"The quest to undercut fashion’s standards of perfection, and to find beauty in the disdained, overlooked or overripe, runs throughout Mr. Penn’s career. In an otherwise pristine still life of food, he included a house fly, and in a 1959 close-up, he placed a beetle in a model’s ear." So long, Irving Penn.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 7, 2009 - 20 comments

The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has put 675 reels of archival 16 mm film online via the Internet Archive. Most of the film is unedited, and stems either from Museum research, or was donated by interested amateurs. Much of it is silent, reflecting the technology of the day. One highlight are the four surviving reels of the long-running TV show 'What in the World" (look for the episode starring Vincent Price), but the archive is full of other hidden gems, such as the 1950s archaeological expedition to Tikal, a 1940 film "A 1000 Mile Road Trip Across America", and Glimpses of Life Among the Catawba and Cherokee Indians of the Carolinas (1927). The films are downloadable in various formats, including MPEG2, Ogg Video, and 512Kb MPEG4. Happy browsing! via.
posted by Rumple on May 3, 2009 - 12 comments

An oldie, but apropros for Earth Day. Join Penn & Teller in banning the nefarious Dihydrogen Monoxide!
posted by grapefruitmoon on Apr 22, 2009 - 63 comments

In 1989 Rob Pike, Penn & Teller, and Dennis Ritchie (one of the creators of UNIX), prank Arno Penzias, with a funky speech recognition demo.
posted by oonh on Feb 19, 2009 - 6 comments

The Last Living Entertainer in Vegas [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Mar 8, 2008 - 19 comments

Penn econ professor pleads guilty to killing wife. With last year's child porn and now murder, it looks like the Wharton professor felony hat trick is two-thirds complete. (It's there if we expand it to the whole University.)
posted by supercres on Nov 27, 2007 - 27 comments

Meet Mark Penn. Pollster to Hillary Clinton and Corporate America. Penn came up with terms like "Soccer Moms" and "Office Park Dads", and if you're reading metafilter you're probably an e-fluential (you can take a quiz to find out. And don't forget about the momfluentials! Oh, and remember, when talking about the war, don't ever use the word mistake. Hillary Isn't)
posted by delmoi on Apr 30, 2007 - 32 comments

There's been plenty of Bullshit! on MetaFilter before, and now there's more: Boy Scouts [1, 2, 3] ("Duty to God ahead of country, others, and self, is the credo of suicide bombers."); Wal-Mart Hatred ("Wal-Mart is one of the great anti-poverty programmes in the country."); Circumcision ("By the end of this programme, one of these three will drop their pants and show us the restored foreskin on their penis."); and The Best ("Stupid? How many of you are searching for it on the web right now?").
posted by hoverboards don't work on water on Apr 27, 2007 - 46 comments

"After our transparently bogus story and our impossibly shitty video appeared on the website... we received a flood of messages from big-shot bigfoot hunters who were dying to find out about [the] footage. Our plan was working." So, Penn and Teller faked the Sonoma bigfoot footage. But only the BFRO fell for it. Conveniently, they deleted the evidence of that. With so many sasquatch enthusiasts expressing doubt about the video when it was released, can our favorite Libertarian and mime really use it to prove that bigfoot is bullshit?
posted by kyleg on Apr 27, 2006 - 70 comments

"A Helpful Hand" - Penn & Teller call Bullshit! on the "bestselling book in the world," the Holy Bible. (link is to entire episode approx 29mins - *language, flash)
posted by hypersloth on Dec 14, 2005 - 120 comments

this i believe: there is no god. the inimitable, outspoken penn jillette (of penn and teller fame) takes a hell of a brave stand in today's climate of blind faith.
posted by ab3 on Nov 21, 2005 - 247 comments

Sorry. We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States.
posted by titboy on Dec 17, 2003 - 16 comments

Federal V.I.P. Penn Gillette almost gets his "crank grabbed." Not quite as concerning as the pregnant woman who got her breasts groped by security at the airport but it's an interesting read.
posted by suprfli on Jan 5, 2003 - 36 comments