I'll be different." "What if I try a new career, and it turns out I don't like it?" Po Bronson tackles some of the thoughts that keep people from pursuing a career they would really love. The article (one-page version) is based on his New York Times bestseller, What Should I Do With My Life? The writing is several years old, but the question seems to spring eternal.
posted by vytae on Jun 26, 2008 - 195 comments

NYT asks: What's your recipe deal breaker? Deep frying? Requiring a helper? Standing overnight? Lifehacker readers chime in with the recipes that stop them cold.
posted by divabat on Jun 10, 2008 - 139 comments

"We want to be in clean country with like-minded people with access to clean food. . . . The question is, Do I have Internet access in the woods?" The New York Times has the story of an Austin family that has decided to give away almost all of their worldly possessions in exchange for a simpler more sustainable life. Could you do it? [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on May 19, 2008 - 83 comments

The "Great Filter" is a hypothetical barrier to explain why civilisations are so unlikely to progress to the point of inter-stellar colonisation that we have not encountered any in 40 years of looking. Maybe humanity has already negotiated the filter - as some massive evolutionary improbability - or perhaps it lies in our future as an almost-certain threat to our existence? We should hold our breath as we look for evidence of life on Mars.
posted by rongorongo on May 12, 2008 - 85 comments

In 1974 - or 1976, depending who you ask - Armistead Maupin began writing "an extended love letter to a magical San Francisco” in the form of a serialized, fictional drama published originally in the Pacific Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, originally called "The Serial" which then became collectively known as Tales of The City. It is a suprisingly beautiful, deep, emotional, cosmopolitan and lasting tale about life in San Francisco in the turbulent, heady days of the 1970s and 1980s. Widely credited with and cherished for helping spread a little of the openess, tolerance and acceptance that San Francisco is now famous for. It then became a series of books - Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You - and lastly, the spin-off tale of Michael Tolliver Lives. Almost exactly twenty years after first publishing, it then became an excellent miniseries from the United Kingdom's Channel 4, which aired in the United States on PBS, but not without protest or limitations. [more inside]
posted by loquacious on May 4, 2008 - 39 comments

Why do we spend so many precious hours of our lives watching films? What is it about cinema that it should occupy a place of such prominence in our lives? And why do we even need movies? It is as though we are trying to fill a gap in our lives - a void, an emptiness within ourselves. So to even begin on the path of our Truth Quest, we have to see the broader picture of how film correlates to life, and life to film. To find this higher perspective, it is helpful to look towards the other arts, as well as philosophy.
Cinema Seekers: Searching for truth in cinema and in life. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Apr 21, 2008 - 26 comments

Suspending Life. "If almost every species on Earth was killed some 250 million years ago, how did our ancient ancestors survive and evolve into us?"
posted by homunculus on Apr 18, 2008 - 31 comments

Do you remember those days when mom and dad used to pack you up in the back of the station wagon and drive you to grandma's and grandpa's? Or when you were a dreamer with nothing else on your mind but to escape from the one street town to the big city? Have you ever dreamed of going back, maybe to settle down, get in touch with your roots, and start a new life for yourself. Well, here's your chance. Why not just get up and do it this time. Sure, it's not going to be easy, but maybe it's the change you've been looking for. On the other hand, maybe not, so be advised. But whatever you decide, it sure does look like a way of life that does hold a lot of potential. [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy on Apr 11, 2008 - 42 comments

Bobby Dunbar was a four year-old boy that vanished in 1912, while on a fishing trip with his family in a Louisiana swamp. For weeks, searchers combed the area looking for him. The lake where he went missing was dynamited. Alligators were captured and had their bellies slit open to see if the body was inside. Nothing was found except a set of child's footprints leading to an old railroad trestle. Eight months later, the police found Bobby in the company of a drifter with a horse-drawn cart. He protested his innocence but was arrested and charged with kidnapping. Another woman came forward and claimed Bobby was, in fact, her son. But she was an unmarried fieldworker, and her claims were dismissed. The crime became a nationwide media event and the boy was returned to his parents, and their hometown held a parade in his honor. Bobby returned to his life. Ninety-one years later, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter uncovered the truth.
posted by smoothvirus on Mar 19, 2008 - 78 comments

Half life: Full Life Consequences! Cartoon version! Based on the first piece of fan fiction to ever be critically acclaimed. [more inside]
posted by oxford blue on Feb 5, 2008 - 29 comments

American audiences remember Akira Kurosawa as the genius of the samurai epic, a past master who used the form both to revise and revive Western classics - Shakespeare with Ran and Throne of Blood, Dostoevsky with Red Beard and The Idiot, Gorky with The Lower Depths - and to give splendid and ultimately immortal life to new archetypes, as in The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo. But Kurosawa also made films of his own time. His masterpiece, in fact, was the quiet story of a gray Japanese bureaucrat dying in post-war Tokyo, and of his attempt to do something of lasting good before he leaves. The film is Ikiru ("To Live"; 1952). [more inside]
posted by Iridic on Jan 29, 2008 - 46 comments

Scientists have built the first synthetic genome by stringing together 147 pages of letters representing the building blocks of DNA.
posted by geeknik on Jan 26, 2008 - 18 comments

"We all leave something behind, but it looked like Olive had left nothing." Olive Archer passed away after five years in a care home, five years that passed without a visitor. Concerned that Olive was an Eleanor Rigby the minister prepared for her service by making an appeal to the public to find if anyone remembered Olive. Friends were found. Sadly, she is not alone. Maybe she needed SagaZone.
posted by geekyguy on Jan 10, 2008 - 45 comments

50 Things I've Learned in 50 Years. [more inside]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Jan 9, 2008 - 81 comments

Steve Reich's CITY LIFE: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
posted by wittgenstein on Jan 2, 2008 - 36 comments

Real robot drama is happening on Mars today. Spirit, racing for her life to find shelter before winter, injured and underpowered after four years of hard labor, may have made her most significant find yet. The broken foot she's dragged behind her for the past two years unexpectedly uncovered evidence of a once-wet Mars with conditions theoretically hospitable for primitive life.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Dec 12, 2007 - 89 comments

Passage -- a small game about a big subject.
posted by empath on Dec 11, 2007 - 24 comments

Venter made an artificial chromosome and may have already created artificial life in his lab. Is it a solution for global warming, or a plot for world domination? Anyway, it's a lot to think about and discuss.
posted by strangeguitars on Oct 6, 2007 - 35 comments

Randy Pausch is a pioneer in virtual reality, a computer science professor, a Disney Imagineer, an innovative teacher, and the co-founder of the best video game school in the world. One year ago he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and after a long and difficult fight he's been given just a few more months to live. This week he gave his powerful, funny, and life-affirming last lecture to a packed auditorium at Carnegie Mellon University, entitled "How to Live Your Childhood Dreams". The WSJ's summary, and a direct link to the complete video of the lecture (2 hours, and unfortunately streaming WMV). Warning: hilarious jokes about dying.
posted by xthlc on Sep 20, 2007 - 30 comments