MetaFilter

Noma's Chef Rene Redzepi, whose dishes include Vintage Carrot and Chamomile; The Sea; and Asparagus and Spruce, on the science of deliciousness and the importance of using local ingredients. [more inside]
posted by lemuring at 11:41 PM PST - 8 comments

It's not your imagination — there really are that many reality shows about swamps, weddings, Louisiana, and cake. And here's visual proof.
posted by chavenet at 10:51 PM PST - 52 comments

This video will haunt your dreams (slyt). Ten tonnes of cement were pumped into a gigantic ant colony and carefully excavated, leaving the skeleton of an alien city and a billion dead ants. (via)
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:52 PM PST - 199 comments

Kristen Bell's Sloth Meltdown (SLYT)
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:14 PM PST - 134 comments

The band "OK Go" are using their signature blend of pleasant indie pop and quirky, home-grown videos to teach kids about primary colors in a new short for Sesame Street. - SLYT
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:45 PM PST - 36 comments

Le Blues De Memphis — behind the scenes at STAX & FAME Recording Studios (1969) and Hollywood Blues, a 1969 Hollywood Recording Session. Just a sample of the vintage 50s, 60s & 70s music, movies, microcode and high-speed pizza delivery at Bedazzled.tv. [sacré bleu]
posted by netbros at 6:32 PM PST - 7 comments

"Piss" Sometimes a girl just wants to get peed on. Filmmaker Bette Bentley has written, produced, starred in and co-directed a funny and very sweet short film on the bedroom negotiations of piss play. [NSFW - also possible trigger]
posted by stray at 6:01 PM PST - 84 comments

NPR is reporting that the Susan G. Komen foundation is severing it's ties and halting grants to Planned Parenthood, cutting off "hundreds of thousands of dollars", mainly earmarked for breast exams. Komen says the key reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation in Congress — a probe launched by a conservative Republican who was urged to act by anti-abortion groups. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:47 PM PST - 311 comments

A brief but hairy encounter. (SLYT) Don't miss the shocking conclusion.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:35 PM PST - 32 comments

The gap year is often a quite memorable experience for some of the London youth. (slyt)
posted by beisny at 3:32 PM PST - 23 comments

20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Gets Wrong
posted by dunkadunc at 3:26 PM PST - 179 comments

IRL : "You do anything long enough to escape the habit of living until the escape becomes the habit." A short film by a recovering WoW addict.
posted by crunchland at 3:06 PM PST - 35 comments

In honor of Philip Glass's 75th birthday (look at the cake!), here are three rather odd albums of or based on his music, all free to play:
Glassworked by U Can Unlearn Guitar ranges from drone to speed metal.
What Capitalism Was Plays Philip Glass on Accordion is as described.
Glassbreaks by dj BC mashes up Glass and Hip Hop. (previously)
posted by moonmilk at 3:00 PM PST - 22 comments

The Story of Trip-Hop's Rise Sinuous and mysterious as a plume of drifting smoke, a new sort of groove wafted two decades ago from Bristol, a bohemian university town in the west of England.... Not all local grooves take flight, but trip-hop most certainly did. Over the next two decades it was re-imagined as chill-out, downtempo, illbient and lounge music.
posted by modernnomad at 2:21 PM PST - 49 comments

Sheep Cyclone (SLYT)
posted by clorox at 2:15 PM PST - 27 comments

While Moore's Law continues to drive consumer and manufacturer expectations of technological advancement, frequency scaling has given way to parallel scaling and our most visible indicator of ever increasing transistor density is ever multiplying cores. Welcome to the Parallel Jungle where heterogeneous cores and ultimately the cloud offer far faster growth rates in parallelism than even described by Moore's Law. [more inside]
posted by I've wasted my life at 2:15 PM PST - 31 comments

Dolly Parton is two amazing singers. You've already heard her unforgettable voice at normal speed. But as John Oswald and others show, slowed down, it becomes something hauntingly lovely.
posted by Mchelly at 1:11 PM PST - 71 comments

Marcin Wichary, a designer for Google, recently visited Chicago's Stern Pinball, the only remaining pinball factory in the world. He posted some amazing photos of his trip. [more inside]
posted by Lieber Frau at 12:32 PM PST - 13 comments

New York Mag presents the balance sheets of an A-List actor for our perusal.
posted by reenum at 12:03 PM PST - 171 comments

Meet Brant Widgeon, an Astronomical Image Enhancement Engineer. This short video goes into the steps he takes to clean up the images taken of space. One of the most technically difficult parts of Brant's job, however, is dealing with space cats.
posted by routergirl at 11:37 AM PST - 11 comments

At Plano Children's Theatre, They've Shampooed All the Black Kids out of Hairspray
posted by Help, I can't stop talking! at 11:28 AM PST - 114 comments

Freedman Home For The Elderly in the Bronx had an unusual purpose at its outset in the 1920s: to house retirees who used to be wealthy but had lost their money. Now it is mostly empty. ScoutingNY.com went inside and took pictures. The abandoned upper floors are especially creepy. [found via curbed]
posted by millipede at 11:28 AM PST - 8 comments

The perils of chronic pain in recovery: As a sober addict prescribed Oxycodone, comedian Amy Dresner was careful to follow doctor's orders. Then her disease kicked in.
posted by hermitosis at 11:16 AM PST - 72 comments

Slam poet Marshall Soulful Jones performs "Touchscreen".
posted by flex at 10:22 AM PST - 11 comments

Some cats just like to be flung
posted by The Whelk at 10:05 AM PST - 67 comments

Writer and comedian A Wolfe writes a compelling piece on education, poverty, and shame.
posted by Dokterrock at 10:04 AM PST - 41 comments

"What if you took the audio from an extended trailer for Forrest Gump and matched to clips from [The Simpsons]? Well, you don’t have to, someone else did and it is fantastic (SLYT)" [more inside]
posted by bitteroldman at 9:55 AM PST - 24 comments

On the Harvard Business Review, Umair Haque talks about creating a meaningful life through meaningful work. The idea of meaningful work seems to be talked about a lot in business circles. What does that say about people in "business"?

Does meaningful work involve science (as a scientist, I say YES!), or should we just be looking for a job, and not work?
posted by source.decay at 9:53 AM PST - 40 comments

Bloomberg columnist and The Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg explains: How to Listen for Racism on the Campaign Trail [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 9:29 AM PST - 147 comments

Bruce Springsteen's upcoming tour lands Ticketmaster in hot water. Again. [more inside]
posted by griphus at 8:59 AM PST - 52 comments

The World of Corporate Logos as Seen By a Five-Year Old (SLYT)
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:21 AM PST - 86 comments

The Invention of the Heterosexual: In a new book, author Hanne Blank explains the surprisingly short history of the concepts of hetero- and homosexuality. [more inside]
posted by latkes at 7:58 AM PST - 49 comments

For the past 18 months, engineers at PayPal, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and nine other technology companies have spent their off-hours (and some on-hours) working hand in hand to tackle the problem that plagues them all: e-mail phishing. The result is DMARC, or, "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance". It's not new, but puts SPF and DKIM to work in a new way.
posted by Blake at 7:12 AM PST - 45 comments

Dub machines. Tristan Shone, aka Author & Punisher, builds and plays his own drone metal instruments.
posted by googly at 7:08 AM PST - 22 comments

Is the Earth getting lighter? BBC Radio's More or Less ("the mathematical icing on the cake of life") talks to some of the Naked Scientists from Cambridge about whether the Earth is gaining or losing mass, revealing some surprising and interesting facts.
posted by philipy at 6:59 AM PST - 12 comments

Running nearly 2000 kilometres through Western Australia, the Canning Stock Route is the longest stock route in the world. And since 2006, Indigenous Australians from WA's Mid-West, Pilbara, and Kimberley region have been sharing their stories about this region through the Canning Stock Route Project. [more inside]
posted by barnacles at 6:23 AM PST - 14 comments

In his essay “The Dead Mule Rides Again,” Jerry Leath Mills argues:

. . . there is indeed a single, simple, litmus-like test for the quality of southernness in literature, one easily formulated into a question to be asked of any literary text and whose answer may be taken as definitive, delimiting, and final. The test is: Is there a dead mule in it?"

Mills’s convincing textual evidence draws on over thirty authors, but declares Cormac McCarthy ”unchallenged king of literary mule carnage.”
posted by Fizz at 5:51 AM PST - 33 comments

Gorgeous microphotography of the growth of colonial fungi species. Featuring aspergillus, fumigatus, botrytis, trichoderma, and cladosporidium.
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 5:30 AM PST - 14 comments

In Martian Chronicles, a young-adult novella by Cory Doctorow, colonists leave a bloated earth and head towards the economic promise land of Mars. There's a fascinating spin on this tale that isn't summarize-able so go listen to it. Part 1, 2, 3.
posted by Taft at 10:29 PM PST - 125 comments

A decade after the death of renowned folklorist Alan Lomax, his vision of a "global jukebox" is being realized: his vast archive — some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of it tucked away in forgotten or inaccessible corners — is being digitized so that the collection can be accessed online. About 17,000 music tracks will be available for free streaming by the end of February. NYT article here.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:16 PM PST - 39 comments

Diplomacy isn't everyone's idea of fun. Time is one obstacle; a quick game can take six hours, and others can go on for 16 hours. More important, most of the action unfolds away from the table, in tense, furtive conversations among the seven players representing the once-great powers of Europe as they trade intelligence and plan joint maneuvers. The back-and-forth sounds like a David Mamet screenplay about the Triple Entente, especially because no promise is binding, no piece of information reliable. According to the rules (3 MB PDF), "players may say anything they wish." Eavesdropping, slander and betrayal -- back-stabbing, in Diplomacy parlance -- become arrows in your quiver, not the concealed weaponry of cheats and spoilsports.
posted by Trurl at 8:10 PM PST - 110 comments

Trale Lewous advertises Skittles. Over and over again. Also M&Ms, Snickers, Twizzlers, and Butterfingers. [more inside]
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:50 PM PST - 15 comments

ALIEN age 11 - an adaptation created by an underage artist based on the Alan Dean Foster novelization and a few stills, without having seen the actual film.
posted by Artw at 6:06 PM PST - 23 comments

Syllabi provides context and collects informative links for a wide variety of timely topics. The posts cover material ranging from The Mystery of Whales to The Violinists vs. the Stradivarius to The Finnish Approach to Education Reform. There are also regular roundups of good reads from the previous week. [more inside]
posted by Anonymous at 5:52 PM PST - 9 comments

In October, 2011, Grace Brown put up a tumblr where victims of sexual abuse can post a photo of themselves holding a quote from their attacker.
posted by gman at 5:28 PM PST - 108 comments

“The United States [owes] its fall of 27 places [to 47th] to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.” -Reporters Without Borders

Btw, Occupy Wall St. has begun heating up again for the spring with 400 arrested in Oakland yesterday. And a blooming Occupy K Street movement (DC, FB) [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 4:40 PM PST - 232 comments

Flick Knives, Dance Music and Edwardian Suits: Teddy Boys, Christmas Humphreys and the murder of John Beckley on Clapham Common in 1953.
posted by madamjujujive at 4:32 PM PST - 15 comments

The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore , was "Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, “Morris Lessmore” is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor." (SLV)
posted by HuronBob at 4:18 PM PST - 9 comments

James McBride talks about The Help, Hattie McDaniel, why black women are still winning awards for playing maids, how black culture is appropriated and represented, and whether marginalized groups in America all serve the purpose of "cultural maids". [more inside]
posted by nakedmolerats at 3:39 PM PST - 59 comments

Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses
posted by davidjmcgee at 3:39 PM PST - 41 comments

"Note (January 26, 2012): Some people have complained that this site has been sending them texts. If you're one of them, then someone else might be playing a prank on you. This Cat Facts page does not gather people's emails or phone numbers and has no technology capable of sending out messages. Sorry, there is nothing we can do to help since we aren't the ones sending the messages."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:12 PM PST - 48 comments

Visualizing Economics. Catherine Mulbrandon makes visualizations of economic data, including the variation of the top marginal tax rate over time and the high cost of buying a TV on credit.
posted by escabeche at 3:00 PM PST - 13 comments

January of last year, Wayside Creations - a YouTube troupe with a penchant for propmaking - released Nuka Break, a fan film based on Fallout: New Vegas. [more inside]
posted by absalom at 2:56 PM PST - 8 comments

Swole.me is a completely free automated diet planner that creates meals according to your goal calorie intake and how many meals you’d like to eat per day. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 2:40 PM PST - 50 comments

"Planning to make a joke on Twitter about bombing something? You might want to reconsider: According to a report from Britain, two tourists were detained and denied entry into the U.S. recently after they joked about destroying America and digging up Marilyn Monroe. That the Homeland Security Dept. and other authorities—including the FBI—are monitoring such social media as Twitter and Facebook isn’t surprising. That these authorities are willing to detain people based on what is clearly a harmless joke, however, raises questions about what the impact of all that monitoring will be."* [more inside]
posted by ericb at 2:38 PM PST - 97 comments

Face detection has various applications. Easymustache.com is perhaps not one of the most practical ones. [more inside]
posted by tykky at 1:46 PM PST - 65 comments

Tack-o-rama : Retro resources for designers. (With associated Tumblr blog) [more inside]
posted by romakimmy at 1:37 PM PST - 4 comments

Future Shock (2, 3, 4, 5) is a glimpse at society on the precipice of the information age, in this 1972 documentary based on the Alvin Toffler classic about the world gone mad, due to technology and computers. Narrated by Orson Welles. [more inside]
posted by crunchland at 1:26 PM PST - 22 comments

The Paris Review on librarian porn (nsfw).
posted by twirlip at 12:41 PM PST - 52 comments

Gigi Gordon dies at 54; crusading criminal defense lawyer. 'Defense attorney Gigi Gordon, who was hailed as 'an unstoppable force for justice,' battled corrupt police and overzealous prosecutors to free dozens of prisoners who had been wrongfully convicted.''"She changed the way criminal law was practiced in this county," said her ex-husband, Andrew M. Stein, who also is a criminal defense lawyer. "People don't realize how many people she set free."' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:40 PM PST - 20 comments

The Beardslee, Shellrude and Darr families left North America for West Africa during the 1950s. They followed what they believed to be “God’s Calling” – to spread Christianity throughout the world. Their children however - starting at the age of 6 – were required to attend the boarding school in Mamou, Guinea, run by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Cut off from their families for 9 months out of the year and without any reliable means of communication, the children quietly suffered emotional, spiritual, physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of the all-missionary staff. All God’s Children tells the personal story of the first boarding school for children of missionaries to be investigated for abuse at the hands of the parents’ missionary colleagues. The survivors and parents share their journey of seeking justice, redemption and healing. [more inside]
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:40 PM PST - 9 comments

The world of science fiction is filled with strange tales of alternate futures where one minor event reshaped the entire history of the world. In our world, one minor event in 1935 could have changed the world of animation and science fiction ushering in an era of adult animation. But, alas, that did not happen and is the topic of our sad story today. Though Bob Clampett is often remembered for his Warner Brothers cartoons, including some surreal shorts, he could have been known for bringing John Carter of Mars to life in animation. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:58 AM PST - 14 comments

FML Listings posts incredulous commentary about outrageously overpriced real estate listings in Toronto. Look at the run-down bungalows -- in North York! -- listed for a million dollars and despair. Canada's housing bubble, on full display. Via Maclean's.
posted by mcwetboy at 10:29 AM PST - 74 comments

The long running English sitcom Only Fools And Horses is going to be remade in the US…. The Guardians showbiz spies reveal the subtle tinkerings that have been made to the original formula. The funniest thing ever on television. Allegedly. (This is funnier)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:24 AM PST - 37 comments

The Story of a Suicide: a fantastic array of updates about Tyler Clementi’s death (Previously on MeFi) and Dharun Ravi’s trial.
posted by hermitosis at 10:10 AM PST - 78 comments

You may not know who the Costacos Brothers are. But if you were a sports fan in the US during the 1980's, chances are that you had one of their posters up in your room.
posted by reenum at 10:07 AM PST - 17 comments

Sharon Montrose does lovely, wonderful, and sometimes whimsical portrait photography of rescued baby animals. [more inside]
posted by quin at 10:00 AM PST - 14 comments

“Even if you've never heard of Melies, you've probably seen the film's most famous shot: a moon with a human face, wincing at the spaceship that has just crashed into its eye.” A full-color restoration of Georges Melies’ Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) debuted this year at Cannes, with a new soundtrack by Air. Full article and preview clip (NPR)
posted by spitefulcrow at 9:34 AM PST - 33 comments

Back in December, Fox News attacked the Muppets for the supposed "anti-coprorate" and "anti-capitalist" themes they saw in the movie The Muppets. Kermit and Miss Piggy are, finally, fighting back.
posted by cerebus19 at 9:22 AM PST - 61 comments

“Obituaries are not about death. They are a celebration of life." The Art of the Obituary [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:10 AM PST - 14 comments

US National Archives releases newly discovered JFK assassination tapes, of the communications of Air Force One personnel following the assassination. The digitized recording was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons at the same time as it was revealed on archives.gov
posted by stbalbach at 8:56 AM PST - 18 comments

"I would point out to you that medical explanations are modern. That Americans today want medical explanations for things that in the 19th century would have been explained by hysteria, and in the 18th century would have been explained by religious conversion experiences in the context of the Great Awakening, when people were having these types of fits, and in the 17th century by witchcraft."

posted by empath at 8:22 AM PST - 54 comments

"We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey..." -from the final three Diaries Of Robert Falcon Scott (p. 166/167) which are now available scanned, transcribed, and narrated in fully searchable form by the British Library.

Other books in the collection include:
• Leonardo Da Vinci's 500+ page Codex Arundel scanned in its entirety.
• William Blake's Notebook with explanatory notes (text & narration).
• Mozart's Musical Diary with explanatory notes (text & narration) and playable musical pieces.
• The original Alice's Adventures Underground scanned, transcribed, and narrated.

[more inside]
posted by lemuring at 5:55 AM PST - 19 comments

Awesome weird gymnastic wall coolness! Neat article from the NYT on new quasi-sport, Wall Trampoline. Bonus points for mentioning the school in Quebec where Cirque du Soleil kids train. Enjoy!
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 4:05 AM PST - 25 comments

The Snowfield You are a lone soldier wandering the aftermath of a great battle. It is the dead of winter and you won’t last long in the cold. But you are not alone. [more inside]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:24 AM PST - 24 comments

"You know how annoying it is when you're sitting on the train with a magazine and the person sitting beside you starts reading over your shoulder? Welcome to every single moment of your future. Might as well get used to it. It's an experience we'll all be sharing." --Charlie Brooker on sharing, and why the world is doomed
posted by bardic at 10:00 PM PST - 101 comments

You can say any common word to Alyssa. She will pronounce it backwards the proper way in 3 seconds or less.
posted by ColdChef at 9:48 PM PST - 74 comments

The Pan African Space Station continues to arrive... I previously posted about Chimurenga's Pan African Space Station. Back then they were doing special events, but they opened up a world to innovative and experimental African musical artists. Now the Station has gone live and is broadcasting all night/all day! (Yes, that is a popup radio player...) [more inside]
posted by artof.mulata at 8:45 PM PST - 6 comments

First Person Monster Blog with your host, special effects artist Shannon Shea. [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 8:16 PM PST - 6 comments

A useful tool for those who live in the northern reaches of our planet and wish to predict dancing skies.
posted by ubermasterson at 7:52 PM PST - 11 comments

Cynthia Nixon (of "Sex and the City" fame) told the New York Times last week that she chooses to be gay. Her comments generated a number of responses from gay bloggers, some angry, some not so much, and generated enough heat to be covered by the AP. In today's New York Times, Frank Bruni tries to make sense of it all.
posted by gertzedek at 7:50 PM PST - 89 comments

Links from Studio Olafur Eliasson
posted by beshtya at 7:24 PM PST - 9 comments

78 78s - In Search Of Lost Time - is a streaming mix of beautiful 78s from around the world, collected and curated by Ian Nagoski. "I started sifting through boxes of junky old 78s that no one else wanted about 15 years ago, and almost right away, I made a rule: Anything that wasn't in English, buy it." [more inside]
posted by carter at 6:00 PM PST - 15 comments

Never liked it anyway: A website to get rid of unwanted/left-over gifts from bad relationships. There are tales, and tips on moving on.
posted by vidur at 5:20 PM PST - 40 comments

David Cronenberg talks to the LA Review of Books about making movies
posted by Artw at 5:10 PM PST - 14 comments

So, Nickelodeon, you tell us that Spongebob Squarepants lives in a pineapple upside down house at the bottom of the sea. Are you really sure about that? Beware of misleading your viewers about the universe, Nickelodeon! [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 2:59 PM PST - 66 comments

In the late 1970s Jorge Luis Borges edited a 33-volume series of fantastic tales by many authors, from Jack London to Pu Songling, Leopoldo Lugones to Henry James. The series was called "The Library of Babel," after the Borges story of the same title. In 2009, Grant Monroe found a directory of Spanish-language science fiction, fantasy, terror and mystery stories, listing the contents of the 33 volumes -- JLB's own favorite weird tales both well-known and obscure -- and began tracking down links to each of the stories, one by one: "Searching the Library of Babel". [more inside]
posted by finnb at 2:15 PM PST - 11 comments

The First Word. A new Electric Sheep comic by Patrick Farley on the psychedelic origins of language. [NSFW, Via]
posted by homunculus at 1:25 PM PST - 37 comments

The Cost of Knowledge lets scientists register their support for a boycott of all Elsevier journals for their support of SOPA, PIPA (tag) and the Research Works Act (previously, WP, MLA, UK, Oz, etc.). It appears the boycott was inspired by Field's medalist Tim Gowers' recent comments describing his personal boycott of Elsevier journals. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 12:55 PM PST - 60 comments

Rabbit plays sheepdog. (SLYT)
posted by sardonyx at 10:11 AM PST - 40 comments

London coffee bars of the 1950s (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:09 AM PST - 63 comments

Beautiful Day at the Dog Park - Dogs playing in slow motion.
posted by quin at 9:51 AM PST - 14 comments

Is ADHD nature or nurture? Discuss. [more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:37 AM PST - 226 comments

In 1962, the New York Times called it a masterpiece, and it won the Oscar for best foreign film that year. If you can't see it any other way, one reviewer on IMDB will rent a theater and screen it for you - if you don't mind a trip to Melbourne. Sundays and Cybele (Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray) is worth tracking down, however you manage. [more inside]
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 9:34 AM PST - 8 comments

After years of rumored depression, drug and alcohol addiction, and legal issues, D'Angelo is poised to make a comeback. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 8:45 AM PST - 26 comments

In an age where composite video devices are oft relegated to thrift stores, select videographers are embracing the format and its analog roots via video synthesis. [more inside]
posted by I've wasted my life at 8:43 AM PST - 14 comments

Any shortlist of the top wrestling promo botches in history would include Lex Luger's t-shirt and the debut of the Shockmaster. But it is unlikely that anything will ever surpass Hulk Hogan setting up his Wrestlemania XIX feud with Vince McMahon.
posted by Trurl at 8:33 AM PST - 20 comments

Colombian video artist Dicken Schrader covers Depeche Mode songs with the help of his young children, Milah and Korben, using some unexpected objects as instruments and illustrative props. Three split-screen videos: "Strangelove", "Everything Counts", & "Shake The Disease".
posted by flex at 7:57 AM PST - 22 comments

A time-lapse video of a Mongolian family assembling a yurt near the Russian border.
posted by gman at 7:39 AM PST - 22 comments

Sarah and the Seed - a 5-part comic about hope and babies by Ryan A.
posted by heatherann at 7:31 AM PST - 20 comments

The Guga Hunters Of Ness. (SLVimeo) [more inside]
posted by veryape at 7:05 AM PST - 8 comments

In 1970 Timothy Leary recorded an album called "You Can Be Anyone This Time Around". Now largely forgotten, without even a Wikipedia entry, the title track is worth a listen. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:14 AM PST - 29 comments

First PC game, DONKEY.BAS, comes to iPhone and iPad. [more inside]
posted by Ad hominem at 12:02 AM PST - 22 comments

Toolimation: An animated take on building up a touring bike [SLYT]
posted by BlooPen at 9:22 PM PST - 18 comments

Nyancat snake!
posted by Tarumba at 7:54 PM PST - 26 comments

We've had a lot of posts about Bohemian Rhapsody, but this is worth one more listen. Richie Castellano has put together a one man show, split screen version of Queen's hit, and nails it!
posted by HuronBob at 7:36 PM PST - 45 comments

Benny Anderssons Orkester has been creating their own special blend of pop, big band jazz and Swedish folk music for over a decade now. See them in a delightful 2-hour concert recorded last summer courtesy of SVT Play. Part 1 [59m, expires Feb 7], Part 2 [59m, expires Feb 14] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:15 PM PST - 8 comments

Food and drink menus from the international airlines, railways, and cruise ships of decades past (Click "Digital Images" link in each carrier's thread). Courtesy of the Northwestern University Transportation Library's Menu Collection. [Via]
posted by Rykey at 6:58 PM PST - 25 comments

Jump Error [SLYT] [more inside]
posted by rebent at 6:55 PM PST - 6 comments

25 Things I Learned from Opening a Bookstore.
posted by jeremy b at 5:28 PM PST - 139 comments

Former Black Panther patches together purpose in Africa exile. 'Most of O'Neal's big dreams have faded over the years, or come to feel silly. Like beating the 42-year-old federal gun charges that caused him to flee the United States. Like the global socialist revolution that he was supposed to help lead. Like returning home to the streets of his Midwestern childhood. Like winning citizenship in his adopted African country, and the prize that's eluded him on two continents: the feeling of belonging somewhere.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 4:46 PM PST - 11 comments

The great pianist-arranger-composer Clare Fischer has died. Besides being a mean pianist who even Herbie Hancock called a huge influence, very few could claim the achievements of this man, who worked with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie, the Hi-Los and other jazzmen to Prince, Rufus and Chaka Khan, Paul McCartney, Prince, and so many more.
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 4:22 PM PST - 9 comments

Al Jazeera takes a look at the K-Pop Wave (YouTube link) [more inside]
posted by needled at 3:19 PM PST - 50 comments

It took the graphic novelist Craig Thompson seven years to complete Habibi, his epic exploration of child slavery and sexual awakening in an imaginary Middle-Eastern kingdom. Here he charts its creation from first thoughts to finished pages.
posted by Artw at 3:00 PM PST - 23 comments

A list of pothead novels.
posted by stinkycheese at 12:30 PM PST - 61 comments

The Pojman Pocket Protector Collection
posted by sciurus at 12:20 PM PST - 18 comments

CBC Radio's Day 6 is holding a contest to break, in one sentence, all of Elmore Leonard's 10 writing rules.
posted by anothermug at 11:51 AM PST - 50 comments

Ball Boy's Quick Catch steals attention from Nadal-Federer Aussie Open semifinal match. ''I didn't have much time to think about it. I just stuck my hand out and the ball just stayed there. I couldn't believe it myself but then I just had to get straight on with the match." Dylan Colaci's catching skills were compared to those of Australia's master of close fielding Ricky Ponting. Rafael Nadal went on to beat Roger Federer in four sets and will meet Novak Djokovic in tonight's men's final.
posted by sweetkid at 11:44 AM PST - 21 comments

American writer abducted in Somalia. A writer and travel journalist from Manhattan Beach, Calif. has been kidnapped by Somali pirates. [more inside]
posted by pallen123 at 11:21 AM PST - 72 comments

Incident reports from police departments can be boring, staid affairs. Not so with those from University of Texas at Austin. This week's highlights include a budding horticulturist with a marijuana growing habit, a non-alcoholic student with catlike reflexes and a man who enjoys singing in trees. Via TM Daily Post.
posted by Leezie at 11:00 AM PST - 22 comments

Smother Goose, an invaluable resource for anyone who was ever traumatized by a childhood "classic", covers everything from popular kids' books to bizarre movies, even that odd little song you had memorized as a kid. [more inside]
posted by misha at 10:09 AM PST - 25 comments

The Nightmare Before Christmas' " This Is Halloween " sung by everyone's favorite turrets and murderous AI in " This Is Aperture "
posted by The Whelk at 8:40 AM PST - 13 comments

Dutch royal railway waiting rooms The Dutch railway system has published 360 degree videos of the waiting rooms that were constructed for the royal family at the end of the 19th century. [more inside]
posted by joost de vries at 8:32 AM PST - 29 comments

Astronomical... the solar system in book form
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:03 AM PST - 24 comments

Pocoyó is a charming little animated children's show from Spain. Many episodes are available online in English (narrated by Stephen Fry), in the original Spanish, and in a few other languages. You can make your own Pocoyo-style avatar and read the Pocoyo blog at the show's website. [more inside]
posted by flex at 7:56 AM PST - 22 comments

Marx for Beginners (running time: 7 minutes)
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 6:31 AM PST - 26 comments

Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Disney, Pixar, Intuit and Lucasfilm are facing a lawsuit for their for their "no poaching" agreements (Bloomberg, TechCrunch). [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 5:31 AM PST - 59 comments

To get one large point out of the way: In the new book, The Socialist Car: Automobility in the Eastern Bloc, several contributors rapidly acknowledge the oxymoron of the title as well as the practice of owning a car in the former Soviet Empire. The private automobile, that avatar of western individualism, is difficult to square with collectivist notions. And once its owners were at the wheel, these socialist automobiles were often difficult to reconcile with notions of mechanical reliability. More than one contemporary joke appears in the text; the introduction, for instance offers, “Why does a Trabant have a heated rear window? To keep your hands warm when pushing it.” All that aside, the collection of essays edited by Lewis Siegelbaum, is a fascinating look at automobile use, production, and urban planning behind the Iron Curtain. It reveals a system that, if far from socialist or egalitarian in origin, created a culture of automobile use distinct from the western world.
posted by infini at 2:36 AM PST - 23 comments

First recorded 50 years ago, Peter Paul and Mary's Puff the Magic Dragon has a rather sad ending: Puff 'sadly slips into his cave' while little Jackie Paper grows up and puts his childhood behind him. But in 2007, Peter Yarrow published a book, Puff, the Magic Dragon, in which the classic song remains the same, but whose illustrations give us a new glimpse into Puff's future. Here is Mr. Yarrow, performing the song with his daughter Bethany at Woodstock's Bearsville Theatre, in '07. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:51 PM PST - 49 comments

Anthony Griffith talks about the highs and lows of having his daughter fighting cancer as he struggles to be funny.
posted by pjern at 11:12 PM PST - 22 comments

Why History Needs Software Piracy: How copy protection and app stores could deny future generations their cultural legacy.
posted by homunculus at 8:54 PM PST - 53 comments

Photographs of the Prison Chess series were taken in 2008 and 2009 in a maximum security facility of the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:45 PM PST - 18 comments

Problem: There haven't been enough electronica genres clumsily co-opted by pop! Also, we need more modern interpretations of awkward '80s fashions. Solution: Party Rock Anthem. [more inside]
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:24 PM PST - 109 comments

Play ChatChat.
Description: A multiplayer game about being a cat.
Instructions: Be a cat.
(By Terry Cavanagh, who brought you VVVVVV).
posted by nobody at 8:20 PM PST - 34 comments

Let me introduce you to Kai Davis and her poem "Truth" (NSFW); a powerful commentary, on racism and perceived intelligence, which has been quietly circulating the web since December 2011. While the poet herself does not seem to have a web page, Davis' slam poetry is being noticed in slam poetry circles as well as on Tumblr. [more inside]
posted by DisreputableDog at 7:41 PM PST - 73 comments

While you may be familiar with popular video games like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto or Call Of Duty, there is another genre of video simulation games dedicated to the more mundane, albeit vital aspects of life: [MLYT]
Street Cleaning Simulator
Woodcutter Simulator
Oil Platform Simulator
Bus and Cable Car Simulator
Demolition Company Simulator
Ambulance Simulator
Agricultural Simulator
They all appear to be made by the same German Game Designer. [more inside]
posted by AndrewKemendo at 7:23 PM PST - 43 comments

After announcing their reunion, all 220,000 tickets for the first three shows of the Stone Roses 2012 world tour sold out in just 68 minutes. [more inside]
posted by ancillary at 6:21 PM PST - 71 comments

An internet search, even in these days of abundant information, yields only that the pamphlets can be found in various library collections, and that they continued to be produced into the '70s. And that Edmund Wilson once sent one, "Mr. P. Squiggle's Reward," to Nabokov, calling it "one of the oddest of many odd things that are sent me by unknown people." He also got the title wrong, dubbing it "Mr. P. Squiggle's Revenge," which is probably significant. But that’s it: nothing about Volk or McCalib.

Epitomes was a series of pamphlets published by Elwin Volk and Dennis McCalib. Few traces of Volk's life are to be found, but he seems to have been a lawyer, and wrote at least a couple of pamphlets about law, which he self-published in Pasadena. McCalib is equally elusive. A man by that name contributed to an issue of One: The Homosexual Viewpoint in 1964. A Dennis McCalib also used the pseudonym Lord Fuzzy. The aforementioned "Mr. P. Squiggle's Reward" got a curt, two half-sentence dismissal in Poetry Magazine, otherwise these pamphlets seem not to have troubled the literary world. Someone donated their manuscripts to UCLA where they rest undigitized in fourteen boxes. But Library of Congress has scanned a total of twenty-six pages in high resolution.
posted by Kattullus at 6:17 PM PST - 9 comments

Cats On Film brings us My Day, By Jonesy. What's a cat to do when all the can-openers seem to have their attention focussed on the giant hairless kitten which just burst out of one of their chests?
posted by hippybear at 5:48 PM PST - 8 comments

http://lowcommitmentprojects.com/
posted by deanklear at 5:19 PM PST - 30 comments

StateTable:  US/Canada  states, provinces,  territories and minor possessions as CSV, SQL, HTML form elements, PHP arrays, and more. All the countries in the world, as a text list, CSV and API (from the very handy and open Factual).
Also: FreeMapTools, including “how far can I travel from any point on the Earth in a certain time, using a form of ground transportation?”, and “If I dug a tunnel straight through the planet, where should I emerge?” (previously)
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 4:07 PM PST - 11 comments

Take a ride through The Villages, FL, a retirement community where the Joneses are defined by... golf carts.
posted by troll at 3:47 PM PST - 37 comments

House music, particularly French house, relies heavily on sampling bits of material from all kinds of audio sources (i.e disco and classic rock). Find out how it works and where the samples from dozens of house tracks originated in this series of excellent youtube videos.
posted by Taft at 3:24 PM PST - 7 comments

Is Newt Gingrich’s plan for a moon mine science fiction? The technology may be in place, but is there any reason to go?
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM PST - 177 comments

on Goals Scored renders (largely English) football information into a variety of visualizations, some trivial, some striking. Test your knowledge of Premier League club crests, or identify goalscorers by the shape of their productivity. [more inside]
posted by Errant at 2:28 PM PST - 11 comments

Someone worked out when Ice Cube had his 'good day.'
posted by secretdark at 1:29 PM PST - 145 comments

After the Wire, actress Sonja Sohn couldn’t leave Baltimore’s troubled streets behind.
posted by modernnomad at 1:15 PM PST - 16 comments

"I suppose quite a few of you are gonna be sorta wondering what the hells going on and who the hell we are, em, but um, we're called Fingathing and we're from Manchester. My name's Peter Parker and I play, like, one turntable, and this dude over here is Sneaky, and he plays the double bass. And basically that's it. That's how we make our music." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:43 PM PST - 15 comments

The firm represented the justice, who never paid for the work. Now the firm litigates cases before him. Remember Michael Gableman, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice? Now he is the subject of a likely fruitless petition by a Democratic state representative, Kelda Roys, regarding the "free" legal work done for him by a prominent firm which still litigates before him. Previously on MetaFilter on the Wisconsin Supreme Court justices. Previously on MetaFilter on Wisconsin recall elections.
posted by bearwife at 12:37 PM PST - 12 comments

A UK man who downloaded recipes on how to make explosive devices has been jailed under the controversial Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which makes it a crime to be "in possession of records of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". [more inside]
posted by unSane at 12:25 PM PST - 81 comments

What you may or may not have seen hidden in "The Shining".
posted by cashman at 11:16 AM PST - 215 comments

The girl with 7 horses – Photographer Ulrika Kestere uses clothing to form images of horses in a lovely photo-essay. [more inside]
posted by quin at 10:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Does California need the high-speed rail project? The New York Times published six opinion pieces debating the merits of the $90 billion high-speed rail plan that would connect Los Angeles to San Francisco. Streetsblog has a summary of the six opinions. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:41 AM PST - 122 comments

The seven biggest economic lies with Robert Reich.
posted by latkes at 9:06 AM PST - 118 comments

Contrary to popular belief, cats can make great DJs. It's just a small sample, but it's nice to see him really get into it as the set progresses.
posted by gman at 8:58 AM PST - 31 comments

Unsure what to give your special someone for Valentines Day this year? Why not give their name to one of the Bronx Zoo's 58,000 Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
posted by The Whelk at 8:35 AM PST - 43 comments

Artist Roger Ibars' "Hard-wired devices" are vintage video game controllers linked to clocks and other devices.
posted by griphus at 7:35 AM PST - 20 comments

DIY bungee jumping
posted by defenestration at 7:22 AM PST - 44 comments

Election year politics may be cruel, cynical and disheartening, but nerdy rapper Adam Warrock's new EP reminds us that there is one candidate whose message of positivity never wavers, even while it might be at odds with her name. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:02 AM PST - 18 comments

Alexander Alekhine lies dead. Little Samuel Reshevksy gives a simultaneous exhibition. Mikhail Tal presents his most chilling death stare. Fischer plays Fidel. Che meets Miguel Najdorf. Reuben Fine cavorts with a beauty on a beach, showing her his moves. Anatoly Karpov hangs out with Salvador Dali. The grave of Jose Raoul Capablanca. Klaus Junge plays in his Nazi uniform. Sometimes hit and miss, but it has to be said that this a great epic thread of vintage chess photos.
posted by rahulrg at 6:38 AM PST - 17 comments

Musaic Box is a puzzle game that uses music to define the pieces. Find outlines for songs, and then try to put them together...very fun and addicting. Don't try to play with the sound off obviously.
posted by schyler523 at 6:37 AM PST - 6 comments

"Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically." Link. [more inside]
posted by BobbyVan at 5:59 AM PST - 267 comments

Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, in which the author, Erik Andrulis, proposes an "axiomatic, experimentally testable, empirically consistent, heuristic, and unified theory of life." He also claims to be able to unify physics.....ahem. All this is done using the chemistry notation you learned in highschool. [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:57 AM PST - 53 comments

A serial intern in the finance sector speaks: "Applying for internships is so tiresome and bruising. It's like dating, you sit by the phone waiting for a call. Back in my days at university I would get up at 5.30am or 6am. First I'd go jogging, then send out an application for an internship. Every morning. It's so painful to hear 'no' all the time."
posted by feelinglistless at 5:21 AM PST - 82 comments

The Jerry Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection, given to Indiana University in 2006, is now online, with images and descriptions of some 24,000 puzzles, from an 18th century Japanese puzzle to nearly 300 kinds of Rubik's Cubes. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:54 AM PST - 11 comments

How to play Street Fighter by oneself (by the one and only desk)
posted by kilo hertz at 11:23 PM PST - 14 comments

Minecraft was officially released a few months, back, but that doesn't mean that the game still isn't being updated. Aside from new features like Kitties and Jungles being added in the latest update, there are hundreds of active mods available which are updated constantly. [more inside]
posted by empath at 8:54 PM PST - 68 comments

Drinking: A Love Story, Chapter Six: Sex - by Caroline Knapp
posted by Trurl at 8:06 PM PST - 36 comments

Dear Mr. Kotter,
Please excuse Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo DeHuevos Epstein from class. He has an appointment in heaven.
Signed,
Epstein's Mother
[more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:21 PM PST - 87 comments

Jo Mora was a California (by way of Uruguay and Boston) painter, sculptor, author, photographer and, most notably, map-maker. He sculpted the many figures on the Monterey County Courthouse and designed the chapel in the Carmel mission. He spent three years living with and photographing the Navajo and Hopi in Arizona. He authored and illustrated a number of children's books. Of all his many talents, Mora was probably best known for his unique maps ("cartes" as he called them) of the West. He created incredibly detailed maps, interesting, funny and maybe anachronistically racial, of California, Yosemite and Yellowstone. Music fans will recognize Mora's work from the Byrds' 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo (full carte here).
posted by one_bean at 6:59 PM PST - 4 comments

After a string of projector malfunctions occurred during a screening of Martin Scorsese's Hugo in New York City, the pre-show advertising began playing over the film's climactic scene. Metahilarity ensues.
posted by alexoscar at 6:41 PM PST - 42 comments

"It will probably always be unclear who, exactly, Jonathan Keith Idema really was".
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:38 PM PST - 33 comments

Former Fox News host Glenn Beck has produced a video appropriating Anonymous' trademark style. It is unclear whether he is mocking the group or whether he seeks to join them. If "we are all Anonymous," then can't he be Anonymous, too? (direct youtube link, for those wishing to avoid Beck's site.)
posted by nobody at 3:40 PM PST - 100 comments

The granting of gay marriage rights in New Hampshire seemed to be a step in the right direction. However recently there is a push back to refuse service in public places to the gay community based on religious objections, seemingly against earlier legislation written to stop this exact type of discrimination.

You may or may not remember a similar story featuring an upstate New York town clerk (NYT).
posted by aloiv2 at 3:11 PM PST - 63 comments

Animals in hats [more inside]
posted by coriolisdave at 3:01 PM PST - 18 comments

TVTropes calls it a "Neo-Dada art form consisting of video remixes. . . to confuse, stun or entertain the viewer". A recent top ten list (more here) fills the gaps of that description with ample WTF, which is almost too appropriate for a video genre that first garnered attention as a misdirection troll. [more inside]
posted by I've wasted my life at 2:57 PM PST - 33 comments

John Tyler was the 10th president of the United States. Born in 1790 he became president upon the death of "Tippecanoe" William Henry Harrison. His nickname given by his detractors was "His accidency." He led in relative obscurity. His Grandchildren are still alive.
posted by Xurando at 2:27 PM PST - 37 comments

The Atemporality of "Ruin Porn": Part I, Part II.
posted by Artw at 12:01 PM PST - 30 comments

""If technology is a drug--and it does feel like a drug--then what, precisely, are the side-effects?" "Charlie Brooker (previously), the writer of E4's Dead Set, returns with a suspenseful, satirical three-part mini-series that taps into collective unease about our modern world" - Black Mirror [more inside]
posted by mrgrimm at 12:01 PM PST - 76 comments

Dengue Fever is an L.A. band that fuses Cambodian pop music with psychedelic rock. They have a youtube channel where you can find highlights such as a live acoustic version of their song Uku as well as a clip from the 2007 documentary Sleepwalking Through The Mekong. NPR has an interview with them in 2008 and a review of their second album Escape From Dragon House. Peter Gabriel is a fan.
posted by mannequito at 11:08 AM PST - 29 comments

After twenty-five years of thinking about this problem I decided to write a web page about it. Here is the problem: Can you find three foods such that all three do not go together (by any reasonable definition of foods "going together") but every pair of them does go together? [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 10:47 AM PST - 166 comments

Psychology Today delves into the societal and psychological issues raised by casual sex.
posted by reenum at 10:43 AM PST - 32 comments

Matt Damon Craft
posted by The Devil Tesla at 10:37 AM PST - 57 comments

The mind-altering power of the Mackie DL1608 Digital Mixer needs to be seen to be believed. SLYT.
posted by Paid In Full at 10:35 AM PST - 50 comments

Laser Pointer Hack! A DIY guide to turning your laser pointer into a laser cannon.
posted by quin at 10:24 AM PST - 20 comments

80s Sports Posters Jerry Rice: Goldfingers. Patrick Ewing: Madison Square Guardian.
posted by sweetkid at 10:01 AM PST - 38 comments

JADs International, makers of fine Star Wars and Star Trek related perfumes, have released a new line to coincide with The Avengers Movie. [more inside]
posted by mikoroshi at 9:58 AM PST - 17 comments

Lego figurines, Kinder surprises and other toys played the role of 'demonstrators'. Police in Siberian city ask prosecutors to investigate legality of protest involving display of toy figures holding miniature placards. "Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event." [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 9:55 AM PST - 24 comments

Adam Smith is the first to admit that his debut feature film is not the easiest sell in the history of cinema. "There's no real narrative strand," says the director. "It's 85 minutes long, it's got paintballs exploding – and clowns..." Don't Think, The Chemical Brothers in concert. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:54 AM PST - 6 comments

Inshallah Kashmir: Living Terror is Oscar-nominated director Ashvin Kumar's brand new documentary, which is banned in India, that provides the perspectives of people that rarely receive positive mainstream media attention. [more inside]
posted by gman at 8:49 AM PST - 4 comments

Stephen Colbert interviews Maurice Sendak: part one (aired 1/24), part 2 (aired 1/25) [more inside]
posted by flex at 8:13 AM PST - 54 comments

Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions - The government's case also contained potentially embarrassing allegations that top Google executives, including co-founder Larry Page, were told about legal problems with the drug ads. [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:12 AM PST - 60 comments

The Hidden Mythos of Police Academy.
posted by veedubya at 8:07 AM PST - 37 comments

Japanese scientists think they may have an explanation for how a three-dimensional universe emerged from the original nine dimensions (plus time) of space: the universe had nine spatial dimensions at its birth, but only three of them experienced expansion. A Hollywood sound designer tries to explain ten dimensions. Efforts to portray an eighth dimension have already been explored.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:05 AM PST - 58 comments

The long strange trip of a Singaporean Cold-War-era assault rifle into the hands of Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, and what it reveals about the unintended consequences of the global trade in small arms and ammunition. [slnyt]
posted by killdevil at 8:00 AM PST - 9 comments

Australian PM Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott are dragged from an Australia Day lunch by their security details after armed Aboriginal protesters surrounded the venue. The protestors arrived from the nearby Tent Embassy after comments made by Tony Abbott that it was time for the Embassy to "move on" - comments particularly pointed on a day many are trying to rebrand as Invasion Day.
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 7:40 AM PST - 59 comments

Here's a 30-second Video of a Snoring Dormouse. [SLYT]
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:05 AM PST - 36 comments

As part of a university course, Steve Wheen has started the Pothole Gardener project. He uses plants and miniatures to create sanctuaries of tranquility in broken urban places. via
posted by infini at 6:39 AM PST - 6 comments

Charles Murray, author of the controversial 1994 work The Bell Curve, has a new book coming out, entitled Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. He's included a twenty-five question, weighted quiz to get a feel for how in touch you are with mainstream, blue-collar American culture. It's not automated, so you'll need pen and paper. [more inside]
posted by valkyryn at 6:38 AM PST - 357 comments

"Jim Henson made this film in 1963 for The Bell System. Specifically, it was made for an elite seminar given for business owners, on the then-brand-new topic — Data Communications." - SLYT, from AT&T's Archives YouTube channel.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:29 AM PST - 8 comments

Reddit's r/EarthPorn is the largest of the SFW Porn Network, dedicated to large, hi-res photos. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:12 AM PST - 10 comments

Check Out Some New People: The Human Library is an innovative method designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding.The main characteristics of the project are to be found in its simplicity and positive approach. Started in Copenhagen, Denmark 12 years ago, it has since Spread, and new libraries continue to pop-up All Over the Place.
posted by Blake at 5:11 AM PST - 6 comments

UK Photographers who compose a picture in a similar way to an existing image [PDF] risk copyright infringement, lawyers have warned following the first court ruling of its kind.
posted by unSane at 5:02 AM PST - 55 comments

Wastelander Panda Prologue [more inside]
posted by cmoj at 4:43 AM PST - 7 comments

Loudly and with much smashing, FilmCritHulk has become a major presence in the world of online film criticism with his semiotical essays on storytelling, cinematic principles, and media theory. Starting first on his personal blog, Hulk now writes for Badass Digest [previously] (the lifestyle blog corner of the Alamo Drafthouse empire [previously, previously]) [more inside]
posted by kcalder at 4:40 AM PST - 24 comments

Four years ago, Joshua Heineman (previously) started posting animated GIFs made from turn of the century stereoscope photos, bringing this early 3D technique back to life. Now he's teamed with NYPL Labs to create an interface to let you make your own GIFs and 3D anaglyphs from the 40,000 digitized stereographs in the collections of the New York Public Library. (Background from the NYT)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:38 AM PST - 8 comments

How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back: New York’s biggest borough has reinvented itself as a postindustrial hot spot. In City Journal, Kay S. Hymowitz walks us through a story of entrepreneurial "creative class gentrification" in NYC's most populous borough. [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:26 AM PST - 86 comments

They are off by 20 years and a set of genitals in my case... Follow the link in the text to find out if Google has done any better with you.
posted by moneyjane at 12:02 AM PST - 131 comments

Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos has passed away. "[He was] possessed of a singular style that has long divided critics... visually evocative, often beautiful, his films contain long sections with little or no dialogue." In 1995, he won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes for Ulysses' Gaze, and three years later, the Palme D'Or for Eternity and a Day. A career in clips. [more inside]
posted by phaedon at 12:00 AM PST - 9 comments

Motorsport - Love For Life The latest video created by Finn Antti Kalhol, Motorsport - Love For Life is a roughly four and a half minute meditation on auto racing, suffering and love. [more inside]
posted by basicchannel at 10:23 PM PST - 25 comments

The USDA has released an updated version of its plant hardiness zone map. Based on low temperatures from 1976 to 2005, it puts most US locations into a slightly warmer planting zone. While many headlines link the overall changes with global warming, the map also reflects factors such as urban heat, prevailing winds, and the slope of the land. The Washington Post has an interactive graphic showing the old and new zones.
posted by pernoctalian at 9:00 PM PST - 22 comments

"Gridiron League is a collection of idealized NFL insignias that pay tribute to each team's history and geography in a period-specific aesthetic that glorifies the Vince Lombardi-era over the Cold-Activated-era. This is not an exercise in nostalgia but an interpretation of the league's founding principles through the symbols that we, as football fans, identify with most." [more inside]
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:49 PM PST - 45 comments

Ultramapping - outstanding and cool maps of all types, collected at Sha Hwang's Pinterest pinboard.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:43 PM PST - 12 comments

Handmade Cinema. A guide to experimental film and filmmakers.
posted by Pope Xanax IV at 8:42 PM PST - 3 comments

[all links nsfw] Although [Lisa] Lyon briefly served as unofficial chairperson for women’s bodybuilding in its infancy, her fondest desire was to explore bodybuilding as an artistic medium. Elevating bodybuilding to the level of fine art, Lyon was photographed by the likes of Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe, and was the first female bodybuilder to appear in Playboy.* [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:01 PM PST - 27 comments

In 1993, in the era of television reinvention following the earthquake of Twin Peaks, ABC aired a 6-hour miniseries executive produced by Oliver Stone and Bruce Wagner -- Wild Palms. Featuring a monster cast (James Belushi, Dana Delaney, Robert Loggia, Angie Dickenson, Kim Cattrall, Ernie Hudson, Nick Mancuso, Bebe Neuwirth and Brad Dourif, just to name a few) and with episodes directed by the likes of Kathryn Bigelow and Phil Joanou, it was a near-future cyberpunkish surreal Television Event that the New York Times described as "nothing so much as an acid freak's fantasy, drenched in paranoia and more pop-culture allusions than a Dennis Miller monologue." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:44 PM PST - 49 comments

It's a day of high jinx, high revelry and high people in Australia; a day when a large and vocal majority come together to "celebrate what's great" about this country. But what is the meaning of all this fanfare? What is the true origin of this passionately marked day of facepaint and binge drinking? Is everyone in Australia so keen on this particular anniversary? To get to bottom of these questions, and more, join your amiable host Robert Foster [previously] as he conducts a high-octane, high-frequency satellite link-up with a representative of the Mainstream Australian media: multi-Logie award-winning broadcaster, entertainer, emu-wrangler and true blue Aussie, Kenneth Oathcarn. Rap News Episode 11: Australia Day
WARNING: contains adult Australian vernacular - viewer discretion is strongly advised.
posted by finite at 7:13 PM PST - 12 comments

Canadian queer magazine Xtra! has found itself at the center of controversy after refusing to refer to certain transgendered interviewees by their preferred pronoun: "they." [more inside]
posted by asnider at 6:59 PM PST - 170 comments

in which the owner of The New York Knicks, James Dolan, happens to front a blues band - JD & The Straight Shot
posted by beisny at 6:24 PM PST - 13 comments

It's hard to tell where the wired world ends and the wild one begins. For years, wildlife cameras around Banff national park captured photos of animals to track their activity. One of those animals, a female grizzly identified as Bear 71, in now the subject of an NFB interactive documentary assembled from those photos.
posted by RobotHero at 6:23 PM PST - 14 comments

WPS (Wi-fi Protected Setup) is a protocol used by many wireless routers to make it easy to use wireless printers and other networked peripherals. Recently researchers revealed that the protocol was unsafe. It turns out that the PIN password space is only 11,000, and most routers don't object to repeated failed attempts to log in. As a result, it is possible to brute-force try every PIN in two-four hours. An open source program called Reaver has now been released which will do this. The Department of Homeland Security recommends disabling WPS on all routers, but not all routers permit it to be disabled.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:22 PM PST - 41 comments

Nicol Williamson passed away on December 16th in Amsterdam from esophageal cancer at the age of 73. You might remember him as Merlin in Excalibur or Father Morning in Exorcist III. Rest in Peace
posted by tribalspice at 5:44 PM PST - 37 comments

Susan Blackwell is an American actress, writer and singer, best known for playing herself in the musical [title of show].^[1] The web series "Side by Side by Susan Blackwell" chronicles her unconventional encounters with Broadway celebrities: sorting laundry with Daniel Radcliffe, feeding goats with Jonathan Groff, researching rectal surgeries with Norbert Leo Butz, naming dogs with Zachary Quinto and consulting a ouija board with Andrew Rannells, to name a few. [more inside]
posted by Zephyrial at 5:41 PM PST - 4 comments

Alex Gross converts antique cabinet card portraits into pop caricatures (larger collection). Chris McMahon creates involuntary collaborations with bland landscape paintings he picks up at yard sales, similar to John Lytle Wilson's Corrected Paintings. And then you have fat cats in art, or Great Artist's Mews.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:13 PM PST - 10 comments

What happens when a Southern paleontologist falls for a creationist? According to Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, it might go a little something like this.
posted by yellowbinder at 2:30 PM PST - 29 comments

In 2002, Doug Monroe placed his parents in assisted living. A decade later, he's looking back at "the weighty financial and emotional costs that come with a parent's immortality": The Long Goodbye.
posted by zarq at 1:39 PM PST - 85 comments

A pair of Toronto high school students sent a Lego man into space two weeks ago. [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 12:57 PM PST - 30 comments

If 2012's Oscar-nominated movie posters told the truth
posted by Artw at 11:59 AM PST - 232 comments

The One-Minute Fly [SLYT] An animated short (with a nod to Ice Age).
posted by humannaire at 11:53 AM PST - 6 comments

Wilco's own Nels Cline gives a 38 minute video rundown of his stage guitars and rig.
posted by Ardiril at 11:52 AM PST - 49 comments

My mistake, if I can call it that, was trust - to think a smile was a smile and not a show of teeth. - - - All this week, tor.com is publishing The Situation, a comic based on a story by everyone's favorite Jeff VanderMeer, and illustrated by Eric Orchard. [more inside]
posted by Think_Long at 10:56 AM PST - 18 comments

Yesterday, news broke Wikileaks founder Julian Assange announced a 10-episode television show that will feature "key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries." Today it was announced that the show will be broadcast by the Kremlin funded English language channel Russia Today. The press seems unimpressed with Wikileaks' chosen distribution channel.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 9:47 AM PST - 93 comments

20 Things That Happened on the Internet in 2011 from Syzygy (2010 version).
posted by mrgrimm at 9:42 AM PST - 34 comments

10 SFF Authors Play D&D Together’ by Brent Weeks
posted by Fizz at 9:23 AM PST - 39 comments

Why Portland's Public Toilets Succeeded Where Others Failed. A short documentary on the Portland Loo. Official website.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:14 AM PST - 65 comments

“We now have a ‘lost cat in airplane’ file that’s got one piece of paper in it after this morning.” [more inside]
posted by empatterson at 9:00 AM PST - 70 comments

Barbie Ma Muse Famous artworks recreated with Barbie. (NSFW - some nudity)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:44 AM PST - 6 comments

Boots and Cats - SLYT silliness. [via]
posted by quin at 8:17 AM PST - 30 comments

The Hip-Hop Family Tree: A Look Into the Viral Propagation of a Culture (part two, part three) is a "semi-regular, ongoing feature" currently running in the comic Brain Rot by Ed Piskor. (Ed Piskor and Wizzywig Comics previously on MeFi)
posted by flex at 8:10 AM PST - 16 comments

What do you get when you cross the low key folk rock of Bon Iver with the arena rock of Bon Jovi? You'd probably get something like Bon Joviver. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:53 AM PST - 18 comments

Every Doctor Who story, 1963-2011, a tribute clip from YouTube user Babelcolour. If this is your kinda thing, you might dig the rest of their videos.
posted by jbickers at 7:36 AM PST - 38 comments

GQ reports on paraplegic web cam hacker Luis Mijangos [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:08 AM PST - 20 comments

An Oklahoma state Senator has introduced a bill to ensure the safety of the state's food supply. [more inside]
posted by Runes at 6:41 AM PST - 110 comments

The Beatles, "Revolution," cut up, scrambled, and looped. The Beatles sing "one two three four" for an hour. All of Billy Joel's greatest hits played at once. Celine Dion screams for 1.5 minutes. Please enjoy responsibly. (Mostly via I Love Music.)
posted by escabeche at 6:28 AM PST - 35 comments

President Obama’s YouTube Forum deems marijuana legalization questions “inappropriate”
posted by rodmandirect at 5:45 AM PST - 195 comments

Germany celebrates a leader who was instrumental in bringing her power and glory as well as being responsible for carving up Poland [more inside]
posted by Renoroc at 5:44 AM PST - 25 comments

It appears that the O2, Tesco mobile, and GiffGaff mobile data networks (they are the same, just rebranded) reveals your mobile number (cell phone #) to every website you visit using their mobile data network. [more inside]
posted by priorpark17 at 1:01 AM PST - 47 comments

"I believe the time has come to realise that breast cancer screening programmes can no longer be justified ... I recommend women to do nothing apart from attending a doctor if they notice anything themselves." [more inside]
posted by latkes at 11:35 PM PST - 52 comments

A Swarthmore College student-reporter's questioning of whether it is moral to go into banking sparks NYT columnist Nick Kristof to not only assert the affirmative, but to argue (in part) that in fact more well-educated, liberally-mined people should go into "conservative" industries like banking in order to reform it from the inside. In effect, Kristof suggests, socialist-leaning, educationally-empowered students should hunker down, swallow their disdain, and apply their ideals to change finance. Said student responds (in Slate): elite, ostensibly liberal-leaning students don't seem to be particularly discouraged from capitalism or going into banking in this climate, and probably never have been.
posted by Keter at 10:04 PM PST - 48 comments

Often cited as a direct inspiration for Indiana Jones, Charlton Heston is Harry Steele. Steele is a treasure hunting gigolo hot on the trail of an ancient Incan artifact in Jerry Hopper's 1954 Secret of the Incas. The film opens with a song featuring the beautiful soprano of the illustrious Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo, better known by her stage name of Yma Sumac(previously and previously). The song may be familiar to fans of The Big Lebowski. [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 10:01 PM PST - 12 comments

The transhumans are among us. Let's hope this guy outbreeds us all. [more inside]
posted by Meatbomb at 9:29 PM PST - 66 comments

A strange bacterium found in California’s Mono Lake cannot replace the phosphorus in its DNA with arsenic, according to researchers who have been trying to reproduce the results of a controversial report published in Science in 2010. (Via Bad Astronomy.) Previously.
posted by IvoShandor at 8:11 PM PST - 31 comments

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.)
posted by Trurl at 7:58 PM PST - 102 comments

Last Friday morning, two men managed to crash their pickup truck by attempting to drive 60 mph down the Sixth Street Railroad Bridge in Augusta, Georgia. Police believe alcohol was a contributing factor to the accident, but the fact that the railroad track in question is an active street-running line may have also played a part. [more inside]
posted by radwolf76 at 7:23 PM PST - 44 comments

Eight Net Generation norms. Some statistical fingerprinting. Digital natives in the workplace. Changing faith. Socialism loses its stigma. Adapting in the wake of the Great Recession.
posted by I've wasted my life at 6:00 PM PST - 24 comments

President Barack Obama will today give the annual State of the Union address. There will be at least three rebuttals in addition to a prebuttal that occurred this morning. The address will be streamed online at Whitehouse.gov. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 5:55 PM PST - 410 comments

Let's Talk About Reproductive Norm Enforcement, Baby. An anonymous philoso-blogger recounts, in an honest, intelligent, compelling, and occasionally poignant way, the process of undergoing medically necessary surgery that would cause infertility. If you care about the reproductive expectations with which women are saddled by contemporary society, you should read this. You should also read this if you care about bioethics, medical decorum, feminism, women in academia, the ethical behavior of philosophers, or, you know, justice. If you care about those last four things, you should have been reading Feminist Philosophers already.
posted by MultiplyDrafted at 5:43 PM PST - 107 comments

Greetings, Starfighter! You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan Armada. [more inside]
posted by curious nu at 5:42 PM PST - 39 comments

The Legal Stranger Project "How do I explain to my child as it grows up that in our state, I am not your mom, that there are people out there who go out of their way to make sure our family cannot be complete? "
posted by chronkite at 4:40 PM PST - 47 comments

In the last decade, no organ of music criticism has wielded as much influence as Pitchfork. It is the only publication, online or print, that can have a decisive effect on a musician or band’s career.... [W]hatever attracts people to Pitchfork, it isn’t the writing. Even writers who admire the site’s reviews almost always feel obliged to describe the prose as “uneven,” and that’s charitable. Pitchfork has a very specific scoring system that grades albums on a scale from 0.0 to 10.0, and that accounts for some of the site’s appeal, but it can’t just be the scores.... How has Pitchfork succeeded where so many other websites and magazines have not? And why is that success depressing? A lengthy history and review of Pitchfork [Media], from an inexpensive online alternative to a music zine, to "indie" music kingmaker, and thoughts on pop music (criticism). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:48 PM PST - 105 comments

Is Your Food Spending Normal? This interactive calculator from Mother Jones compares your spending with others in your location and income bracket.
posted by desjardins at 3:16 PM PST - 82 comments

A complete playable Nintendo Gameboy Color system, emulated in JavaScript and HTML5, with Super Mario Land, Zelda, Megaman, Final Fantasy, Tetris and more.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 2:35 PM PST - 35 comments

Maps! Maps are great. And Cartophile is a pretty great blog about maps, courtesy our own desjardins, via mefi projects.
posted by cortex at 2:35 PM PST - 20 comments

Google announces privacy settings change across products; users can’t opt out.

But let's not single out Google:
Facebook already does it.
And let's not forget the "traditional" internet advertising companies.
Visa and MasterCard want to get in on the fun as well.
Children get tracked more than adults.
Here's a good Wall Street Journal page keeping track of the tracking: What They Know.
posted by benbenson at 2:21 PM PST - 146 comments

One of only two American players on the 2010/2011 Boston Bruins team, goaltender Tim Thomas skipped a White House event to honor the team's Stanley Cup championship victory for political reasons. Reactions have been numerous and mixed.
posted by Hoopo at 2:12 PM PST - 58 comments

It's just another clever colour matching game. It seems to be getting trickier and trickier, but don't let that confuse you - it's all about matching the colours perfectly.
posted by hat_eater at 1:57 PM PST - 58 comments

"One in three teens has shared a password with a friend or significant other." [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 1:37 PM PST - 58 comments

This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for “Urban eXperiment.” UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris. - Wired.com "The New French Hacker-Artist Underground"
posted by The Whelk at 1:06 PM PST - 20 comments

On April 24 2002, Ron Paul made an address to the House on his predictions on the results of US domestic and foreign policies, ending with "I have no timetable for these predictions, but just in case, keep them around and look at them in five to ten years. Let's hope and pray I am wrong on all counts. If so, I will be very pleased." Spoiler: he is probably not pleased.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:27 PM PST - 160 comments

What do you do when your viola recital gets interrupted by someone in the audience getting a call on their cellphone? Improvise.
posted by scalefree at 12:26 PM PST - 25 comments

Stunning portraits of endangered zoo animals by National Geographic Photographer Joel Sartore. Part of The Biodiversity Project. Previously. (via)
posted by roaring beast at 11:58 AM PST - 14 comments

Having now traversed 34 kilometres (21 miles) across the surface of Mars and exceeding it's 90-day mission to explore Mars by 2,830 days, NASA's Opportunity rover turned 8 years old today. So what's the feisty martian robot been up to lately? It's now exploring the rim of the 14-mile-wide Endeavor crater, discovering "slam-dunk" evidence that water once flowed through underground fractures, and is being strategically positioned at a 15-degree angle for a long winter suntan.
posted by joinks at 11:50 AM PST - 29 comments

Lancaster, CA employs an innovative method of crime fighting: bird noises.
posted by reenum at 11:48 AM PST - 20 comments

Chip Zdarksy spills the beans on the time DC asked him to write Watchmen 2. May not be safe... for people.
posted by Artw at 11:48 AM PST - 45 comments

The Pirate Bay announced today a new category of torrents, Physibles:

We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.

[more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:13 AM PST - 157 comments

How the Glock Became America's Weapon of Choice The Glock was created in 1982 by a curtain rod manufacturer named Gaston Glock. Glock didn't like the handguns available on the market and decided to manufacture a new gun from scratch. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 10:51 AM PST - 123 comments

if i die: if i die is the first and only facebook application that enables you to create a video or a text message that will only be published after you die. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:18 AM PST - 70 comments

The page turner is a wonderful complex yet compact Rube Goldberg machine. The NYT has a bit of background on the creator behind it.
posted by mathowie at 8:18 AM PST - 21 comments

Archetype is a seven minute sci-fi short by Aaron Sims, which despite being a no-budget project, features amazingly high quality special effects. [more inside]
posted by quin at 8:15 AM PST - 17 comments

Pictures are making the rounds of a younger Ron Paul in the 1975-1979 Houston Astros "rainbow" uniform. Why, you might ask? "An 1889 editorial in the New York Sun advised 'all statesmen of any aspirations for the future to consider that if they have not yet recorded themselves as lovers of our national game [baseball] or some other sporting interest, they should do so immediately.'" This isn't lost on the 21st-century GOP hopefuls, either (you have to see the Rick Santorum video). Since not long after that editorial--1909 actually--the "two parties" in the U.S. Congress have faced off in the Annual Congressional Baseball Game. [more inside]
posted by resurrexit at 8:00 AM PST - 42 comments

What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:52 AM PST - 50 comments

5 things I learned today: five interesting links posted (almost) every day
posted by flex at 7:13 AM PST - 26 comments

Today's Astronomy Picture Of The Day (previously, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) is utterly astonishing. [more inside]
posted by motty at 7:08 AM PST - 30 comments

The Turtle and the Shark is one of Samoa's most cherished stories, and it has been animated beautifully by Ryan Woodward in the style of siapo, or Samoan tapa barkcloth. [more inside]
posted by barnacles at 4:52 AM PST - 7 comments

The dot and the line is a romance in lower mathematics starring a dot and a line. It won the 1965 Academy Award for Animated Short Film.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:25 AM PST - 22 comments

Is Necrophilia Wrong?
posted by veedubya at 3:21 AM PST - 241 comments

Play by play animation and description dissecting the Costa Concordia tragedy using available AIS data. Warning: distracting off camera 'thunking' noise throughout. Captain John Konrad also discusses the three fatal mistakes made by the ship's master that lead to the grounding.
posted by mattoxic at 1:24 AM PST - 42 comments

The King Center archive launched a new web interface this year, featuring online access to thousands of historical documents relating to Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.
posted by latkes at 10:16 PM PST - 9 comments

Bioanimation companies like XVIVO, Hybrid Medical (Previously), Random42, Biolucid, Argosy Medical, and BioDigital have been doing beautiful work for hire, freely available to watch. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:58 PM PST - 10 comments

In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.
posted by homunculus at 9:28 PM PST - 166 comments

OxyContin: Purdue Pharma's painful medicine. Among the sellers of opioids, none has been more successful -- or controversial -- than Purdue Pharma, maker of the No. 1 drug in the class: OxyContin, which generated $3.1 billion in revenue in 2010. Purdue and its marketing prowess are the biggest reasons such drugs are now widely prescribed for all sorts of pain, says Dhalla: "Purdue played a very large role in making physicians feel comfortable about opioids." And as we'll see, Purdue's past and present go a long way toward explaining how so many Americans came to be in the grip of potent painkillers.
posted by storybored at 8:53 PM PST - 63 comments

Chess Notes Archives
posted by Trurl at 7:54 PM PST - 15 comments

Barack Obama, Post-Partisan, Meets Washington Gridlock. The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza reviews major domestic policy decisions from the first two years of the Obama administration, based on internal White House memos. Some key decisions: [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 7:48 PM PST - 50 comments

One Hour Per Second - "In 1 minute 50 seconds of uploads to YouTube, an unlucky person falling through a bottomless pit travels 12,000 miles."
posted by Memo at 7:11 PM PST - 32 comments

Discover bytebeat. A new genre of algorithmic music has been developed by demoscene coder viznut, a.k.a. PwP. Sharing genes with chiptunes and facilitated by bitwise operators, bytebeats are decidedly non-traditional music created by short, programmatic formulas. Read about computationally minimal art, the aesthetic that spawned bytebeat. Try your hand at composing (some helpful examples). Read an explanation of how the formulas work. A few more pieces.
posted by I've wasted my life at 5:14 PM PST - 48 comments

A history of "pearl clutching." Apparently, it originated on In Living Color.
posted by mokin at 5:09 PM PST - 50 comments

Taxali is not my original last name. It was changed 300 years ago to Taxali by a Maharaja in India. My ancestor invented a coin that was difficult to counterfeit and was subsequently knighted Taxali by the Maharaja.  It means, "Maker or Steward of The Mint".  How serendipitous!!  Here I am, 300 years later, honouring my ancestor's achievements and mine and my sister's family name. via [Drawn]
posted by unliteral at 4:41 PM PST - 20 comments

Dog Poop Insurance is a product that would potentially be available for a single-premium at the time of purchasing your new shoes.
posted by gman at 4:01 PM PST - 14 comments

In a unanimous decision [PDF], the Supreme Court has ruled on United States v. Jones and found that placement of a GPS tracker on a car by police is a violation of the fourth amendment—but is the ruling as clear-cut as it seems? [more inside]
posted by reductiondesign at 3:18 PM PST - 34 comments

Pipe Logic "Suppose the null-byte is an electron. Then, /dev/zero provides an infinite supply of electrons and /dev/null has an infinite appetite for them..." Modeling transistors and logic gates using Unix pipes.
posted by bitmage at 1:55 PM PST - 21 comments

What the Right Gets Right and What the Left Gets Right : An experiment in "transideological friendship." What liberals and conservatives think their ideological opposition does well.
posted by crunchland at 1:39 PM PST - 121 comments

On the same day that NJ governor Chris Christie announced that he has nominated an openly gay African-American Republican mayor to the state’s highest court, Washington state's legislature has announced that they have the votes to pass the same sex-marriage bill that the governor has already promised to sign. Washington will be the seventh state to have same sex marriages. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:24 PM PST - 70 comments

"Hong Kong people are dogs," mainland professor Kong Qingdong said (video in Mandarin with English subtitles; "dog" comments are around 1:06) in response to a widely-viewed video (Cantonese/Mandarin, no subtitles, but a English-subtitled news report is here) of mainland tourists eating on the Hong Kong subway, where eating is banned. This has incited an uproar in the former British colony, but is not the only flare-up between Hong Kong and the mainland recently. [more inside]
posted by andrewesque at 12:02 PM PST - 87 comments

When they flew together, it was like holding hands in the air. Since reviews of Red Tails are focusing on its good intentions , one way to honor those intentions is to check out some real romance and some real related history. [more inside]
posted by TreeRooster at 11:52 AM PST - 21 comments

Focus on the User, Google! says a coalition of engineers from Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. They have created their own 'Don't be Evil' bookmarklet to rearrange Google's social search results to remove G+ bias, using Google's own APIs. Caution: Bookmarklet does not work with IE or in areas without Google's new social search features. May choke smaller ferrets.
posted by Sparx at 11:21 AM PST - 91 comments

"Inspired by the iconic sleeve of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album, this Waves Mickey Mouse Tee incorporates Mickey's image within the graphic of the pulse of a star. That's appropriate given few stars have made bigger waves than Mickey!"
posted by obscurator at 11:18 AM PST - 93 comments

Off the coast of Hawaii comes the first scientific evidence of cooperative play between a bottlenose dolphin and a humpback whale. In two separate incidents a dolphin rode on the head of a whale above the surface of the water. It is not, however, the only footage of dolphins and whales playing around and helping each other out. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:54 AM PST - 29 comments

Arthur C. Clarke Award director Tom Hunter (previously) on the importance of science fiction Awards in elevating geek culture and The Kitschies, the highly praised new genre fiction award from pornokitsch.
posted by Artw at 10:41 AM PST - 5 comments

Irrational Games' creative director Ken Levine wants you to meet BioShock: Infinite's new difficulty: 1999 Mode.
posted by griphus at 10:35 AM PST - 85 comments

A Portrait in Postcards. Twenty years after her death, Angela Carter's literary executor and friend, Susannah Clapp, remembers Carter through the cards she sent, "These cards make a paper trail, a zigzag path through the 80s. They are casually dispatched – some messages are barely more than a signature – but are often the more telling for that: they catch Angela on the wing, shooting her mouth off. She would have hated the idea of a soundbite, but she had a gift for a capsule phrase, for a story in a word. " The postcard gallery.
posted by gladly at 9:55 AM PST - 4 comments

Ghostery Research has compiled data on internet trackers from users who opted into GhostRank and allowed Ghostery to send information in.
Here are a couple of interesting graphs:
Presidential Candidates websites
Which trackers cause the most lag (load time).
They also have a new site which lists trackers and their ilk in the form of a periodic table . (They explain a little about it here).
posted by marienbad at 9:44 AM PST - 25 comments

Hari Kunzru: Reading The Satanic Verses in Jaipur: Why the novelist read from Salman Rushdie’s banned book The Satanic Verses to protest against the cancellation of Rushdie’s visit to the Jaipur Literature Festival.
posted by Fizz at 9:10 AM PST - 8 comments

Four days after the shutdown of popular "cyber-locker" Megaupload, rival companies Filesonic and Fileserve have also disabled file sharing. The two companies also owned wupload, upload.to, and a number of other cyber-locker sites. Is this the end of direct download filesharing?
posted by reformedjerk at 9:08 AM PST - 108 comments

David Grann of the New Yorker writes about the power of the Aryan Brotherhood inside America's federal prisons.
posted by reenum at 9:00 AM PST - 20 comments

"I love stories. My chief hobby is reading. I was formally trained as a writer, not as a game designer (there wasn’t really any formal training for game design I got started, but that’s another story). I think most game stories are not very good. And I quite enjoy games with narrative threads pulling me through them. When I find a game with a good story, I frequently prefer the story to the actual game! So please keep that in mind as you read: I love story."
Narrative in a game is not a mechanic. It’s a form of a feedback, by Raph Koster
posted by codacorolla at 8:57 AM PST - 10 comments

PodCastle is a free weekly fantasy podcast with 192 full-length episodes and 67 mini-episodes. Featured authors have included Elizabeth Bear, Hal Duncan, and MeFi's own Willow Fagan. [projects]
posted by 256 at 8:50 AM PST - 7 comments

Iza Privezenceva is a Russian girl who is astonishingly fast with a recurve bow.
posted by quin at 7:58 AM PST - 114 comments

One designer's attempt to create a logo for each of Chicago's seventy-seven community areas, and a few of the more well-known neighborhoods in between. [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore at 7:41 AM PST - 33 comments

Results of a new survey by the Washington post and Kaiser sheds some light on black women in America in a way that some others have failed to do. 2011 saw a record number of articles, books and shows dedicated to analyzing the "plight' of black women in America. Naturally, most of it devolved into popular tropes about black women being undesirable, ugly, angry, and lonely. This new survey shows that for some black women, the path to happiness doesn't necessarily have to be through companionship with a mate.
posted by RedShrek at 5:49 AM PST - 34 comments

In the course of his life, he stepped into the ring as a Golden Gloves boxer, marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC and even fell victim to southern racism. It would not be until decades later as a mechanic that a customer would ask Gordon Burt Jr to play a song on his guitar.

In addition to receiving a recording deal, Dr. G.B. Burt continues to live in Alabama, but also enjoys his dream of performing on stage - an ambition that stretched as far back as the 1950s.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:41 AM PST - 7 comments

"The observers of this unusual visual stimulus reported seeing the borders between the stripes gradually disappear, and the colors seem to flood into each other. Amazingly, the image seemed to override their eyes' opponency mechanism, and they said they perceived colors they'd never seen before."
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:07 AM PST - 30 comments

Andrew Lo reviews 21 books on the financial crisis. In a 41-page paper, Andrew Lo, from the MIT Sloan School of Management, does a comparative review of 21 books about the financial crisis - some from academics and some from journalists and Secretary Paulson, looking for common threads. Tyler Cowen comments.
posted by falameufilho at 11:10 PM PST - 30 comments

Zapatou is a video editor who likes to make audio-visual mashups, such as World Covers of Adele's Rolling in the Deep, a a 10th anniversary 9/11 memorial in pictures, quad-screen HD eye-candy of the Fast and the Furious, and Mellencamp's Hurt So Good, lip-synched by the Ice Age 3 crew.
posted by iamkimiam at 10:50 PM PST - 11 comments

Refining companies face $7M in fines for not adding nonexistent additive to fuels
posted by leffler at 10:21 PM PST - 50 comments

Amnesty International believes that Iran has executed at least 600 people in 2011 in what it calls "a killing spree of staggering proportions". [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 8:36 PM PST - 64 comments

"We are seeing the emergence of a new variation on an old, cissexist theme: 'No, it’s not a good time for you to transition. This is going to be so hard on us. Oh won’t you wait or reconsider this choice for us normal people?'. Their subtext is plain and unambiguous to nearly every trans person: 'Maybe you should never transition.'" [more inside]
posted by cp311 at 8:18 PM PST - 181 comments

After 20 years together at the helm of Research In Motion Ltd. [previousy, previously], Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, the company's co-chief executives, turned over the top job late Sunday to a little-known insider as part of a board and management shuffle.
posted by unSane at 8:16 PM PST - 42 comments

The "unique abdominal dexterity" of Helena Vlahos.
posted by hermitosis at 7:38 PM PST - 28 comments

Life's a Happy Song sung by Kermit the Frog and Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKensie, who wrote the song [NYT].
posted by Kattullus at 7:05 PM PST - 39 comments

Diary of an Author: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5.
posted by fings at 4:49 PM PST - 28 comments

Billionaires doing skits dressed in drag. [more inside]
posted by pallen123 at 4:29 PM PST - 28 comments

Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966) is a disturbing film to watch. With its unresolved, horrific ending, it’s possibly one of the most depressing films ever made [SPOILER]. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 3:21 PM PST - 38 comments

Here's a dance performed by Yang Liping and her niece Cai Qi at a Chinese New Year gala recently. It's called "Spring" and will likely mark the end of a celebrated career. Yang Liping (杨丽萍） is perhaps most famous for her gorgeous arm movements in the Peacock Dance (雀之灵), and here's one more dance performed entirely in silhouette called "Moon". (MLYT)
posted by of strange foe at 3:09 PM PST - 7 comments

Moonwalker.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:51 PM PST - 38 comments

With surprising candor, Chris Dodd tells Obama that the Hollywood purse strings are about to get tight. Angry over the Obama administration's siding against SOPA and PIPA, Dodd says openly that the money the Democratic party regularly counts on Hollywood for might not be there this election cycle. One view is that Hollywood considers that it bought something very specific with it's money, and it's angry it's not getting it. Should Obama be worried about this? Perhaps not. The guys from Freakanomics say that our assumption that money is the most important factor in deciding elections is a fallacy.
posted by asavage at 1:42 PM PST - 239 comments

Finland votes – as visualized by national broadcasting company, click Sivakoikaa! (Ski!). (About the candidates). First round of Finland's presidential elections has finished with Sauli Niinistö (conservative) and Pekka Haavisto (green) winning 36.7% and 18.7% of votes. If no-one wins over 50% in the first round, the second round will be held amongst the top two candidates two weeks later. Haavisto has steadily doubled his share in polls, where Niinistö has halved his share from his best polls. Among his other achievements in international peace and being green, Haavisto could be the first openly gay elected head of the state.
posted by Free word order! at 1:28 PM PST - 26 comments

Driving through Time features roughly 2700 photographs and 76 interactive maps of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The website allows students, researchers, and digital tourists to uncover hidden stories, hear forgotten voices, and understand the often wrenching choices that the construction and preservation of a scenic parkway in a populated region have necessarily entailed. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 1:23 PM PST - 4 comments

You may have never heard of them, but they definitely have your email address. They are the Yahoo-Yahoo Boys; the young Nigerian men who cut wide swaths of cash by preying on the naiveté of moneyed Westerners vis a vis their dreaded 419 emails. ...But if you check your spam folder right now you might notice that it is slightly lighter these days. That's because it's been a tough week for Nigeria’s most infamous internet enthusiasts. Due to the week-long strike action that took place in response to the government’s decision to remove a national fuel subsidy, it has become increasingly difficult for the Yahoos to extract funds from their “clients”. [...] The Yahoos' disposition towards #OccupyNigeria is also worth paying attention to because 419 culture is essentially a street-level microcosm of the institutional corruption that has plagued Nigeria for the past forty years. And although the Yahoos are often blamed for distorting Nigeria’s image abroad, they've also become part of the cultural fabric.
posted by infini at 12:13 PM PST - 25 comments

Germany has the economic strengths America once boasted. 'Germany with its manufacturing base and export prowess is the U.S. of yesteryear, an economic power unlike any of its European neighbors. As the world's fourth-largest economy, it has thrived on principles America seems to have lost.' 'Germany's economy looks like that of the U.S. a generation ago. In 1975, manufacturing accounted for about 20% of the United States' economic output, or gross domestic product, about the same as in Germany today. Since then, U.S. manufacturing's share of GDP has slid to about 12%.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 11:28 AM PST - 85 comments

What does the dancing Chinese lion eat at Gung Haggis Fat Choy? Not lettuce.. but haggis of course [SLYT with bagpipes, be warned] (The lion breaks out into a bit of highland fling for extra fun). [more inside]
posted by chapps at 10:45 AM PST - 13 comments

Kitchen Nightmares shows Gordon Ramsay helping restaurants make miraculous turnarounds. Ramsay helped relaunch Austin, Texas's El Greco, but the restaurant still ended up closing. Some people are saying that Ramsay's interference may have been the final nail in the coffin for the restaurant.
posted by reenum at 8:57 AM PST - 110 comments

Paterno, Joseph Vincent (Joe Pa)
Born: December 21, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York.
Died: January, 22, 2012 in State College, Pennsylvania.
Vocation: Football Coach
Employer: Penn State, Retired.*
posted by Toekneesan at 8:38 AM PST - 169 comments

Light your torch and wave it for the lunar event tomorrow with the full 17-minute-long video for Duran Duran's New Moon On Monday (Part 1, Part 2).
posted by hippybear at 8:26 AM PST - 17 comments

The Correlation Of Laughter AT FOMC Meetings.
posted by storybored at 8:15 AM PST - 10 comments

Tony Award winner, BAFTA winner, and multiple Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes reads briefly aloud from a Voldemort/Harry slashfic entitled "Broken Innocence," by Jaden Kelly. (SLYT for nerds, no redeeming social value) (via)
posted by Countess Elena at 7:27 AM PST - 22 comments

In one of the strangest new bids to get tourism dollars, Yves Jégo, the current veep of France's Radical party and the former Overseas Secretary of State, has announced plans to start raising funds for a new theme park dedicated to Napoleon. [more inside]
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 2:45 AM PST - 34 comments

Let's take a brief detour into the strange sonic labyrinth of Sun Araw. [more inside]
posted by SomaSoda at 11:27 PM PST - 16 comments

Singers get all the chicks.
posted by empath at 10:56 PM PST - 45 comments

Ayn Rand has a fantasy in Atlas Shrugged of striking ‘creative’ capitalists, a fantasy that finds its perverted realisation in today’s strikes, most of which are held by a ‘salaried bourgeoisie’ driven by fear of losing their surplus wage. These are not proletarian protests, but protests against the threat of being reduced to proletarians.

The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie in the London Review of Books.
posted by klue at 8:42 PM PST - 91 comments

In 2009, Roxana Altamirano made her first post to Nerd Boyfriend (previously), a style blog that finds clothing similar to those worn by iconic male figures. Now, almost three years later, there is a Nerd Girlfriend. [more inside]
posted by mokin at 7:50 PM PST - 31 comments

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has begun releasing Security-Enhanced Android patches and tools, which port their Security-Enhanced Linux tools to Android devices. SEAndroid and SELinux provide mandatory access control designed to limit the amount of damage that rogue or exploited software can do. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 6:53 PM PST - 35 comments

The Truck They Couldn't Drown Watch agog as this Rasputin of Russian trucks conspicuously fails to give up the ghost crossing a Siberian river.
posted by ironjelly at 5:43 PM PST - 66 comments

Today Dutch sailor Laura Dekker returned to St. Maarten, completing her yearlong solo voyage around the world aboard her sailboat, “Guppy.” (Previously)
posted by the_artificer at 5:28 PM PST - 48 comments

Lists of Note is a new site from Shaun Usher, proprietor of Letters of Note. It posts interesting lists, running the gamut from funny to poignant, mostly by famous people, though other sources crop up. Here's a sampling of lists: Johnny Cash, Walt Whitman, Eero Saarinen, Don Carman, Marilyn Monroe and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
posted by Kattullus at 5:05 PM PST - 9 comments

Comedian Bert Kreischer was named the "top partier" at Florida State University in a 1997 Rolling Stone article. The 2002 movie "Van Wilder" was inspired by his life. Bert Kreischer is THE MACHINE (animated version). Bert Kreischer hangs out with Tracy Morgan. NSFW (language).
posted by IvoShandor at 4:21 PM PST - 13 comments

Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Collection provides visitors with the opportunity to view a virtual reconstruction of Walpole's extensive collections--everything from armor to wall hangings--housed in his custom-built Gothic villa, Strawberry Hill. (For video tours and discussions of its ornamentation, ongoing restoration &c., check out the Strawberry Hill Youtube Channel.) Objects can be viewed according to maker, type, or room; there's also a virtual tour, based on contemporary paintings and sketches. For more about Walpole, plus links to e-texts of his fiction (most famously, the pioneering Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto), visit The Literary Gothic.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:07 PM PST - 5 comments

Perfected by the old masters, this age old tradition has been imitated, innovated and passed on to the next generation. The question remains, what made them hate those guitars so much? (MLYT)
posted by TheCoug at 3:43 PM PST - 32 comments

Emil Johansson is attempting to build a Family Tree that holds all of the characters in Middle Earth. As of today, there are 646 entries.
posted by soelo at 3:12 PM PST - 30 comments

There's been a lot of great photography of Yosemite National Park. National Geographic has done some excellent work and there's plenty of photos that provide a great historical view of the area. More recently there was a fantastic zoomable 17 gigapixel project (previously). But this HD time-lapse day & night video of several locations around Yosemite Park provides perhaps the most amazing view of the area yet. More info on the making of the video at Project Yosemite.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:02 PM PST - 8 comments

Mapping out whiskey. Start here, swimming in Drunkards Channel: Map On Temperance, 1846. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 2:20 PM PST - 17 comments

In honor of Squirrel Appreciation Day 2012, I present the Albino Squirrel Preservation Society. Start a chapter in your area! (Previously on MeFi)
posted by hermitosis at 2:19 PM PST - 17 comments

Evgeny Grinko is a Russian musician who recently posted two gorgeous, minimal instrumentals to YouTube. He also has a free EP called Winter Sunshine. [more inside]
posted by fake at 2:17 PM PST - 8 comments

A Florida roofing crew is surprised when they disrupt a bat home. For maximum fun, there's also a longer version. (via Nothing to do with Arbroath)
posted by madamjujujive at 2:09 PM PST - 57 comments

Nearly three decades after Israel began airlifting Ethiopia's ancient Jewish community out of the Horn of Africa, Israel's rabbis are now working to phase out the community's white-turbaned clergy, the kessoch, whose unusual religious practices are at odds with the rabbinate's Orthodox Judaism. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 1:43 PM PST - 31 comments

Speaking of Dub (the real kind), just over one year ago the music world lost one of its pioneers in the realm of dub and roots. Vivian "Yabby You" Jackson produced some of the most hard driving reggae ever released. RIP. [more inside]
posted by Jibuzaemon at 1:33 PM PST - 9 comments

What, exactly, is Dubstep? Electronic music artist Bassnectar explains. [via]
posted by saiwol at 11:32 AM PST - 146 comments

Young Russian Violinists' Impromptu Jam With Dave Brubeck
posted by noaccident at 11:22 AM PST - 18 comments

“You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.” Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher of the NY Times give an in-depth report on Apple's migration of electronics manufacturing to Asia and its impact on middle class Americans.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:19 AM PST - 158 comments

Animatronic baby mechanism for anonymous job (SL Nightmare Fuel)
posted by dirigibleman at 10:02 AM PST - 32 comments

...Failed Simulations & the Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness: "Accomplishments that are hard to explain can be much more impressive than accomplishments that are simply hard to do", posits Cal Newport of Study Hacks ("Decoding Patterns of Success" - at work, at school). (via AskMeFi)
Also from the blog: The Passion Trap ("How the Search for Your Life’s Work is Making Your Working Life Miserable") and Beyond Passion ("The Science of Loving What You Do"). [more inside]
posted by flex at 9:52 AM PST - 15 comments

Lifecycle - A bike in New York is locked to a pole and photographed everyday as it slowly disappears. [via]
posted by quin at 9:28 AM PST - 41 comments

Gizmo's Freeware is a non-commercial community website staffed entirely by volunteers. Our primary function is to help you select the best freeware product for your particular needs.
posted by Trurl at 9:14 AM PST - 8 comments

The Secret Document That Transformed China. Planet Money story about Xiaogang village in China that was hungry and desperate in 1978, and how the risk the farmers took ended up influencing the transformation of China.
posted by Eekacat at 8:26 AM PST - 4 comments

The first sexual revolution: lust and liberty in the 18th century
posted by Artw at 8:11 AM PST - 17 comments

A much anticipated birth is expected by many Chinese families after the New Moon on Monday, 23rd January ushers in the auspicious Year of the Dragon. The only mythological beast in the Chinese Zodiac, the Dragon as a symbol in China dates back to 3000 BC and stands for happiness, immortality, procreation, fertility and activity. This year's babies will be Black Water Dragons, considered to be calmer, more flexible and even more charismatic than other elements. In previous dragon years, countries such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore have all experienced baby booms, and preparations are in place for this year's influx of baby dragons.
posted by infini at 7:00 AM PST - 34 comments

Is a tent clothing? Is someone wearing a tent illegally squatting? Is the person recording it all very annoying? (SLYT) There are so many things to think about here. The guy in the background makes it hard to concentrate on those things, but they're there.
posted by h00py at 4:49 AM PST - 66 comments

Steven Siegel's photos of New York in the 80s. Via gothamist. [more inside]
posted by latkes at 12:00 AM PST - 41 comments

Ball girl saves Cedrik-Marcel Stebe from gigantic bug at the Australian Open (SLYT). [more inside]
posted by Ritchie at 11:53 PM PST - 88 comments

SFU graduate students captures photos of the "critically endangered Miller’s Grizzled Langur, which had never been documented in the 38,000-hectare Wehea rainforest and was thought to be possibly extinct."
posted by chapps at 8:57 PM PST - 7 comments

This might be the most amazing 404 error page ever.
posted by grouse at 8:02 PM PST - 59 comments

There are over 400 2012 Presidential candidates not named Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, or Ron Paul. Mental Floss lists 11 of them.
posted by SisterHavana at 7:47 PM PST - 35 comments

Until 2009, the human clitoris was an absolute mystery: Get ready, everybody — it's time you were brought up to speed on some important features of the female anatomy. (possibly NSFW: some diagrams of internal anatomy) [more inside]
posted by coolxcool=rad at 6:37 PM PST - 91 comments

As we near completion of the current Year of the Rat, it feels appropriate to tell a story about how rat appreciation started, how the ratitor came to be, and how the organic unfolding of rat haus reality awareness manifested, first in the building of the balsa wood house itself (preceded by the rat cabin and ancestral rat hans), then in its image scribing, next as a gift-in-photo series, and now as this virtual gathering place for consciousness to further explore, expand, and extend itself.
posted by deanklear at 5:47 PM PST - 6 comments

This past November, news broke of a rather odd domestic terror plot that had been broken up by the FBI. Four senior citizens in northern Georgia who met regularly at a local Waffle House, were allegedly planning to spread ricin and botulinum toxin in Atlanta and Washington, DC, in order to kill millions of people and "save the Constitution." But was there ever really a conspiracy?
posted by zarq at 5:34 PM PST - 86 comments

Ask for Amazing WATE-ON. Retronaut's collection of dietary supplement ads offers some historical perspective on the obesity epidemic. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 4:37 PM PST - 17 comments

Top Ten Favorite Books from authors: Stephen King's 10 favorite books. David Foster Wallace's 10 favorite books. Sue Monk Kidd's 10 favorite books via the CS Monitor.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:42 PM PST - 50 comments

Inside Nature's Giants is a ridiculously educational British science documentary series featuring dissections of very big animals, including a giant squid, a sperm whale, a giraffe, and many, many more. [more inside]
posted by sawdustbear at 3:26 PM PST - 19 comments

"My First Hardcore Song," by Juliet, age 8.
posted by koeselitz at 2:31 PM PST - 50 comments

Back in 09', Star Wars Uncut (previously) asked people to recreate 15 second chunks of Star Wars: A New Hope however they wanted, using live action, animation, text adventure screens, SCUMM interfaces, costumed pets, and more. Now they've been edited together to recreate the entire movie as a homemade, constantly shifting media experiment. (Vimeo link)
posted by The Whelk at 2:08 PM PST - 128 comments

Years by Bartholomäus Traubek: a record player that plays slices of wood.
posted by functionequalsform at 1:50 PM PST - 18 comments

SiHKAL: Shulgins I Have Known and Loved: After spending days, weeks, months poring over the work [PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story; TiHKAL: The Continuation; lab books] of psychonaut-in-chief, Alexander Shulgin, Hamilton Morris mustered up the chutzpah to give him a call and request an interview. The result is this: an epic love-fest on the man who birthed Ecstasy in a test-tube. Hamilton visits the Shulgin residence (in San Francisco, naturally) and tempers his fanboy freakout with a rare and intensive look at the home and laboratory that caused the balls of millions to trip. For those who prefer text, here is the video in article form. [Shulgin previously: 1; 2]
posted by troll at 1:48 PM PST - 15 comments

In the 1970s and 1980s, Chicago gangs distributed gang cards to stake their neighbourhood claim. Full gallery available here.
posted by gman at 1:27 PM PST - 41 comments

New witnesses surface on the infamous West Memphis 3 case based on Peter Jackson's upcoming documentary which will premiere as one piece at the 2012 Sundance. Here's the trailer. [more inside]
posted by straight_razor at 1:15 PM PST - 40 comments

People can't decide if he looks more like Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves. But whoever he looks like, it's the way he sounds and what he can play that make Benoît Sauvé unique. [more inside]
posted by circular at 1:11 PM PST - 10 comments

SOPA and PIPA dropped by Congress. The ideas present in both SOPA and PIPA may return, but both bills in their present form—and with their present names—are probably done for good.
posted by asnider at 12:58 PM PST - 99 comments

Where the Peter Pan Collar Came From—and Why It’s Back. [slate.com]
posted by Fizz at 12:46 PM PST - 16 comments

Alec Baldwin has a podcast on WNYC, Here's the Thing, in which he has ~20 minute interviews with pretty much anyone he's interested in talking to. [more inside]
posted by neuromodulator at 12:26 PM PST - 16 comments

Hollywood dream of filmmaker Nicholas McCarthy is stop and go. 'His 11-minute thriller had just played Sundance. He had hoped the premiere would launch — after many failed attempts — his dream of making it. He was offered one meeting on which all his hopes rested.' 'This might be his last chance. He was 40, with a wife and baby. Like countless dreamers, he'd existed on the outskirts of Hollywood, fending off debt and doubt, staying afloat with low-wage jobs, diligently writing screenplays and making short films, hoping to hold on long enough to catch a break.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:18 PM PST - 7 comments

Today on Rewind a remarkable historical piece that features two American icons who clashed over issues of corruption and misappropriation of funds in the 1950s and 60s. They are Robert Kennedy- former Attorney General of the United States, but at the time Chief Investigator of the Rackets Committee for the United States Senate, and James Hoffa- head of the Teamsters Union. (MP3) [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 12:01 PM PST - 1 comment

Confessions of a Binge Drinker : "If, as the CDC suggests in a new report, binge drinking leads to violence, spread of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy, and risky behavior, then why am I doing just fine?" [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 11:57 AM PST - 97 comments

Joe Pass plays a Fender Jaguar
posted by Ardiril at 11:56 AM PST - 17 comments

The Schleppers.
A history of the New York comedy underworld in the 1950s, from WFMU's Beware of the Blog. Featuring Joe Ancis, Jack Roy (aka Rodney Dangerfield), and Lenny Bruce.
posted by anazgnos at 11:42 AM PST - 8 comments

A short list of Kpop songs with double word titles from the last 3-4 years: Cry Cry High High Mirror Mirror Spark Spark Cooking Cooking Push Push Sorry Sorry Haru Haru [more inside]
posted by subdee at 11:37 AM PST - 13 comments

The 1988 Crystal Light National Aerobics Championships, hosted by Alan Thicke. This is still a thing.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 11:16 AM PST - 34 comments

Underwater Experiments. Beautiful underwater photography by Alexander Semenov. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 10:46 AM PST - 5 comments

Think Downton Abbey is good? The New York Times' national desk, and over 30,000 others, can't get enough of the live webcam for Wisconsin's recall (previously). Broadcasting from an undisclosed location, the characters -- including "Sideburns" and "Flirty von Flirtenheimer" -- put the "men" into "Government Accountability Board." Background.
posted by Madamina at 10:45 AM PST - 66 comments

I, I'm so in love with you. The soulful side of President Obama. (slyt)
posted by Hoenikker at 10:29 AM PST - 50 comments

In July 2011, Uganda's Little League baseball team became the first African team to qualify for the Little League World Series, which was held in Williamsport, Pa., in August 2011. After beating the the 22-time World League qualifying Arabian American Little League squad from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the Ugandan team couldn't take part in the world series after their visas were denied (NYT; alt: HuffPo), due to concerns about birth certificate validity, but that's not the end of their story. The Canadian team from Langley raised funds to travel to Uganda, giving the Ugandan team the match they were denied. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:23 AM PST - 19 comments

What's a JavaScript Closure? Ever wonder about some of JavaScript's more advanced and esoteric features? Nathan Whitehead's interactive tutorial explains and walks through each of these concepts one step at a time. At the end of each lesson, you are encouraged to write short snippets of code demonstrating the concepts that you just learned, which are then automatically checked for errors and verified.

Perhaps you're new to JavaScript, or programming in general; CodeAcademy offers similar interactive tutorials that will teach you the basics, and hold your hand along the way. Perhaps you'd rather learn at a more even pace; CodeAcademy's CodeYear will introduce you to one new concept every week throughout 2012. [more inside]
posted by schmod at 9:43 AM PST - 42 comments

Freud: the last great Enlightenment thinker. Freud never held out the hope of tranquillity. Rather, he aimed to reconcile those who entered psychoanalysis to a state of perpetual unrest...psychoanalysis does not so much promise inner peace as open up a possibility of release from the fantasy that inner conflict will end.
posted by shivohum at 9:23 AM PST - 69 comments

Are Women People? A writer for The Hairpin discovers the satirical poetry of Alice Duer Miller.
posted by flex at 9:22 AM PST - 41 comments

Etta James, jazz legend best known for "At Last," died today after a bout with leukemia and dementia, while her husband and sons were battling over her savings.
posted by tr33hggr at 8:47 AM PST - 143 comments

This might be the happiest dog you'll see today. [slyt]
posted by quin at 8:38 AM PST - 43 comments

You order your food, everyone places their phone on the table face down. The first one to flip over their phone loses the game and pays for everyone's meal, otherwise everyone pays for themselves. Don't be a dick when you're out with friends at a restaurant.
posted by cashman at 8:28 AM PST - 167 comments

Are you at a pugilistic disadvantage because your fist names are substandard or uninspired? Problem solved.
posted by acanthous at 6:38 AM PST - 42 comments

Not sure what this Dwarf Fortress thing is all about? The Legend of Ungrashzon (German SLYT, English subtitles available) illustrates.
posted by Zarkonnen at 5:18 AM PST - 33 comments

Fukushima: Inside the Reactor 2 Containment Vessel, 1/19/2012. Here are Mainichi Daily News and Japan Times reports.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:57 AM PST - 69 comments

Drunk Ron Swanson That is all.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:14 AM PST - 78 comments

Financial Advice Generator.
posted by vidur at 10:34 PM PST - 28 comments

Shredding Capitol Hill is about finding your playground.
posted by Oh OK HA HA at 10:31 PM PST - 10 comments

Why America is fucked SLYT.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:06 PM PST - 94 comments

Comic books are destroying society. Again (or is it still?) Bonus: the full text of Seduction of the Innocent, from 1954.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:17 PM PST - 72 comments

Gamification strikes again: Microsoft Visual Studio now has a plugin that allows you to earn achievements while you code. The full list of achievements ranges from ones that reward repeated use of Visual Studio features to ones that reward poor coding techniques. No word on when they'll be incorporated into Xcode and Eclipse, but be patient.
posted by barnacles at 8:04 PM PST - 78 comments

The exquisite jazz violin of Stephane Grappelli - then and later [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:32 PM PST - 15 comments

The rise and fall (...and rise and fall) of Newt Gingrich. With just two days to go before the all-important South Carolina Republican primary, Newt Gingrich seems to have shaken off the spectre of past failures, is leading Mitt Romney in the most recent polls, and is on the verge of an amazing political comeback... assuming you overlook his ex-wife's new claims, set to air today, of Gingrich wanting -- and potentially having -- an open marriage.
posted by markkraft at 3:27 PM PST - 544 comments

If collaboration doesn't produce the best results (SLNYT), why do we keep trying to force people to work collaboratively? Previously
posted by stinker at 3:05 PM PST - 46 comments

Cleveland Indians pitcher Fausto Carmona was arrested today in the Dominican Republic and charged with using a false identity. [more inside]
posted by SisterHavana at 1:37 PM PST - 26 comments

There's official. And then there's Facebook official. [SLYT-viral-probably-something-blue-but-totally-worth-it]
posted by unSane at 1:32 PM PST - 49 comments

The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor (sl Cracked list) [more inside]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:42 PM PST - 358 comments

Megaupload has been shut down. Four people, including the founder Kim Schmitz, have been arrested for violation of piracy laws. Two more are named as defendants in the indictment. 18 domain names have been seized, warrants have been issued in 9 countries. Given that Megaupload took the fight to Universal Music Group in December and is on record as being vehemently against SOPA, one wonders if this crackdown is a retaliation of some sort. Given that industry insiders accuse MegaUpload of being responsible for at least $500 Million in lost revenue for the music industry, it's ironic that its current CEO is Swizz Beats, noted major-label rapper and hip-hop producer.
posted by Phire at 12:41 PM PST - 324 comments

The Script Lab's top10 character introductions in film
posted by Artw at 11:56 AM PST - 56 comments

The small village of Siem Reap, Cambodia has mushroomed since the 19th century French discovery of Angkor Wat. It is now Southeast Asia's most visited tourist destination, notably among South Koreans. In 2010, they accounted for 12% of foreign visitors to the region, ranking just below neighboring Vietnam. But the sprawling temples of Angkor may not be the first stop on every South Korean's itinerary.

On the frosty Korean Peninsula, relations between North and South are perennially tense. But here amid the balmy breezes of this Cambodian tourist town, Koreans from both sides of the border are enthusiastically fraternizing at the North Korean restaurant as if reunification were just days away [NYT].

[more inside]
posted by obscurator at 11:40 AM PST - 11 comments

Gordotronic.com launched across the interwebs.... Seattle artist and record producer Gordon Raphael (The Strokes, Regina Spektor) has launched an all encompassing website featuring his own unreleased albums (7 of them) , Interviews, Art, and Video.
posted by ktrain at 11:32 AM PST - 1 comment

Mefi's own jscalzi painstakingly explains what a record is to his 13 year old daughter.
posted by desjardins at 11:32 AM PST - 108 comments

Nine ways scientists demonstrate they don't understand journalism. Ananyo Bhattacharya, chief online editor of Nature, writes in the Guardian that science journalism will never and should never be what some scientists want it to be. Meanwhile, aggregators like Futurity (previously on MetaFilter) and The Conversation are aiming to let scientists present their findings to the public without mediation through the traditional press. Bhattacharya describes both as "a bit dull." Bhattacharya, previously: "Scientists should not be allowed to copy-check stories about their work."
posted by escabeche at 11:17 AM PST - 42 comments

"Neither the Copyright and Patent Clause nor the First Amendment, we hold, makes the public domain, in any and all cases, a territory that works may never exit. "
posted by burnfirewalls at 11:08 AM PST - 95 comments

Previously the Guardian has done a series on Writer's Rooms, now they have started on Writer's Desktops - "where writers show us around their working lives by revealing what's on their computer desktops" (Previously)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:48 AM PST - 9 comments

Let's Break Final Fantasy 6 is a delightful Let's Play of a familiar and beloved game in which an enlivened youth sets off on a long and arduous journey of playing a long and (well, somewhat) arduous game without...saving in order to... Wait. What? Where'd that airship come from and what is that moogle doing to that train? [more inside]
posted by byanyothername at 10:24 AM PST - 39 comments

National Public Rodeo Vanity Fair's David Margolick on the recent history and (somewhat) uncertain future of National Public Radio.
posted by Chrischris at 10:23 AM PST - 8 comments

We want to sing a big shout to U.S., and to all ravers in the world! And to Westbam, Marusha, Steve Mason, The Mystic Man, DJ Dick, Carl Cox, The Hooligan, Cosmic, Kid Paul, Dag, Mijk van Dijk, Jens Lissat, Lenny D., Sven Vath, Mark Spoon, Marco Zaffarano, Hell, Paul Elstak, Mate Galic, Roland Casper, Sylvie, Miss Djax, Jens Mahlstedt, Tanith, Laurent Garnier, Special, Pascal F.E.O.S., Gary D., Scotty, Gizmo,... and to all DJs all over the world!
posted by filthy light thief at 9:41 AM PST - 15 comments

Possibly inspired by Al Gore, Apple announces a new iTunes U app, textbooks for iBooks 2.0, and iBooks Author, so you can create your own interactive books.
posted by empath at 9:21 AM PST - 179 comments

The size of the known universe - A six and a half minute video which provides a view of the scale of the universe.
posted by quin at 8:29 AM PST - 34 comments

"Google turned off Code Search earlier this week." Google announced Code Search's impending departure last October (to unhappiness). Russ Cox, one of the original authors of Code Search and one of the head Go engineers (previously and previouslier) has published an explanation of how Code Search worked, and enough code that you can run similar queries on your own machine.
posted by mkb at 8:23 AM PST - 16 comments

The company that creates digital effects for Boardwalk Empire has put together the before and after shots from Season Two.
posted by gman at 8:20 AM PST - 44 comments

IMDABES. [translation "I'm the best." SLYT]
posted by d1rge at 8:15 AM PST - 10 comments

What a 130-mph car crash looks like from the inside of the car.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:05 AM PST - 53 comments

"The '70s, man. Martin Luther King Jr. is dead. Malcolm X is dead. The Kennedys are dead. Kids at Kent State are getting capped. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix have both gone haint. Nixon's in the Oval Office, and the Manson murders stain the Hills. Morrison and Dennis Wilson once picked up Charles Manson on Sunset and dropped him off at producer Terry 'Turn Turn Turn' Melcher's house on Cielo Drive. A few years later, Manson's acolytes would murder Sharon Tate and four others at that house, including celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, who styled Morrison's original king-of-the-jungle coif." -- LA Weekly's Jeff Weiss presents an exhaustive account of The Door's album L.A. Woman, which is now 40 years old
posted by bardic at 1:11 AM PST - 84 comments

Chris Dodd responds to the SOPA/PIPA protest and blackout on the official MPAA blog calling it an "abuse of power".
posted by loquacious at 1:06 AM PST - 194 comments

Chances are that sometime, somewhere, out of the corner of one ear, at least, you've heard the iconic (yet all-but-forgotten) "Willie and the Hand Jive". Set to a Bo Diddley beat, it was an infectious little number that made quite a splash back in its day. Here's a fun live version of the bouncy tune, complete with the three largest dancing girls you're ever likely to see, and here's the original 1958 recording. The composer of the tune, the son of Greek immigrants who decided that the world of black music was where he wanted to be, was one Johnny Otis, who has just died at the grand old age of 90. Shortly after its release, "Willie and the Hand Jive" was covered by early rock icons like Bo Diddley and, across the pond in England, Cliff Richard. But apart from his most famous tune, Johnny did a LOT of recording and performing throughout his lengthy career, so there's... [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:16 AM PST - 42 comments

A quicker picker-upper. "[A] group of MIT researchers will present a new algorithm that, in a large range of practically important cases, improves on the fast Fourier transform."
posted by Ardiril at 10:33 PM PST - 34 comments

Like dogs? Like Star Wars? here ya go! [SLYT, VW-Blue, intentional viral, more disclaimers, one more disclaimer)
posted by HuronBob at 9:48 PM PST - 31 comments

Roger Waters spent an hour earlier today talking to Howard Stern. [soundcloud link, 57m] The interview covers a wide variety of topics, including his standing with former members of Pink Floyd, his songwriting technique, and his ongoing tour of The Wall, which just announced a date at Yankee Stadium.
posted by hippybear at 9:26 PM PST - 38 comments

Cruise Captain says he 'tripped' into lifeboat and couldn't get out. Audio recording of an Italian Coast Guard Captain telling him to get back on board [Transcript]
posted by panaceanot at 8:03 PM PST - 193 comments

Seawise Giant - later known as Happy Giant, Jahre Viking, and Knock Nevis - was the largest ship ever built.
posted by Trurl at 7:22 PM PST - 16 comments

Do Sports Build Character or Damage It? They foster the warrior within us, for better and for worse. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 6:40 PM PST - 45 comments

"One jar contained chilli powder, the other turmeric. But in the dark, the girl from Odisha couldn't see which jar had the chilli powder. So she mixed both the powders, carried it to the bedroom and threw it into the eyes of five thieves brutally beating up his [sic] parents." The (Indian) Daily Mail write about the 24 child winners of the National Bravery Awards.
posted by Diablevert at 6:12 PM PST - 32 comments

We Were Wanderers On A Prehistoric Earth (3m14s, fullscreen)
posted by stbalbach at 6:02 PM PST - 6 comments

"The Cranach Digital Archive is an interdisciplinary collaborative research resource, providing access to art historical, technical and conservation information on paintings by Lucas Cranach (c.1472 - 1553) and his workshop. The repository presently provides information on more than 400 paintings including c.5000 images and documents from 19 partner institutions."
posted by peacay at 5:57 PM PST - 4 comments

A one-of-a-kind, 35-foot-long camera that exposes 6-foot-tall negatives. The detail in a portrait subjects’ eyeball alone is a thousand times greater than what you get with the average negative. Resulting portraits will be featured on prints 2 stories tall. Photographer Dennis Manarchy is traveling around the country documenting various cultures.
posted by The Deej at 4:51 PM PST - 16 comments

"How to make sense of Conspiracy Theories" [Part 1 of 9 from YouTube] Rob Ager is best known for his very thoughtful analyses of films such as The Shining [see also this analysis of the Overlook's geometry, previously], A Clockwork Orange [and supplement], Psycho, Pulp Fiction, Aliens, Taxi Driver and others. He has recently completed an analysis of the subject of conspiracy theories. "All of us, from time to time, will believe that two or more people in a particular context have conspired to achieve a mutual aim – be it cheating in a card game or engineering an international war. It isn’t by definition a lapse in logic to believe that a conspiracy has or is going to occur in a given situation. Conspiracies do happen and it is a natural facet of healthy thinking and self-preservation to seek out awareness of conspiracies that may affect our lives." [Text version, Ager's Collative Learning site]
posted by McLir at 4:22 PM PST - 53 comments

After the highly publicized Bruce Lee monument was erected in Mostar, a city and municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2005, a series of similar ventures were initiated in rural Serbia. Some sociologists describe the glorification of nonpolitical celebrity figures as the result of an identity crisis caused by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, a period when a once functioning multi-ethnic unity collapsed.

— Turbo Sculpture is an essay by Aleksandra Domanović about sculptures of pop culture heroes, e.g. Bruce Lee, Rocky Balboa and Bob Marley, which have been placed or proposed in the nation-states that once comprised Yugoslavia. You can also watch a photo-illustrated reading of the essay voiced by a dead-pan British man. [via We Find Wildness]
posted by Kattullus at 4:20 PM PST - 5 comments

John McCain's entire 2008 opposition research file on Mitt Romney [PDF], scribd mirror
posted by msalt at 3:35 PM PST - 141 comments

The Evil Marketing Genius of Paula Deen, the New Face of Diabetes. Paula Deen has announced she has Type 2 Diabetes, has started a new web site "Diabetes in a New Light", and is now a paid spokesman for Novo Nordisk's diabetes medication Victoza. Naturally she minimizes any influence diet might have to do with her disease, but prefers to focus on the treatment side of things. Anthony Bourdain weighs in.
posted by Eekacat at 2:44 PM PST - 316 comments

What were you raised by wolves? by Vera Brosgol. Cartoonist Vera Brosgol has posted her startling, wordless mini-comic online. [Previously] [Previously]
posted by Fizz at 2:26 PM PST - 32 comments

Swallowed by a whale. If, I’ll pretend for a moment, you were swallowed, it would happen like this: You would first be chewed. Sperm whales’ teeth are 8 inches long – longer than most blades in your knife drawer. Then you would be gulped to the fauces, the back of the mouth, and forced down. Here is where Bartley apparently touched the quivering sides of the throat. You would also touch the throat, perhaps claw at the sides of the throat like you would sliding down an icy slope. There would be no air, and you’d suffocate in acid and water, but, we’re saying, you somehow survive. Imagine a black and mucous-smothered tube sock slipping over you.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:47 PM PST - 115 comments

Atheism 2.0: Alain de Botton reviews some of the often-overlooked values that religion can have for secular society. [more inside]
posted by Misunderestimated at 12:41 PM PST - 187 comments

All rise! The Puppet Court is now in session! Denied entry with their cameras into the courtroom for the corruption trial of Jimmy Dimora, a former Cuyahoga County official, local "ACTION!" news channel decides to reenact each day's events...with puppets.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 11:54 AM PST - 29 comments

In an editorial (PDF) in the Canadian Medical Association Journal this week, interim Editor-in-Chief Rajendra Kale suggests that the sex of a fetus, determined by ultrasound, should not be revealed until after 30 weeks of pregnancy to prevent the selective abortion of females, common in other countries and taking place in some immigrant communities in Canada. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:37 AM PST - 78 comments

cliff richard dying inside
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:34 AM PST - 54 comments

New Zealand produces some of the world's best shearers and its national championship, the Golden Shears, receives substantial media coverage; but the IOC is unlikely to be persuaded that it should be an Olympic demonstration sport. [more inside]
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 10:31 AM PST - 23 comments

In the same spirit as Drew Droege's Chloe Sevigny videos, I present the Diary of Zac Efron (2, 3, 4, 5)
posted by hermitosis at 9:50 AM PST - 8 comments

The rise and fall of personal computing - A neat (and in some ways, stark) visualization of the impact of mobile devices on computing
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:45 AM PST - 148 comments

Masyu, also known as Pearls, is an NP-complete logic puzzle created by the makers of Sudoku. Brandon McPhail provides a few free puzzles to get your feet wet on his web site (Java applet). Once you've mastered those, UCLICK Games offers a free daily puzzle (Flash) with the past month of archives available too. [more inside]
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 8:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Stop the Wall - A group of NYC based Internet companies express their common distaste for SOPA and PIPA in this video
posted by rudhraigh at 3:16 AM PST - 33 comments

This notice is here to tell you not to remove this notice.
posted by latkes at 11:46 PM PST - 132 comments

Everyone knows America's Oldest Brewery is D.G. Yuengling & Son (and daughters) of Pottsville, PA (and Tampa, FL) This family owned brewery was established as the "Eagle Brewery" in 1829 by a German immigrant named David Gottlob Jüngling. After the original brewery burned down in 1831 it was relocated to its current location. It was built into a mountain with caves dug into the side, a common practice to preserve beer and to achieve the cool temperatures required to make lager before refrigeration. Yuengling spent most of its history as a small regional brewery and only began to attract national attention years after the launch of Yuengling Traditional Lager in 1987, which went on to become the flagship product of the company and now accounts for 80% of Yuengling's production. On the strength of that growth, and with other brewers being bought out by or outsourcing production to foreign companies, Yuengling has now passed The Boston Beer Company to claim the title of America's largest brewing company as well. In this globalized beer era where giants war for market share, products from America's new largest brewer are only available in 14 states.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 8:56 PM PST - 113 comments

German filmmaker David Sieveking had just finished film school and was a huge fan of David Lynch. How could he pass up the opportunity to see Lynch when he came to speak about creativity and how to unlock it? How could he possibly fathom that the lecture would lead him on a five year voyage into the world of Transcendental Meditation, viewing the movement from within and without, with an accepting and then a critical eye, and ultimately would lead him on a journey to the source of the Ganges and yield a feature-length documentary, Sieveking's first movie? For a limited time, David Wants To Fly can be viewed at the Link TV website in its entirety. [~95min]
posted by hippybear at 8:54 PM PST - 7 comments

On the latest episode of Marc Maron's WTF, comedian Todd Glass publicly came out for the first time, and talks movingly about the fears of being typecast that kept him in the closet.
posted by Apropos of Something at 6:44 PM PST - 59 comments

"The following is a short demonstration of Quintronics' latest musical invention called The Singing House. This drone synthesizer can be installed into any building in order to provide its inhabitants with a pleasing chord that is constantly changed by the weather." Brought to you by the maker of The Drum Buddy. [more inside]
posted by crunchland at 6:26 PM PST - 16 comments

The gray Cherkassian cow lived alone in a shed attached to a railroad attendant's tiny house on the vast Soviet grasslands. The cow had a calf, and the railroad attendant's son liked the calf very much. Then the calf was taken away and the cow became very melancholy. She never had a chance to tell her story. This is her story. (Contains Russian animation.) [more inside]
posted by Nomyte at 6:13 PM PST - 6 comments

John Lennon's cats
posted by Ardiril at 6:13 PM PST - 22 comments

The attacks from both the right and the left on [Obama] and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong. ... Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama’s long game—and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country’s future as his original election in 2008. Andrew Sullivan writes an intriguingly optimistic piece on why he thinks and hopes that Obama will be re-elected this year.
posted by WalterMitty at 4:58 PM PST - 320 comments

A Philadelphia program is bringing families, airport employees and airlines together to help autistic kids fly more comfortably. [more inside]
posted by chela at 4:40 PM PST - 6 comments

A Million Wisconsinites Petition to Recall Scott Walker: "Petitions with the names of 1 million Wisconsinites were submitted to state elections officials today, in a move that will jump-start the process of removing the nation’s most notorious antilabor governor from office... In all, close to 2 million signatures were submitted Tuesday, building the historic in-the-streets popular uprising that rocked Wisconsin in 2012 into a electoral uprising that has the potential to rock the politics not just of the state but of the nation in 2012. The movement to oust Walker will have secured the support of a higher percentage of eligible voters than has ever before sought to recall an American governor." [more inside]
posted by flex at 4:32 PM PST - 106 comments

The Hatchet Job of the Year Award, sponsored by The Omnivore, is looking for 'the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the last twelve months'. The shortlist includes Geoff Dyer on Julian Barnes ('excellent in its averageness'), Lachlan Mackinnon on Geoffrey Hill ('he is wasting his time and trying to waste ours') and Jenni Russell on Catherine Hakim ('if you should pass it in a bookshop, pick up a copy and drop it somewhere where nobody's likely to take an interest in it'). Mary Beard, another of the shortlisted candidates, insists that 'it's not actually a prize for skewering .. it's for honest as well as entertaining book reviewing, that isn't afraid to go beyond deference, to call a spade a spade'. [more inside]
posted by verstegan at 4:22 PM PST - 19 comments

The year was 1969, and even the people who made commercials for the International House of Pancakes were on acid.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:52 PM PST - 77 comments

Teach Thee How to Curtsy by Sir Jarlsberg
posted by azarbayejani at 3:15 PM PST - 17 comments

The only way to become fluent in a language is to actively mimic the speech sounds of native speakers. Idahosa (ee-DAO-ssah) Ness has developed a language learning system based on music and mimicry.
posted by unliteral at 3:14 PM PST - 49 comments

10 Alternative Book Covers/Film Posters to celebrate the launch of the Penguin Design Award 2012.
posted by Pilly at 3:12 PM PST - 9 comments

Sleeves Received is a collection of the best-designed finds from The Wire's mailbag. (via thingsmagazine)
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:40 PM PST - 8 comments

Between 1987 and 2000, MTV Europe broadcast Party Zone, charting the frontier of European electronic music. For a primer, check the frenetic "megamixes" of featured artists on Party Zone's exclusive R&S Records (alive and well). On a more coherent note, Party Zone occasionally featured live performances by Orbital, Mouse on Mars (1,2) and others. Video (and occasional) Interview jockey Simone Angel even sat down for a chat with Richard D. James [1h10m, interpsersed with heretofore unseen videos and live performances]. [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 2:35 PM PST - 1 comment

Julia Wertz has been posting comics thrice-weekly about her life in San Francisco and then Brooklyn for the past 5 years. Sometimes they're sad. Sometimes they're hilarious. And sometimes they're just strange. [more inside]
posted by lunasol at 2:23 PM PST - 15 comments

Karsten Thormaehlen captured the wisdom and joy of aging by photographing centenarians. [more inside]
posted by gman at 2:22 PM PST - 7 comments

Here comes Alan Measles - WW2 hero turned benign dictator turned Godhead. Guru, muse, art critic, raconteur. In his capacity as minor deity he resides in a hand-tooled Louis Vuitton traveling shrine, and embarks on a pilgrimage to Bavaria to make peace with the Germans, in his custom-built personal conveyance. In his entourage are his devoted minion and bodyguard, and some other bloke named Alan. In London this weekend? Pay your respects to Alan's stunt-doubles in the Kenilworth AM1, and purchase Measles memorabilia from the gift shop. [more inside]
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 2:14 PM PST - 3 comments

The Waggle Dance of the Honeybee (7:29, YouTube) is a short documentary that elaborates upon Karl von Frisch's honeybee waggle dance translation.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:02 PM PST - 10 comments

Apocalypse Later, Surf Now - A short, beautiful video of people enjoying themselves as the world ends.
posted by quin at 1:59 PM PST - 13 comments

"I shot a little video every day of 2011 on my Canon Powershot, then I edited it all down to a little over a second each." (SLVimeo)
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:49 PM PST - 38 comments

Screaming Females are a 3-person self described "rock/rock/rock" band from New Jersey featuring Jarrett Dougherty on drums, King Mike Abbate on bass, and Marissa Paternoster on guitar and vocals. They're not incredibly famous and they're probably not on the cusp of a string of number 1 hits, but they put on a mean show and they've got a new album in a couple of months if rock/rock/rock should happen to be your thing. [more inside]
posted by sandswipe at 12:28 PM PST - 33 comments

Hopefully you've already seen the sneak peak, and maybe you saw the leaked opening credits. With a 2012 airdate now promised (Twitter, Nickelodeon 2012 teaser), several scenes have been recently leaked (MAJOR SPOILERS) from the first episode of Avatar: The Legend of Korra. (Previously.)
posted by kmz at 12:03 PM PST - 30 comments

Hello (slv)
posted by jontyjago at 11:14 AM PST - 25 comments

George Lucas on his retirement, Red Tails, and future pursuits (in love and film). SLNYT
posted by Atreides at 10:52 AM PST - 114 comments

Here's never before seen footage of a teenage Kanye West performing at the Double Door in Chicago in 1996 (YouTube) Want to go farther back in time? After posting the 1996 video DDotOmen readers uncovered footage of a 12 year old West, performing "His Name Means Love," a poem he wrote in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, at Vanderpoel Elementary School in 1990. (YouTube) [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:42 AM PST - 15 comments

...there’s some desperation to this junk version of “Dancing in the Street,” with both parties trying to affirm their A-1 celebrity status. One of the more pernicious effects of the whole Live Aid/Farm Aid/Band Aid spectacle was to cement the hierarchy of the “legend” rock acts and a smaller tier of anointed successors from the slightly-younger generation (Tom Petty, Sting, Dire Straits, U2). It was the height of the Boomer Counter-Reformation. The late Eighties would see the over-publicized returns of everyone from Steve Winwood to the Monkees to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, to a revamped George Harrison to a MOR version of Pink Floyd to Robbie Robertson pretending that he was Peter Gabriel (a version of Gabriel who couldn’t sing) to an all-star Yes and a Zeppelin-sampling Robert Plant, culminating in the return of the “revitalized” Stones in 1989, the touring company now reincorporated into a gleaming multinational. As Marcello Carlin said back when Popular covered this single: “Suddenly we were once again reminded who in pop and rock mattered and who didn’t…With their massacre of “Dancing In The Street,” Bowie and Jagger seemed to relish rubbing it in.“

-The Annotated Jagger/Bowie "Dancing in the Street"
posted by anazgnos at 10:35 AM PST - 170 comments

With the UK struggling through continued dismal economic prospects so grim they are even damaging such an august a tradition as the Indian restaurant, perhaps a new Royal Yacht to celebrate the Queen's diamond jubilee will cheer everyone up?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:32 AM PST - 31 comments

British scientists have discovered a “treasure trove” of Charles Darwin fossils that have been lost for more than 150-years. | 'I spotted some drawers marked "unregistered fossil plants",' he recalls. 'I can't resist a mystery, so I pulled one open. What I found inside made my jaw drop!' Inside were hundreds of fossil plants, polished into thin translucent sheets known as 'thin sections' and captured in glass slides so they could be studied under a microscope. | The British Geologic Survey has images 33 of the "Lost Fossils" online. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 10:24 AM PST - 15 comments

The Gay Rights Movement in 7 minutes. [SLYT]
posted by schmod at 10:20 AM PST - 25 comments

Gesture drawing from home: a convenient tool for practising figure drawing
posted by rollick at 10:07 AM PST - 15 comments

"Countries are defined by the lines that divide them. But how are those lines decided — and why are some of them so strange? Borderlines [a New York Times column by Frank Jacobs of Strange Maps] explores the stories behind the global map, one line at a time." The latest in the series: "The Loneliness of the Guyanas," and the inaugural essay, "In Praise of Borders."
posted by ocherdraco at 9:49 AM PST - 17 comments

Why Citizen's United isn't the problem, and why Stephen Colbert is missing the mark. [more inside]
posted by postel's law at 9:35 AM PST - 88 comments

Copenhagen's Christiania squatters, famed for their anti-free market ways, are selling shares in their community so they can buy it from the government. What do you get for your investment: "a symbolic sense of ownership in Christiania and the promise of an invitation to a planned annual shareholder party." As one squatter calls it, "ownership in an abstract form." According to the Copenhagen Post, after striking a deal with the state this summer, Christiania residents now need to raise 76.2 million kroner (almost $13 million) to buy the majority of the area’s properties and an additional six million kroner to rent adjoining green spaces. The first 43 million kroner (or approximately $8 million) is due on 15 April 2012. Several prominent people have purchased Christiania Shares, including Margrethe Vestager, minister of the economy and interior, and Mogens Lykketoft, president of parliament. The shares are available for purchase online (Text source)
posted by infini at 9:25 AM PST - 22 comments

Which is easier to buy: Viagra or Marijuana?
posted by DU at 8:28 AM PST - 62 comments

Most people have heard of Daniel Lanois for his production work with U2 and Brian Eno but he started his climb to fame with a little band called Martha and the Muffins who had a monster hit song. [more inside]
posted by ashbury at 7:49 AM PST - 39 comments

I'm Human A video by the students of Liberty Middle School in Madison, Alabama. Featuring the students and faculty of Liberty Middle School, Bob Jones High School, and James Clements High School; and the music of Sigur Rós. (SLYT)
posted by BitterOldPunk at 7:48 AM PST - 12 comments

Journalism warning stickers
posted by unSane at 7:40 AM PST - 33 comments

Shakespeare's The Tempest banned by Arizona schools
posted by Artw at 6:38 AM PST - 128 comments

Twilight of the Twinkie?: [infographic] Twinkies Maker Hostess Files for Chapter 11 Protection. [Wall Street Journal] [Previously]
posted by Fizz at 3:54 AM PST - 59 comments

On Dec 14, 2011 Miranda Gibson climbed 200ft up a tree in Tasmania. She hasn't yet come down. [more inside]
posted by Kerasia at 2:09 AM PST - 30 comments

Conceptual Photography 1964 - 1989 at the Zwirner & Wirth
posted by beshtya at 10:54 PM PST - 2 comments

An ambitious plan for putting kickstarter out of business.
posted by latkes at 8:02 PM PST - 138 comments

Defriending My Rapist
posted by SkylitDrawl at 7:48 PM PST - 103 comments

Debora Iyall had some hits in the 1980s with her band Romeo Void. She's still making music, and just released an EP. She was today's guest on Native America Calling as the January Music Maker (stream m3u link, direct download link) [59m]. (sorry, no transcript available) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:07 PM PST - 18 comments

The world just got a little less funky. Jimmy Castor passed away today. You might know him as the doo-wop Junior who replaced Frankie Lymon in The Teenagers. You might know him forYou Might know his hits Troglodyte, Hey, Leroy, or maybe the Bertha Butt Boogie. You might even know his Magic Saxophone. [more inside]
posted by louche mustachio at 6:05 PM PST - 17 comments

[NSFW] Here's a feed of the 50 most recent public images posted to LiveJournal.
posted by troll at 5:39 PM PST - 77 comments

Share screens easily in real time with Quick Screen Share [Beta]. No registration required, and it features remote mousing and keying.
posted by Rykey at 4:00 PM PST - 26 comments

Joe Dilworth, one-time drummer/collaborator with indie stalwarts Stereolab, Th' Faith Healers and Jarvis Cocker, ex-lover of PJ Harvey, is also a very accomplished photographer. [more inside]
posted by The Discredited Ape at 3:05 PM PST - 4 comments

"With a little help from the internet, the genre grew because it was so unique. But in growing, it also evolved. The relaxed, dubby vibe got pushed aside to make way for more. More wobble, more sounds, more everything. Maximize to maximize."

Liquido asks: Who killed Dubstep? (more)
posted by dunkadunc at 2:22 PM PST - 246 comments

Brought to you by Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturers Sandoz, Eric Duvivier’s La Femme 100 Têtes (1967, rated NSFW) is a free cinematic adaptation of Max Ernst’s collage-novel of the same name. Via { feuilleton }.
posted by misteraitch at 2:05 PM PST - 11 comments

High Speed Animal Flight Videos Show Hidden Aerial World. The Dutch Program Vilegkunstenaars (Flight Artists) sent high-speed video tools to amateurs around the world with the challenge: Capture nature in flight. They then picked the best from the over 2,400 slow-motion clips that were uploaded. [more inside]
posted by quin at 1:57 PM PST - 11 comments

Monster Brains' has posted its collection of cover art from Mexican horror magazines.
posted by gman at 1:39 PM PST - 16 comments

If you like Bob Ross and his happy trees, you will enjoy Fabian Gaete Maureira. This Chilean street artist produces scenes reminiscent of that of Bob Ross and "The Joy of Painting." But he does it in three minutes! And just for the heck of it, here are some memorable videos of Bob Ross painting: Mountains Evergreen Tree Clouds
posted by zizzle at 12:49 PM PST - 15 comments

In Gold We Trust. With the shiny stuff soaring to $1643.12 an ounce and prominent politicians advocating a return to the gold standard, Wells Tower investigates the latest Klondike gold rush.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:47 AM PST - 98 comments

will.i.am introduces the Ultrabook Project (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:16 AM PST - 82 comments

Elevator: Source is a Half-Life 2 mod which puts the player on an elevator that visits a number of strange floors. It requires Gary's Mod and HL2:Ep2, but you can sample the experience with this gameplay video.
posted by codacorolla at 10:13 AM PST - 40 comments

Day at Night was an interview series on the public television station of the City University of New York that aired from 1973-4. CUNY TV is in the process of digitizing and uploading the 130 episodes that were produced, with 46 done so far. The episodes are just under half an hour in length. Among the people interviewed by host James Day are author Ray Bradbury, actress Myrna Loy, medical researcher Jonas Salk, singer Cab Calloway, writer Christopher Isherwood, nuclear scientist Edward Teller, comedian Victor Borge, tennis player Billie Jean King, linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, composer Aaron Copland, actor Vincent Price and boxer Muhammad Ali.
posted by Kattullus at 9:34 AM PST - 6 comments

How Gil Scott-Heron and Stevie Wonder set up Martin Luther King Day , with audio slideshow. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 8:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Last week, three founders of private equity fund The Carlyle Group shared a year's pay of $413M. They didn't do the private equity industry any favours as there has already been additional interest from the government for greater taxation of this elite subcategory of the 1%. [more inside]
posted by nickrussell at 8:48 AM PST - 63 comments

Urban Outfitters has stopped selling a line of Navajo-themed undergarments, drinking accessories, and other items whose relation to the tribe is questionable, at best. What caused the kerfuffle, and did UO have any obligation (beyond the obvious PR repercussions) to give way? [more inside]
posted by anewnadir at 8:44 AM PST - 121 comments

Am I wasting my time organizing e-mail? A study of e-mail refinding. (single link academic paper in .pdf.)
posted by escabeche at 8:25 AM PST - 47 comments

This article aims to investigate the first ‘Death Star’ from the ‘Star Wars’ film series and how much energy it would require to destroy a planet.
posted by veedubya at 8:22 AM PST - 77 comments

BroNYcon, and New York gathering of the bronies, took place over the weekend of the 7th January. The frist Bronycon, in June 2011, was a relatively small affair, with around 100 guests. This one, held at the Hotel Pennsylvania, had 700, many of whom seemed to be faux-bewildered journalists. [more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:27 AM PST - 289 comments

Transit Agencies Face the New Calculus of Broader Backsides
posted by Renoroc at 4:09 AM PST - 51 comments

The debate about whether young people should expect to 'intern' or work for free - and what this means in terms of who* gets into these industries - has been raging for years, but for unemployed people in Britain, this kind of labour no longer just means trying to enter into competitive or media-driven industries. An unemployed graduate, having been sent to work for Poundland without needing the experience nor being offered the job, is seeking a judicial review against the regulations that require many receiving unemployment benefit to work, unpaid, for large corporations. [more inside]
posted by mippy at 4:01 AM PST - 64 comments

William and Sly 2 is a gorgeous, ethereal fantasy exploration game wherein you play a nimble fox tasked with finding the scattered pages of your human friend's journal, while gathering mushrooms, finding keys to unlock mystery boxes, and freeing rune-bound spirits and pixies trapped in frost along the way. [more inside]
posted by taz at 1:32 AM PST - 14 comments

Before Steve Irwin brought short shorts in Australian television documentarism to the world, there were the earworming Leyland Brothers, Malcolm Douglas, the original and literal "Crocodile Hunter" who combined conservationism with cooking, and the dry humourist Alby Mangels, who had his own personal filming curse, interviewed Caribbean drug lords, posed nude (SFW) for Cleo, filmed through minefields and warzones, and filmed more than 80 documentaries.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:35 PM PST - 14 comments

Teahupo'o was included on Transworld Surf's list of the' Top 10 Deadliest Waves' and is commonly referred to as the "heaviest wave in the world".[6][1] The name 'Teahupo'o' loosely translates to English as “to sever the head” or "place of skulls"." [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 10:20 PM PST - 61 comments

Movies From An Alternate Universe. Pixar's Up, filmed in 1965 by Walt Disney. Alternative movie posters of all kinds. Premakes previously.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:41 PM PST - 27 comments

Hugh Howey was a self-published novelist of no real success. Until WOOL, that is - a 15,000 word "little throwaway story" he uploaded to Amazon's Kindle Marketplace one day and promptly forget about. The story he didn't blog, didn't tweet, and didn't even sell on his site hit #2 on the Kindle SciFi Bestseller list and "changed the course of e-books." [more inside]
posted by DarlingBri at 9:27 PM PST - 130 comments

Why the video pros are moving away from Apple
posted by Artw at 8:52 PM PST - 110 comments

Wired called it 'A Robot Scientist.' H+ Magazine asked, 'Signs Of The Singularity?' Even the more pedestrian Science News titled their article 'Software Scientist.' So what is Eureqa? [more inside]
posted by BillW at 8:21 PM PST - 24 comments

The sci-fi and fantasy trailer edits of bloodrunsclear range from a more diverse recasting of The Last Airbender and a more accurate version of the upcoming live-action Akira film to a moody treatment of The Sandman to the retro-looking adaptation of Neuromancer and the haunting Call of Cthulhu film. Want trailers to video game adaptations? To wargamers he has a live-action Warhammer 40,000 teaser. To LARPers he gives you Vampire: the Masquerade. To video gamers? Well... which kind are you interested in?
posted by Apocryphon at 8:14 PM PST - 43 comments

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus || Spoken Word

Responses, Why I Dislike Your Poem, But Love God and I Hate Religion, And Jesus Too

posted by Blasdelb at 6:57 PM PST - 83 comments

Victorian Farm | Edwardian Farm -- 18 hours of BBC experimental archeology/historical documentaries, online. Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn and historian Ruth Goodman spend two years living the life of rural country farmers.
posted by crunchland at 6:53 PM PST - 33 comments

All this brings me to an Indian I want you to know better than his jury did—Douglas Ray Stankewitz, the longest tenured inmate on California’s death row. Like most Indians who find themselves in a group of non-Indians, he is currently known as Chief, but unlike many Indians, he is proud of the nickname. The government wants to kill Chief because Theresa Greybeal was shot dead in the course of a robbery by a group of people high on heroin, and there is no question that Chief was one of them. There is a serious question about who pulled the trigger, and juries are reluctant to kill individuals who did not pull the trigger. But as far as his jury knew, Douglas Stankewitz pulled the trigger. And he might have, but we will never know, based on his trial.
posted by latkes at 6:32 PM PST - 31 comments

Thinking of visiting Melbourne? This video will help you make your decision! (SLVimeo)
posted by awfurby at 6:30 PM PST - 32 comments

GonZo Presents Disco's Payback: The Reboots is an 11-track album featuring modern pop records mashed up with disco classics.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 6:15 PM PST - 3 comments

There has been only one mass-produced internal combustion alternative to the traditional reciprocating engine, the Wankel rotary. There has been only one auto manufacturer that has adopted the rotary engine, Mazda. After the 2012 model year, for the first time since 1967, Mazda's line-up will not include a rotary engined car. [more inside]
posted by hwyengr at 5:23 PM PST - 72 comments

Fire ant rafts are hard to sink - a very cool demonstration of how ants make use of surface tension.
posted by quin at 1:47 PM PST - 52 comments

Robbie Basho, "the father of the American Raga," recorded for John Fahey's Takoma label. He's often grouped with Fahey, Max Ochs, and Sandy Bull as a progenitor of "guitar soli," complex avant garde acoustic guitar (and other stringed instrument) playing. The Basho archives has posted two live shows, one from 1978, and the second from 1982, for streaming or download, and a 1983 radio interview and show for streaming.
posted by OmieWise at 1:42 PM PST - 10 comments

100 Free Photoshop Podcast Tutorials — While many Photoshop instructors focus on features and tools, Richard Harrington covers both the specific skills and techniques you'll need. [requires iTunes]
posted by netbros at 12:31 PM PST - 11 comments

Why you will fail to have a great career [more inside]
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 10:56 AM PST - 110 comments

15 photographs taken at the scene of the 1960 Park Slope, Brooklyn passenger plane collision. These are horrifying, view with caution. Previously. Sorry it had to be from the Daily Mail, folks.
posted by timshel at 10:48 AM PST - 30 comments

Punk Rock Fashion Show at the popular Spit nightclub. Boston, 1982. PLYT; mildly NSFW due to subliminal nipple
posted by pxe2000 at 10:17 AM PST - 28 comments

It's the BDO world championship final and the Guardian has The Joy of Six: darts the six best moments in darts history* which has a great anecdote about the Indoor League, a near legendary television programme. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:10 AM PST - 16 comments

What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation? - Edge 2012 Annual Question (earlier)
posted by Gyan at 9:08 AM PST - 33 comments

MeFi's own cstross on the future: Part 1, Part 2.
posted by Zarkonnen at 8:12 AM PST - 76 comments

Brave New World. (SLYT) An adaptation of a really excellent book. Bud Cort makes everything good.
posted by h00py at 5:45 AM PST - 10 comments

Pogo remixes The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. (Lots of previously here)
posted by gman at 5:35 AM PST - 12 comments

We Will Survive Capitalism! flash mob with US Uncut [previously] and the Brass Liberation Orchestra
Previous BLO flash mobs include Bad Hotel [previously], Operation Hey Mackey [previously], and "PAY UP!" (demanding Bank of America pay their taxes). Speaking of BofA, in San Francisco on Thursday activists turned every Bank of America ATM in the city into an Automated Truth Machine, using special non-adhesive stickers designed to look exactly like BoA’s ATM interface. But instead of checking and savings accounts, these new menus offered a list of everything BoA customers’ money is being used for, including investment in coal-fired power plants, foreclosure on Americans’ homes, bankrolling of climate change, and paying for fat executive bonuses. [more inside]
posted by finite at 4:20 AM PST - 42 comments

A unique urban ecology prompts a new look at globalization. Japanese architect Naohiko Hino visited Guangzhou's 'Africatown' after being inspired by an article in Le Monde Diplomatique* and wrote his view on the unique model of globalization he saw in the heart of China's manufacturing powerhouse. [more inside]
posted by infini at 2:12 AM PST - 19 comments

The end of the world, in 14 days, according to Reddit. [more inside]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:30 AM PST - 184 comments

Lincoln and Shakespeare [more inside]
posted by grumblebee at 9:07 PM PST - 30 comments

The U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program has been training the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) in mine and swimmer detection for many years. (The program was declassified in the 1990s.) Military dolphins were used in the first and second Gulf Wars, and there are rumors they are deployed in the Gulf today. These animals could be important if Iran blockades the Hormuz Strait as threatened.
posted by blob at 8:50 PM PST - 28 comments

A FOIA by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has revealed that the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring political dissent, including social media that reflect adversely on the U.S. government generally and DHS specifically. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 7:56 PM PST - 60 comments

The language of love stamps.
posted by unSane at 4:21 PM PST - 17 comments

Kill Bill, Parts 1 & 2, in One Minute, in One Take, produced by the University of York Filmmaking Society.
posted by grouse at 3:50 PM PST - 27 comments

Birds in Books. "Pennsylvania artist and designer Paula Swisher takes doodling in the margins of old engineering and science manuals to new heights. She began the illustrations using nothing but ballpoint pen and white-out similar to Mark Powell’s envelopes, but soon explored new materials including colored pencil, gouache and other mixed media like thread and cut-out paper." Via Colossal. More illustrations on her flickr.
posted by sweetkid at 3:21 PM PST - 10 comments

Professor Brian Cox (previously 1 2) goes unplugged in a specially recorded programme from the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In his own inimitable style, Brian takes an audience of famous faces, scientists and members of the public on a journey through some of the most challenging concepts in physics. [more inside]
posted by lazaruslong at 3:20 PM PST - 40 comments

What's one thing the major GOP candidates can all agree on? Why, the need to be hard on porn, of course. Morality in Media (MIM, previously) recently revealed that presidential hopefuls Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich had all affirmed the group's drive for "enforcement of obscenity laws". And the multi-billion-dollar per year industry? Adult Video News responds to the campaign (nsfw ads).
posted by stinkycheese at 3:05 PM PST - 61 comments

The Obama White House formally speaks out against SOPA, PIPA. The Obama White House has come out against the Stop Online Piracy Act. The move has -- unsurprisingly -- drawn responses from the MPAA, RIAA, and other interested parties.
posted by joe lisboa at 3:00 PM PST - 223 comments

"The online world of Islamic extremists, like all the other worlds of the Internet, operates on a subtly psychological level that does a brilliant job at keeping people like Abumubarak clicking and posting away -- and amassing all the rankings, scores, badges, and levels to prove it. Like virtually every other popular online social space, the social space of online jihadists has become "gamified," a term used to describe game-like attributes applied to non-game activities. It turns out that what drives online jihadists is pretty much exactly what drives Internet trolls, airline ticket consumers, and World of Warcraft players: competition." [more inside]
posted by vidur at 2:22 PM PST - 21 comments

Search by Image, Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1, a part of Sebastian Schmieg's ongoing Search By Image Series.
posted by griphus at 1:42 PM PST - 16 comments

Everything you wanted to know about Scottish independence in one single animated news item (SLYT) From Taiwanese news animation masters Next Media Animation. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 12:33 PM PST - 27 comments

What can you do in 15 days? In China, they can build a 30-storey skyscraper.. Can't wait that long? Ok, a 15-storey hotel in 6 days then. "If China's economic development continues on its current trajectory, it could build a new Chicago every year until 2030 more than 1,500 new buildings that are over 30 stories high according to a [McKinsey] report.". For some analysts this is terrible news.
posted by storybored at 12:25 PM PST - 51 comments

Falling STAR*D?: It is common practice for psychiatrists to switch depressive patients between different antidepressants if their current drug does not evince a symptomatic response. Despite clinical wisdom supporting this, little empirical, controlled evidence exists to direct “switching” protocols (e.g. if a patient with Z characteristics is on drug X, is it usually better to switch to drug A, B, or C? Will switching help at all?) in the psychopharmacological treatment of depression. The NIMH-funded STAR*D (Sequenced Alternatives to Relieve Depression) study aimed to address these questions of treatment direction in a very large (n>4000), “real-world” sample using a multi-phase treatment plan with different drugs (and cognitive therapy) at every step to maximize chances of eventual remission. Overall, the NIMH reported that about 67% of patients eventually achieved remission, with few differences in effectiveness between different types of treatment at each step. However, researchers and commentators have raised concerns regarding inconsistent reporting of outcomes, after-the-fact changes in study design and analysis, and other issues that may have inflated, partially invalidated, or misrepresented widely reported treatment outcomes. These inequities may also have implications for the secondary moderator analyses (i.e. does trait A predict switching to X or Y is better?) that were a major reason for the study. [more inside]
posted by Keter at 12:16 PM PST - 11 comments

Diagnosed with cancer, my father decided to have his tongue removed. It’s an extreme treatment, but he’s always known how to make things work out.
posted by Blasdelb at 12:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Watch 30 giant hornets take out 30,000 honey bees
posted by Artw at 11:28 AM PST - 71 comments

Microsoft confirms UEFI fears, locks down ARM devices Seems like MS is up to old tricks. New BIOS bootset up seems to only allow MS Operating system as per Microsoft Windows Certification standards which hardware makers have to follow for Windows certification. [more inside]
posted by aleph at 11:06 AM PST - 104 comments

Tobar an Dualchais will keep you busy for awhile. It's a collection of over 26,000 oral recordings made in Scotland, from the 1930s onward. Folklore, songs, music, history, poetry, oh my. Includes some fascinating material from Belle Stewart, the McPake Sisters of Peebles and John the Bard.
posted by RedEmma at 10:43 AM PST - 5 comments

"We're starving." - Charlie Kaufman's BAFTA Screenwriters lecture, recorded September 30, 2011. PDF transcript.
Previously 1, 2
posted by timshel at 9:43 AM PST - 20 comments

Bill Moyers has returned to broadcasting. His new weekly show, Moyers & Company, aired its first episode on many PBS stations last night with a half-hour interview with Jacob Hackler and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics, and a second half-hour examining Occupy Wall Street. The episode, and other video not included in the weekly episodes, will be available on his new website.
posted by hippybear at 9:31 AM PST - 9 comments

The Best Doritos Commercial You Will Never See on TV [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:03 AM PST - 66 comments

Hundreds of 'spot' paintings by Damien Hirst are currently on display in 8 cities on three continents.
posted by xowie at 8:23 AM PST - 96 comments

Nicely scanned copies of classic Golden Guides. Highlights include Light and Color, Stars, Evolution, and the always popular guide to Hallucinogenic Plants.
posted by HumanComplex at 7:15 AM PST - 15 comments

Little Girl Vs. Lion - Wellington Zoo
posted by The Whelk at 6:56 AM PST - 69 comments

Nickel weeklies with covers and full texts courtesy of Bowling Green State University. [more inside]
posted by maurice at 6:48 AM PST - 5 comments

Cat GIF Page You won't be able to stop looking.
posted by Four-Eyed Girl at 6:47 AM PST - 42 comments

This is why you don't go to the gym.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:40 AM PST - 57 comments

This is why I don't give you a job. Hungarian blogger Jakab Andor breaks down the numbers and explains why taxes and regulations make it highly unappealing for him to start a small business employing people in Hungary. He also argues that these same factors make women and older people particularly unappealing prospects. His comments generated quite a bit of controversy (warning: most comments in Hungarian), to which he responded with an offer.
posted by shivohum at 9:47 PM PST - 96 comments

... [Sarah Orne] Jewett's gifts have always been recognized by a select few, and continue to be. [The Country of the] Pointed Firs, especially, was immediately recognized as a major achievement. Henry James called it, perfectly, “a beautiful little quantum of achievement.” Willa Cather listed it as one of her three great American novels...
posted by Trurl at 7:43 PM PST - 13 comments

New York Yelp's hotest reviewer is Stefon K. Founded by an unknown Manhattanite, this user's got everything: Mother Theresa on a ketamine binge, live-action Furbies, Laotian children in birdcages and a connection to one of Saturday Night Live's favorite characters.
posted by Apropos of Something at 4:52 PM PST - 50 comments

For Friday the 13th of January, WFMU DJ Kurt Gottschalk played about 20 different versions of Thelonious Monk's Friday the 13th, including quite a few sent in by his listeners. Here's the playlist and 3 hour mp3 stream (below the blinky picture of Monk), including listeners' comments. Good luck!
posted by moonmilk at 4:10 PM PST - 6 comments

Marching Band For Geese. Beethoven For Elephants. Mariachi For A Beluga Whale (previously). Heavy Metal For Parrots. Jazz For Horses.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:19 PM PST - 13 comments

We're Eating Less Meat. Why? by Mark Bittman (via Ta-Nehesi Coates)
posted by flex at 2:10 PM PST - 149 comments

The Internet often discusses shows that died before their time. Splitsider looked at "10 Promising TV Series That Weren't Picked Up". Television Without Pity also has its "Brilliant But Cancelled" blog, taken over from the original site. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 1:47 PM PST - 258 comments

Take a photographic journey into the past with Illustrated Past, which offers glimpses of life in Brittany, a trip to Tunis and Algiers, scenes of Dutch daily life. These examples are excerpts from the Dutch book, De Aarde en haar Volken (Project Gutenberg), or The Earth and its Peoples (Google auto-translation). Where the 1906 edition featured photos from around the world, the 1877 edition featured etchings (Gutenberg; Google translation).
posted by filthy light thief at 1:16 PM PST - 10 comments

Game Theory 101 has a selection of video and text lectures covering such topics as How to Fly on an Airplane with an Empty Seat Next to You for Free, Why You Should NOT Maximize Your Score in Words With Friends and How to Catch a Ball at a Baseball Game. It's not all light and fluffy, though. Some other topics include Why You Should Support International Aid, How the United States Debt Crisis Will End and Why the Intervention in Libya Was a Bargain. If you're new to game theory, start with The Prisoner's Dilemma.
posted by desjardins at 1:04 PM PST - 49 comments

Mapstalgia - video game maps drawn from memory [via mefi projects, MetaTalk, and Cortex]
posted by The Devil Tesla at 1:02 PM PST - 10 comments

Did you know James Joyce wrote a children's book (sort of)? Patricia Highsmith wrote one too. So did James Baldwin (not to be confused with James Baldwin the children's book author). Eugène Ionesco wrote four stories for young kids. Graham Greene also wrote at the very least four children's books (and possibly more). Other unlikely children's book authors are Aldous Huxley, E. E. Cummings, Chinua Achebe (2, 3, 4), Eleanor Roosevelt and Gertrude Stein. Author Ariel S. Winter has written about all these books on his excellent blog We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie. On his Flickr page you can look at scans from these books, sometimes even the whole book.
posted by Kattullus at 12:52 PM PST - 29 comments

Who Pinched My Ride? "Stolen bicycles have become a solvent in America’s underground economy, a currency in the world of drug addicts and petty thieves." Outside's Patrick Symmes tells his story of loss(es), frustration and the failures of modern technology. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:46 PM PST - 59 comments

Foreign Policy is reporting that Israeli intelligence agents posed as CIA officers to recruit members of Jundallah, a designated terrorist group, in its covert fight against the Iranian effort to acquire nuclear capability.
posted by RedShrek at 12:18 PM PST - 36 comments

In the '80s, price increases in marijuana drove demand toward other drugs. The war on drugs hard, soft, or otherwise helped persuade pot smokers to put down the bong and pick up the pipe, the mirror, or the needle.
posted by latkes at 10:49 AM PST - 63 comments

The best description I can give
Would be that if you looked at new spring snow
Which has a fine grain size
About an hour after dawn or an hour before sunset
You'd see the same spectrum of light
That an alien astronomer in another galaxy would see
Looking at the Milky Way [more inside]
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:45 AM PST - 10 comments

Do you like creepy things? Lucia Peters has written an amazing series on "Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren’t" exploring Internet-age urban legends and carefully constructed hoaxes. From the world of underground video games that drive you mad, there is Killswitch and Majora's Mask. If you like modern takes on monsters, there is The Slender Man (who appears in Marble Hornets and EverymanHybrid), The Rake, and This Man. Horrible conspiracies can be found in the Indian Lake Project, the Montauk Project, and the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Haunted objects can be found in The Hands Resist Him and the Dybbuk Box. And, if you like little bits of creepypasta horror stories, check out Candle Cove and the Dionaea House. Be warned, even though this stuff isn't real (right?) there are often unsettling pictures and videos in these links. Now, I think I am going to go take a walk in the sun....
posted by blahblahblah at 10:26 AM PST - 111 comments

Hanging With Frank - a 1997 short film portrait of a Glasgow prison's execution chamber and a man that worked there in the 50's.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:17 AM PST - 3 comments

The Anglo-Moroccan connection originates in the quarrels between the two half-sisters Queen Elizabeth i and Queen Mary i. Elizabeth suspected that Mary's husband, Philip ii of Spain, had designs on England, and she was consequently interested in an ally who could join in attacking Spain. On the Moroccan side, there was considerable enthusiasm for expelling the Spanish and Portuguese from the several Moroccan coastal cities they had conquered. The Moroccans also wanted naval support in case of further encroachment by the Ottoman Turks, who were eager to extend their empire west from Algiers into Morocco. It was for this last reason that the Moroccan sultan Ahmad al-Mansur was unwilling to collaborate with the Ottomans despite Ottoman consideration of an invasion of Spain: He preferred instead an alliance with the English.

An 'Extreamly Civile' Diplomacy: a short history of early Anglo-Moroccan relations
via the always wonderful @bintbattuta
posted by timshel at 9:40 AM PST - 7 comments

"Google, what were you thinking?" Kenyan startup, Mocality use an online sting, and cunning detective work, to apparently find Google fraudulently stealing their customers.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 9:26 AM PST - 130 comments

Every once in a while you just want to know an obscure word in a foreign language just to show off to your friends, so today's word is вымя, which means udder. [more inside]
posted by Nomyte at 8:50 AM PST - 26 comments

According to the National Building Museum's new exhibit on unbuilt DC, there have been lots of proposed pyramids on the National Mall that were never built, including memorials for Washington and Lincoln. Also, a proposed National Sofa. [more inside]
posted by nonane at 8:46 AM PST - 14 comments

Alan Moore and David Lloyd designed it 30 years ago. The V for Vendetta mask appropriated by Occupy protesters the world over. The Guardian recently asked Alan what he thought about the masks. Now Channel 4 news takes him into Occupy territory to face that face. But who is the true anarchist?
posted by 0bvious at 8:20 AM PST - 36 comments

A flickr set of Ottawa punks from the mid-'80s. [more inside]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:57 AM PST - 22 comments

Unanimous SCOTUS ruling: Anti-discrimination laws (such as the ADA) do not apply to church employees with religious duties. Full ruling: PDF, HTML
posted by Evilspork at 6:44 AM PST - 106 comments

Every Presentation Ever [SLYT]
posted by blue_beetle at 5:33 AM PST - 62 comments

The billionaire became inmate No. 12-981.

Matty Moroun is a Detroit businessman and the owner of Centra Inc, the holding company which controls the Ambassador Bridge - a the only privately managed U.S. / Canada Border crossing, and the #1 busiest North American border crossing. He was sent to jail early yesterday for defying a judge's ruling that he comply with a court order compelling him to complete his company's portion of The Gateway project, a joint construction project he agreed to in 2008 designed to ease border traffic. Instead of working on the ramps to ease congestion, his crews built built a roadway that took traffic past the company's lucrative duty-free store and fuel pumps, and that kept thousands of trucks bound for expressways lined up on surface streets in the area. [more inside]
posted by bricksNmortar at 4:55 AM PST - 146 comments

Giraffes Drawn By People Who Should Not Be Drawing Giraffes, the only website "dedicated exclusively to giraffes drawn by people who should not be drawing giraffes." It features a pithy giraffe by Philip Glass, and aims to acquire drawings from both a sitting world leader and Lady Gaga (neither of whom should be drawing giraffes). (Previously)
posted by quoz at 3:07 AM PST - 32 comments

Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
posted by beshtya at 2:29 AM PST - 7 comments

Come with me, time-traveler, you'll blend in well at the 1980 WesterCon. [more inside]
posted by troll at 2:01 AM PST - 24 comments

CSPAN callers have a question, why will no one answer? [TouTube, perhaps NSFW]
posted by LarryC at 10:41 PM PST - 33 comments

If it's not too late for one more 2011 roundup, Gay USA featured a full hour of examining the events of 2011. Along with regular hosts Andy Humm and Ann Northrup, lesbian and AIDS activist Sarah Schulman, transgender activist Pauline Park, and gay and civil liberties activist Bill Dobbs discuss a variety of topics from DADT to Occupy Wall Street. Video runs about one hour. Sorry, no transcript available.
posted by hippybear at 10:09 PM PST - 12 comments

As discussion rages over what to do about rising obesity rates, scientists study environmental toxins called obesogens. Last night, Canadian program The Nature of Things aired Programmed to Be Fat? The documentary admits the fatty pitfalls of Western living, but asks that if this is the only factor, why has infant obesity risen 73% in the past 20 years? Babies aren't terrific Big Mac consumers. [more inside]
posted by mobunited at 9:15 PM PST - 99 comments

1982 Night of 100 Stars Fashion Show
posted by Trurl at 7:01 PM PST - 42 comments

Bookstore Waterstone's changes its name to ... Waterstones.
posted by anothermug at 6:10 PM PST - 80 comments

Abobo's Big Adventure : apparently the Nintendo Entertainment System DOES blend.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:17 PM PST - 17 comments

When Mitt Romney Came to Town (subtitle: The King of Bain) a 30 minute attack documentary whose "overriding sensibility is not Swift Boat — it's Frontline, replete with a calming voice of God narration and meticulous sourcing to SEC filings, court documents, and the Boston Globe" (Rolling Stone) provides an interesting moment in the future of political messaging and funding. [more inside]
posted by stratastar at 5:16 PM PST - 195 comments

Néo Fénéon: "Three thousand seven hundred dollars richer after stealing from the job, Marvin Williams, 25, of Brooklyn, went to urinate in a playground." - Items from the NYPD blotter remixed daily in the style of Félix Fénéon. (previously)
posted by mrgrimm at 5:07 PM PST - 8 comments

Scrollsy makes Etsy even more fun to explore.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:31 PM PST - 8 comments

Arguably, less-than-ideal rhino iguana chow. [YouTube] The lagomorphs in the all-Trix arm of our study succumbed to progressive tail mange in <20 days.
posted by 0rison at 4:19 PM PST - 10 comments

Is Pakistan’s cricket star-turned-politician for real? What does Pakistan see in Imran Khan? Will there be a Pakistani Spring?
posted by vidur at 3:18 PM PST - 7 comments

"What I'm getting at here is that slut shaming is wrong at any age" - A thirteen year-old girl provides an articulate and thoughtful argument against slut-shaming.
posted by quin at 2:46 PM PST - 120 comments

The trailer for Wes Anderson's new movie, Moonrise Kingdom, is out, and boy is it Wes Anderson-y.
posted by Clustercuss at 2:43 PM PST - 109 comments

I Got Cash SLYT, NSFW lyrics
posted by jivadravya at 1:51 PM PST - 19 comments

Guantanamo: An Oral History
posted by reenum at 1:26 PM PST - 8 comments

Júzcar is a little Spanish village that voted to stay blue, but their buildings weren't always that hue. In fact, if you view the Google maps, you'll see the traditional whitewashed walls, as you'd expect for one of the (former) White Towns of Andalusia. It happened in advance of Global Smurfs Day, to celebrate the birthday of Peyo (25 June 1928 – 24 December 1992), the Belgian creator of the Smurfs comics. The town was chosen by Sony as the site for the international debut of its new Smurfs movie, who offered to pay for the town to become temporarily blue. The citizens unanimously voted to accept the offer. In September, the 221 residents voted to keep the town blue, as the media coverage was huge, and tourism was boosted from 300 summer tourists to thousands. More photos. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:47 PM PST - 21 comments

"Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible." [NYT]
posted by BobbyVan at 12:35 PM PST - 27 comments

Why are smart people usually ugly? (SLSlate) [more inside]
posted by asnider at 12:21 PM PST - 101 comments

A year after Jared Loughner's shooting of 20 people, including congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, The Exiled Online has published transcripts of an interview with some of his closest friends. Their story was recorded the week of the shootings and describes the enviornment that nurtured Loughner's mania.

This piece is a part of a category of eXiled reporting based on Mark Ames's Going Postal premise: Reaganomics begat a new era of desparation, and people with mental instabilities have been the first to attempt thier own abortive rebellions. The idea was explored by a 2009 BBC documentary of the same name.
posted by clarknova at 11:44 AM PST - 29 comments

If you believe the US government is too heavily influenced by corporations, perhaps apps like No More SOPA are the future of "voting". Will technology enable us to directly push back on corporations influencing government policy?
posted by sarah_pdx at 11:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Crow + Roof + Tubing = Awesome. [SLYT]
posted by Fizz at 11:15 AM PST - 62 comments

"Half a century after Little Rock, the Montgomery bus boycott and the tumultuous dawn of the modern civil rights era, the new face of the movement is Facebook, MySpace and some 150 black blogs united in an Internet alliance they call the AfroSpear. Older, familiar leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, are under challenge by a younger generation of bloggers known by such provocative screen names as Field Negro, thefreeslave and African American Political Pundit (new). And many of the newest struggles are being waged online." ~Howard Witt-The Chicago Tribune (text via fieldnegro)
posted by infini at 11:00 AM PST - 6 comments

A "mystery man" was caught at a polling site for the New Hampshire primary attempting to use a dead man's name to vote. That man turned out to be James O'Keefe, who may have also broken federal law (and potentially violated his probation for previous wiretapping shenanigans) by crossing state lines to tamper with another state's election by filming poll workers and attempting to commit election fraud.
posted by backseatpilot at 10:41 AM PST - 151 comments

The Battle Of Maldon is an Old English poem (here in the original Old English, here in a modern translation) retelling the events of a battle that took place in England in 991, in which a small army of Saxons attempted to halt an invading Viking force only to suffer a crushing defeat. This battle, and the disastrous rout suffered by the Saxons, led to the introduction of the Danegeld, the payment of silver in tribute to the Vikings to buy off their invading forces. [more inside]
posted by dng at 10:29 AM PST - 25 comments

Chicago's Anti-Superstition Society throws a Friday the 13th Party, 1940.
posted by griphus at 10:29 AM PST - 30 comments

If you enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasy RPGs, or if you just like reading in-depth analysis of fictional worlds, then the Tome of Awesome [pdf] is for you. [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 10:08 AM PST - 49 comments

Two months after being kicked out by the NYPD in an early morning raid, the Occupy Wall Street protestors have returned to Zucotti/Liberty Plaza to meet new regulations that make protesting all but impossible. Meanwhile, OWS is looking for an accountant and NYC councilman Ydanis Rodriguez wants to donate his 5k stipend to the protestors. Yasha Levine of The Exiled writes about his arrangement hearing after being arrested during the Occupy LA raid and Political Cartoonist and Essayist Tim Kreider releases four essays he wrote during the first occupation of Zucotti/Liberty Plaza, "What OWS Wants" "Capitalism, A Bummer" "An Open Letter To The Tea Party." and "OWS: The Morning After." [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 9:08 AM PST - 138 comments

The New York Times Public Editor asks "Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?" As of this writing, 98% of registered commenters are saying (often in all-caps) "Yes".
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:05 AM PST - 165 comments

Sometimes state quarters know you only invited them because you thought they were San Francisco. (Previously.)
posted by NickDouglas at 8:54 AM PST - 36 comments

Skyrim 2012. A thousand years after the Dragonborn's adventures, Skyrim endures. (SLYT)
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:18 AM PST - 44 comments

Class Conflict Awareness Rose Significantly From 2009 To 2011 A new Pew Research Center survey reports that "the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness".
posted by Benny Andajetz at 6:45 AM PST - 85 comments

“Most of the languages I’ve studied I’ve never spoken, and I probably never will,” he told me. “And that’s okay with me. That’s nice if you can do that, but it’s rare that you have an interesting conversation in English. Why do I think it would be any better in another language?”
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:14 AM PST - 70 comments

In the UK, people pay a yearly licence fee to watch live television, with revenues funding the BBC. TV Licensing is the group that collects fees, and they use a number of methods — some real, some imaginary, some in between — to gain compliance. But one Briton remains determined not to play that game.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:56 AM PST - 170 comments

Toronto Musician Corin Raymond wants to pay for his next recording using Canadian Tire Money.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 3:37 AM PST - 36 comments

Pizza Boomerang (SLYT) (NSFW)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:29 AM PST - 33 comments

Ottawa does about face on same-sex marriage for non-Canadians. The Harper government has served notice that thousands of same-sex couples who flocked to Canada from abroad since 2004 to get married are not legally wed. The reversal of federal policy is revealed in a document filed in a Toronto test case launched recently by a lesbian couple seeking a divorce.... The government’s hard line has cast sudden doubt on the rights and legal status of couples who wed in Canada after a series of court decisions opened the floodgates to same-sex marriage. The mechanics of determining issues such as tax status, employment benefits and immigration have been thrown into legal limbo. [The lesbian couple's] divorce application will be considered next month by an Ontario Superior Court judge. They are asking the judge to either craft an exemption allowing them to divorce or to strike down any legislative provision that has the effect of preventing them from doing so. [more inside]
posted by maudlin at 2:52 AM PST - 116 comments

The heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune has dropped a load of cash on a movie: Thrive: What on Earth will it take? The premise: We are killing the world because an invisible elite is withholding the secret of free energy, to prevent us from thriving. Transition Culture thinks it's dangerous tosh. Huffington Post thinks it's a reactionary, libertarian agenda that stands in jarring contrast with the soothing tone of the presentation. An Archdruid thinks it's what a narrative of progress must produce when the narrative no longer describes observable reality. But it's bound to be popular with the Consumer class. (Warning: evidence of toroidal energy devices that some viewers may find disconcerting).
posted by falcon at 2:06 AM PST - 80 comments

Punk Rock Scrapbook: Photos taken in Santa Cruz and San Francisco in 1978-1988
posted by beshtya at 11:03 PM PST - 12 comments

I want to see it all catch fire. I want to pour gasoline in the ducts and light a long fuse, and watch from the street as it burns and burns and burns. A Gizmodo blogger confronts his demons … at CES.
posted by rossmeissl at 10:12 PM PST - 66 comments