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posted by NortonDC at 9:10 PM PST - 181 comments

The Wonder Girls a Korean pop girl-group, got people in Korea wanting to learn themoves for their hit song "Tell Me." Everyone's doing it, girls (in the snow and in classrooms), boys (at a wedding, and, er...abandoned auditorium?)... [more inside]
posted by kkokkodalk at 8:49 PM PST - 32 comments

The Gough, or Bodleian map is surprisingly accurate considering it dates from the 14th century. The Map is considered the first true map of Britain. Some say the red lines cris-crossing the map are roads, however, some disagree. You be the judge, because the map is available for interractive viewing at Queens University Belfast.
posted by mattoxic at 8:02 PM PST - 8 comments

The Sunland Big Baobab tree is large enough to contain a tree bar and wine cellar.
posted by dhruva at 7:58 PM PST - 8 comments

Second Skin [is a documentary that] takes an intimate look at computer gamers whose lives have been transformed by the emerging genre of Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). [more inside]
posted by Dave Faris at 7:39 PM PST - 29 comments

Mark Liu's Fly Fishing Art .....Mark is both an artist and a photographer, with a love of the outdoors, and of fly fishing. In addition to his paintings linked in the title, Mark also has a blog dedicated to his fishing related photography. One of the neat aspects of Mark's site is his offer to send you free art if you take a kid fishing! If, like me, you're stuck in a long winter of ice and snow, these paintings and photos will provide a few moments of vicarious fishing! Enjoy!
posted by HuronBob at 7:33 PM PST - 5 comments

The Pelican Project - six decades of Pelican book covers.
posted by dobbs at 6:56 PM PST - 12 comments

Erstwhile British TV star Jeremy Beadle died yesterday from pneumonia, aged 59, having just recently fought off kidney cancer then leukaemia. While most famous for hidden camera pranks, stunts and general cruelty, and subject of undoubtedly the funniest joke in the world (due to a birth defect), his lesser known activities included knowing just about everything, euthanasia and raising millions for charity. Love him or hate him, RIP.
posted by cillit bang at 6:20 PM PST - 19 comments

The talk show host, Miss Oprah Winfrey is illegally invading my privacy to promote show ideas on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Further, each time I gather evidence of proof, she pays people with her talk show earnings money to bribe them to destroy evidence. Many more complaints to the FCC about selected tv shows here.
posted by oxford blue at 5:28 PM PST - 76 comments

Dead musical instruments... brought back to life by YouTube? Check out this mellotron demo film, a rare trautonium keyboard in some guy's garage, trautonium music by composer Oskar Sala, an original Ondes Martenot, a documentary on the telharmonium (parts 1, 2, and 3), and the Sonovox (used to funny but not-suitable-for-work effect in this parody of Sparky's Magic Piano). Meanwhile, avant-gardists have revived the art of prepared piano, but more mainstream acts such as Tori Amos and Ferrante & Teicher have also experimented with it. Last but not least, another performer of prepared piano is Margaret Leng Tan, but I think she should get more accolades as the best virtuoso of the toy piano since Schroeder from Peanuts.
posted by jonp72 at 4:46 PM PST - 14 comments

Should you be attending this year's carnival in Rio, you probably won't be seeing a huge float rolling down the parade route depicting an enormous pile of emaciated corpses and a samba-dancing Hitler. But that's only thanks to a Brazilian judge's decision.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:57 PM PST - 53 comments

The Panopticons are a series of 21st-century landmarks erected across East Lancashire, England, as symbols of the renaissance of the area (not to be confused with Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon).
posted by homunculus at 3:55 PM PST - 16 comments

Kolmanskop, a ghost town buried in the sand
posted by jonson at 3:09 PM PST - 13 comments

There have been a few husband/wife teams in the art world. Nothing has impressed me as much as the work of Jorge Rodriguez Gerada and Ana Alvarez-Errecalde. Their work stands alone, but complements each other. Check out Ana's video of some of Jorge's work. Or some of her own work (NSFW). Or read an interview and see some of Jorge's work.
posted by conifer at 2:32 PM PST - 6 comments

The rock art of the Tassili culture is found throughout North African mountains, the Tassili n'Ajjer. The rock art of Europe is well known around the world. Lesser known but just as amazing and less well-understood is the rock art of North Africa. (prev.,prev.) This tradition is thought to have developed independently of European rock art although researchers agree about very little else about it. This art hearkens back to a time when the Sahara's climate was milder and more wet. This rock art has often been compared to the pre-Nguni San rock art of Southern Africa. There are of course people who believe that aliens did it. The more research that is done about this area and its archaeology, the more we may have to rethink our ideas about the Sahara. . Sadly enough, like many archaeological sites it is becoming endangered.
posted by anansi at 12:30 PM PST - 8 comments

Los Angeles! he walks again by night... ...out of the smog, into the fog. Relentlessly -- ruthlessly -- ("I wonder where Ruth is?") -- doggedly! ("Woof woof!" *) For the past 42 years the Firesign Theatre, the best comedy group of the 1960's, has been putting their art in cans from Canada to Kashmir. Up for the Grammy in 1998 and 2001, Firesign at their best combined clever, multilayered writing with pitch-perfect satirical performances as Rocky Rococco, Ralph Spoilsport, Art Holeflaffer, Hemlock Stones, Uh Clem and Barney, and many more. Back in the day, it would have been astonishing if at least one of your peers couldn't recite all of The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye, including the sound effects. [more inside]
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 12:16 PM PST - 91 comments

"Ratzinger is an Evolutionist, which by definition makes one an athiest", is one of the reasons that this website, in which the "true" catholic faith (different [?] from the other catholic faith) is promoted, gives as to claiming Benedict XVI isn't the true pope. And to make their point they have elected a "real" pope themselves: Pope Pius XIII His real name? Lucian Pulvermacher (wikipedia) (previously) [more inside]
posted by omegar at 11:35 AM PST - 77 comments

Predicting the Future WSJ - "We look ahead 10 years, and imagine a whole different world." Plus, review of predictions from 1998 -
posted by sjjh at 10:52 AM PST - 42 comments

Edward Samuel's Illustrated History of Copyright A fascinating illustrated historical tour, looking at how different technologies have shaped how we think about copyright and intellectual property.
posted by carter at 10:49 AM PST - 4 comments

"Tained Love" on ukulele. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 10:07 AM PST - 62 comments

Its animated-type opening credits set the tone - and when, soon after, Jonas Mekas stumbles in, explaining his version of the butterfly-wing theory, you know this is a different kind of rock-movie. Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel's 1990 music film "Step Across the Border" matches 35mm black&white cinema direct to several seasons of poly-instrumentalist Fred Frith's round-the-globe improvisational jams (with the likes of Joey Baron, Iva Bitová, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn and others). A big-wig at Cahiers du Cinema has it in his top-ten - now you can watch this masterpiece of visual jazz online (or do yourself a favour and get the DVD). (Thanks to Vincent Moon for the heads-up.)
posted by progosk at 10:03 AM PST - 10 comments

How experts think we'll live in the year 2000 [via Paleo-Future] [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy at 6:54 AM PST - 42 comments

Well, excuse me, princess. Youtube one-link, but very much a catch-phrase.
posted by parmanparman at 6:25 AM PST - 47 comments

"There's no Brad Pitt of smell," Herz says. "Body odor is an external manifestation of the immune system, and the smells we think are attractive come from the people who are most genetically compatible with us." [more inside]
posted by iamkimiam at 6:08 AM PST - 40 comments

Fernando Aguirre is a crime fighter patrolling the streets of Bogota.
posted by gman at 3:49 AM PST - 9 comments

Star Trek orgasms (nsfw). Bonus: Kirk, ultimate ladies man.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:30 AM PST - 29 comments

Club Little Gun, a bunch of tiny guns built into things from rings to crosses. Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones, the whip pistol. via [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 12:33 AM PST - 10 comments

PBS Frontline explores Growing Up Online. Here's what they learned.
posted by miss lynnster at 12:15 AM PST - 43 comments

TOKYO International Great Quilt Festival 2008, a photo collection of beautiful Japanese art quilts. From Moonstitches via CRAFT.
posted by artifarce at 8:09 PM PST - 7 comments

So, do you do it? Is your significant other "one of them"? Is it catching? [more inside]
posted by pearlybob at 7:44 PM PST - 61 comments

Web Trend Map 2008 Beta.
posted by signal at 6:59 PM PST - 18 comments

Your mother told you never to discuss religion or politics in polite company. You'll probably start a fight. [more inside]
posted by JDHarper at 6:53 PM PST - 3 comments

Here is an alphabetical list of the most popular music stars real names.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:49 PM PST - 48 comments

Way back in 2003, I posted a link to a video that showed an octopus transforming itself to look like its surroundings. If you read the thread, there was some doubt about it and I think we all wished that web video was better at the time. Well, a friend posted a link to a TED talk recently that shows this same octopus at a much higher resolution. The relevant footage appears near the end of the talk. [more inside]
posted by stefnet at 6:29 PM PST - 30 comments

Don't Mess with Charles Bronson (Videos) Charles Bronson is not to be messed with on the street, in any man made structure, but certainly not on a train. When Charles Bronson wants to sit alone and read his paper on the subway, leave Charles Bronson alone.
posted by thisisdrew at 5:57 PM PST - 33 comments

Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator. Now you can join in when the rest of the architecture grad students go to the roof to smoke a joint/apply for grant money.
posted by plexi at 4:54 PM PST - 22 comments

Female educator & writer comments on male culture - describing video gaming males in their 20s as 'child-men', delaying traditional responsibility by decades compared to previous generations (NPR interview). Inevitable response by gaming community and others in their 20s. Further example on the change in societal isolation that leads to bowling alone, or a new social community structure being born? [more inside]
posted by Argyle at 4:30 PM PST - 171 comments

Reading the news, the violence in Kenya can feel distant. For Mission in Action/Nakuru Baby Orphanage, located in the heart of the Rift Valley, the violence is all to near, and extremely troubling. (the last link contains images that may be very disturbing) [more inside]
posted by [expletive deleted] at 4:17 PM PST - 15 comments

Bloody balls! Make sure to stick around for the surprise ending. [more inside]
posted by nangsta at 4:14 PM PST - 14 comments

Off-Road Velociraptor Safari [flash game, requires Unity Web Player installation]
posted by Elmore at 2:45 PM PST - 9 comments

I can has... wait, it's canned? Canned cheeseburger, only €3.95. [more inside]
posted by whir at 2:21 PM PST - 81 comments

The Polypunk mixtapes. "selected in Tokyo, designed in London, posted from Brooklyn, hopefully enjoyed around the world." From digi nikki. via. [more inside]
posted by vronsky at 2:08 PM PST - 6 comments

The story behind Woody Allen's signature typeface (with screengrabs from each film). Via. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 12:12 PM PST - 41 comments

Marijuana vending machines. [more inside]
posted by Mister_A at 11:10 AM PST - 86 comments

7 short stories by Roberto Bolaño Gómez Palacio, The Insufferable Gaucho, Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey, Phone Calls, Dance Card. From Nazi Literature in the Americas: Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce, Luz Mendiluce Thompson & Ernesto Pérez Masón and The Fabulous Schiaffino Boys. If you know the fiction of Roberto Bolaño you know what you're in for. If you don't, any of these stories is a good place to start, though the first three are perhaps the most natural starting points. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 10:47 AM PST - 10 comments

Questioning Consciousness. "To understand consciousness and its evolution, we need to ask the right questions." By Nicholas Humphrey, who was previously discussed here. [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus at 10:00 AM PST - 51 comments

Meet the Sheeples. The rehasher of the Dress-Up Jesus magnets (Previously on MeFi) has immortalized his legion of hate-mailers in comic form. Click each to read the actual tête-à-tête. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 9:36 AM PST - 62 comments

Steve Martin on the development of his comedy. [more inside]
posted by bove at 9:14 AM PST - 58 comments

"That half-destroyed paperwork is a tantalizing secret." The Stasi fostered a pervasive and justified paranoia. And it generated an almost inconceivable amount of paper, enough to fill more than 100 miles of shelves. The agency indexed and cross-referenced 5.6 million names in its central card catalog alone. Hundreds of thousands of "unofficial employees" snitched on friends, coworkers, and their own spouses, sometimes because they'd been extorted and sometimes in exchange for money, promotions, or permission to travel abroad. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi tried to destroy its records. Now, with the help of computer science, the "billion-piece puzzle" is finally coming together. The article is an interesting update on the one featured in this 2003 Metafilter post . [more inside]
posted by amyms at 7:42 AM PST - 29 comments

Why is your plane late? Airlines can make more money selling 70 airplanes worth of tickets per hour than they could if they limited themselves to the 60 airplanes per hour that the runway can handle. A long but excellent post on what is causing the delays at the airport.
posted by Coop at 7:18 AM PST - 34 comments

Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules. A truly inspirational set of values that could add everything to the life of anyone in education. What makes this set of rules even better is that they came from the students themselves. But they couldn't have done so without the pioneering work of Sister Mary Corita [more inside]
posted by MrMerlot at 6:10 AM PST - 31 comments

Grills made of you are worn by sellers of drugs / You are used in cars, and great for spark plugs. A periodic table of rather bad poetry about the elements. Via This compilation of periodic tables.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:40 AM PST - 17 comments

Affordability for first-time home buyers in the UK has fallen by 351% over the last 10 years. Never fear; through a deal with the Hyde housing association, Paramount Homes and Scandinavian partner Skanska, Ikea has introduced the BoKlok into the British housing market. These prefab homes will start at just £70,000 (including a voucher for some free furniture) and will probably be built on the fringes of London, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. Previously
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:29 AM PST - 68 comments

While the dream of immortality might be as old as mankind, the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula (image) seems to be living it:

The hydrozoan Turritopsis nutricula has evolved a remarkable variation on this theme, and in so doing appears to have achieved immortality. The solitary medusa of this species can revert to its polyp stage after becoming sexually mature (Bavestrello et al., 1992; Piraino et al., 1996). In the laboratory, 100% of these medusae regularly undergo this change. Thus, it is possible that organismic death does not occur in this species!

An in-depth research paper.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:33 AM PST - 48 comments

10 Universities Offering Free Writing Courses Online.
posted by nickyskye at 10:45 PM PST - 15 comments

Toronto trustees have voted in favor of an 'Afrocentric' school. City staff endorsed the plan, while other groups in the city have not been so supportive.
posted by jjb at 10:05 PM PST - 66 comments

Audio gold: David Lee Roth's vocal track from Runnin' With the Devil, without benefit of, you know, music.
posted by shadow vector at 9:59 PM PST - 74 comments

THX for the eyes. [more inside]
posted by brownpau at 9:06 PM PST - 53 comments

According to the latest biweekly numbers released last Thursday by the Federal Reserve, for the two weeks that ended January 16th American banks had negative $1.3 billion in non-borrowed reserves. This is, historically, extremely unusual; just two months ago they had $30 billion (positive, of course) in non-borrowed reserves. The only reason some banks haven't been shut due to insufficient -- negative! -- reserve requirements is that the Federal Reserve is currently loaning them enough money through the brand new TAF (Term Auction Facility) program (also running in Canada and Europe) to make up their shortfalls. Today's TAF press release says that 52 American banks or institutions are currently receiving loans totaling ~$40 billion -- but the Fed refuses to name who they are. [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl at 8:58 PM PST - 162 comments

Wonderland is a series by Yeon Doo Jung which takes drawings done by children, and re-photographs them in the real world. The results of this interpretation are, um, hilarious. Use the green arrows for navigating from photo to photo. [more inside]
posted by suedehead at 8:20 PM PST - 27 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 at 8:17 PM PST - 45 comments

Harbin Ice and Snow World 2007 "Welcome to... Beijing after an ice storm? No, this is “The Eighth Annual Harbin Ice and Snow World”, China’s premiere winter event." Previously on MeFi.
posted by dhruva at 7:16 PM PST - 9 comments

Tony Judt's acceptance speech for the 2007 Hannah Arendt Prize: "Let me suggest five difficulties that arise from our contemporary preoccupation with the Shoah, with what every schoolchild now calls 'the Holocaust.'"
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:11 PM PST - 30 comments

Sculptor John Kearney of Chicago and Provincetown and his wife Lynn have been running Chicago's Contemporary Art Workshop in a former dairy for almost 60 years. Unlike their better-known contemporary the Hyde Park Art Center, (founded nearly the same year) the pair never let the gallery move beyond its original mission, to discover and support young artists, especially those with little or no exhibition background. The Workshop had early solo exhibitions for both artists who went on to fame, and those whose careers fizzled (full disclosure-that would be me) and has exhibited thousands in its 6 decades. Kearney, who worked with found objects from early in his career, is the best-known sculptor you never heard of, with his creative and amusing bumper sculptures all over Chicago. [more inside]
posted by nax at 6:01 PM PST - 6 comments

A recent poll (PDF) asked for reactions to the same model dressed in two different ways: in a plain shirt with her hair down, and in a blue head scarf of the style of some Islamic women. Perhaps understandably, the survey respondents felt the scarfed image was more traditional and more religious. But some of the other perceptions are less obviously predictable. (via crooked timber)
posted by Rumple at 5:55 PM PST - 44 comments

Did you hear about the BMW M5 crash that occurred in Ocala, Florida over the weekend? (video - with a car advertisement opening, ironically). The five teenagers in the car flew 200 feet off an airport runway, then hit a tree, splitting the car in half. What you may not have heard of was that the driver, Josh Ammirato, was an active member of m5board.com, an online BMW M5 forum community. AmericanM5, he was known by, had posted only a day before the crash, asking about rough shifts when exceeding 140MPH. The thread about his crash. Edmunds Inside Line has full details of story, including map of the accident.
posted by patr1ck at 3:09 PM PST - 248 comments

The Fail Blog. New and Classic Fail pictures.
posted by psmealey at 1:58 PM PST - 104 comments

groundviews is Sri Lankan citizen journalism initiative. [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 1:50 PM PST - 3 comments

Is foreclosure right for you? Walking, a click away.
posted by wallstreet1929 at 12:47 PM PST - 32 comments

Yet another buzzword for the dustbin. Tipping Point. Exploitable phenomenon or total load of crap. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 12:14 PM PST - 80 comments

The World at Night is a collection of astrophotography from around the world.
posted by Upton O'Good at 12:10 PM PST - 9 comments

Some people hate cilantro. Some people hate shrimp. But Lee really, really hates Discovery Channel. (via)
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:42 AM PST - 60 comments

A proposal for the monetization of the file sharing of music from the Songwriters and Recording Artists of Canada. "Most Canadians are aware that the Internet and mobile phone networks have become major sources of music. What they may not know is that songwriters and performers typically receive no compensation of any kind when their music is shared or illegally downloaded... We believe the time has come to put in place a reasonable and unobtrusive system of compensation for creators of music in regard to this popular and growing use of their work."
posted by tranquileye at 11:17 AM PST - 38 comments

Popcards.fr is a collection of kitschy French postcards from the 50's, 60's and 70's. Kitschy barely does justice to this collection. Categories abound, including pets, humor (and I use the term loosely), lovers, cuisine and perhaps the two most interesting sections, guys and gals. [via I like via sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy]
posted by Kattullus at 10:37 AM PST - 12 comments

Russell's Teapot Comic. (A little background on Bertrand Russell and his teapot.) [more inside]
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 10:19 AM PST - 71 comments

The Crate Digger Death-Match. A couple of weeks ago, Drown Radio challenged 12 musicians to create a complete album in 12 hours while utilizing only $12 worth of materials purchased at thrift stores. Here are the results of round one, complete with MP3s.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:15 AM PST - 18 comments

What do you call capturing sound the way the human head hears it, that is, three-dimensionally? Nope, not stereo. Binaural recording. Holophonics. Dummy head (no, not you) recording. [more inside]
posted by artifarce at 8:12 AM PST - 14 comments

John Maynard Keynes kept two sex diaries. The second one is a bit mysterious. (via marginal revolution)
posted by wittgenstein at 8:08 AM PST - 49 comments

Would you vote for an articulate horizontal-thinking Canadian? Race and religion in America defined through obfuscation.
posted by waraw at 7:20 AM PST - 54 comments

Virtual Morphologies - the dark surreal stylings of J. Karl Bogartte. "In 1973 I accidentally discovered that by moving things around on the ordinary copy machine (and in effect, subverting its intended purpose…), strange conjunctions revealed themselves. At the beginning of 2000, I just as suddenly abandoned this process and leaped into the 21st century, exploring the computer and the realms of digital surrealité."
posted by desjardins at 6:06 AM PST - 6 comments

Barbie Tarot.
posted by Orb at 5:29 AM PST - 22 comments

Skip The Tuition: 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World
posted by anastasiav at 5:00 AM PST - 20 comments

The History of Visual Communication
posted by Wolfdog at 4:53 AM PST - 11 comments

There are lots of people who post weight loss videos on Youtube. But none of them faced as many challenges as Jeremy did. Morbidly obese, and bedridden, we watched while he struggled to walk again and defeat obesity. Despite those that were rude to him, nobody seemed to have as much spirit and drive as Jeremy did. Even Jeremy's last video was filled with optimism. But even though so many of us struggle against obesity, some of us lose the fight. Even though Jeremy has passed, Roberta's videos dealing with his loss remind us how fortunate we really are.
posted by smoothvirus at 4:49 AM PST - 15 comments

The Cheating of Salim Baba [video | projector]
posted by hadjiboy at 3:40 AM PST - 25 comments

Darkroom book images, You may have had to of spent 100's of hours in a darkroom to appreciate this project. "Images articulated around the decline of silver-gelatin photography" Book from Nazraeli Press by Michel Campeau. {via darius himes blog}
posted by doug3505 at 10:54 PM PST - 17 comments

U2FU? Paul McGuinness, longtime manager of the band U2, has called on governments to compel ISPs to introduce mandatory French-style service disconnections to stop unauthorized downloading. [more inside]
posted by markkraft at 10:54 PM PST - 68 comments

ehhhhhahah. ehhahhhah. Hehhaahhah!...eeeee. EEEEEEEE! And Eeeeeeeeeeeee. And hhhhhhhheh. HHHHHHH-heh/ HHHH-heh-HHHHH! And of course this ode to the meaning of life...iiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! Predators III: Predator Gone Wild? Nope, it's your voice box.
posted by humannaire at 10:36 PM PST - 15 comments

18 animators collaborate on a cute little cartoon set to a song by Oppa Novy God, a "festive brass band" from St. Petersburg. (via Bloody Circus of Scary Dolls)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:48 PM PST - 8 comments

Obama--A Conservative Hope? Despite running for the candidacy of the Democratic party, Barack Obama should be the great hope of conservatives—both in the US and Europe.
posted by John of Michigan at 7:07 PM PST - 174 comments

Divorce Hearing was a television program where couples aired their grievances to Dr. Paul Popenoe, who would attempt to help them figure out how to make things work. Popenoe is notable for few things: he wasn't a real doctor - his highest academic achievement was receving an honorary degree from Occidental College; he founded the first "marriage clinic" in the US in Los Angeles in 1930 and created and authored the long-running "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" column for Ladies Home Journal. Oh yeah, he was a eugenics proponent, too. (Discovered via.)
posted by beaucoupkevin at 6:26 PM PST - 8 comments

Buttercup Festival is resurrected! Our beloved comic strip is back. Three new panels are up so far.
posted by amelliferae at 6:04 PM PST - 17 comments

Need an idea for a Science Fair project? The scientists at Science Buddies are here to help.
posted by pombe at 2:16 PM PST - 12 comments

Pimping ain't easy. In a cluster of lawsuits gathered up by The Associated Press, the former chief financial officer of health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. is depicted as a corporate Casanova -- a world-class, love-'em-and-leave-'em sort of guy who romanced dozens of women around the country simultaneously, made them extravagant promises and then went back on his word with all the compassion of a health insurance company denying a claim. [more inside]
posted by psmealey at 1:57 PM PST - 41 comments

Over 30 years ago, Robert Burnham Jr. struggled to get his astronomical (in more ways than one) three volume work published. Burnham's Celestial Handbook: An Observer's Guide to the Universe Beyond the Solar System "remains a sort of real-life hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, a compendium with something to say about nearly every cosmic destination worth visiting. . . It is rarely compared to other books because there simply is none other like it." It remains a beloved and relevant book among star-gazers today. Yet few know much about the life of the author, or of his sad and lonely demise: Sky Writer.
posted by spock at 1:39 PM PST - 20 comments

Today is the 50th anniversary of the first Lego brick ...A timeline...How they're made... and The Google/Lego connection (see their homepage today.)
posted by uaudio at 12:07 PM PST - 71 comments

Steroids, "Other Drugs," and Baseball: a Voice of Scepticism on the Impact of Steroids on Major League Baseball. Eric Walker suggests a "juiced" ball made much more of an effect than PEDs.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:16 AM PST - 32 comments

According to studies, most people are positive about their own lives, but tend to see the world going to hell in a hand basket - for a sample ride in said hand basket, see the disturbing A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2006; 1hr 23m) one of the canonical Peak Oil educational/propaganda films. Doomer porn is nothing new - starting with Rousseau, a common belief still exists - both in popular and scientific circles - that humans reached the height of advancement in the hunter/gatherer stage, a proto-garden of eden, and its been downhill since. Or is it just the same old story?
posted by stbalbach at 10:04 AM PST - 118 comments

Someone is offering doctors a financial inducement (premium? kickback?) to write prescriptions for certain drugs at the expense of others. Only this time it's the insurers paying $100 a pop for switching patients from brand-name statins to generics. Pfizer, manufacturer of the statin Lipitor, the world's best-selling drug brand of all time, is pissed. They point to a study that says you are more likely to die if you switch to generic simvaststin than you are if you stay on Lipitor. [more inside]
posted by Mister_A at 9:09 AM PST - 68 comments

Anti-Pacman.
posted by sveskemus at 8:52 AM PST - 47 comments

The Return of a Clockwork Orange - Writers, artists, directors, UK film censors and starring actor Malcolm McDowell discuss Stanley Kubrick's classic film A Clockwork Orange
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:05 AM PST - 116 comments

The biggest tourist attraction in Buenos Aires is a cemetery. El Cementerio de la Recoleta is the final resting place for some of Argentina's most illustrious and wealthy residents. (Yes, Evita is among them.) AfterLife explores the architecture, motifs, and history of this cemetery, as well as the stories of its residents. [more inside]
posted by veggieboy at 5:20 AM PST - 16 comments

The murky demimonde of Amazon's Top Reviewers. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, but I had imagined Amazon's customer reviews as a refuge from the machinations of the publishing industry: "an intelligent and articulate conversation ... conducted by a group of disinterested, disembodied spirits..."
posted by farishta at 5:11 AM PST - 44 comments

Trailers From Hell. Cult directors (and other industry types) introduce and comment on trailers for cult films. For instance, Allison Anders on Peeping Tom, Rick Baker on The Man Of A Thousand Faces, Joe Dante on Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman, Jack Hill on White Heat, Dan Ireland on The Haunting, Mary Lambert on The Masque Of The Red Death and Edgar Wright on Carnage. (Flash menu and intro unfortunately)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:01 AM PST - 11 comments

Will asteroid 2007 TU24 devastate our planet due to "magnetic reconnection"? Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait doesn't think so.
posted by starkeffect at 2:27 AM PST - 43 comments

Nothing says douche like a new haircut. Not your thing? Well, it comes in enough styles for everyone.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 11:09 PM PST - 60 comments

Saddam's Confessions - Given Saddam Hussein's central place in the American Consciousness over the last couple decades and particularly in recent years, I found 60 minutes' interview with FBI interrogator George Piro pretty fascinating.
posted by kliuless at 10:33 PM PST - 24 comments

Vispo is a site dedicated to visual poetry, both static and animated, run by Jim Andrews (though there's also a sound section). Among my favorites are bpNichol's First Screening (made in Hypercard), poem game Arteroids, the works of Ana Maria Uribe, Oppen Do Down (warning: audio starts immediately), Enigma M, strings and a selection of typographic works by Clemente Padin
posted by Kattullus at 10:28 PM PST - 5 comments

Is the music industry embracing free, legal music downloads? Qtrax is now in beta.
posted by The Deej at 9:21 PM PST - 53 comments

Thrift Store Art. Reinterpretations. (Previously.)
posted by piratebowling at 8:01 PM PST - 12 comments

Nona Hendryx (wiki) founding member of Labelle went on to a solo career that included working with The Talking Heads, Material, and Laurie Anderson. Her album Nona (produced by Laswell) featured the club hit Transformation which still sounds 20 years ahead of its time even though it was recorded in 1983. Here she is rocking the house live at the Apollo with Why Should I Cry and making your spirit soar with Winds of Change [warning: one or more of these videos may contain a keytar]
posted by vronsky at 7:42 PM PST - 13 comments

The Mexican Suitcase [more inside]
posted by wowbobwow at 7:14 PM PST - 26 comments

She works six days a week and has sold her husband - twice.
posted by parmanparman at 6:04 PM PST - 31 comments

Barefootin'! Ron Hunter, men's basketball coach of IUPUI, decides to raise awareness for Samaritan's Feet, a charity that collects shoes for needy children, by coaching barefoot. Initially, he hoped to collect 40,000 pairs in honor of the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. - 110,000 pairs of shoes were collected by tip-off. [more inside]
posted by geekyguy at 5:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Erika Gunderson got into a taxicab in New York City this past New Year's Eve and found a digital camera on the back seat. The cab driver had no information or interest in which previous passenger might be the rightful owner. Bringing the camera home, Gunderson's fiancé, Brian Ascher, took on the task of trying to find the owner. Using clues from 350 photos and two videos stored on the camera he was able to track down the owner, Irishman Alan Murphy in Sydney, Australia and return the camera to him. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 4:30 PM PST - 36 comments

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony. "Just a few years ago, America’s hold on global power seemed unshakable. But a lot has changed while we’ve been in Iraq — and the next president is going to be dealing with not only a triumphant China and a retooled Europe but also the quiet rise of a 'second world.'" [Via The Washington Note.]
posted by homunculus at 4:15 PM PST - 63 comments

YouTube in partnership with The Davos Forum has established a great "contest" although I don't think of it like that. YouTubers are asked to submit a video answering the question "What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?" I thought a long time about the question, and then, after approaching Mayor Gavin Newsom to be in the video, then getting caught up against deadlines, I had the answer: to end racism around the World. Here's the video. Here's Emma Thompson's response.
posted by nickyskye at 2:42 PM PST - 34 comments

You've seen the original White and Nerdy Video. Now watch two and a half minutes of pure, unadulterated awesome.
posted by Lord_Pall at 1:34 PM PST - 57 comments

Snow White and the Seven Stormtroopers. Inspired by the Disney attraction Star Tours, and its related merchandise, DeviantArt user Thumper-001 is working on an evolving series of creative mashups. (Via) [more inside]
posted by cmgonzalez at 12:47 PM PST - 8 comments

Total Eclipse of the Heart (YT) as "performed" by Legion of rock stars, a cover band that does “such lousy job with the source material that it becomes oddly hilarious”. (Choice of 179 videos. Via The in-between)
posted by growabrain at 12:35 PM PST - 49 comments

Apotropaios contains much fascinating information about the (here, mainly British and Irish) folk magic practice of concealing objects in buildings for ritual protection purposes. Yes, mummified Ceiling Cat is averting your evil. One aspect of the practice, the deliberate concealment of garments, has provided us with insight into ordinary costume of bygone days.
posted by Abiezer at 10:18 AM PST - 26 comments

Thoreau was into it. Scientists are using it to understand climate change. When Project Budburst starts again on Febraury 15th, you can participate, too. [more inside]
posted by Tehanu at 10:17 AM PST - 15 comments

The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), is the largest church in the world¹. Completed in 1990 for about $300 million by President Félix Houphouët-Boigny - with profits skimmed from the slave labor best cocoa (chocolate) industry - in the small rural town of his birth, it sits today in the bush a vast empty palace of marble and crystal gawked at by the occasional backpacker. Among other trappings it has the only airport big enough in Africa to take the Concorde, a presidential palace with a lake stocked with scores of Sacred Caymans (crocodiles,) and a mansion next to the Basilica reserved exclusively for the Pope on visits from Rome (used once). The President enjoyed his complex for less than 3 years before dieing in 1993.
posted by stbalbach at 9:03 AM PST - 65 comments

Art Deliverance - Alex Klochkov's gallery of abandonment from the Soviet Union. There's next to no explanation of the photos, unfortunately. Indirectly via Retrospectacle's post about the brain lab.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:08 AM PST - 13 comments

Is this the end of the bus timetable? It can be bloody cold in Helsinki in January. The last thing you want to do is hang around too long for a bus or tram. Soon you won't have to because Helsinki City Transport is currently fitting *its entire fleet* with Linux servers. Not only will each bus or tram become a travelling wireless hotspot, but you will be able to see exactly where in the city your new bus actually is. Meaning that you only step into the bitter cold the minute before it arrives. (its in beta but you can see the effects of the live trial) [more inside]
posted by MrMerlot at 5:23 AM PST - 49 comments

An angry demonstration over MetaFilter
posted by orthogonality at 3:10 AM PST - 52 comments

Some skaters blowing shit up.
posted by loquacious at 1:50 AM PST - 59 comments

Indonesia's former President Mohammed Suharto, who towered over Indonesian politics for 32 years, has died in hospital aged 86. Accused of amassing billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth for himself, his family and friends, Indonesian officials were never able to find any evidence of this ill-gotten wealth. The BBC remembers him in pictures.
posted by Effigy2000 at 12:38 AM PST - 38 comments

The 25 Greatest Duets Of All Time (with embedded YouTube videos of each) from retroCRUSH. Duets, by nature, are a corny type of song. Sure, there's a handful that we recognize here that are also some of best tunes ever recorded, but there's something inherently cheesy and fun about duets that make them a fun guilty pleasure for millions to enjoy.
posted by amyms at 11:07 PM PST - 67 comments

What did the Internet look like in 1996? "...very few web designers had even the most rudimentary of aesthetic sensibilities, and nearly half of them were clinically retarded."
posted by desjardins at 10:53 PM PST - 87 comments

To the august company of "I now pronounce you man and wife" and "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow," artist Sean Landers adds a new utterance for study, albeit one that perhaps he alone is capable to perform: "I am vastly underappreciated . . . as an artist . . . in my time." [MP3]
posted by electric water kettle at 10:43 PM PST - 3 comments

Lego wrangler Lwelyk has put together a little blog featuring his video game Lego creations. Each piece is an exact recreation of the original 2D sprite artwork where one pixel equals one square Lego block. Aside from Mother Brain we also get Phanto, Mushroom Block, Flying Shy Guy, Tingle and tons of others. The Mother Brain is by far the most impressive but the Twinrova piece definitely gets an honorable mention. [more inside]
posted by jcterminal at 10:31 PM PST - 5 comments

One good lawyer is often what it takes. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 10:03 PM PST - 12 comments

George Habash aka the Doctor, founder of the PFLP has died. The group, still extant, were notorious for various attacks in the 60s and 70s, most notably the Dawson's Field Hijackings in the early days of Black September when four planes bound for NYC were hijacked. Three were evacuated and detonated on live TV at a remote airstrip in Jordon. Leila Khaled (Mefites might better know her the inspiration for another Doctor's accomplice, Leela) and her Sandinista accomplice Patrick Argüello boarded a Swissair flight from Amsterdam posed as married Hondurans. Argüello was assaulted with a whiskey bottle and finally shot, while Leila was arrested and released as part of an exchange deal. Though the group gave up hijacking, the Japanese Red Army, armed with Czech rifles concealed in violin cases, orchestrated the Lod Airport massacre on their behalf, killing mostly mostly Puerto Rican pilgrims. The only surviving culprit, Kozo Okamoto is eventually granted refuge in Lebanon.
posted by harhailla.harhaluuossa at 9:42 PM PST - 4 comments

"There are literally millions of tone qualities and endless shades of dynamic level available on the Hammond organ." [more inside]
posted by Floydd at 8:19 PM PST - 20 comments

The Car / Farm / TV / Mouse / House of Tomorrow
posted by Dave Faris at 8:04 PM PST - 6 comments

The Illustrated President.
posted by homunculus at 4:00 PM PST - 60 comments

Fuck Planet Earth. The extreme beauty of the popular Planet Earth series comes alive with this comedic bit that simply repeats the F-bomb to great effect. [more inside]
posted by mathowie at 2:27 PM PST - 105 comments

Looking for something unique to bring to your next gaming session? Star-spawn will cringe in fear when they see you have shown up to battle bearing these long-lost relics of R'lyeh. The dwarves have toiled long in the mines and quarries of Khaz Modan, and even crafted the bones and teeth of great ancient beasts to create deadly weapons for your gaming arsenal. Perhaps most impressive and prized of all these unique equipages is this rare trophy of the cold and frozen north. [more inside]
posted by Demogorgon at 1:10 PM PST - 33 comments

Italian Progressive Rock, and a few examples of the genre: Locanda Della Fate, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Balletto di Bronzo, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme, New Trolls, Area. [more inside]
posted by parki at 12:55 PM PST - 16 comments

With the death of Louis de Cazenave, Lazare Ponticelli is the last surviving French veteran of World War One, and the country has been wondering how to mark the inevitable. By contrast, Germany's response to the recent death of Erich Kaestner has been a more muted affair, indeed, all but unnoted. [more inside]
posted by IndigoJones at 12:40 PM PST - 10 comments

The Japanese National Archives have a nice set of late 1930s, pre-World War 2, civil defence posters, created in response to their hostilities with China: General Air Raid Defence; Blackout Control; Fire Protection; and Gas Attack. via Airminded, an excellent blog on "Airpower and British Society 1908-1941, mostly." [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 12:16 PM PST - 13 comments

Scientists have built the first synthetic genome by stringing together 147 pages of letters representing the building blocks of DNA.
posted by geeknik at 12:02 PM PST - 18 comments

French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the most important literary stylists of the last 50 years, the acclaimed master of hyper-realism and the anti-novel, and member of the Académie Française, has devoted his latest novel to kiddie porn. [warning: first link contains excerpts of the novel which many may find truly disturbing.]
posted by vronsky at 10:57 AM PST - 134 comments

Never underestimate the power of simple office supplies. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 10:55 AM PST - 14 comments

Another Country is the name of Chicago Tribune photographer Scott Strazzante's long-term documentary project. Presented in diptych form, he shows the lives of two subjects on the same piece of land separated only by time. From the Cagwin family farm to a sleepy suburban Chicago subdivision, the striking images magically embody the old saying- the more things change, the more they stay the same. [more inside]
posted by TheGoldenOne at 9:03 AM PST - 27 comments

Notre Dame publishes reviews of recent philosophy books online. [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:48 AM PST - 10 comments

While many of Cuba's top musical figures left the country to pursue their careers in the US and elsewhere, the suave, hugely popular singer Benny Moré stayed. While he is a much loved and revered figure in Cuba, this great vocalist, who died in 1963, is not nearly as widely known outside the island nation as he should be. Viva Benny Moré! [NOTE: See hover-overs for link descriptions] [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:05 AM PST - 16 comments

You suck at Photoshop.
posted by sveskemus at 6:24 AM PST - 88 comments

He's probably the first person you'll see if you've ever been to an Indian Train Station. Not as dramatic as has been immortalized on screen, but certainly no less forgettable either. He is one of many who waits for his turn to carry your luggage on his head, or his shoulders, and maybe even around his neck. He has dreams and ambitions too, and just wants to earn a decent enough living. But it can get tedious at times, especially with the odds stacked against him. [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy at 2:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Those of us who were born in the 1970's have a number of indelibly permanent shared experiences. Relive a few of them with 3 hours of MTV from 1983. [more inside]
posted by Lord_Pall at 12:55 AM PST - 56 comments

At the Isle of Wight Festival, Dylan was the only monster on the bill capable of attracting a monster of an audience. In refusing to play the Woodstock Festival and in then letting himself be talked into playing the Isle of Wight, Dylan in effect was telling England's counterculture: ''C'mon. Let's hold our own Woodstock.'' And so, on the Isle of Wight, a dot of land that certainly wasn't the easiest place in the world to get to, Dylan almost single-handedly proved an enticing enough attraction to collect an audience sometimes estimated to be as few as a 125,000 and sometimes as many as 250,000.

My Dylan Papers: Part 2 The Isle of Wight

Another scrap from the late Al Aronowitz, the self-styled Blacklisted Journalist, and former Dylan courtier, recalling the only full concert Dylan gave solo or with the Band between 1967 and 1973 and sung in his Nashville Skyline voice, to boot, no less. And now you can have it all to yourself.... [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:27 AM PST - 10 comments

What Am I Craving? That's the question we always ask ourselves when thinking about what to eat. So we got to thinking: wouldn't it be cool to have a tool that could listen to what we were craving and then suggest something good to cook?
posted by amyms at 10:19 PM PST - 28 comments

1982-2007 Pixar's papers on computer graphics
posted by brundlefly at 9:39 PM PST - 21 comments

O Hammers, Head : discussion of a freakish reference in Philodemus's On Methods of Inference, found in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy at 6:26 PM PST - 42 comments

The Case for the First Folio For centuries, editors of Shakespeare's plays have conflated different published editions (quartos and folios) in an attempt to create one true text as the writer intended. In this essay (.pdf file) Jonathan Bate, one of the editors of The RSC Shakespeare makes the case that in fact what they're doing is editing together different drafts of the play originated by the bard at different times in his life attempting to make better dramatic sense. Essentially that none of the texts you studied at school are what Shakespeare intended to be performed at all. [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless at 4:42 PM PST - 29 comments

Frontline Blogger covers war in Iraq with a soldier's eyes. First hand impressions, photos, and reports from a non journalist. A NYT write up.
posted by semmi at 2:30 PM PST - 25 comments

Basic Concepts in Science: A List A regularly updated list of blog entries explaining the basics of science and mathematics.
posted by LeeJay at 1:27 PM PST - 16 comments

For your consideration: the entries of the New Yorker's Eustace Tilley redesign contest.
posted by youarenothere at 1:09 PM PST - 18 comments

Books That Make You Dumb - Ever read a book (required or otherwise) and upon finishing it thought to yourself, "Wow. That was terrible. I totally feel dumber after reading that."?
posted by blue_beetle at 12:48 PM PST - 232 comments

Ursa Major, the former home of deceased basketball great (and cocksman extraordinaire) Wilt Chamberlain is for sale. History. Slide shows.
posted by dersins at 12:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Who Can I Turn To? - Anthony Newley, 1965 [more inside]
posted by post punk at 12:10 PM PST - 29 comments

Author Paulo Coelho talks about how creating The Pirate Coelho, a site with links to torrents of his own books, leads to a massive increase in sales.
posted by dobbs at 11:16 AM PST - 9 comments

"Blogs", by Sarah Boxer in The New York Review of Books. An essay concerning books about blogs. Boxer, former New York Times reporter and critic, is author of the forthcoming Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web (NPR interview), an anthology of the best of blogs.
posted by stbalbach at 10:53 AM PST - 26 comments

Fusarium solani , a fungus known for attacking tomatoes, has become a major problem in France's famous Lascaux Cave, a World Heritage site. Authorities say it's under control, but that's disputed. "They tell us the cave's condition is stable. But that's what they say about Ariel Sharon," said one anonymous expert quoted in a special report by Time magazine. The fungus is also believed responsible for a deadly epidemic of "White-Nose Syndrome" that has been killing bats in the Northeastern U.S. over the last few years. The fungus is durable: "Authorities began spraying massive doses of antibiotics and fungicides [in Lascaux] in an effort to stop the rapidly spreading organisms. Within weeks the molds reappeared quickly developing a resistance to the antibiotic sprays."
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:30 AM PST - 24 comments

When it's been gray for days and it seems like spring will never come, making a terrarium (sometimes known as a Wardian case) is a good way to keep from going mad. Your own little ecosystem can be set up easily and cheaply in almost any clear-walled, enclosed container -- even a Mason jar or a two-liter Coke bottle. (Inspired by this.)
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:43 AM PST - 21 comments

Oscarology is a system of astrology I invented -- excuse me, that was revealed to me in a powerful mystical experience -- based on what movie won the Best Picture Oscar for the year you were born. I have been communing with the Spirit of the Oscars and transcribing the visions it has vouchsafed to me.
posted by arcticwoman at 8:29 AM PST - 64 comments

America's debtor prisons.
posted by geos at 7:09 AM PST - 80 comments

Demi-Lee Brennan received a liver transplant at the age of nine. Her doctors were rather surprised when her body subsequently took on the immune system of the organ donor and her blood type changed from O-negative to O-positive.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 6:57 AM PST - 33 comments

Election poll fatigue? Diversify your daily dose of stats with What Japan Thinks. Check out Japan's favorite emoticons, thoughts on drinking vinegar, and of course awwcats. [more inside]
posted by soma lkzx at 6:11 AM PST - 28 comments

Let's pay a little visit, shall we, to everyone's favorite lasso twirlin', geetar strummin' stars of the Vaudeville stage, Otto Gray's Oklahoma Cowboys Then let's head for the South Pacific, for the "Hawaiian" sounds of Witt and Berg. And from the early days of the "talkie", Max Fleischer explains the new-fangled technology for us in the 1929 cartoon, Finding His Voice.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:28 AM PST - 10 comments

Bikes: Steel? Aluminum? Carbon Fiber? Wood, and nothing but wood.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:21 AM PST - 28 comments

"The "American Intervention in Northern Russia, 1918-1919," nicknamed the "Polar Bear Expedition," (wikipedia) was a U.S. military intervention in northern Russia at the end of World War I." The ostensible purpose was to open an Eastern Front following the Russian withdrawal from World War I, but in practice the unit stayed to fight Bolshevism. An archive of the expedition, which gives wonderful insight into early Bolshevik Russia as well as war-weary United States, is online. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 1:19 AM PST - 23 comments

Stop the Spying! Don't just tell Congress to stop the spying -- show them.
posted by telstar at 1:09 AM PST - 37 comments

Borrah Minevitch & His Harmonica Rascals - Harmonica Specialty and Rascal Bill McBride's vocal turn on Always In My Heart are excerpts from Borrah Minevitch & His Harmonica School--a wmv video file of a Vitaphone Short which with no surprise we find at Vitaphone Shorts, a subsection of Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans--which was first brought to our attention by the noble crunchland, albeit at another and now defunct URL, let it be noted. . [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 11:46 PM PST - 5 comments

In July 1915, a fresh-faced young man got off a train and presented himself at a working cattle-and-sheep ranch on the North Fork of the Smith River, a few miles outside of White Sulphur Springs, Montana. He was slender—about 5'8," 150 pounds—and arrestingly handsome, with champagne-colored hair and blue-green eyes. He carried himself so lightly on the balls of his feet that his wife later wrote, "There seemed to be some heavenly support beneath his shoulder blades that lifted his feet from the ground in ecstatic suspension, as if he secretly enjoyed the ability to fly but was walking as a compromise to convention." The ranch hands must have been astonished at the sight. F. Scott Fitzgerald had arrived in Montana.

Fitzgerald wrote but one story set in Montana, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, but what a doozy of a story.
posted by Kattullus at 11:22 PM PST - 14 comments

Actress Dani Miura talks about what it's like to work as bait on To Catch A Predator. Previously.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:07 PM PST - 63 comments

On Tuesday, A.V. Club critic Nathan Rabin's reassessment of the rabidly ambitious Perfume: The Story of a Murderer marked the culmination of his Year of Flops project, a reviewing marathon of 104 commercial and critical failures. Here's the index of the films, sorted into Elizabethtown-derived categories of good but luckless movies, ordinary losers, and disasters of mythic proportions. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 9:34 PM PST - 35 comments

In my quest to fulfill a jones for antiquity, I came across some Roman Numismatics. There are many great photos of Roman artifacts to be found here. Monetary, military, scroll down, click and scroll some more. It's almost as if ancient Rome has come back to life. (Some art is NSFW)
posted by snsranch at 9:17 PM PST - 2 comments

Organic Cuba without fossil fuels.
posted by wilful at 8:30 PM PST - 26 comments

How To Fake An Atomic Bomb Blast On Public Television. [ YouTube] This past June, the early-morning live weather report on Prague television station CT2 was being delivered on top of live panning sweeps of the beautiful Czech Republci countryside and a seemingly par-for-the-course summery day. But as NYT reported today, "Then came the nuclear blast." The immediate reaction by the viewing public? Somewhere between a semi-collective shrug and minimally raised eyebrow. Yet months later, CR art-prankster group ZTOHOVEN [Czech] are presently enjoying international attention and wide-spread accolades for this classic piece of culture-jamming. [more inside]
posted by humannaire at 8:22 PM PST - 17 comments

I'm not a computer programmer, but I love the thought and artistry that go into [computer] application design. [more inside]
posted by lonemantis at 7:25 PM PST - 51 comments

Before photoshop, there was Oscar Gustave Rejlander. He is hailed as the father of art photography and the pioneer of the combination print. [more inside]
posted by MaryDellamorte at 6:40 PM PST - 5 comments

Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm Angry. Yup, every single way the David Banner lost his mind.
posted by filmgeek at 6:34 PM PST - 62 comments

One Last Journey. "Cars these days, they're like washing machines." (Not Clarkson...)
posted by parmanparman at 6:00 PM PST - 13 comments

Some people have built some seriously tricked out home theaters.
posted by mkultra at 5:50 PM PST - 49 comments

Bleachbum: for a youthful appearance everywhere BleachBum.com is your source for information about anal bleaching products and procedures. Anal bleaching is one more way holly wood celebrities try to stay younger. While rectal bleaching isn't for everyone, some people are interested in maintaining a youthful look...everywhere.
posted by Flem Snopes at 2:24 PM PST - 90 comments

Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World. Wired on internet asshats.
posted by dersins at 12:30 PM PST - 174 comments

A "thriving necropolis" - The North Cemetery in Manila is populated by thousands of families - many living in mausoleums and even making their livings in the service of the dead. [more inside]
posted by honeyx at 12:20 PM PST - 11 comments

In these days of high-powered graphics, there is a ASCII gaming renaissance underway. Among the most interesting are: ASCII Sector, a remake of the classic Wing Commander Privateer; the fast-paced Doom RL; the Ultima V influenced Legerdemain; and the much-discussed strategy game/frustration simulator Dwarf Fortress (now with a new unofficial tileset and experimental 3-D visualizer that may prevent some eye-bleeding), And, of course, the classic, complex Rogue-like RPGs continue to go strong, those interested may want to check out this list of the best new rogue-like game releases from ASCII dreams or the list of releases from Temple of the Roguelike.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:12 AM PST - 41 comments

DeBeers to pay out $295 million in a class action lawsuit for price fixing. If you purchaced any diamond between January 1, 1994 and March 31, 2006, here's how to get your cut.
posted by jpdoane at 10:25 AM PST - 86 comments

What happens when oral sex leads to pregnancy? Apparently, this can happen 2.5% 0% of the time, although in this case, the father, Dr. Richard O. Phillips is claiming the mother, Dr. Sharon Irons secretly kept the sperm to artificially inseminate herself. He sued for emotional distress (as well as theft, though the theft charge was thrown out); Sherry Colb has written an interesting article on the bizarre case. [Colb previously on MeFi]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 9:37 AM PST - 135 comments

- This is the Title of this Story
- Self-reference in 'Self-reference in...'
- This is Not the Title of this Essay
- How I explained infodumps and saved humanity [more inside]
posted by cortex at 9:36 AM PST - 73 comments

Pride of Toledo - 2004 Contest Pictures of barbershop harmony female singers from Lake Erie Region 17, encompassing parts of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. (All are part of Sweet Adelines International, a worldwide organization of women singers, which was mentioned before)
posted by growabrain at 9:27 AM PST - 15 comments

The process and history of "brokered conventions," for both the Republican and Democratic parties: What if no candidate gets a majority (2025 delegates for the Democrats, 1191 for the much smaller Republican convention)? This is where "brokered convention" comes in. Actually, it is more like "All hell breaks loose." All delegates are now up for grabs. All the candidates try to grab as many delegates as they can ... but after the first ballot, the delegates are free agents don't have to obey their chairman or anyone. Some might not care about dams and bridges but might trade their vote for a promise to insert a plank in the platform to [ban voting machines, build a 20' electrified fence on the Mexican border, declare the chicken to be the national fowl, you name it].
posted by geoff. at 8:01 AM PST - 63 comments

Dreams: The Terry Gilliam Fanzine Or, if you prefer, here is his Official Site
posted by psmealey at 7:58 AM PST - 15 comments

Couch for sale.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:35 AM PST - 77 comments

A Planned Parenthood health center opened its doors to patients [in October], two weeks later than planned, after anti-abortion activists raised questions about how it received its building permits. Planned Parenthood is claiming victory, but :prolife/antiabortion: activitists are still smarting. But is the Aurora clinic just about abortions, or is it filling an unmet need in one of the largest population centers in Illinois? Illinois is ground zero for :prolife/antiabortion: activism
posted by nax at 7:24 AM PST - 39 comments

Jah Shaka, self-styled Zulu Warrior, has run one of London's top reggae sound systems for nearly 40 years. Playing rare dubs on a hand built, awesomely loud sound, creating earthquaking bass and exorcising tops. Shaka stuck with the conscious Rastafarian message through a lean 1980s, while most of his contemporaries turned to dancehall and ragga. He was rewarded in the 90s with a new following and countless musicians and producers claiming him as an inspiration. Despite burning his hands in a fire and having his equipment stolen and being nearly 60, he is still playing, inna king david style.
posted by criticalbill at 7:09 AM PST - 18 comments

Hellbenders and Giant Salamanders live in various places around the world: China, Japan, and the United States. Some are only 12 inches long. Some are over 5 feet long. The National Zoo in Washington DC now has them too.
posted by onhazier at 6:13 AM PST - 18 comments

Why do the poor commit more crime? Is it because they are irrational? (via marginal revolution) [more inside]
posted by wittgenstein at 5:56 AM PST - 104 comments

GayHappinessFilter: Early studies on the subject concluded that "heterosexual relationships may have a great deal to learn from homosexual relationships." (pdf) But even so, do gay relationships tend to end sooner? Perhaps, but according to recent research, gay and lesbian couples are just as committed in their relationships as heterosexuals. (pdf) In fact, same-sex couples are actually more satisfied with their relationships, (pdf) and reported more positive feelings toward their partners and less conflict than heterosexual married couples. (Probably just as well, since just because you can be a gay newlywed doesn’t necessarily mean you can be a gay divorcee.) So what’s the secret to gay happiness? Most likely not ”the most satisfying orgasm you can get ... pure sexuality ... almost like pure heroin,” although that’s a heck of an endorsement from a “researcher” who claims to be against it.
posted by kyrademon at 4:24 AM PST - 35 comments

HorribleEconomicNewsFilter: Rogue trader costs his bank 7 billion dollar. Take that, Nick Leeson!
posted by Skeptic at 2:57 AM PST - 55 comments

For the past 50 years, The British have made some of the funniest Comedy TV Shows. Come inside for A Video Chronology of The History of British TV Comedy. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:38 AM PST - 96 comments

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi.... Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities.... His code is not his own; it is that of his class–no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value–success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.... Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy.... Mr. G will never be a Nazi,... [h]e will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along.

"Who goes Nazi?" via sott.net, with added context. [more inside]
posted by orthogonality at 12:43 AM PST - 76 comments

Design Police : Bring bad design to justice
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:25 AM PST - 44 comments

Use your library. Make more GIF files. Trust the process. Make art - it's good for your heart. from advice to sink in slowly.
posted by divabat at 12:03 AM PST - 8 comments

20th Century Avant-Garde is a great resource guide to experimental art from 1900 onwards. Special sections for dada, the situationists and fluxus. You can also browse by categories such as artists, film and video art, movements in art, publishers and many more. If you're interested in experimental art of the 20th Century you can get lost in this site for hours.
posted by Kattullus at 11:13 PM PST - 8 comments

"February is more than a diminutive month of love... It is a month of hair." Your mission should you choose to accept it, is to grow your beard throughout February, then shave back to a glorious mustache for a gala beer party at the end of the month. The rules are very, very serious. Apparently the reverse goes for the ladies i.e. shave everything from eyebrows to hair. [more inside]
posted by chime at 10:20 PM PST - 20 comments

"Fish Heads" (Lumania, 1980). Produced and Directed by Bill Paxton. Starring Bill Paxton, Barry Hansen; with Billy Mumy and Robert Haimer as Art Barnes and Artie Barnes. The song on which the film was based, by Barnes & Barnes, turns thirty years old this year, and has been retooled for the internet age by Haimer. Haimer and Mumy have also collaborated on some new material. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 9:54 PM PST - 39 comments

Stanislav Szukalski was born in Warta, Poland on December 13, 1893. When he was only six years old, a teacher sent him to the headmaster's office for whittling a pencil. The headmaster examined the pencil more closely and discovered that young Stanislav had carved a tiny, near-perfect figure. [more inside]
posted by louche mustachio at 9:18 PM PST - 8 comments

Cornell University and the University of Michigan collaboratively present two sites on the "Making of America" (Cornell Site; Michigan Site), together including over one million pages of 19th Century American books and periodicals online. At this Cornell page you can browse or search some well-known, full-text periodicals including: The Atlantic Monthly 1857-1901; Harper's 1850-1899; Scientific American 1846-1869; Putnam's 1853-1870; and The Manufacturer and Builder 1869-1894. From Michigan, you can browse less well-known journals, including American Jewess 1895-1899; Ladies Repository 1846-1871; and the Journal of the United States Association of Charcoal Iron Workers 1880-1891. warning: frames abound [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 9:08 PM PST - 8 comments

Paul the Wine Guy explains art, for geeks.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 8:41 PM PST - 10 comments

'Race' graphically illustrated - "most Europeans" vs. Ashkenazim (previously; see also IQ & Gladwell, viz. ;) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:40 PM PST - 100 comments

Since its inception in 1961, over 190,000 volunteers have served overseas with the US Peace Corps. In 2007, the Peace Corps had over 8,000 volunteers serving in 74 countries (2007 annual report (PDF)). Some volunteers have taken to blogging their activities and experiences. Peace Corps Journals maintains a directory of most of them, organized by region and nation. Every nation's page has Wikipedia, CIA Factbook, PC proper, PC staff listings and PC Wiki links; link(s) to site(s) pertaining to RPCVs that served in that nation (if any); and some even link to the nation's informative Peace Corps-published Welcome Book (PDF). Below those elements are the links to the various blogs. While you're perusing the journals, also check out flickr's Peace Corps photo pool
posted by cog_nate at 6:22 PM PST - 18 comments

Japanese places and people photographed by Felice Beato, a pioneer 19th century photographer who documented the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and the Anglo-French military intervention in China before opening a studio in Yokohama in 1863. He also seems to have been the first photographer in Korea.Wikipedia NYPL archive First two links are units in MIT's Visualizing Cultures project.
posted by Abiezer at 4:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Sex, drugs and sleaze! Were the bad old days really the good old days? Native New Yorkers who remember the City in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, speak up! Was the Big Apple better off then or now?
posted by nangsta at 4:25 PM PST - 64 comments

This is definitely not a good time to be in the bond insurance business. With large-scale insurers Ambac and MBIA -- and with smaller players faring no better -- one could well think that in the end the lending crisis has brought to light considerable flaws at the very basis of the American -- and indeed global -- financial sector. (all links above except the first lead to 6-month stock charts) [more inside]
posted by clevershark at 4:17 PM PST - 19 comments

The Ugliest Yacht in the World? "Frankly, Sigma is a bit scary. With its razor-sharp hull and Northrup Grumman aesthetics, Sigma looks more like a cruiser for Darth Vader’s navy." Contenders include Asean Lady, "an office tower plunked down on an outrigger canoe", and Wallypower 118, "with all the elegance and charm of a WWII torpedo".
posted by stbalbach at 3:52 PM PST - 62 comments

Words Without Pictures. A web site about photography.
posted by chunking express at 2:27 PM PST - 4 comments

Everyblock has launched. It's local news culled from (any and all available) services, including photos, news, restaurant inspections, classified ads, and civic announcements. Sounds pretty dry, but looking at my old neighborhood in San Francisco, there's a wealth of hyperlocal information that you can't get in one place. They're currently in three major metro areas of the US with many more to come -- their launch announcement has more. This site was spearheaded by Adrian Holovaty, a pioneer of the intersection between journalism and computer science, and winner of a $1million grant last year to build such sites.
posted by mathowie at 2:07 PM PST - 32 comments

Turning a chapel into an apartment. The Dutch architectural firm ZECC has made a beautiful, modern apartment out of an abandoned chapel. There are more stunning photos and cross-sections in this PDF, though the text is in Dutch. Other stunning church renovations.
posted by desjardins at 2:02 PM PST - 25 comments

How to catch a bus.
And the paper in question. (PDF)
posted by johnny novak at 12:48 PM PST - 44 comments

The HF Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) (a Google Video) radio signals are clearly heard in the 40 meter band, echoing off the Moon. This video shows S-meter readings as seen on a Yaesu FT-1000MP amateur radio (ham radio) transceiver located in San Jose, California. And of course a thorough explanation of what you are watching/hearing can be found on About the HAARP - LWA Moon Bounce Experiment.
posted by jackspace at 12:47 PM PST - 7 comments

Dogcaught, a group blog about trains and the train experience. Some of the pictures are nice enough that they almost look tiltshifted. Others are beautiful and alluring. Hang around long enough and you might turn into a foamer. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 12:27 PM PST - 14 comments

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is often misunderstood (and is different from Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.) From wikipedia: "OCD sufferers are aware that such thoughts and behavior are not rational, but feel bound to comply with them to fend off feelings of panic or dread. Because sufferers are consciously aware of this irrationality but feel helpless to push it away, untreated OCD is often regarded as one of the most vexing and frustrating of the major anxiety disorders." [more inside]
posted by agregoli at 12:19 PM PST - 64 comments

"'If Ranger Craig leads me to a freshly-dug open grave, I'm going to be very miffed,' I thought." Andy Ihnatko goes on a behind-the-scenes tour of Alcatraz. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 12:12 PM PST - 11 comments

SpaceShipTwo (SS2) [the suborbital craft] and WhiteKnightTwo [its launch system], created by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, have been revealed. More images. Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn says the WhiteKnightTwo will have an "open architecture like Linux to allow other people to develop new vehicles and revolutionize new industrial uses of space". He continues that, if people come to Virgin with plans geared towards the use of WhiteKnightTwo, they will work with them.
posted by blatant gizmo at 11:41 AM PST - 21 comments

The product of an entire semester's work: one single type block. An essay on letterpress printing with wood. [via]
posted by Armitage Shanks at 11:28 AM PST - 16 comments

Irritated and indifferent -- consumers in the Expectation Economy. [more inside]
posted by tkolar at 11:27 AM PST - 20 comments

Rick Majerus has always been a bit controversial, but this has been a bad month. [more inside]
posted by ozomatli at 10:57 AM PST - 19 comments

Finally, one central point of aggregation for the complaints of white people. So this solves that problem -- now, who's going to make a mayonnaise jar with a mouth wide enough to make it easy to scrape out the last bits? GOSH!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 10:12 AM PST - 67 comments

last.fm has gotten a major upgrade. Full tracks stream on-demand without login. Easily get a peek into genre favorites. [more inside]
posted by cowbellemoo at 8:51 AM PST - 64 comments

This epic battle scene from Zulu was great cinema, but wasn't quite accurate historically. [more inside]
posted by RussHy at 7:57 AM PST - 38 comments

How to win at the internet: Horse mask? Check. Wild mushrooms? Check. Improbable thongs and partial nudity? Check. Dancing? Check. Craziest goddamn thing I've ever seen on the internet? Absolutely. As if I even need to say it, this isn't safe for work, for human consumption, or retaining what few shreds of sanity you believe that you may still cling to.
posted by loquacious at 7:33 AM PST - 53 comments

All the recent Tom Cruise or LOLXTIANS posts made you feel picked on? Get your game on playing Faith Fighter and have the final say! Pick your deity, you're matched with an opposing deity and the fight is on to the death, or whatever recursive afterlife an immortal would experience. (via) [more inside]
posted by uaudio at 7:29 AM PST - 24 comments

Wang Chung. Pokemon. And now, Cloverfield.
posted by jbickers at 7:22 AM PST - 32 comments

While fellow mid-nineties stargirl Lisa Loeb is off becoming the next Jewish Dear Abby at the Daily Forward's storied Bintel Brief, Jill Sobule is hosting an online "telethon" to raise the money to record her next album. $100 (copper level) gets you a junior executive producer credit, while for $10,000 (weapons-grade plutonium level) you can actually sing on her CD (or at least play cowbell).
posted by ericbop at 7:09 AM PST - 35 comments

When a coyote or fox or pet dog tugs at the device, it unleashes a lethal dose of poison into their mouths, which mixes with saliva to form a gas that causes convulsions, then paralysis, and finally death.....And it's only a matter of time until M-44s claim their first human victim. Dennis Slaugh of Vernal, Utah nearly earned that distinction
posted by james_cpi at 6:53 AM PST - 36 comments

Best Cities to have a Baby Portland Oregon tops the list. Not surprisingly Detroit didn't fair so well
posted by Tablecrumbs at 6:36 AM PST - 47 comments

While it may be old news the US was drawn into the Iraq War under false pretenses, a new report by the Center for Public Integrity documents 935 specific falsehoods in public statements by eight white house officials: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz, Fleischer and McClellan. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:32 AM PST - 68 comments

Tired of video sites that are 99% cats running into walls? Check out Big Think ("YouTube for Smarty Pants") and FORA.tv ("A hipper, Web-based version of C-SPAN"). Give your brain a workout! (Via, and earlier)
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:01 AM PST - 27 comments

Chief Marie Smith Jones, 1919-2008. "Eyak language dies with its last speaker." Or download the story directly as an .mp3 from Alaska Public Radio Network . [more inside]
posted by fourcheesemac at 9:16 PM PST - 49 comments

"This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste...All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential." (Via Making Light.)
posted by ottereroticist at 8:54 PM PST - 57 comments

The Top 5 Game-Inspired Music Videos (via, with one more) [more inside]
posted by flatluigi at 7:41 PM PST - 30 comments

People Are Curious. A 3-foot-1-inch tall man with no legs propelling himself along by his hands on a skateboard tends to warrant a fair share of attention. Kevin Michael Connolly, who was born with no legs, used his X Games winnings (he won the 2007 Silver Medal in Skiing) to travel the world and photograph people's reactions to him.
posted by amyms at 7:30 PM PST - 19 comments

Joel Johnson of Boing Boing shows up to The Hugh Thompson Show to discuss gadgets but chooses a different topic

Yesterday, I was invited to talk about gadgets onThe Hugh Thompson Show, a television-style talk show sponsored exclusively by AT&T for distribution on the online AT&T Tech Channel. I eventually did talk about gadgets, but in light of AT&T's shocking and baffling announcement of their plans to filter the internet, I thought that a much more interesting and important topic.

posted by device55 at 6:38 PM PST - 31 comments

Michael Lewis gets a vasectomy.
posted by jonson at 3:46 PM PST - 119 comments

Vietnamese maid finds Taiwanese employer is her long-lost dad
posted by Artw at 3:45 PM PST - 23 comments

The best/worst in Lithuanian music: the catchy Otter in Love, DJ Dago's rave music, Suopis ir Rambynas' folk music and Mr Valdas Karklelis and his creepy and [NSFW] pervy writhing . [more inside]
posted by meech at 3:41 PM PST - 11 comments

Heath Ledger found dead in Manhattan apartment.
posted by waraw at 1:57 PM PST - 461 comments

Got an embarrassing love letter or humiliating photo from your angsty teenage years you’d like plastered all over the web, perhaps recited aloud and featured in live performances? Thought so
posted by Smedleyman at 1:49 PM PST - 17 comments

Atlantic Magazine opens its archives. Atlantic Magazine announced today that they will drop subscriber-only access to the site, giving full access to every issue of the last 12 years. Where to start? Well, I particularly recommend David Foster Wallace's fascinating examination of right-wing talk radio (DFW trademark footnotes intact), Hitler's Forgotten Library, and Eric Schlosser's The Prison-Industrial Complex. (via)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:36 PM PST - 51 comments

Can't afford to get to Disney this year? Worry not: ride the rides on YouTube. There's The Haunted Mansion, The Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, The Tower of Terror, Peter Pan and plenty more. The best, though, are the ride-throughs for rides that are no longer there: EPCOT's Horizons, World of Motion and original Imagination are ones I remember vividly from my childhood. Maybe you will too.
posted by adrober at 12:21 PM PST - 16 comments

I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! In light of this morning's Oscar noms, here's a site where there will be discussion about There Will Be Blood. Via Projects.
posted by hermitosis at 11:31 AM PST - 52 comments

Wharram Percy [1996 vintage Web] was a Yorkshire Wolds village that survived for more than a millennium before being suddenly depopulated. Was it plague, Viking raids or William the Conqueror's Harrying of the North that drove the people from the land? No, it seems it was the sheep. The main link provides an overview of some of the findings about the village and medieval English peasant life [BBC radio programme] emerging from the decades of archaeological research into Wharram Percy.
posted by Abiezer at 11:15 AM PST - 16 comments

The Origin of Emotions by Mark Devon “I began thinking about emotions while studying evolutionary theory at Harvard University. Learning that adaptations do not evolve unless they help survival, I reasoned that each emotion must have a purpose that helped survival. If I could identify an emotion’s trigger, I could also identify its purpose." [more inside]
posted by dontoine at 10:32 AM PST - 38 comments

Odyssey of State Capitols and State Suspicion. "The story behind an exhibition: postcards, designs, photography, travels, history, stamps and law enforcement." [Via BB.]
posted by homunculus at 10:25 AM PST - 10 comments

Bulgarian chess grandmaster Ivan Cheparinov twice refuses to shake hands with English grandmaster Nigel Short before a match. This is forbidden under tournament rules, so Short protests, and here's how it plays out.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:11 AM PST - 88 comments

Six new cities are planed in The Construction Site Called Saudi Arabia. "The vision is to turn the kingdom into a major industrial power by 2020. Drawings of these new towns depict a cross of the futuristic “Blade Runner” and traditional Arabic design." The cities will focus on petrochemicals, aluminum, steel and fertilizers, and will together have four times the geographical area of Hong Kong, three times the population of Dubai, and an economic output equal to Singapore’s. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 7:47 AM PST - 53 comments

Harpooned: Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator [more inside]
posted by nthdegx at 4:46 AM PST - 31 comments

While the US equities markets were closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day, stock markets around the world took a nosedive, losing billions in equity; the markets in Australia, South Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Germany, France, the UK, and more countries have dropped at least 5% each (Canada only fell 4.75%), even though most of those markets had already been seriously down for several days prior. India has been hit particularly hard, at one point down a whopping 11%, tripping their markets' automatic "circuit breakers" for a mandatory time-out period, before scraping back up to close at 8% down. US futures markets are currently predicting a 650+ point drop just at the open Tuesday morning, before even a single trade goes through. [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl at 12:18 AM PST - 305 comments

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence has put up a some interesting media, including a variety of talks from the Singularity Summit 2006 and 2007, about the possibilites and progress of technological development. For an overview of the issues Ray Kurzweil talks about the ideas and promises of the singularity, while Douglas Hofstadter calls for deeper exploration of the implications and hazards of coming technology.
posted by MetaMonkey at 9:35 PM PST - 43 comments

The universal coverage debate comes down to one, simple question: why does health insurance pay for checkups when car insurance doesn't pay for oil changes? [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:46 PM PST - 119 comments

When the discussion turns to 60s-era soul divas, the name of Bettye Swann isn't likely to be first on anyone's tongue. But she was possessed of a tender, supple and seductive voice, and she deserves to be heard and reconsidered. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:42 PM PST - 12 comments

World Golf Tour in cojunction with Taylormade have released a beta version of photorealistic flash competitive golf simulator As of now, nothing but a closest to the pin challenge is available, but they promise full playable courses are coming soon. It promises to be World of Warcraft, but for chubby middle aged men, enabling play with friends in real time. Avid golfers may never be productive again. Fortune Magazine checks it out.
posted by Keith Talent at 7:54 PM PST - 12 comments

Join a community commitment to make a thing a day for the month of February. "knit cook draw paint sodier (sic) write install destroy invent document" are presented as ideas to demonstrate that anything goes. Last year's contributions are currently down, but did run the gamut of media and topics.
posted by artifarce at 7:51 PM PST - 8 comments

Hollywood Midget Movie Stars. They started as popular vaudevillians. (From a review: "The chief feature, however, was the ten scenes in which the Singer Midgets appeared. The Midget strong man, the Midget conjurer, the Midget "Cleopatra" with the winning ways--these and many more were there.") They stormed the New York stage. They were members of The Lollipop Guild (YouTube link), as well as playing other Munchkins. They were suspected of being German sympathizers. But they may be best remembered for starring in the world's first all-midget musical western. Now available for your viewing pleasure from YouTube: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:27 PM PST - 32 comments

Justice, the french electro-whatever group (read: Daft Punk)(previously discussed here) recently had their addition to the prestigious FabricLive Series rejected for not entirely clear reasons, although the relatively short length (40-something minutes) and taste (or perhaps the lack of) may have been factors. Justice, being the gentlemen they are, decided to give the mix away as a Christmas present to their friends (yes, I'm a little late on this, but not as late as you, presumably), and it is now readily available for anyone to download here. I'm only familiar with a few of the artists in the mix (Fucking Champs! Goblin!), but it's a pretty good time, and definitely a big, fat middle finger to most of the minimal techno mixes which Fabric usually releases, which is probably why they rejected it in the first place. Lots of old pop, funk and super-cheesy french music (and the FUCKING CHAMPS!), tell me what you guys think!
posted by domakesaypat at 4:12 PM PST - 51 comments

The photography of Dutch photographer Arthur Mebius includes personal and commercial work, and is often rather funny. [more inside]
posted by whir at 3:50 PM PST - 6 comments

"The Christmas card didn’t arrive this year." Ken Nelson, longtime head of country music at Capitol Records, passed away last week. In a time when studio band assembly lines were the rule, Nelson was known among artists for his hands-off approach to record production. Through his work with artists like Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, and Red Simpson, Nelson helped bring national recognition to West Coast country.
posted by roll truck roll at 2:19 PM PST - 12 comments

"From somewhere around 110,000 trillion trillion years ago" Scientology, a very litigious and secretive group had their website hacked recently and some documents have made it on to the web. The /i/nsurgency haxorz (a splinter group of the famous Anon folks) are claiming responsibility. This is part of an ongoing war of sorts. Also, a helpful Scientology acronym guide of sorts. [more inside]
posted by lattiboy at 1:50 PM PST - 121 comments

General Butt Naked is now a preacher of some kind of Christianity. But in his adolescence he ran a gang of soldiers in the Liberian civil war which killed, he thinks, about 20,000 civilians. They fought naked except for their army boots, crazed on drink and ganga. Before the fight they would kill children and eat their hearts. Now he claims that it was all down to evil spirits and wants forgiveness.
posted by alloneword at 1:27 PM PST - 57 comments

There's the white squirrels of Exeter, and the black squirrels of London. Apparently they're both awesome if you like squirrels, or craft songs about them.
posted by joelf at 1:22 PM PST - 27 comments

Technology of Cooperation (.gif map), from Howard Rheingold's Cooperation Commons project. Rheingold on Amish technology practices. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 1:19 PM PST - 6 comments

Before there was MTV, before mp3s or YouTube, there was ASCII ROCK!
posted by Anything at 12:37 PM PST - 14 comments

'Daydream Believer' writer Stewart, who came to prominence in the 1960s as a member of folk music's Kingston Trio, died Saturday at a San Diego hospital after suffering a brain aneurism. He was 68. The Monkees version of his biggest hit. But Stewart, one of our greatest singer/songwriters never achieved the level of fame many of us felt he deserved. No matter, he seemed to prefer the intimacy of small clubs and released dozens of albums, like the timelessCalifornia Bloodlines and scores of other beautiful songs, such as July, You Are A Woman, Walk On the Moon and his own aged like a fine bourbon rendition of Daydream Believer.
posted by dawson at 12:05 PM PST - 23 comments

Comprehensive profile, in the NY Times magazine, of the new crop of talented Romanian filmmakers. Be sure to check out the interactive component of the story, with clips and commentary on several recent films.
posted by lovejones at 11:16 AM PST - 7 comments

"I have a dream..." Take 17 minutes out of your day and remember. And then maybe take a look at this NY Times slide show of murals depicting Dr. King. Feel free, in fact please do, add appropriate links and suggestions in the comments section.
posted by brookeb at 11:12 AM PST - 40 comments

"I believe with every fibre of my being that every human being has the right to live without the pain of the past". An amazing collection of personal stories, reflecting diverse attitudes to forgiveness and reconciliation, hosted by The Forgiveness Project.
posted by teleskiving at 10:06 AM PST - 12 comments

Ubuntu has quickly become the number one Linux distro for the desktop. Not only is it free, but it has also made Linux easier to use than ever. Now, Wubi enables Windows users to install Ubuntu just like any other application, so you no longer have to mess around with partitions, burning CDs, etc. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:09 AM PST - 82 comments

Train tracker.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:57 AM PST - 27 comments

So we've already learned how babies are made in Germany. But we haven't seen Russia or Israel. Could be NWS if you work with people who don't know where babies come from.
posted by Lord_Pall at 7:38 AM PST - 31 comments

Mumbai CST (then and now) | Cuttack Railway Station | Howrah (1927) | Gorakhpur Railway Station (then and now) | Chennai Central Station (day) | Trivandrum Central {via} [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy at 7:37 AM PST - 10 comments

Continuing the recent theme of horrifying parasites, here's an infectious little nematode that makes its host swell up into a plump, juicy, red berry so that birds will mistakenly eat its bloated ichorous abdomen and spread the eggs. (via) [more inside]
posted by XMLicious at 6:41 AM PST - 31 comments

A year from yesterday, George W. Bush will no longer be President. So here's yet another online quiz to help you "Test your party preference". But the policy questions in contention in this quiz may seem surprising to many Americans.
posted by orthogonality at 6:36 AM PST - 73 comments

Revealing Character — In 2004 and 2005, photographer Robb Kendrick traveled through Texas to take tintypes of working cowboys and cowgirls, capturing a part of American life that evolves with the times.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:56 AM PST - 13 comments

Too much serious talk and stress? Take a break with this nice little distraction. Flight of the Hamsters. How far can you get them to go?
posted by MaryDellamorte at 1:38 AM PST - 23 comments

Kin-Dza-Dza! is a Soviet sci-fi cult classic that has managed to go largely unnoticed outside of Russia. Bizarre, funny, and at times surprisingly deep. Truly one of the unknown sci-fi greats. Part One. Part Two. [Google Video, with embedded English subtitles] [more inside]
posted by pravit at 11:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Study: Internet Not Dumbing Down Kids, Who Were Stupid Anyway. Full report! (warning: PDF) The information literacy of young people, has not improved with the widening access to technology: in fact, their apparent facility with computers disguises some worrying problems. Young people have unsophisticated mental maps of what the internet is, often failing to appreciate that it is a collection of networked resources from different providers. (Like tubes!)
posted by parmanparman at 11:28 PM PST - 43 comments

Like to faire une photo? You're not alone. The inimitable (but perhaps for not much longer) National Geographic magazine has advice for taking portraits, travel photography, landscapes, excitingly vague 'adventure' photos and even plan old digital photography. After you've created magic how about selling it or getting published? Sharing is so 2007.
posted by oxford blue at 11:09 PM PST - 13 comments

In 1968, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire -- Dot, Helen, and Betty Wiggin -- started a band, under the encouragement, support, and management of their father, Austin. Dot recalls that the girls would rise late, practice for two hours, then work on their home-schooling. Then they did their calisthenics, rigidly prescribed by their father, and rehearsed two more hours in the evenings when Austin was home. Over the next 8 years, Austin would rent out the Fremont Town Hall many Saturday nights for a dance; the sisters, known collectively as "The Shaggs," would play their music, while their mother, Annie, would collect tickets and sell sodas (with help from more of the Wiggin siblings). In 1975, Austin Wiggins died; the sisters, without their father to spur them on, laid down their instruments and got on with the rest of their lives. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 9:22 PM PST - 79 comments

City Farmer is a Vancouver-based organization that's been promoting urban agriculture since 1978. If you dig around their sprawling website, you can find everything from this feel-good news story, to a series of links leading to a nice deep free book. Alternatively, their new blog has cool pictures.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 9:21 PM PST - 4 comments

Amazing Birth (NSFW). One link youtube post, requires login for age verification, but it's worth it.
posted by alms at 8:50 PM PST - 136 comments

"It's like having a gun held on you with the hammer back and not knowing when the man's gonna pull the trigger," is the dramatic introduction to Appalachian Voices' coverage on mountaintop removal. The on-line journal is an environmental advocate for the Appalachian mountains, covering topics from air pollution to forest restoration, but also subjects like box turtles, coyotes, poison ivy and timber thieves. They also have a blog.
posted by Atreides at 8:17 PM PST - 8 comments

In more or less chonological appearance, here are examples of one of our very own still extant national musical treasures:
Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Talking Merchant Marine
Ramblin' Jack Elliott - San Francisco Bay Blues
Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Salt Pork West Virginia
And here, from SXSW 2006, is Ramblin' Jack Elliott & Billy Bragg - The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd
Also from SXSW 2006, Jack Elliott & Marty Stuart - Engine 143
From last year, here is Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Old Shep
and Ramblin' Jack Elliott - South Coast
And from last week's Bill Graham's Birthday Bash, here is
Phil Lesh, Jackie Greene & Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Friend of The Devil [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 7:37 PM PST - 8 comments

Before he went to prison for dogfighting, Michael Vick trained his pit bulls at a 4,600-sq-ft house on 15 acres in Surry, Virginia. Earlier this year, local tax rolls valued the property at $747,000, but Vick hurriedly sold the house to real estate developer Ray Todd on the cheap, to aid his mounting financial troubles. Todd had hoped to resell the house for $1M at a December auction, and dozens of rubberneckers toured the property -- to gawk at the syringes left on the ground, the twenty kennels "like prison cells", and the outbuildings where the dogs were fought. Naturally, no one was buying. Still, Todd wants to recoup his investment, so he’s turning to a conventional sale this month… and failing that, is considering building (unbelievably) a bed-and-breakfast where pets are welcome. Enter The Vick House project: a Dallas charity called Jalie’s Butterflies is hoping to raise enough money online to buy the house and convert it to a non-profit animal shelter, under guidance of the SPCA. [more inside]
posted by pineapple at 7:30 PM PST - 27 comments

I remember her smoky-voiced laugh best. I can't believe I'm the first person to post about Suzanne Pleshette's untimely death. I came to MetaFilter after not having visited in many months to post a respectful '.' and there wasn't a link up yet. So I'm starting one.* As much as I loved her in Newhart, I remember her most from her appearances on talk shows, mostly her flirting with Johnny Carson. I was a little surprised when I read that she'd married Tom Poston, who also passed away recently. He seemed kinda square on The Newhart Show, and she seemed so hip. Apparently I confused their TV personae with their real ones. [more inside]
posted by jenii at 5:00 PM PST - 64 comments

Doc Watson: his warm and unprepossessing voice and rolling guitar stylings (both flatpicking and fingerpicking) are treasures of American music. The following video clips will be a treat for any Watson fan, but especially for guitar players: they feature closeup shots of Doc's left hand fretwork as well as insets of his right hand picking. So, without further ado: Deep River Blues, Blue Railroad Train, Black Mountain Rag and Bluebell. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:10 PM PST - 21 comments

Polar bear babies make adorable video subjects.
posted by jonson at 3:56 PM PST - 38 comments

New England's Lost Ski Areas. The Northeast used to be littered with mom-and-pop-size ski areas, many of which have been consolidated into huge resorts, while others fell to development or just passed out of existence. This site serves as a repository for information, images, and reminiscinces. Links to other region's lost ski area sites, too. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 3:47 PM PST - 26 comments

The Shaved Bumblebee. His is the little story of the bumblebee Bernard who wanted to impress his friends with an experiment. It was one of these boring days and they were as usual looking for some nonsense to get involved in and succeeded in switching on an electric shaver. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:28 PM PST - 24 comments

Dolphins create rings of air bubbles! [more inside]
posted by proj08 at 12:37 PM PST - 47 comments

18 stunning bridges from around the world. (via Mira y Calla) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 9:55 AM PST - 94 comments

Book Scavenging. Hundreds of homeless people eke out a living scavenging books from dumpsters and sidewalk trash in Manhattan. Sidewalk is a book about the subculture of sidewalk book scavengers and vendors.
posted by stbalbach at 9:11 AM PST - 52 comments

The Red Bull Music Academy is the best in music, past & present, from around the world, under one roof, getting down just for the funk of it. It is an event that travels the world, a yearly celebration of all the journeys and breakthroughs, all the dreams and intricacies that go into the music we love.
Here on the 'tubes the RBMA mainly consists of lectures, interactive features, and documentaries. [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 3:24 AM PST - 21 comments

It seems that everyone wants to post their toplists for free game recommendations at the moment. First up is Gnomes' Lair with 100 excellent free games in bloom. Can't forget 1up with 101 Free Games 2008. And last but still well worth checking out is Indiegames' (formerly Indygamer) Best Freeware Arcade Games 2007 and Best Freeware Adventure Games 2007. If that isn't enough for you, also worth taking a gander at is Javet's Freeware Game of the Day thread on Tigsource.
posted by pancreas at 1:42 AM PST - 19 comments

The Strange Lives of Polar Dinosaurs: How did they endure months of perpetual cold and dark? See also Taking A Dinosaur's Temperature: Polar species heat up one of paleontology's great debates. And Bones To Pick: Paleontologist William Hammer hunts dinosaur fossils in the Antarctic. From Smithsonian Magazine.
posted by amyms at 12:56 AM PST - 22 comments

All About Halifax. A short video from Canadian sketch comedy group Picnicface. See also: Beard No Beard, Panda PSA, Mother's Day, I'm Your Brother. Some violence, NSFW language.
posted by russilwvong at 10:29 PM PST - 17 comments

The Algorithm: Idiom of Modern Science - an allegory told with iPods as Universal Machines.
posted by loquacious at 9:19 PM PST - 42 comments

El Paso. The lovely ballad of love and murder on the Mexican border won the very first Grammy for Country & Western for Marty Robbins in 1960. But for some it will never feel complete without Steve Martin's video, in which he recreates the lyrics with some non-union actors. [more inside]
posted by Bookhouse at 9:12 PM PST - 28 comments

A new medical bill payment reporting system called MedFICO is said to be going live this summer. This system is being developed by the health care industry in an effort to judge a patient's ability to pay. Healthcare Analytics, a healthcare actuarial company, is developing the score in conjunction with Tenet Healthcare, credit scoring company Fair Issac, and venture capitalists. [more inside]
posted by uaudio at 8:50 PM PST - 55 comments

Canon in D: Korean Breakdance stylee! No apne balian styles here yo.
posted by parmanparman at 8:14 PM PST - 24 comments

Superuse: Reusing can be beautiful, unusual, functional, and even illustrative of our culture of excess. (all links lead to the same site).
posted by artifarce at 7:47 PM PST - 10 comments

...Japanese hip hop has become a significant national, cultural, and business genre since the late twentieth century, and this phenomenon has been applied and has succeeded by using almost the same ideology that was historically used by other Japanese industries like automobile manufacturing. The pioneers in the Japanese hip hop industry like Buddha Brand learned their skills in the U.S. and have successfully been influencing the contemporary Japanese music scene. As a result, the imported hip hop has become a ''Japanized'' products. Many hip hop industries in Japan have modified the American hip hop into Japanese ways, and their businesses, like the hip hop dance schools, have succeeded.

The Japanese Hip Hop Movement: Its Cultural and Economic Impact [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 7:14 PM PST - 39 comments

A Visual Dictionary of Famous Plane Curves is an outstanding resource for curves found in nature, man-made objects, and mathematics. Other websites that list exotically named curves also animate how they are created. One of the most unusually named curves, the “Witch of Agnesi”, has an unusual etymology. A number of these curves will be familiar to anyone who has used a Spirograph. Previously.
posted by Tube at 5:58 PM PST - 13 comments

Housing, preserving, and providing access to these small-scale, homemade rags that document some corner of [often do-it-yourself and punk rock] culture, zine archives can be found via independently operated centers in Georgia (physical library in construction), New Orleans (myspace link, www address out-of-commission), Florida, Minneapolis, Denver, Cambridge, Olympia, Chicago, Seattle and... [more inside]
posted by ethel at 3:07 PM PST - 21 comments

The coldest game in football won't be at Lambeau Field (also known as the frozen tundra and the home of the Lambeau leap) tomorrow. It was 13° below zero in 1967 when the Green Bay Packers played the Dallas Cowboys. They called it the Ice Bowl and it had a dramatic finish. [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 2:31 PM PST - 49 comments

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes.
posted by telstar at 2:12 PM PST - 64 comments

Marta Costello makes a big deal out of explaining why she didn't make a big deal... [more inside]
posted by ZachsMind at 1:29 PM PST - 25 comments

Somehow, despite a varied career spanning several decades, including recurring roles on All in the Family and The Phil Silvers Show, we always knew that it would mention Sam the Butcher in the headline of his obituary.
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:13 AM PST - 26 comments

Julian Voss-Andreae is a German-born sculptor based in Portland, Oregon. [more inside]
posted by prostyle at 9:01 AM PST - 10 comments

What’s Behind Those Offers to Raise Credit Scores - You've all heard the ads, here's how those companies try to raise your credit scores. The credit industry hates it, because it works, at least for now.
posted by Argyle at 9:01 AM PST - 47 comments

Ustad Srinivas plays some mean electric mandolin, y'all. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:18 AM PST - 28 comments

So apparently it's not the lack of oxygen which causes cells to die. Rather, getting oxygen back, which triggers the same cell death mechanism that guards against cancer, causes cell death.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:42 AM PST - 48 comments

With the success of American Gladiators and no writers in sight, tv networks are reaching into the past for ideas. You knew it would happen sooner or later. Yep... they're digging deep: Circus of the Stars is coming back. Could Battle of the Network Stars be far behind? [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster at 12:44 AM PST - 60 comments

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He plays the banjo, but he isn't just some hick. He enjoys Chicks, jamming with friends, wide open spaces and fights.
posted by stavrogin at 11:03 PM PST - 72 comments

Lost cosmonauts is a site detailing the radio site at Torre Bert, set up by Italian amateurs in 1959 to monitor the beginnings of the space race. The Torre Bert station was regarded as a legitimate tracking station, however they then released recordings of dying cosmonauts which were quickly denounced as exaggerations, or outright conspiracy. In 1991 Pravda admitted that Gagarin was not the first cosmonaut . [more inside]
posted by scodger at 10:17 PM PST - 40 comments

Collecting Vintage Typewriter Ribbon Tins. (From Uppercase). Lots more on the internets
posted by growabrain at 8:57 PM PST - 11 comments

On November 14, 1940, German bombers flew through the skies for nine hours above Coventry, England in a raid that Winston Churchill probably didn't know about but if he did, did nothing to prepare for. The bombers dropped thousands of pounds of explosives and incendiaries that resulted in hundreds of deaths and huge destruction. Coventry, perhaps best known before the war for naked horseback riding and the manufacture of pretty-but-malfunction-prone automobiles, was also home to a grand cathedral, St. Michael's Church, one of the greatest cathedrals in England. The cathedral was nearly destroyed; the fire left behind little but debris and the still-standing outer walls and spire. [more inside]
posted by Shotgun Shakespeare at 8:56 PM PST - 28 comments

The Tokyopia Wedding Game A work of love for friends executed in late 2006, via "Greggman"'s generally excellent blog. [more inside]
posted by panamax at 8:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Michel Gondry Curates YouTube from Sundance; Pussy On The Mat : Ornette Coleman and Mark Kostabi: anxiety attack: Devendra Banhart - A Ribbon: Max Roach at his best: MIT sketching: game Over
posted by post punk at 5:45 PM PST - 12 comments

Reviving an ancient practice, churches are exposing sinners and shunning those who won't repent. Unfortunately, some of the worshipers are expelled not because of willful or unrepentant sins, but for criticizing the pastor on matters of church polity. "A lot of times, flocks aren't willing to submit or be obedient to God. If somebody is not willing to be helped, they forfeit their membership."
posted by mrducts at 5:19 PM PST - 128 comments

The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World. In order to get this out of my head, I must share it with you.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 5:08 PM PST - 125 comments

MATSYS Based on the idea that architecture can be understood as a material body with its own intrinsic and extrinsic forces relating to form, growth, and behavior, the studio investigates methodologies of performative integration through geometric and material differentiation.

B_Complex, N_Table, Endless Ocean, Endless Sky (more), P_Wall. more.
posted by klangklangston at 4:47 PM PST - 6 comments

Axis of Agriculture: Tagging Terrorist Chickens If you worry about al-Qaeda infiltrating the Amish farming community or the organic food movement, you can finally relax.
posted by Freen at 4:34 PM PST - 13 comments

Larry Schwarm is best known for his photographs of prairie fires and landscapes in the Flint Hills of Kansas. On May 5, 2007, he visited his hometown of Greensburg, Kansas to take photos of what was left after an F-5 tornado leveled the town the day before. [more inside]
posted by sleepy pete at 4:05 PM PST - 12 comments

Now, this is my kind of trebuchet! (via)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:59 PM PST - 26 comments

WTF, LA hospitals? "Gabino Olvera, 42, sued the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center for negligence and elder abuse after it discharged him in February 2007, took him across town in a van and left him in a soiled hospital gown without a wheelchair in the heart of the city's homeless area."
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:58 PM PST - 89 comments

Bionic contact lens invented. That is all. [more inside]
posted by caution live frogs at 2:31 PM PST - 44 comments

Decoder Ring Theatre! Follow the pulpy audiodrama adventures of Black Jack Justice (& girl detective Trixie Dixon) and Canadian superhero The Red Panda with his trusty sidekick The Flying Squirrel. [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 2:12 PM PST - 7 comments

The G1000 Fucking Fucker. There is nothing like the G-1000. Not even vaguely. It is arcane and radical. It is 100% vacuum tubes, from input to output. It contains 100% new-old-stock (NOS) tubes. Types never seen in guitar amps. Artwork on the amp's front panel by Dave Lovelace, of "Retarded Animal Babies" infamy. Check out the hi-res picture for all the explicit functional details. [NSFW] I'm guessing it has a pretty good dirty channel. [more inside]
posted by psmealey at 1:50 PM PST - 50 comments

Retrospectacle on the Plague. Shelley Batts is a neuroscience PhD candidate who writes the great blog Retrospectacle [Prev]. She's recently posted a series on the bubonic plague: It's real and perceived causes (1 2), the bizarre medical garb doctors used, and modern cases of Yersinia pestis* infection in the U.S. and the world.
posted by McLir at 1:46 PM PST - 15 comments

Comics writer Warren Ellis invited indie comics creators to introduce their work (warning: image intensive page) in his new forum, Whitechapel. With posts from 100+ writers/artists creating everything from free webcomics to traditional books, it's a great source for new reading material.
posted by nerdcore at 1:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Line Golfer = Line Rider + mini-golf. A great idea that just needs some super amazing artists to build some awesome levels.
posted by lubujackson at 12:56 PM PST - 10 comments

Periodic Table of Printmaking : AzureGrackle started a project with 96 printmakers to create an artistic representation of the periodic table of the elements.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 11:54 AM PST - 10 comments

In the 1980s, some artists successfully managed the transition from punk rock to rap. Others, not so much.
posted by Afroblanco at 11:20 AM PST - 43 comments

"Jennifer Musa, who has died aged 90, was an Irishwoman of modest stock who took over from her husband as head of a tribe in the remote borderlands of Baluchistan; unveiled and uncompromising, she dedicated her life to the conservative Muslim tribesmen among whom she lived for 60 years until her death." 1992 New York Times interview. 1995 interview with The Independent. 2006 interview. Another 2006 interview.
posted by Kattullus at 11:20 AM PST - 14 comments

Chicago Center for Literature and Photography has some excellent book and film reviews, written by author and artist Jason Pettus. He mostly reviews contemporary fiction but has a few classics like The House of the Seven Gables, which is part of a two-year project to read 100 "classics" to see if they are really classic or not.
posted by stbalbach at 11:06 AM PST - 15 comments

Hip-hop artist Sean Paul suspected to cause grand mal seizures in woman. Stacey Gayle, a 25-year old epileptic, had grand mal seizures nearly every time she heard Paul's hit "Temperature." She listened to the song on her iPod in front of doctors. Soon after, she suffered three seizures. [more inside]
posted by uaudio at 8:53 AM PST - 84 comments

After 60 years of separation due to her family being marked as an enemy of the people, and sent off to internal exile a couple who spent only three days together after their marriage have reunited, in an amazing stroke of luck. [more inside]
posted by korej at 7:51 AM PST - 39 comments

It could have been the greatest disaster in US history. On January 18, 1978, 30 years ago today, the 1400 ton 2 1/2 acre roof of the Hartford Civic Center, covered by a blanket of snow and ice, suddenly and completely collapsed, damaging almost all of the seats underneath. Just four hours earlier there was a basketball game packed with 5000 fans. Had it collapsed then, many, if not most, of the fans and players could have died. [more inside]
posted by eye of newt at 7:43 AM PST - 37 comments

Having trouble letting go? The Museum of Broken Relationships can help!
posted by misha at 7:37 AM PST - 4 comments

Stickk.com allows people to undertake commitment bonds: promises that they will do something (lose weight, quit smoking, etc.) or else forfeit a pre-determined amount of money to a charity. Either the honor system or a referee can be used to decide if the goal is met. The idea is related to Nobel prize-winner Thomas Schelling's concept of strategic precommitment. More here, here, and here.
posted by shivohum at 7:05 AM PST - 17 comments

Bobby Fischer, former World Champion chess player, dead at 64.
posted by JaredSeth at 4:05 AM PST - 134 comments

Did Vladimir Putin really turn around Russia's economy? Washington Post's Fred Hyatt attempts to refute the conventional wisdom that Putin was responsible for Russia's turnaround from the economic instability of the "disastrous" 90s by offering a thorough counter argument to prove that Putin's effect on the economy was just the reverse. [more inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 2:34 AM PST - 26 comments

Sacred Destinations. Nearly every culture in human history has sought to encounter and honor the divine, the mysterious, the supernatural or the extraordinary in some way. This most often occurs at sacred sites - special places where the physical world seems to meet the spiritual world. From ancient wonders, to Greek temples, to Biblical sites, and everything in between, the website has a vast collection of photo galleries and maps. The website's founder also maintains a travel blog and posts recent pictures on Flickr. [more inside]
posted by amyms at 11:45 PM PST - 5 comments

"Here is your chance to weigh in on one of the most troubling dilemmas in contemporary literary culture." "It's the question of whether the last unpublished work of Vladimir Nabokov, which is now reposing unread in a Swiss bank vault, should be destroyed—as Nabokov explicitly requested before he died." The Original of Laura was inherited by his son Dmitri Nabokov nearly 21 years ago. Now Dmitri is 73 and will soon publish the manuscript, or following his father's dying request, burn it. Which is greater, the obligation to V.N., or the obligation to art?
posted by dawson at 11:42 PM PST - 110 comments

Is it a banjo? Is it a ukulele? No, it's a banjolele! [more inside]
posted by MaryDellamorte at 9:09 PM PST - 36 comments

C'mon, you've been staring at that staring girl FPP for way too long. Let's get up and stretch. Ready? Aaaand ONE! ... aaaand TWO! ... aaannd [[POP!]] Ohmygawd are you allright? Hey... hey, what are you doing? Whoa... umm... EeeeAWW, for the love of jesus, Cut that out. I mean it. I'm going into the other room to read. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 9:07 PM PST - 23 comments

Argument to Beethoven's 5th [youtube 5:51], a brilliant sketch by 1950s funnyman Sid Caesar, shows that you don't need words to tell a story. [more inside]
posted by Zephyrial at 8:59 PM PST - 22 comments

The girl who stares (her only talent) is quickly becoming a youtube phenomenon. Participate in the demise of our culture and watch her do nothing.
posted by pwally at 8:03 PM PST - 178 comments

I come to praise Wham-O, not bury it. Despite the recent death of Wham-O cofounder Richard Knerr, coming a half-decade after the death of hos partner Arthur "Spud" Melin, let us not mourn. Instead, let us remember what Wham-O gave the world. [more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie at 6:37 PM PST - 35 comments

Selling out is becoming trendy. Last fall, Burt’s Bees was sold to Clorox. It turned out then that former owner Roxanne Quimby bought out co-founder Burt himself in 1999 and sold 80% of the company to AEA Investors in 2004; this was just the final stroke of the pen. [more inside]
posted by bassjump at 6:30 PM PST - 43 comments

The Internet Party: When the Google's parents leave town all those Web 2.0 kids go crazy. [video via]
posted by donovan at 6:17 PM PST - 47 comments

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth's second warmest year in a century (2005 being the hottest). More here. of course, others disagree.
posted by wilful at 4:33 PM PST - 38 comments

Two articles on how interaction may shape the buildings, work places and urban spaces of tomorrow: Design Week's Study takes sensory approach to improve office of the future [which mentions Duncan Wilson, who works with and blogs about this stuff]; and City of Sound's The Personal Well-Tempered Environment.
posted by nthdegx at 3:25 PM PST - 1 comment

Hey, bisexuals! Is your sweetheart terrified that you’ll have second thoughts after graduation? Are you trying to figure out how to tell your parents? Are presidential primary frontrunners lumping your orientation together with pedophilia and bestiality? Well, for the first two, at least, you can reassure them that bisexuality is not a phase ... by quoting SCIENCE! (pdf) (Side effects may include cheering at increasing cultural acceptance or eye-rolling at need to continue to demonstrate the obvious. Effects have been demonstrated in women only. Presidential primary frontrunners may be immune to science.)
posted by kyrademon at 2:59 PM PST - 180 comments

Toymakers Hasbro and Mattel claim that the popular online game Scrabulous (available on Facebook) infringes on the trademark for the board game Scrabble. They have not yet filed suit, but have asked Facebook to desist in its alleged infringement. Scrabulous is one of the top ten plug-ins on the site, developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla in Calcutta, India. "There has been speculation that the challenge to Scrabulous had been launched as Hasbro and Mattel prepare their own online version of Scrabble." Electronic Arts holds the license to the electronic rights to Scrabble. Facebook users are rallying to save the game. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 2:27 PM PST - 90 comments

fuck yeah. Canada has joined Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in adding the U.S. and Israel to their list of countries who torture. Have we learned our lesson?
posted by gman at 2:22 PM PST - 54 comments

ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat
posted by lazaruslong at 2:16 PM PST - 34 comments

What if the Devil tricked a well-meaning computer developer into making a horrendous animal racing game? (cringeworthy YouTube link) Now we know! Yes, Cougar Interactive has a product for you. Zoo Race! The biblical flood is over, and with hardly any people around, what's Noah, God, and the animals gonna do? Why, RACE of course! The game features compelling voice work, top flight graphics, and of course... animals straddling on rockets. And to top it all off, God is the announcer! It was the best 2007 had to offer, and it's still available... so, like their web site says.. Buy the FUN game that the big game companies would not ever make. (as found at Kotaku) [more inside]
posted by tittergrrl at 1:24 PM PST - 58 comments

I don't cross post from other sites (digg), unless there's a good reason. Final Salute is a good reason. Additional links/background are there, but go to the slideshow. And this photo.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 1:12 PM PST - 28 comments

How To Win A Fist Fight by Joe the Peacock (tip of the hat to CrossFitNYC)
posted by jason's_planet at 12:50 PM PST - 76 comments

"The Emptied Prairie," a National Geographic article on North Dakota's ghost towns and the decline of the Great Plains. Typically amazing National Geographic photos here. Reminds me of a similar series that ran in the New York Times several years ago, which included this fascinating article by Timothy Egan.
posted by dersins at 12:21 PM PST - 42 comments

"Geordie messiah to return - Kevin Keegan is returning to Newcastle United as manager". Thus read the official statement issued by Newcastle United heralding the improbable return of Kevin Keegan to be manager of the club, the perennial under achievers in English football. [more inside]
posted by iboxifoo at 11:51 AM PST - 30 comments

MicroHorror: Terrifying tales, related in 666 words or fewer. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 11:43 AM PST - 14 comments

Darko Maver: In 1999, An artist is killed in his prison cell in Podgorica.

Early works. Writings. Culminating exhibit. His arrest. His death. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston at 10:50 AM PST - 13 comments

By turns touching, inspiring, and hilarious, Planet Karen is the daily comic diary of Karen Ellis.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:36 AM PST - 27 comments

Jallikattu, [Stunning Photographs | Jallikattu YouTube] an Indian version of the Running of the Bulls, takes place in the State of Tamil Nadu, during the Pongal festival each year. This year, the Supreme Court directed the State Government to put a halt to the practice, in vain, and the bulls were forced to participate as usual (with 129 people being gored, and many more injured). [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy at 8:33 AM PST - 16 comments

3191 : A year of evenings spent with Stephanie and Mav who live 3191 miles apart. Previously, a Year of Mornings.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 8:13 AM PST - 4 comments

"Researchers found that failing to publish negative findings inflated the reported effectiveness of all 12 of the antidepressants studied." See also: Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature. [more inside]
posted by OmieWise at 8:12 AM PST - 137 comments

Kung fu bunny 2 - a cute clip from a 25-year old Chinese animator. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 6:24 AM PST - 11 comments

Did the Victorian police overreact in spraying capsicum spray into spectators at the Australian open tennis on Tuesday night? The officers say they were protecting themselves, it seems not all agree and legal action might ensue. Is the Australian Open (or any international sporting contest in Australia) still a family friendly environment?
posted by mattoxic at 3:54 AM PST - 44 comments

"Intended to deepen our understanding of disputes over climate change and the human contribution to it," the new 'Climate Debate Daily' is brought to you by the folks who created the well-known 'Arts and Letters Daily'. Links to everything from scientific articles through PR releases down to blog entries, are arranged on the page in 'face-off' format, with pros and cons in side-by-side columns. If you want to keep on top of the debate on climate change, it seems that you'll find no better source of information anywhere ..
posted by woodblock100 at 1:52 AM PST - 55 comments

Nitroeconomics (if you want to sound more scientific you can call it synthetic economics) is different. It is set in the virtual world of Nitropia, which doesn't exist but easily could.... We can use nitroeconomics to understand real situations in the real world, such as the subprime crisis, with a simple three-step process.... The first cool thing about Nitropia is that it has no financial system at all. Unlike other, inferior virtual economies, it does not distinguish between "money" and other virtual objects. A monetary token in Nitropia is an object like any other - a magic sword, an inflatable penis, or whatever. A player in Nitropia who has a lot of money just owns a lot of these tokens. There is no special, separate "bank balance."

A[n Austrian-school] straightforward explanation of the present financial crisis (part 1) [more inside]
posted by orthogonality at 12:30 AM PST - 28 comments

Worship the Trilobite. [Via Pharyngula.]
posted by homunculus at 11:40 PM PST - 32 comments

"The purpose of this mod is to add back into the game all the content that was originally planned by the Fallout 2 devs." Over the last 2 years an industrious chap has "gone through almost all the text files and scripts and compiled a list of what appears to have been pulled from the game," in order to restore it to it's originally intended glory and now his work is complete. Enjoy. [more inside]
posted by aldurtregi at 9:06 PM PST - 18 comments

In Praise Of Melancholy. We are eradicating a major cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are annihilating melancholia. Does an overemphasis on the pursuit of happiness cause us to miss an essential part of a full life? Via.
posted by amyms at 8:40 PM PST - 82 comments

The bastard offspring of New Age, Techno, Industrial and Acid House, trance is one of the most popular and most maligned musical genres of the 21st century. Trance can be bombastic or delicate, psychedelic or rock and roll, spacey or deep, euphoric or dark, commercial or underground, lush or funky, melodic or monotone, hard or laid back. You can try making some yourself with this toy, or go in depth with this tutorial. You can find it online, but if you want to really experience it, you need to hear it at a club.
posted by empath at 7:42 PM PST - 183 comments

In the early twentieth century, photographer Lewis Hine took now-famous photographs of American child laborers. In the nearly hundred years since Hine took those photos, surely many viewers have wondered what became of the children he documented. Freelance historian Joe Manning has taken it upon himself to find out. [more inside]
posted by craichead at 6:55 PM PST - 20 comments

Nearly 12 Years Old, ‘Rent’ Is to Close. The 1996 Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning musical will close its doors at New York's Nederlander Theatre on June 1st. The 7th longest-running musical in Broadway history, it is based on Puccini's La Boheme and is credited with bringing young people to musical theatre and the invention of Broadway Rush ticketing - it sold its first two rows for $20: first in , first served on the day of the performance. [more inside]
posted by crossoverman at 6:29 PM PST - 75 comments

Transmissions from a vanished world. There is more that you can learn about Usama Alshaibi and the spiral minaret of Samarra, but it is best if you watch the video and live with the mystery for a while first.
posted by nangsta at 5:42 PM PST - 11 comments

Don't send in the clowns. Why are they considered scary by kids of all ages? Maybe it just makes sense. [more inside]
posted by wendell at 5:37 PM PST - 52 comments

We're only two weeks into the year, but net neutrality issues hit the ground running. The FCC already has three different inquiries open. (also) (previously) The 700 Mhz auction threatens to disrupt an already converging telecom industry. AT&T's post-merger commitment to net neutrality ends this year, and they plan to test the filtering waters, despite recently opposing the practice. And today, a leaked memo revealed that Time Warner will test tiered internet services soon. The Internet as we know it, and communications in general, might be headed for some major changes in 2008.
posted by spiderwire at 5:29 PM PST - 20 comments

Word Sandwich: The mystery five-letter word is somewhere between your "highest" guess alphabetically and your "lowest." It's essentially a lexical Guess the Number.
posted by tepidmonkey at 5:07 PM PST - 28 comments

Balls! [more inside]
posted by loquacious at 4:30 PM PST - 38 comments

"It's so black, it's like, how much more black can it be?(youtube link) The Answer is none. None more black." And I have just found out there is a band called None More Black.
posted by hubs at 3:01 PM PST - 37 comments

The Last.fm guys really wanted a ballpit, inspired by the xkcd blog. Pictures.
posted by nthdegx at 2:09 PM PST - 29 comments

Patriots, countrymen, help out the American economy with Operation: Change For The Better.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:59 PM PST - 17 comments

Vinyl Cafe: The Story of Roger Woodward. Stuart McLean tells the story of the last person to go over Niagara Falls - with only a lifejacket - and live to tell the story. (go to the 28:00 mark in the audio to get the story) [more inside]
posted by GuyZero at 12:58 PM PST - 6 comments

Are We All Really Just Disembodied Brains Floating in Empty Space? Recent mathematical results in the field of cosmology related to the Boltzmann's Brain Problem may point toward a peculiarly arbitrary universe in which, as improbable as it sounds, it's more likely than not. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 12:40 PM PST - 104 comments

Rubber band warfare just got deadlier. (Single YouTube link to rubber band gun AWESOMENESS.)
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:34 PM PST - 29 comments

There’s a new Corey in town and he’s getting rich because of a party he threw in which 500 kids, the police dog squad and helicopters showed up. The “journalist's” voice, intonation and overall attitude is more grating than Corey. His parents are pleading for him to come home, fans have started sites dedicated to him, and DJ Loc-a-Doc? has already remixed the interviews. Show your support or have him add you so you can get his next invite.
posted by gman at 12:32 PM PST - 89 comments

Beautiful Squid. How I am obsessed with thee!! A legend, different than an octopus, rarely seen, oddly loved, making its home in the Mediterranean, and the far sea, the giant squid is one of the most elusive creatures of the deep. Even in death it produces treasure.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 12:12 PM PST - 22 comments

50 fun facts about banks.
posted by jbickers at 12:05 PM PST - 37 comments

The Library of Congress, on Flickr. [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 11:54 AM PST - 23 comments

Massive, sprawling, jarring, yet soothing, intimate, and inescapable. Listening to Giant Squid is like waking up to find yourself trying to escape from underneath a mile-wide sheet of lake ice. Featuring stark contrasts between soothing instrumentals and oceanic heavy riffs, intertwined with male/female vocal harmonies that are alternately calm and frantic, Giant Squid creates a dynamic that is haunting and irresistible. [more inside]
posted by baphomet at 11:45 AM PST - 11 comments

Some unusual thoughts on how to drive. Wait and See. Trucks. Bubbles and Barriers. [more inside]
posted by wittgenstein at 11:00 AM PST - 30 comments

Having trouble making your decision? Just let the magic power of the internet tell you what to do. You can let someone else do the work, but you're probably better off doing it yourself.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:45 AM PST - 20 comments

"Well you know my name is Simon/ And the things I draw come true/ Oh, pictures take me over, over / Across the ladder with you." Little Gems is an extensive collection of information (including downloadable theme songs) about (mostly) British children's TV from the 1960s to 1980s. Simon In The Land of Chalk Drawings, The Moomins [previously on MeFi], Cockleshell Bay, Belle and Sebastian, The Herbs, and Hattytown Tales are just a few.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:45 AM PST - 26 comments

Letman : Job Wouters is a Dutch designer known for his two-color flyers, which emphasize manic color and hand-lettering. His sketchbooks (White, Gray, and Black) are full of fun letter design.
posted by klangklangston at 10:31 AM PST - 7 comments

These webcams were found automatically through a variety of clever search techniques and update several times a day. Their owners may or may not have intended for them to be public, but they obviously are. Via Opentopia. [more inside]
posted by allkindsoftime at 9:35 AM PST - 35 comments

Mach 7 Origami Plane - Designs for origami planes abound. How many of them reach Mach? How many get launched from the International Space Station? A team from the University of Tokyo is planning just such a launch.
posted by caddis at 8:26 AM PST - 19 comments

This 2-minute test tells you how tired you are. It accompanies the Wellcome Institute's Sleeping & Dreaming exhibition.
posted by Lezzles at 7:48 AM PST - 76 comments

Each year the world makes about 5 trillion plastic bags^{(art exhibit)} using about 20 billion barrels of oil, each bag able to last thousands of years. In 2007 cities began legislating against plastic bags from outright bans to mandatory surcharges, starting in San Francisco, then Hong Kong, Melbourne and now some countries in Africa, Israel and even the entire country of China are taking similar strides to cut down on the worlds bag obsession. Who's next in 2008?
posted by stbalbach at 7:35 AM PST - 78 comments

Lew Rockwell Dunnit - in interviews with Reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul—all named the same man as responsible for writing Ron Paul's newsletters containing inflammatory rhetoric under his name: Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr. [more inside]
posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 7:08 AM PST - 148 comments

ResetDOC asks: "What is democracy?" [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:34 AM PST - 8 comments

The history of the humble fortune cookie is in dispute.
posted by Xurando at 6:21 AM PST - 16 comments

Matrioshka Brain? Quine? Whuffie? - 75 Words every sci-fi fan should know, Science fiction citations at the OED, Swear words from science fiction, Neologisms in science fiction, Brave new words.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:01 AM PST - 27 comments

I may not know art, but I know what I like. [more inside]
posted by sambosambo at 4:07 AM PST - 22 comments

Manipur, which has a population of 2,388,634, has the highest rate of HIV in the country, which is also the reason why it has the most number of NGOs working in the area. However, what is disturbing is that a day or two ago, one of these NGOs bribed a group of children into getting their blood tested, so that they could increase their chances of garnering more funds.
posted by hadjiboy at 3:12 AM PST - 37 comments

Huh. Not the only time it's been noted, but still,Dieter Rams did make it look good first. An interesting guy who's basic design precepts Jonathan Ive has been very successful at emulating. For which I am only happy. [more inside]
posted by From Bklyn at 2:52 AM PST - 10 comments

Better World Books - Recently recognized by Fast Company as one of the best for-profit social enterprises of 2008, they offer a wide selection of new and used books with free shipping in the US and less than $3 shipping elsewhere. A portion of the profits go to fund literacy organizations such as Room to Read and WorldFund, and their shipping is carbon-neutral. The only thing missing is the ability to import Amazon wishlists.
posted by divabat at 2:50 AM PST - 18 comments

A complex situation has arisen in the Southern Ocean where the Japanese Whaling fleet run by The Institute of Cetacean Research is attempting to slaughter nearly a thousand whales for the much scoffed at purpose of scientific research. Greenpeace located the fleet and claims to have chased the whalers out of hunting grounds. An Australian Federal Court judgement meanwhile has ruled the expedition illegal and imposed an injunction against the illegal whaling in Australian waters. The Japanese do not recognise Australia's claim. The Japanese responded by ignoring the judgement. Now Sea Shephard an activist group have put two of their members aboard a Japanese Ship and claims they were tied to the mast. Despite the Japanese Government saying the activists would be released the ships captain refuses to do so. Recent related post.
posted by dodialog at 12:14 AM PST - 67 comments

Everyone knows how seriously Italians take their food. So a debate about the origins of a humble pasta dish isn't any real surprise, though an appetizing read. Made with (formerly hard to find, state-side) Guanciale, (cured, unsmoked pig jowl), at least one proper recipe exists if you can find some to try your hand at it with.
posted by disillusioned at 11:59 PM PST - 19 comments

Wesley Snipes is in a lot of trouble. On trial for tax fraud, Snipes is apparently defending himself by employing the 861 argument, a longtime favorite of tax protesters, which advances the odd position that only foreign income is subject to federal income taxation. [more inside]
posted by "Tex" Connor and the Wily Roundup Boys at 8:04 PM PST - 80 comments

Jack Mulqueen presents Kiddie a-Go-Go. Check out the intro brought to you by Mickelberry's Plump & Juicy Franks and their fine variety of cold cuts. Hostess Pandora (played by Jack Mulqueen's wife Elaine) introduces the Stop and Go-Go dance, followed by a live performance from the New Colony Six in full Revolutionary War costumes. Unlike the Buddy Deane Show (which inspired the movie Hairspray), this later clip indicates that Kiddie A-Go-Go had racially integrated without incident. Other happenings inspired by the Kiddie A-Go-Go include a children's album, the public access TV show Chic-A-Go-Go, and San Francisco's Pip Squeak A-Go-Go (featuring go-go dance lessons from the Devil-Ettes).
posted by jonp72 at 7:54 PM PST - 5 comments

Free Bird on piano [YouTube]. The 14-year-old musician, who calls himself UnclassicalPiano on YouTube, currently has 16 other selections, including Stairway To Heaven, Behind Blue Eyes, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Message In A Bottle and Black Sabbath's Paranoid (his main interest is metal), all of which he says he learned to play by ear.
posted by amyms at 7:48 PM PST - 40 comments

In the United States, most counties conduct local legal business in a centrally-located courthouse, which tends to be located in the county seat. Here is a flickr photo set of nearly all the county courthouses in the United States. From the [oldest] to the [most densly populated] to the [most populous], from the [ugly] to the [ornate], county courthouses present a remarkable variety of architectural styles. In some ways, these buildings seem to be the equivalent of European cathedrals -- they often represent the local community's largest and most expensive building, and they're designed with that in mind. Given our remarkable capacity for observer list keeping, I wonder why more people aren't courthouse spotters.
posted by one_bean at 4:15 PM PST - 34 comments

The Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich was well-received by the critics. Recently, amateur subtitle writers have used a poignant scene from the movie to showcase the Fuhrer's banning from iSketch and XBox Live (previously), as well as the downfall of HD-DVD.
posted by reformedjerk at 3:13 PM PST - 44 comments

Who's who in Nowata High School's classes of '79, '80, '81, and now welcoming the Class of '82.
posted by xmutex at 3:04 PM PST - 51 comments

The Story of Blossom the Brave Balloon.
posted by dersins at 2:58 PM PST - 12 comments

Richard Forty's Dry Store Room No. 1 describes the archives of the British Natural History Museum. Not on display, among other things, is Proustite, it is a compound of silver, arsenic and sulphur that forms as blood-red crystals that fade, poetically, when exposed to light.' Via Things Magazine.
posted by parmanparman at 2:47 PM PST - 7 comments

The Fabaroni is a 3D printing machine that constructs 3D models with pasta dough. You've also got the 3D chocolate printer made out of lego. And Previously.
posted by mattbucher at 2:04 PM PST - 11 comments

"Because of the digital chip age in which we live - "Mass Effect" can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes. With it's "over the net" capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away." [more inside]
posted by prostyle at 1:34 PM PST - 82 comments

Overstream: Add Your Thoughts to Video Have you ever wanted to customize an online video by adding your own comments or subtitles in any language, or wanted to send a custom video postcard?
posted by psmealey at 12:51 PM PST - 7 comments

Why go with a simple cake topper? A Texan bride of Nigerian descent had a klassy cake made for her big day. The company who created the brilliant piece. One of the master sculptors talks about AND shows us how she did it. Other cakes they've made. Well worth the 5 grand. Does this contradict empath’s statement that 5’4” people aren’t diseased?
posted by gman at 12:21 PM PST - 47 comments

Dance music toys. Get your cheese on. Via Music Thing.
posted by nthdegx at 12:18 PM PST - 10 comments

Nutjobfilter. Tom Cruise on Scientology. It's one link to a video, but it's one link to a video that you really should watch.
posted by Optamystic at 11:43 AM PST - 308 comments

The Entire Federal Government in Six Square Feet
posted by konolia at 11:41 AM PST - 37 comments

As Iraqis See It. "About a year ago, McClatchy Newspapers set up a blog exclusively for contributions from its Iraqi staff. 'Inside Iraq,' it's called, and several times a week the Iraqi staff members post on it about their experiences and impressions. 'It's an opportunity for Iraqis to talk directly to an American audience,' says Leila Fadel, the current bureau chief. As such, the blog fills a major gap in the coverage." Previously discussed here. [Via disinformation.]
posted by homunculus at 11:30 AM PST - 10 comments

Million-dollar mistake at Dreamhost. A $7.5 million error this morning at the world's 15th largest hosting company has left most of it customers short by hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Discussion boards are reporting a litany of overdrafts, credit card overlimit fees, and bounced checks.
posted by chips ahoy at 11:14 AM PST - 121 comments

Top Gear is coming soon to America – unfortunately without the charms of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and The Stig. To produce a worthy rival program, the American version will have a lot to live up to: [more inside]
posted by bent back tulips at 10:44 AM PST - 82 comments

Scans from a storybook adaptation of John Sutherland's 1959 animated film Rhapsody of Steel.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:09 AM PST - 7 comments

By September, President Warren Harding had sent in Federal troops and bombers under war hero Billy Mitchell to put down the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War. Short video. Podcast. That was then. Now a second battle of Blair Mountain continues to preserve the history and the environment of the first. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 8:49 AM PST - 13 comments

Blowhard vs. Bureaucrat? A Defense of Free Speech. During the controversy over the Danish cartoons of Mohammed (original Mefi thread), one of the few Canadian outlets to republish the offending images was the now-mostly-defunct Western Standard magazine run by controversial right-wing pundit and lawyer Ezra Levant. Now, Levant is facing a human rights complaint before the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and has posted his initial interview with the Commission online. Levant is frequently vitriolic, and his interlocutor mostly bored, but the issues raised are important ones. Levant's summary of the situation is here, and his opening statement to the Commission is here.
posted by Urban Hermit at 8:43 AM PST - 55 comments

B is for Beaner. ironic t shirts are cross cultural. [via tex[t]-mex]
posted by Stynxno at 8:33 AM PST - 19 comments

Type a word to translate into birdsong. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 8:26 AM PST - 32 comments

How many men does it take it recreate the massive 1944 allied assault on Omaha Beach? Three. [YouTube] [more inside]
posted by LarryC at 7:05 AM PST - 47 comments

Ancient manuscripts lost and found, Nazis, academic backstabbing, religious fundamentalism - something for everyone in this story. (And count on Spengler for some controversial thoughts on what it all means)
posted by IndigoJones at 5:53 AM PST - 20 comments

Is fibromyalgia a useful way of categorizing the illnesses experienced by several million Americans? The doctor who pioneered the study and characterization of the illness no longer thinks it exists as a distinct entity, and other experts agree. People who've been diagnosed with the disorder experience real pain, and are comforted by being able to put a name to their illness, but their doctors often think they'd have been better off without the diagnosis. [more inside]
posted by jackbrown at 5:13 AM PST - 50 comments

When the working poor turn to addictive drugs to manage pain so they can keep working, that's "moral weakness, not a public health problem.":

Every morning before sunup, Trapp drives 120 miles.... "This methadone makes you feel like a human being again," Trapp says. With disability rates as high as 37 percent in coal-mining areas such as Buchanan County, the region has many people with long-term pain management needs. As is the case with lots of aging miners, Trapp's addiction to pills began in a doctor's office, not a back-alley drug deal.... The clinic's counseling staff members say that many patients need to be on some sort of drug to cope with severe, long-term pain and that methadone has made them functional. And for those who lack insurance or access to more personalized care, it is often the only affordable option.

[more inside]
posted by orthogonality at 2:51 AM PST - 44 comments

It's a familiar story, a young upstart goes against the rules laid down by the establishment, gets smacked down but somehow rises from ruin. It's just not a story one usually associates with scrapbooking. Kristina Contes (blog, flickr page) of scrapbooking group Effer Dares became the most vilified person in scrapbookdom ("Has KC ever done a layout that didn't feature a photograph of herself?" "My 4 y.o. does better with stickers." "After you have viewed her work you know she has no class." "I just want to . . . slap her!"). The L. A. Times tells her story.
posted by Kattullus at 9:51 PM PST - 71 comments

The WGA strike has entered its third month. Since New Year's, Worldwide Pants, the Weinstein Co., and United Artists have reached interim deals with the WGA, with rumors of more to come. Microsoft announced new deals with Hollywood companies. And on Friday, ABC Studios terminated deals with more than a dozen writers. Tonight, CBS, NBC, and 20th Century Fox have followed suit. Names of producers, writers, and shows affected are still being revealed as letters are received. Force majeure. [more inside]
posted by Tehanu at 8:27 PM PST - 167 comments

Happy Smurfday! The Smurfs celebrated their 50th birthday today in Belgium, kicking off a tour in which they will team up with UNICEF to promote children's issues worldwide. Grab a piece of smurfberry cake and a glass of sarsaparilla juice and come inside for more Smurfiness. [more inside]
posted by amyms at 7:17 PM PST - 47 comments

Michigan Democrats for Romney is an effort by mischievous Michigan Democrats to take advantage of the uncompetitive January 15th "beauty contest" primary on the Democratic side by encouraging Democratic voters to vote for Mitt Romney in the Republican primary so that Romney won't drop out of the primary race after making his last stand in Michigan. Similar hijinks by Michigan Republicans in 1972 led to George Wallace's victory in the Democratic presidential primary that year.
posted by jonp72 at 7:02 PM PST - 62 comments

Clazziquai Project is a Korean band fusing jazz, pop, and electropop, leading their music to be described as Shibuya-kei. Several of the band members are Korean-Canadian, including the main man DJ Clazzi, who writes, mixes, and produces. The lyrics are usually a mix of Korean and English, with all-English versions of their songs being released for foreign markets. Their most recent album, Robotica, included remixes by a number of Japanese musicians, such as Fantastic Plastic Machine and Shinichi Osawa. [more inside]
posted by needled at 5:37 PM PST - 18 comments

What is shopdropping? Is it art, stealth marketing, or consumer activism? Yes. (previously)
posted by desjardins at 5:02 PM PST - 31 comments

A Brief Biography of William John Cavendish-Bentinck-Scott, 5th Duke of Portland (1800-1879) - keen horseman and 'peculiar to many - but certainly not mad' owner of Welbeck Abbey.
posted by tellurian at 4:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Tom Hodgkinson, of The Idler, really hates Facebook: "We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships."
posted by mekanic at 4:30 PM PST - 83 comments

Much of the Flying Rhino back catalogue is now available for free from their website, with more to come. In return, they're asking for donations to Children Walking Tall, a charity set up to help children living on the streets in Goa.
posted by plant at 3:29 PM PST - 14 comments

Mercury Messenger, a NASA probe, just performed a fly-by of Mercury at a height of 200 kilometers. It's the first spacecraft to visit Mercury since 1975.
posted by Artw at 3:28 PM PST - 21 comments

Flash Element Tower Defense 2 (registration not necessary to play). [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 3:23 PM PST - 31 comments

The coddled "terrorists" of South Florida. Examining our governments double standard with regard to providing a safe haven for terrorists. Alpha 66 continues to carry out attacks.
posted by skjønn at 3:19 PM PST - 33 comments

Faithful live-action recreations of "classic" Garfield comic strips. (Quicktime required.)
posted by Prospero at 1:57 PM PST - 78 comments

Sandra Bergen sued her dealer after she suffered a heart attack and spent 11 days in a coma because of crystal meth. Her full website. What people think.
posted by gman at 12:02 PM PST - 214 comments

By the time Russian folksinger Venya Drkin (Веня Д’ркин) died of cancer in 1999, he had written over three hundred songs. Love songs, happy songs, angry songs, sad songs. He also sketched pictures: strange, lonely, menacing, redemptive. And wrote folktales. He was only 29.
posted by nasreddin at 11:28 AM PST - 3 comments

James Jean shows how he creates the painted cover for Fables. His blog is full of gorgeous figure studies and sketches that show influences from Lucian Freud and pop/manga design. His eponymous site also includes a broad cross-section of his works: Dive, Tigerlily, and his great recess series.
posted by klangklangston at 11:07 AM PST - 14 comments

The 10 Neatest Articles of 2007.
posted by homunculus at 11:05 AM PST - 21 comments

"it turned out the abstract compositions in the posters contained hidden letters. (The one above, for example, displays the letter A.) Hung side by side on the streets, they spelled out N-A-Z-I. A public outcry followed, and within six weeks the company was ruined." Can a designer punish a company that helped the nazis? Maybe. Maybe not. (via swiss miss)
posted by wittgenstein at 10:30 AM PST - 28 comments

Counting in groups of 12 the first performer claps on 1,2,3,5,6,8,10 and 11. The second performer starts by clapping the same pattern but gradually shifts the pattern one step to the right. You are playing Steve Reich's clapping music. If you are serious you will want to study the score - and perhaps a watch a performance). If you are happen to be Evelyn Glennie you can have a go at both parts at once. - those slightly less more mortal are likely to end up like this. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 10:13 AM PST - 24 comments

War Torn: kickoff of the New York Times' penetrating new series investigating the violence that comes home when our soldiers do.
posted by hermitosis at 8:40 AM PST - 58 comments

MeFi's celebration of the Ivy League continues with "The Facebook of Wall Street's Future," a New York Times map of social and professional connections in the tradition of They Rule (previously on Metafilter here, here , here and here). [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses at 6:15 AM PST - 25 comments

I Can Has Rezearch Papar? via roflcon
posted by signal at 5:54 AM PST - 63 comments

Photogalleries of Loyalist (UFF, UVF) and Nationalist (IRA) murals in Northern Ireland. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 1:23 AM PST - 43 comments

Daniel Barenboim: pianist, conductor, Israeli, peacemaker, and now Palestinian. Predictably, some will add to that list, "traitor."
posted by orthogonality at 1:03 AM PST - 23 comments

Super funny money turning up on the world stage
Along with pranks going on in the gulf this week, some funny stuff going on with US Currency as well - Perhaps part of the explanation of the seemingly endless run on gold?
posted by specialk420 at 11:51 PM PST - 52 comments

Big hair, mall music and the hypest dance moves, Jersey style. From 1986 until 1992, junior high school-aged hipsters to be across America did their homework and honed their snark skills while watching Dance Party USA.
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 10:31 PM PST - 44 comments

Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990
posted by miss lynnster at 9:51 PM PST - 15 comments

Can your computer run a particular game? System Requirements Lab has the answer!
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:03 PM PST - 22 comments

Pictures of offices and desks of video game designers, journalists and celebrities. Includes Dan Hsu, the guys from Penny Arcade, the guy who made Ultima Online and Boing Boing?
posted by phyrewerx at 9:02 PM PST - 14 comments

Let's pause for a moment to view the best part of any gameshow -- the stupid contestants. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi at 8:44 PM PST - 36 comments

The Annals of Improbable Research magazine is available in two free online formats. Tagline: Research the makes people LAUGH and then THINK. Visit some of the site's classics or simply check out the newest members in the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. Hours and hours of brain stimulating fun.
posted by spock at 8:31 PM PST - 8 comments

The Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has a nice collection of online exhibits, including ones on Roman glassmaking, the ancient history of wine, and a history of body modification. (Other exhibits have appeared on Mefi previously.)
posted by Upton O'Good at 8:06 PM PST - 3 comments

Rate your coworkers. You know that person in the cubicle who sniffs and coughs constantly? Or the one who takes the last cup of coffee and doesn't make a new pot? What about that guy who never refills the copier with paper? Or the one who brings in her daughter's Girl Scout cookie order form and expects you to buy something? Or the one who takes your ideas and passes them off as his own? Don't get mad, rate 'em!
posted by John of Michigan at 8:04 PM PST - 30 comments

"A few years ago a psychologist and a philosopher got into an argument over whether we can accurately describe our thoughts. "Yes," said the psychologist; with training and the help of my special technique, we can accurately describe our thoughts. The philosopher doubted it. To resolve their argument, they recruited a young woman who agreed tell them her thoughts, so that they could argue over whether she was credible." Eric Schwitzgebel and Russ Hurlbert debate the transparency of inner experience. See also Schwitzgebel's extremely interesting blog.
posted by painquale at 7:39 PM PST - 34 comments

"In a rebellion shaking the Sicilian Mafia to its centuries-old roots, businesses are joining forces in refusing to submit to demands for protection money called 'pizzo.' And they're getting away with it, threatening to sap an already weakened crime syndicate of one of its steadiest sources of revenue." The rebellion is fueled by a Web site "where businessmen are finding safety in numbers to say no to the mob." Called Addiopizzo (Goodbye Pizzo) "it brings together businesses in the Sicilian capital that are resisting extortion." The campaign was launched in 2004 by a group of youths thinking of opening a pub. "They started off by plastering Palermo with anti-pizzo fliers, reading 'AN ENTIRE PEOPLE WHO PAYS THE PIZZO IS A PEOPLE WITHOUT DIGNITY,' and eventually brought their campaign online where it struck a profound chord with Sicilians fed up with Mafia bullying."^*
posted by ericb at 4:37 PM PST - 57 comments

Photographer Mark Richard's very cool pictures of computing equipment: A visual survey of vintage computers. [via]
posted by ClanvidHorse at 3:38 PM PST - 17 comments

A gallery of images created using Colors! A Nintendo DS homebrew app that makes use of the machines little-known pressure sensitive capabilities.
posted by nthdegx at 1:37 PM PST - 22 comments

YangTown, the Path of Masculine Power, [parts of the site NSFW] was created by a 25 year old guy in LA, who put together his ideas on dating and life advice. The site has a number of his articles on various topics that might be interesting to both men and women such as Are Any of These 5 Energy Vampires Draining Your Life? There are also informative links to Female Orgasm Mastery with explicit instructions on how to stimulate the G-Spot [NSFW], definitely [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:58 AM PST - 95 comments

Mark Toorock demonstrates the art of Parkour. (Wash. Post video) And there is an associated article (Wash. Post). Parkour has been discussed previously on MeFi. {BugMeNot logins for WaPo if needed.}
posted by fourcheesemac at 10:33 AM PST - 37 comments

"They are happy when they run." So says Kalle Leissner, a Swedish musher, of the Alaskan Husky, a breed of dog best known for pulling sleds over long stretches of unforgiving terrain, as in the world famous Iditarod competition. (Not everyone, it should be noted, agrees with Leissner's assessment.) But with climate change forcing the Iditarod's planners to rework their race, could this sport's days be numbered? Maybe...and then again, maybe not.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:01 AM PST - 16 comments

The Moral Instinct. "Evolution has endowed us with ethical impulses. Do we know what to do with them?" [Via The Mahablog.]
posted by homunculus at 9:31 AM PST - 68 comments

Darren Karnick hands his infant to the presidential candidates and photographs the results. The Daily Telegraph says the baby primary is a clear win for Obama. The Boston Globe has more pictures of the candidates with kids. And should you be embarking on a political career, don't forget to bone up on the Commandments for Policians Who Art Babykissers, including such sound advice as "thou shouldst not drop babies thou art kissing, for surely, dropped babies will gain thee no votes."
posted by Kattullus at 11:11 PM PST - 54 comments

The Dream of the Giant Turtle....... The Bermuda Depths! Remember that "made for tv" movie from the seventies with the gigantic turtle, and the girl with the weird glowing eyes, and the creepy song, and...and then there was.... Carl Weathers, and Burl Ives??? [more inside]
posted by bradth27 at 10:46 PM PST - 13 comments

This is a Flash drawing toy involving gravity.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:33 PM PST - 59 comments

2007's Darwin Award winners have been announced. This years crop includes death by enema, elevator, and electricity.. [more inside]
posted by heeeraldo at 6:53 PM PST - 59 comments

A Thailand teen who has had an online presence for ten years... is now doing three yearsin a Thai prison...and with the help of his former teacher is able to tell us about it.
posted by konolia at 4:19 PM PST - 49 comments

This IS safe for work despite the title. I've never seen a woman touch an organ with quite as much enthusiasm and skill.
posted by nangsta at 4:03 PM PST - 41 comments

The Overdub Tampering Comittee Manifesto. What if there was a network of musicians who got a hold of albums right as they leaked, added subtle yet very much additional overdubs all over the album, and then re-leaked it to the internet? ... We set out to make that specific bewildering, annoyance a possibility. [more inside]
posted by whir at 2:49 PM PST - 42 comments

Dildo chess set (NSFW, probably). Other suggestive chess sets, part of a small collection of, er, pawnography. [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses at 2:26 PM PST - 41 comments

FISA wiretapping: keeping us safe in the war on terror. [more inside]
posted by baphomet at 1:52 PM PST - 20 comments

Diary Junction. "An internet resource for those interested in historical and literary diaries and diarists." Information pages on over five hundred diarists are included.
posted by jayder at 1:39 PM PST - 3 comments

Steven Leavitt and Sudhir Venkatesh, of Freakonomics fame, investigate prostitution. According to the working paper [pdf], prostitutes in Chicago are more likely to sleep with the police than get arrested by them.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:49 PM PST - 27 comments

The Star Wars illustrations and posters of Noriyoshi Ohrai.
posted by nthdegx at 12:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Meet Muchhad ( ~ someone with a prominent mustache), the name given to a Paan seller in Mumbai, and his shop. (Never eaten a paan before, no matter, here’s what the folks at IndiaMike have to say.) Of course, you’d better be careful, it can be hazardous to your health. But, there are other alternatives for its taste. [video of muchhad paan waala | youtube | paan virgin spits]
posted by hadjiboy at 11:59 AM PST - 19 comments

anonymity is often a sure route to notoriety. An article on anonymous authors from The Guardian.
posted by zingzangzung at 11:54 AM PST - 10 comments

My crazy cat loves water l Scuba cat l CitiKitti and Sushi, toilet trained cats l phew! One life down, eight to go, bottle cat
posted by nickyskye at 11:37 AM PST - 23 comments

Wondering why OLPCNews.com disparages the OLPC project so much? Curious as to the site's apparent emphasis on bad news about the project? It could just be a coincidence. Or it could be because OLPCNews.com's chief contributor Wayan Vota works on a project that's partnered with Intel, a former OLPC partner turned competitor. Does Intel's back-stabbing extend beyond pre-sales and into public relations? [more inside]
posted by sdodd at 9:43 AM PST - 29 comments

"The Gerald Warner Taiwan Image Collection is a photographic record of a US consul's impressions of urban and rural life in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule. Totaling 340 photographs and postcards gathered by Warner between August 26, 1937 and March 8, 1941, these images provide a snapshot of Taiwan's hybrid culture of Chinese, Taiwanese, Austronesian, and Japanese influences." [Via]
posted by Abiezer at 9:40 AM PST - 12 comments

Restyling of real military weapons into fashion items for ladies.
posted by wallstreet1929 at 6:48 AM PST - 19 comments

Busted in Jena. My path crossed the Jena Six by chance. The BBC broadcast a documentary called “Race Hate in Louisiana” in May 2007. When I watched a copy of it in June, I was dumbfounded. I quit my job a week early, packed the car with my cameras, and drove to Jena.
posted by chunking express at 6:48 AM PST - 47 comments

1. Photograph billboard.
2. Replace head with bloody stump.
3. Affix stump to original billboard.
4. Repeat as necessary.
posted by Partial Law at 11:56 PM PST - 63 comments

You desire to listen to "The Shadow Out of Time". You may also desire to listen to adaptations of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Colour Out of Space. Possibly you desire to listen to Neil Gaiman's Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes pastiche A Study in Emerald, the text of which is available in a fetchingly formatted PDF. Or maybe it's all academic, and you'd rather just listen to some lectures about Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:51 PM PST - 19 comments

In 1798, English economist Thomas Malthus promised "Famine ... the last, the most dreadful resource of nature." It took another 125 years for world population to double, but only 50 more for it to redouble. By the 1940s, Mexi­co, China, India, Russia, and Europe were hungry.
posted by amyms at 11:31 PM PST - 40 comments

Solid Gold was a television show that ran from 1980 to 1988, on Saturdays, in the early evening, hosted by (among others) Dionne Warwick, Rick Dees, and Marilyn McCoo. It showcased snippets of the Top Ten popular songs of the week, accompanied and sometimes interpreted by the Solid Gold Dancers. This post is about them. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 9:42 PM PST - 69 comments

Surely this must be a double, right? I mean, you've got this great and strange program, Addi's Inflatable Minute, and this incredibly strange but somewhat haunting instrument and its all in one You Tube Link? People don't actually make this sort of content in real life, do they?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 9:38 PM PST - 30 comments

The FuMP is a collaborative music parody project licensed under Creative Commons. Highlights, with many more in the archives.
posted by flatluigi at 9:32 PM PST - 4 comments

Vampira, RIP. Maila Nurmi, movie star and horror movie host, friend to James Dean, and documentary subject, has passed away.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:38 PM PST - 33 comments

Flash Friday: White Dwarf
posted by Citizen Premier at 6:20 PM PST - 28 comments

You probably thought all those wooden toys and Nutcrackers from your local version of the KrisKindlMarkt were made in Bavaria. But wooden toys from Germany were an economic engine that supported a large percentage of the population of the Deutsche Democratische Repulic. In fact, people in the DDR were not allowed to own these toys, they were all made for export to the west. You can still find "Unter dem Tisch" (secret, illegal) collections in towns like Dippoldiswalde in the Erzgebirge mountains on the Czech border.
posted by nax at 5:51 PM PST - 14 comments

For the first time since 1982, the NBA will require two teams to replay a portion of a previous game. The Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat will replay the final 51.9 seconds of their December 19th game because the official scorer ruled incorrectly that Shaquille O'Neal fouled out.
posted by pwb503 at 4:39 PM PST - 29 comments

Scientists for better PCR
Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers, Nucleotides and polymerases, too.
Denaturing, annealing, and extending. Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do. [more inside]
posted by nihlton at 3:59 PM PST - 23 comments

People in Order - Age. Love. By Lenka Clayton and James Price. [more inside]
posted by spec80 at 3:48 PM PST - 9 comments

Following up on some recent cyclist deaths in Portland where cyclists waiting in bike lanes at red lights were crushed by right-turning trucks (discussed here), the city is introducting 'bike boxes' to encourage bikes to wait out in front of stopped traffic. The city also plans to promote lower-traffic streets as 'bike boulevards' as an alternative to bike lines on high-traffic streets.
posted by PercussivePaul at 1:52 PM PST - 83 comments

In what might be every blogger's dream come true, a brand has acquired an established blog devoted to that brand: in this case, cult notebook/journal manufacturer Moleskine has purchased the four-year-old fan blog Moleskinerie. But what will it mean for content - will critical posts become a thing of the past?
posted by jbickers at 1:31 PM PST - 32 comments

Improve your Rock Band drumming technique. Rock Band as in the videogame, that is.
posted by nthdegx at 11:41 AM PST - 124 comments

237 reasons why humans have sex (PDF). The research paper referenced in David Buss' contribution to The Edge. NYT comment and analysis.
posted by Tarn at 11:34 AM PST - 51 comments

Kucinich Asks for New Hampshire Recount in the Interest of Election Integrity. A little earlier in the election cycle this time around, many people are worried about serious discrepancies between pre-election opinion polling and exit polls, which both had Obama winning by a substantial percentage, and the official results. Obama also appears to have won in hand-counted precincts while Clinton seems to have dominated in precincts which counted the votes with the Diebold Accuvote TSx optical-scan machines, which have been shown to be susceptible to a memory card hack. [more inside]
posted by dinsdale at 10:29 AM PST - 96 comments

"By the time I cut his balls off," one settler boasted, "he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket." The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked "provided they were black".
posted by nasreddin at 10:08 AM PST - 74 comments

Does Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip have the X-Factor?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:39 AM PST - 24 comments

A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila. MTV made a show out of her because, amongst other reasons, she has over 2.5 million friends on myspace and she claims not to discriminate. The cast bios are interesting fucking ridiculous. The latest has her and some dude named Bobby breaking up. Fan sites are abuzz.
posted by gman at 7:30 AM PST - 102 comments

THE church elder’s reaction was one of utter disbelief. Shaking his head emphatically, he couldn’t take in what the distinguished professor from Yale University was telling him. "No," insisted Jim McRae, an elder of the small congregation of Clearwater in Florida. "This way of worshipping comes from our slave past. It grew out of the slave experience, when we came from Africa." But Willie Ruff, an Afro-American professor of music at Yale, was adamant - he had traced the origins of gospel music to Scotland. [more inside]
posted by brautigan at 6:08 AM PST - 96 comments

Allegro Non Troppo is an animated film written and directed by Bruno Bozzetto [previously]. Now the wonder of the youtubes enjoy Ravel's Bolero [Part 2] [Part 3], Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Dvorak's Slavonic Dance # 7, Sibelius' Valse Triste, Vivaldi's Concerto in C major, and Stravinsky's Firebird. [more inside]
posted by mattoxic at 4:49 AM PST - 21 comments

64-year-old Frank Pringle has figured out a way to extract oil and natural gas out of nearly anything.
posted by divabat at 3:06 AM PST - 62 comments

"But, it's a post on film noir!" I told her. She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me. I knew that caving into my desires meant I might lose her. But I didn't care. I went out to the kitchen to make coffee -- yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. I knew she'd be back. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster at 12:56 AM PST - 48 comments

"Nate Notes are crazed, obscene or blindingly profound 10x10 images that are born from blood, tears, and relentless toil. Sometimes they are funny. Please laugh at them."
posted by anarcation at 10:19 PM PST - 27 comments

On August 6th 2007, Mark Gagliardi drank a bottle of Scotch...
And then discussed a famous historical event.
posted by carsonb at 8:59 PM PST - 55 comments

Does Your Penis Smell Perfect? Have you ever asked yourself: "Why is it that no matter how much time and effort I put into washing my penis in the shower, I still get that awful whiff of a rancid smell throughout the day, or even right after a shower?" Nodoro has the solution. There are commercials (Are they real or parodies?) here. Via.
posted by amyms at 8:10 PM PST - 119 comments

Got Questions About the News? Ask AP (Associated Press) All you have to do is "send your questions to newsquestions(at)ap.org, with "Ask AP" in the subject line. Then keep an eye out for installments of the new Q&A column, where you'll finally get some answers"... maybe... if they feel like it. Instant Analysis: No threat to Ask Metafilter.
posted by wendell at 7:40 PM PST - 13 comments

The finished work of a favorite author annoys, resonants a certain word. Puissant at first, it puissantly overpowers sentences and paragraphs amazingly. Anyways.
posted by Mblue at 7:27 PM PST - 24 comments

You all remember the song from Sesame Street, but you've never heard it like this: one two three FOUR FIIIVE six seven EIGHT NIIINE TEN eleven TWELVE! (via). Se7en!
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:23 PM PST - 17 comments

Toronto: Justice Denied. Mark Kingwell writes about Toronto. The article is a great read even if you've never stepped foot in the city.
posted by chunking express at 5:27 PM PST - 34 comments

Juvenile? Awesome? Awesomely juvenile? The kids of Gizmodo bring some TV-B-Gones to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. This is what happened. [more inside]
posted by bicyclefish at 5:09 PM PST - 83 comments

Gun for the whole family. A Scanning Around With Gene article about historic gun ads. More fun with Gene Gable: Cigarettes, diving, winter fonts, red white and blue, and so much more.
posted by klangklangston at 4:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Sir Edmund Hillary died today, aged 88. Best known as the man who "knocked the bastard off", by scaling Mt Everest, Hillary was an adventurer, activist, and all round kiwi bloke. We will miss you.
posted by pivotal at 2:57 PM PST - 88 comments

Advice on Academic Job Talk Visits by Siva Vaidhyanathan.
posted by mattbucher at 2:31 PM PST - 32 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 at 1:25 PM PST - 45 comments

Chris Matthews has been openly critical of Hilary Clinton. Still, he's certainly not the only one to suggest her recent tears were nothing more than a performance. So when does criticism cross the line into obsession? Note: For those of you sick of American politics, consider this: when was the last time you saw a potential leader pinched on the cheek?
posted by misha at 11:58 AM PST - 149 comments

"(Steve) Jobs, a notorious control freak himself, wasn't about to let a group of suits — whom he would later call "orifices" — tell him how to design his phone."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:00 AM PST - 201 comments

A new report authored by WHO and Iraqi officials suggests a lower violence-related death count - 151000 - than previous studies, notably that of the Lancet [pdf] where over 650000 were reported to have died. Previously on metafilter. For previous studies, the timing has not been a coincidence.
posted by YouRebelScum at 10:22 AM PST - 75 comments

A visual history of floating prisons shows that using ships at prisons did not end with the infamous prison hulks along the Thames. Today, New York (home to the Prison Ship Martyr's Monument commemorating the most deadly part of the Revolutionary War) uses the impressive Bain, anchored off the Bronx, as a prison barge, while the Australians have the sleek-looking Triton as a mobile prison ship patrolling national waters.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:24 AM PST - 21 comments

Esperanza Spalding first picked up the bass at fifteen. In the few years since, she has proven herself a master. She is now the youngest faculty member ever at Berklee and a rising star in the jazz scene. She is currently touring with another young and talented jazz gem, Gretchen Parlato.
posted by honeyx at 8:01 AM PST - 33 comments

"An obsessively detailed alternate-history map, imagining how Manhattan might have looked had the Nazis conquered it in World War II." A project by artist Melissa Gould. The neighborhoods (Charlottenburg, Neukölln, etc.) are named for corresponding Berlin ones. Schrecklich fun. Via strange maps.
posted by languagehat at 7:40 AM PST - 50 comments

Hell’s Kitchen duo wheel friend’s corpse around midtown Manhattan to cash his Social Security check.
posted by Dave Faris at 7:28 AM PST - 41 comments

Public Domain Books Reprints Service is "an experimental non-commercial project to re-print public domain books". It's the first service I have seen that allows simple affordable one-off point and click facsimile paperback replication of any book at Google Books or Internet Archive (millions of books). Curious how it works? Each book includes the technical details (Perl+Ghostscript+DJVU+XLST+etc..). The "experiment" has been running since November and is created by Yakov Shafranovich, a Russian Jewish immigrant in Baltimore of many talents.
posted by stbalbach at 7:18 AM PST - 17 comments

Ricardo Cortés has a new book talked about here and here. Previously, he wrote It's Just a Plant, talked about on O'Reilly and previously here. He also plans to write a children's book about cocaine in the near future.
posted by gman at 7:02 AM PST - 30 comments

"Carl knows how to treat the ladies. And with all of his qualities in one package, he is quite the value meal. Eat up ladies. His fries are getting cold." Fun stuff from one of the members of comedy troupe The Groundlings.
posted by jbickers at 5:15 AM PST - 28 comments

Q. Everyone tells me how great The Wire is, but I've missed the first four seasons. Should I bother with Season 5? A. Yes. Ultimately, you'll want to buy the DVD's, but until then we've got The Wire: four seasons in four minutes. (Single link U-tube)
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:38 AM PST - 61 comments

John James Audubon's Birds of America with Audubon's original text. It's laid out by family and genus but there is also an alphabetical list of plates which has bigger versions of the bird pictures. There are also links to the state birds as well as birds driven to extinction since Audubon's time.
posted by Kattullus at 11:31 PM PST - 16 comments

How Obama is branding himself in graphic design
posted by growabrain at 10:57 PM PST - 71 comments

What I did over Christmas vacation - a scale model of Minas Tirith during the Battle of Pelennor Fields from Tolkein's The Return of the King. In candy. (via oink) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 10:49 PM PST - 41 comments

"I often come back home and empty my camera of the images I have seen, then I 'wash' them of any meaning and rearrange them into personal visions." -- Franco Donaggio [more inside]
posted by netbros at 10:34 PM PST - 1 comment

It's that time of year again. The RPM Challenge has been opened again for 2008. Can you record an album of 10 songs and/or 35 minutes during the month of February and send it in by the end of the month? Previously
posted by pyramid termite at 9:09 PM PST - 19 comments

Cary Grant on LSD. Excerpted from his autobiography.
posted by Bookhouse at 4:41 PM PST - 187 comments

Rules of Thumb is a user submitted (and voted upon) collection of the world's greatest rules of thumb for different situations, from playing Blackjack to choosing a bicycle frame.
posted by jonson at 4:41 PM PST - 38 comments

10cc was NOT "The Worst Band in the World", but they played one on TV. And just about every song they recorded that didn't have 'Love' in the title ("I'm Not in..."), tested the limits of '70s Pop Music Oddness, starting with the stand-up/sit-down/doo-wop "Donna" (sitting by the telephone). [more inside]
posted by wendell at 4:34 PM PST - 45 comments

Dr. President: "The next president of the United States of America will control a $150 billion annual research budget, 200,000 scientists, and 38 major research institutions and all their related labs. This president will shape human endeavors in space, bioethics debates, and the energy landscape of the 21st century." With the coming election, the AAAS has created a new website and devoted a section of their journal Science to the Democratic and Republican candidates' positions on science and technology issues. But to help further clarify their positions, some people are calling for the candidates to have a presidential debate on science and technology. [Via The Intersection and Wired Science.]
posted by homunculus at 3:00 PM PST - 47 comments

Israeli designer Oded Ezer produces stunning works of experimental typography. He has been lauded for creating [PDF link]"...Hebrew characters that melt," but it is his more unconventional work that is truly breathtaking - made up of letters with vivacity and personality. He calls his gorgeously abstracted work "typo art," existing wholly neither in the space of art or typography, with hope that it might transcend language altogether. See his flickr stream for more sketches, works, and arresting typescapes.
posted by youarenothere at 1:19 PM PST - 20 comments

There has been a major scientific breakthrough! [more inside]
posted by aubilenon at 11:57 AM PST - 39 comments

When is the 7th Annual No Pants! Subway Ride? This Saturday, January 12th, New York City. They seem to have done it in 2006 as well. Village Voice article on 2006's shenanigans.
posted by shothotbot at 11:15 AM PST - 42 comments

Mark Kermode reviews Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. "Is that a nest of tables? No, it's Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley having some red hot passionate embrace that is positively teaky." [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:30 AM PST - 90 comments

50 Things I've Learned in 50 Years. [more inside]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 10:14 AM PST - 81 comments

Blogging the Qur'an The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting and cultural critic Ziauddin Sardar will blog a different verse or theme of the Qur'an each week. Bunting says its one of the most difficult books she's ever read, which is what a lot of non-muslims tend to think. The idea has been mooted before by those of a very similar political hue. Others are already blogging the the Bible.
posted by MrMerlot at 10:05 AM PST - 22 comments

Shameless Magazine. An independent magazine for teenage girls. [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 9:20 AM PST - 147 comments

I watched man burn to death, heard others screaming in the fog. A massive, 50-car pileup, the result of three or more crashes on I-4, has led to at least 3 fatalities and 82 injuries in central Florida near Orlando. The smoke and fog were so bad that rescue efforts were hindered. Drivers with no visibility did not know whether to stay in their burning cars or risk running out onto the highway for help.
posted by misha at 8:01 AM PST - 58 comments

For Sale: Max Yasgur's Farm [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 6:42 AM PST - 55 comments

15 Publishing Industry Trends to Watch in 2008
posted by stbalbach at 6:00 AM PST - 54 comments

September 11, 2001. It's 10:15 am and the South Tower just went down. Millions of French people are watching the live coverage of the events on TF1, France's major TV channel, with star anchorman Poivre d'Arvor doing a running commentary. Then, for a split second, a character from a famous movie happily tells us (in French subtitles) that he "did it" (18 s in the video) (Dailymotion video). [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 5:53 AM PST - 81 comments

Chicago adds a 5-cent-per-bottle tax on bottled water. Will this reduce bottled water consumption?
posted by grouse at 4:11 AM PST - 86 comments

It's round robin, user generated, choose-your-own-adventure style, web 2.0 fiction. My productivity is now permanently crippled. The cbc gives some background, if you care about that sort of thing.
posted by mock at 1:26 AM PST - 9 comments

"Video of Iran ‘attack’ on three US warships released by Pentagon"
posted by nthdegx at 1:01 AM PST - 121 comments

Rick West takes very nice photographs of tarantulas.
posted by Upton O'Good at 11:39 PM PST - 25 comments

Only China can destroy socialism. Qin Hui, one of the country's most important public intellectuals, argues "China's rampant state-dominated, welfare-lite capitalism could so undercut competitors that it could threaten the social democratic traditions that underpin the West." [As ever, via.]
posted by Abiezer at 11:14 PM PST - 26 comments

FCC to investigate Comcast's traffic-management practices. The AP and the EFF both have confirmed that they do interfere with some certain file sharing technologies. Previously.
posted by Mr_Zero at 8:38 PM PST - 27 comments

Huang Chuncai poses before his second tumour operation. (slideshow) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:47 PM PST - 43 comments

Pomme Chan makes rococo nouveau illustrations, with a felt-tip/vector art feel. Roughly 60 images to explore through navigation on the left.
posted by klangklangston at 5:29 PM PST - 23 comments

The Hope Diamond glows red when exposed to ultraviolet light. In itself, this is an interesting way to determine the provenance of a particular gem. [more inside]
posted by Araucaria at 2:50 PM PST - 55 comments

John Harris's science fiction artwork is stunning. Much of it attempts to capture scale and the hugeness of relative comparisons in the universe. From the book Mass that looks at his work: "From skyscapes to lost cities, planetary bodies to megalithic structures, Harris's concepts are truly colossal, conveying not just the sheer scale that the edifices of future-fantastical technology might attain, but also the awesome-ness, even terror, of their presence." His work has graced the covers of many science fiction books, which you may have recognized. Interestingly, there's no wikipedia article about him.
posted by SpacemanStix at 2:50 PM PST - 25 comments

The poll tax caused massive rioting in the UK. Will the pole tax move Texans to do the same? There's an interesting class-war aspect to the story. The bill specifies that the revenue generated will support sexual assault prevention programs, though the bill's legality is being litigated.
posted by aerotive at 2:35 PM PST - 50 comments

Mannequin, Fake Boobs and Real Meat in a Swing. Fake hand, holding a real heart. Self-portrait, with octopus. Mannequin with real tongue. Unborn pigs on a meat background. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 2:34 PM PST - 11 comments

Comedian Patton Oswalt has gotten a lot of mileage out of KFC's Famous Bowls ("a failure pile in a sadness bowl."); after years of mockery, he finally tries one for himself, and writes about the experience.
posted by jonson at 2:26 PM PST - 88 comments

Angry White Man. The New Republic examines the archives of Ron Paul's newsletters.
posted by empath at 12:53 PM PST - 274 comments

Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower under a gag order, recently spilled part of the beans to the Sunday Times. Considering the seriousness of the allegations: moles have infiltrated top US nuclear research facilities; the moles have sold US nuclear secrets to foreign governments; all of this behavior has been aided and abetted by top government US officials in exchange for bribes; you might think a US media outlet would be interested in the story. You'd be wrong. Now it seems she has named names. [more inside]
posted by ryoshu at 12:21 PM PST - 54 comments

Plastic Lenin chilling in Antarctica. Plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of my car. St. Joseph, helping you sell your house. Aztec cocaine mule busted at Logan Airport. Colonel Sanders in Tokyo. Santa Claus in Turkey. Ronald McDonald in Bangkok. Muffler Men all over the place. [more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:44 AM PST - 15 comments

Books that heal: bibliotherapy banishes vexations of soul. Maybe.
posted by anotherpanacea at 11:41 AM PST - 3 comments

"Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave Us." There are pictures and videos of kittens to soften the blow.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 11:29 AM PST - 55 comments

Prisoner 547 is a Rabbit in prison. He shares a cell with another Rabbit, a Frog and a Chicken. It is visiting day. In Japanese. One episode of many. [more inside]
posted by Lord_Pall at 10:57 AM PST - 23 comments

Postcards from Our Awesome Future. [via] An art exhibition stemming from the minds of Packard Jennings (whose illustrations have appeared in Adbusters) and Steve Lambert (of Anti-Advertising Agency fame); using San Francisco's infrastructure as a model for improvement, the duo answered the siren call of Objectivism through an arcology devoid of “...budgets, beauracracy [sic], politics, or physics”. [more inside]
posted by Smart Dalek at 10:12 AM PST - 11 comments

Amazingly Nostalgic. Veniamin's even got an AWESOME website.
posted by gman at 9:02 AM PST - 20 comments

Evolution of an artist.
posted by loquacious at 6:17 AM PST - 66 comments

The Academy Awards of the history blogosphere have been announced for 2007. The newest edition of the Cliopatria Awards is now out.
posted by stbalbach at 5:47 AM PST - 5 comments

If you don't live in Ireland, you may be missing out on the inimitable Soupy Norman. YT, with more of the series here. [more inside]
posted by fcummins at 12:01 AM PST - 23 comments

Nearly 60,000* American children (mostly girls) are abducted by strangers each year. After seeing a security video documenting a young girl's abduction, 15-year-old Dallas Jessup convinced her Filipino street fighting instructor to work with her on a school project and together they developed a method intended to teach young girls how to avoid Carla Brucia's fate. The resulting 47 minute video, Just Yell Fire, is viewable free of charge and teaches easy self defense moves created to help a potential victim avoid abduction or date rape. If there's a girl you love and want to protect from harm, the tips in this video may just save her life someday. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster at 10:17 PM PST - 175 comments

A recent article in the The New York Times depicts the violence in Iten, a village 18 miles outside of Elderot that has somehow managed to produce most of Kenya's best athletes. Famous for its high altitude, forgiving clay roads, and dirt track, elite runner Lorhah Kiplagat chose to base her charitable foundation for women and her training center here. The camp is now under siege. Fellow humanitarian and former world record holder in the marathon, Paul Tergat, is missing. Former Olympian Lucas Sang is dead, and countless others are injured or missing.
posted by stagewhisper at 10:04 PM PST - 9 comments

Most Likely You Will Go Your Way A remixed version of the Bob Dylan song from Bob Dylan TV on youtube (of course) [more inside]
posted by nola at 9:54 PM PST - 13 comments

How to wash a cat. Step #1: Dress for the occasion - a four-ply wet suit is suggested, with gloves and a face mask.
posted by plexi at 9:31 PM PST - 43 comments

New Orleans after Katrina, as the world knows, is a bleak, desolate place, devoid of hope and perpetually awaiting the change that never arrives. Where better to stage Waiting for Godot? [more inside]
posted by Bromius at 9:09 PM PST - 31 comments

Love thy Neighbor Photographer and author Steven Hirsh has photographed the homes of registered New York State sex offenders. A wonderful writer and photographer, this work is chilling, alarming, beautiful. I get that Quentin Tarantino feeling of beauty and disgust. Look at me, nooooo look away. The series of 24 images are on Hirsch's website.
posted by doug3505 at 9:07 PM PST - 41 comments

UNIQLO
It's a grid. You play with it. (flash)
posted by dobbs at 8:02 PM PST - 44 comments

There's a slight chance that an asteroid could impact Mars at the end of this month. Usually, collisions between heavenly bodies have vanishingly small odds (a million to one, say), but the chances on this one have been steadily improving, from 350-to-1 to 75-to-1 to 25-to-1 (link to Washington Post). Scientists say that this could be comprable to the famous Tunguska blast in Siberia a hundred years ago (not to be confused with this other Tunguska blast). [more inside]
posted by math at 7:28 PM PST - 35 comments

It smells like dirty socks, wet dog, oil, chemicals, gymnasiums, burning, vomit, and more. It induces blurred vision, disorientation, shaking and tremors, vertigo, seizures, loss of consciousness, respiratory failure, depression, sleep disorders, salivation, nausea and diarrhoea among other symptoms. Is "toxic airline syndrome" the new Gulf War Syndrome? [more inside]
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:54 PM PST - 35 comments

Who bears the burden of a corporate income tax? Certainly not corporations. Instead, the incidence might fall largely on labor, according to a new survey of three recent empirical studies published by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Tax Analysis. [more inside]
posted by "Tex" Connor and the Wily Roundup Boys at 5:07 PM PST - 74 comments

Here's Looking At You. What do you think you look like? And what do others think of you? A film about first impressions from artists Lenka Clayton and James Price.
posted by chunking express at 3:42 PM PST - 42 comments

The Manners Manifesto For example: "(11) Talk to people at the check-out. You don't have to say much. God, even something inane like, "Busy in here, today, isn't it?" or "Not as busy as usual in here, today, is it?" might put us on the road to peace in the Middle East. Carrying on grumping around and spreading those grump vibes certainly isn't going to help."
posted by feelinglistless at 3:21 PM PST - 140 comments

DDR-Modell Autos.info meticulously catalogs radio controlled and flywheel powered cars made by East German (DDR) toy makers such as Presu, Elmes, MSW, Anker, Piko, Gevo, Plasticart and Sommermeyer.
posted by riffola at 3:00 PM PST - 5 comments

Today at CES, Taser International unveiled a "handy new holster that holds not only your stun gun but a music player too." "The TASER MPH (Music Player Holster) is a combination MP3 player and TASER C2 holster."^* The C2 Personal Protector is available to consumers "in four designer colors," including leopard print, red-hot red and fashion pink. It's what they call "Fashion with a Bite."
posted by ericb at 2:36 PM PST - 53 comments