MetaFilter

Two guys join forces together to write a book about classic Jewish LPs. [more inside]
posted by martinc6 at 11:16 PM PST - 11 comments

Tom ("Duff's Device") Duff examines improving computer source code to make it more concisely communicate it author's intent, in Reading from Top to Bottom. [more inside]
posted by orthogonality at 9:19 PM PST - 52 comments

A long-brewing online poker scandal reaches the mainstream: 60 Minutes Report (1, 2) (text version) and two consecutive front page Washington Post articles (by Pulitzer winning investigative journalist Gil Gaul) (plus lots of web exclusive content about the investigation)! [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:06 PM PST - 45 comments

Bayonets Are So 2007.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:41 PM PST - 59 comments

Original Winnie The Pooh Drawings. SLBOP
posted by stinkycheese at 6:11 PM PST - 15 comments

We should have known it was inevitable. Your local newspaper being written in India. Get ready for the outsourcing of journalism. Maureen Dowd doesn't like it.
posted by Xurando at 6:09 PM PST - 55 comments

It happened to Clifford. It happened to Little Bear. It happened to Harold and his Purple Crayon, and Curious George. Now, Moe Greene productions presents, Nate the Great. I don't want to begrudge my favorite children's book authors a fat paycheck, BUT... [more inside]
posted by rikschell at 5:48 PM PST - 31 comments

Beautifully Lit Trees : Nothing to do with Christmas. [via]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:24 PM PST - 17 comments

What to Do. 2008 Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Krugman on what to do about the economic crisis. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 4:00 PM PST - 67 comments

NYRB-filter: The Truth About The Election by Elizabeth Drew
posted by wittgenstein at 3:49 PM PST - 33 comments

Emily the Strange has been the Hello Kitty for teenage girls who prefer black to pink for some 17 years now (if she were a real teenager she'd have grown out of her merchandise). Unfortunately for her creator, someone noticed that nonconformist gloomy teens are nothing new...
posted by mippy at 11:54 AM PST - 121 comments

Ricky Gervais explores the complex meaning within the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme.
posted by plexi at 11:37 AM PST - 39 comments

Beez skateboarding video. A portion on youtube (gross). It will be a cult classic. [more inside]
posted by spork at 10:23 AM PST - 33 comments

Every single ticket issued in New York City from July 2007 to June 2008 in interactive map form. Most ticketed street? 14th Street between 7th and 8th avenue. [more inside]
posted by jourman2 at 9:30 AM PST - 26 comments

The Top 10 Samples in Hip-Hop History. -- Well, not really the 'Top 10', but it's 10 samples and loops from hip-hop history, brought to you by a somewhat goofy bedroom DJ. He followed it up with 14 more sets of 10 -- 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. (List of tracks discussed in each part in the youtube descriptions.) [more inside]
posted by empath at 8:34 AM PST - 40 comments

The Tibetan Youth Congress has been described as an organization bent on terror wherein Young Tibetans ‘will resist China with blood’.
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:21 AM PST - 30 comments

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Fluorescent Pink Katydid [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:50 AM PST - 36 comments

Charles Schulz: "I finally sighed and said, 'Well, Larry, let’s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that?'" We don't usually think of Peanuts as given to political statements but this great post at Edge of the American West makes the case for Schulz's progressive racial politics. [more inside]
posted by LarryC at 12:00 AM PST - 68 comments

Astaria Films presents: Something Lost ... the Love of Your Life ...
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:52 PM PST - 39 comments

The source of a recently-broken curse, the tallest statue to adorn the top of any building surmounts the tallest masonry building in the world. A bit of perspective. Too much perspective? [more inside]
posted by Robin Kestrel at 8:20 PM PST - 32 comments

The Western press is heralding the discovery of the "world's oldest marijuana stash" (789 grams) in the tomb of a 2,700-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed mummy in the Xinjiang region of China (photo). The mummy is believed to be a Nordic-featured Gushi shaman from the Tarim Basin. Scientists conjecture that the cannabis was being saved for use in the afterlife. In actuality, according to the Journal of Experimental Botany, the stash is the oldest pot to be tested for its properties. In 2006, the Chinese press reported that Chinese scientists had unearthed an older marijuana "baggy" in a 2,800-year-old Caucasian shaman's Xinjiang tomb.
posted by terranova at 7:25 PM PST - 61 comments

Death To Film Critics! Hail The CelebCult! "A newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine. When one croaks, get the hell out. The lengthening toll of former film critics acts as a poster child for the self-destruction of American newspapers, which once hoped to be more like the New York Times and now yearn to become more like the National Enquirer. We used to be the town crier. Now we are the neighborhood gossip."
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys at 6:24 PM PST - 37 comments

70s Rock Stars in their parents' homes (via BuzzFeed)
posted by mattholomew at 6:05 PM PST - 47 comments

Jørn Utzon, the architect who designed Sydney Opera House despite the project being plagued by controversy and scandal, died today. While the rest of us are posting photographs of our drunken friends or the poetry of a plastic bag caught in the wind, one Flickr user is busy with pithy, insightful, considered and often witty architectural commentary supplementing exquisite architectural photography. This obituary for Utzon captures the cost of that project to the man himself and to the world. [more inside]
posted by carbide at 4:15 PM PST - 21 comments

On this date in 1949, a Canadian music legend was born. Stanley Allison "Stan" Rogers chronicled Canadian life. He wrote his own sea shanty after a song session with the Friends of Fiddler's Green , and the song he came up with, Barrett's Privateers, is still sung today by members of the Canadian navy as they march. Many of his songs were of tragedy or hard times or the loss of a way of life. On June 2nd, 1983, an in-flight fire aboard an Air Canada flight forced the plane to make an emergency landing at the Greater Cincinnati Airport. Survivors spoke of a large man with a booming voice who helped others to safety, only to perish himself of smoke inhalation. It was believed, though not confirmed, that Stan Rogers was the hero. His music has also saved at least one life. The song "The Mary Ellen Carter" speaks of perseverance and rising to any challenge, and is a fitting legacy to a Canadian legend who died at the age of 33. His son Nathan carries on his musical tradition, as does Stan's brother Garnet Rogers, who also performed on Stan's albums.
posted by newfers at 3:59 PM PST - 44 comments

Set up by Hasidic Jews as Community Centres, there are 3000+ Chabad Houses around the globe. The recent terror attack at the Centre in Mumbai took the lives of 9 people, including a Rabbi and his wife. The rescue (YT) was not without contention. You may also remember this Bangkok Rabbi from his interview in 1 Giant Leap.
posted by gman at 3:57 PM PST - 22 comments

Dancing Scientists Invade YouTube. The winners of the 2009 AAAS/Science Dance Contest (previously) have been announced. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 3:48 PM PST - 8 comments

Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss turned 100 on Friday. NPR's Frank Browning offers an appreciation of his work (audio). Anthropologist Dan Sperber (at OpenDemocracy) offers a succinct appraisal of his influence. Patrick Wilcken (TLS) writes about "the century of Claude Lévi-Strauss." [more inside]
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:38 PM PST - 22 comments

A rare glimpse into a forgotten Hindu world.
Garden and Cosmos - The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. Virtually none of the 60 works on view in "Garden and Cosmos" have ever been published or seen by scholars since their creation centuries ago.
All paintings are from the Mehrangarh museum. ( whose links are also full of interest ). [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 12:55 PM PST - 5 comments

The Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies is your one-stop shop for pre-Columbian Central America awesomeness. There are so, so many wondrous things on that site, I don't quite know where to begin. I suppose John Pohl's scholarly introduction is a natural place to start. But maybe you just don't have time to read anything and just want to dive into pretty, pretty pictures. Perhaps the most user-friendly databases are Justin Kerr's photographs Maya Vases (e.g. 1, 2, 3) and Pre-Columbian Portfolio (e.g. 1, 2a, 2b, 3). From there you can delve into the collection of Linda Schele's photographs (e.g. 1, 2) and drawings (e.g. 1, 2, 3). There are more image databases but let me direct you to the collection of old Maya, Aztec and Mixtec books which are simply stunning (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 [last link pdf]). You can read more about Mayan and Mixtec codices and download high resolution versions of the entire books. There are also Maya dictionaries, glyph guides, linguistic maps and a who's who. There is also classic Mayan and Aztec poetry in translation. I'm telling you, that's not even half of what this amazing site has to offer.
posted by Kattullus at 12:49 PM PST - 19 comments

With that meeting, Mr. Allo took his first step into an intricate trap. The deeply strange tale of one very determined woman's quest to overturn her son's conviction for murder.
posted by digaman at 11:38 AM PST - 51 comments

WFMU-TV; That's Irritainment (Heino, Shatner): Baby Octopus: Love Onion: Hisao Shinagawa: Organisation- Ruckzuck (Kraftwerk): You Must Choose!: FAUST.
posted by vronsky at 10:47 AM PST - 31 comments

How you will (and won't) likely die in the next 20 years (from WHO's Global Burden of Disease). Bonus: map of the last thirty years of disasters, showing the relatively safe and unsafe parts of the world.
posted by Kickstart70 at 10:39 AM PST - 5 comments

JS (Aged 5) She can't wake up.
Operator No? Is she breathing? Can you see her chest go up and down?
JS I can see her shoulders going ... I can see her doing [Makes breathing noises]
Operator She's breathing, is she? But you think she's having a fit.
JS Yeah, I think she is and ... I don't know what to do.

6 transcripts of 999 operators helping people cope with emergencies: a mother giving birth alone, a 5 year old whose mother is fitting, a mother and son trapped in a house fire, a brother and sister resuscitating their father, a husband saving his choking wife, and a neighbour saving his friend with an amputated arm
posted by roofus at 10:01 AM PST - 43 comments

Pattern Tap: an organized collection of web design ideas. [more inside]
posted by signal at 5:42 AM PST - 8 comments

Can social networking be used to effect positive social change? Ushahidi (meaning "testimony" in Swahili) is one such project that harnesses mobile technology to empower local citizens to report on crucial and crisis situations in their area. [more inside]
posted by divabat at 11:12 PM PST - 19 comments

Can China Adjust to the US Adjustment? Prof. Michael Pettis of Beijing University on the macroeconomic parallels between the present crisis and that of the 1930s, with China playing the role today that the US played back then.
posted by Abiezer at 10:47 PM PST - 23 comments

It's party season and a good time to start thinking about topping last year's lame office party. It may have been a few years and maybe you have forgotten some critical lessons from college. Thankfully, there is a science to keg beer. Think it all through and make some plans. You could also hide the vodka and tonic for you and your close buds and be a dick to everyone else. Have fun!
posted by shockingbluamp at 9:55 PM PST - 6 comments

Nostalgic for a time when robots tried to kill you while being condescending? Well, Hunted Forever isn't Portal, but if you're jonesing for some Flash Friday, it might be right up your alley.
posted by 235w103 at 7:15 PM PST - 14 comments

You be the [election] judge. View and vote on six hundred challenged Minnesota ballots. Each is accompanied by a link to a PDF of the full ballot with the name of the challenging candidate and the reason for the challenge. (registration required) via fivethirtyeight.com
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:53 PM PST - 24 comments

Thirty years ago yesterday (November 27, 1978) San Francisco Board of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor. Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the U.S. Prior to his death he championed a movement against a California proposition (Proposition 6, dubbed the Briggs Initiative) which sought to ban gays and lesbians, and anyone who supported gay rights, from working in California's public schools. In the midst of a national right-wing, conservative, religious movement heralded by folks like Anita Bryant the proposition was soundly defeated. Fast forward to today. A new film "Milk" [trailer] (starring Sean Penn in the title role) is garnering critical acclaim and is relevant to current events. "Harvey came up against a lot of obstacles, which I think is the case for any gay man now," says Brolin, who plays Dan White [in the film]. "The irony is that Prop 8 is now what Prop 6 was then."
posted by ericb at 5:58 PM PST - 59 comments

100 artists from around the world designed credit cards for a Japanese bank and Visa. [more inside]
posted by gman at 3:42 PM PST - 32 comments

10 Abstract Masterpieces of Frost.
posted by homunculus at 3:30 PM PST - 13 comments

The Waseda Talker has been turning heads (har har) lately. It's a mechanical simulation of the human vocal tract, from the motion of its synthetic lips down to the hypnotic undulation of its rubbery vocal folds (compare the genuine article here). Think this is new? Well, these days we do most of this stuff electronically — but talking simulacra have a long and weird history, starting back when electronic synthesizers were just a pipe dream. Here's a talking pair of bellows from 1791, and a head you can play like a trumpet as recently as 1937. The granddaddy of 'em all are the Kratzenstein resonators (not Frankenstein, Kratzenstein!) from 1779. Make your own with pipe insulation and a duck call.
posted by nebulawindphone at 3:19 PM PST - 12 comments

"She let out a rich, powerful moan, like the sound of a passing diesel train in the night." Jeremiah Tucker updates Ayn Rand's objectivist novel for the current financial crisis. [more inside]
posted by LMGM at 1:45 PM PST - 46 comments

Nukes In Space: The Rainbow Bomb (52 minutes Google Video) [more inside]
posted by acro at 1:25 PM PST - 13 comments

Previously on Metafilter, a lively discussion followed news that Attorney General Mukasey collapsed during his speech last week to the Federalist Society in which he was defending the Bush administration against "the casual assumption among many in media, political, and legal circles that the Administration’s counterterrorism policies have come at the expense of the rule of law." Just before his collapse, however, an unknown heckler yelled "tyrant!" at him. After some speculation, that person has been identified. [more inside]
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:09 PM PST - 21 comments

'You loser!" screamed Katie, aiming a vase at her husband. "You've destroyed my life,'' she continued, hurling it. "Just look at my hair, look at my nails! You loser, you jerk, you nobody."

Katie's husband, Jack, whose property portfolio disintegrated in the financial crash, had just told his wife that she would have to cut back on her thrice-weekly visits to Nicky Clarke, the nail salon in Harvey Nichols, and the oxygen facials, chemical peels and seaweed wraps at Space NK.
posted by plexi at 12:57 PM PST - 91 comments

Violence, the RPG. In 1999, Greg Costikyan, designer of Toon, Paranoia, and the Star Wars RPG, released this satirical and profane take on violence in games anonymously. It's now available as a free download. [more inside]
posted by empath at 12:39 PM PST - 10 comments

Batman is dead, joining the ranks of Martian Manhunter (in the DCU) and Captain America in Marvel Universe. Are there no other ways to generate comic book sales without killing off characters or blowing up the universe every year?
posted by hrbrmstr at 11:53 AM PST - 56 comments

Night of the Cephalopods Shoot eldritch floating squid monsters with a shotgun as a horrified narrator describes your every move. Requires download, and is Windows only, I'm afraid. via
posted by Caduceus at 10:41 AM PST - 10 comments

Je ne comprends pas anglais, Former Canadian PM Jean Chrétien forgets his second language as he and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent use their elder statesmen status to discuss bringing down the six week old Conservative government in Canada after the promised economic stimulus turned into cutting travel expenses, cancelling pay equity and the right to strike for federal workers, and changing the party funding law in favour of the ruling Conservatives under PM Stephen Harper. The opposition still vow to topple the government even though the funding change appears to have been dropped. But the largest opposition party is effectively leaderless and they need the Bloc Quebecois support. Could the next Prime Minister of Canada be Gilles Duceppe?
posted by saucysault at 9:43 AM PST - 294 comments

Post-Thanksgiving Friday Flash Fun: Damn Birds is a point and shoot game with a humorous twist. You are a statue sick and tired of bird crap and have decided to defend your honor. [more inside]
posted by schyler523 at 8:50 AM PST - 9 comments

SighFilter: In light of other Black Friday tales of horror or posts urging a more sober consumerism, now comes this story of a worker trampled to death at Wal-Mart and a woman who miscarried in a stampede. They ought to have read FEMA's Black Friday Advisory.
posted by resurrexit at 7:45 AM PST - 135 comments

Urban exploration Japan: abandoned mining town. Step into the doctor's office for a dose of creepy. Three-part photo essay. [more inside]
posted by planetkyoto at 6:34 AM PST - 19 comments

Ramblin' Thomas: No Job Blues (1928), J.D. Short: Lonesome Swamp Rattlesnake (1930), Bo Carter: My Baby (1940). [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:00 AM PST - 3 comments

Apropos on Black Friday, Charles, Prince of Wales addresses the Foreign Press Association with a comprehensive lecture on the dangers of unchecked consumerism and the need for an increasingly holistic worldview in light of the global social, economic and environmental challenges. The credit crisis is a side effect of a throwaway society and consumerism is no cure for depression, he says, and we need to question the concepts of "Modernity" and "Economic Growth" we take for granted.
posted by infini at 4:27 AM PST - 101 comments

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present to you Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO, thought to be the inspiration for the Ben "Richie" Hook character in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour" trilogy. A soldier and a hero, resplendent in his eye patch, de Wiart is the shining embodiment of the phrase "they just don't make 'em like that any more"
posted by fatfrank at 3:55 AM PST - 10 comments

Nintendo Comics System. Full colour scans of most of the Super Mario Brothers comics that many Nintendo fans, such as myself, read back during the 90s. Oh, as well as Legend of Zelda, Punch Out!!, Metroid and Captain N: The Game Master. Further reading, if you dare.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:48 PM PST - 19 comments

Some forty-three classic Warner Brothers cartoons. (Sorry, no index page.)
posted by cthuljew at 9:13 PM PST - 18 comments

"The Reinstate Hank campaign calls for the remittal of Opry star, and country music legend, Hank Williams." [more inside]
posted by Knappster at 8:57 PM PST - 8 comments

1930's Bondi Beach fun "Bondi resident George Caddy was best known for his success as a jitterbug dancer. But it's these posthumously discovered photographs of 1930s 'Beachobatics' that's got Alan Davies from the State Library of NSW jumping for joy." [more inside]
posted by lottie at 8:45 PM PST - 13 comments

Tis the season for Shoplifting, when the unemployed, teens, professionals, kleptos, and political shoplifters jack, rack, nick, and stroke holiday gifts. The BBB anticipates a rise in light-fingered merchandising, but notes that on average, shoplifters get pinched only "once for every 48 times they steal." Retailers are fighting back in unusual ways. Wal-Mart, the oft-target of political shoplifters, aggressively guards its merchandise, while across the pond the Dutch approach the problem with bemusement.
posted by terranova at 7:47 PM PST - 50 comments

In 2009, a remarkably gifted politician, confronting a remarkably difficult set of challenges, will have to learn to say "No we can't", Guantánamo will prove a moral minefield, economic recovery will be invisible to the naked eye, governments must prepare for the day they stop financial guarantees, we will judge our commitment to sustainability, scientists should research the causes of religion, we will all be potential online paparazzi, English will have more words than any other language (but it's meaningless), Afghanistan will see a surge of Western (read: American) troops, Iran will continue its nuclear quest while diplomacy lies in shambles, the sea floor is the new frontier, we should rethink aging, (non-)voters will continue to thwart the European project -- but cheap travel will continue to buoy it -- though it has some unfinished business to attend to, and a Nordic defence bond will blossom.

The Economist: The World in 2009. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:00 PM PST - 31 comments

Burton Snowboards' new Love (NSFW?) and Primo (NSFW?) snowboard lines are causing quite a stir across the country. Even the Burlington, VT, City Council wants to get involved. Here's what the Burton cofounders have to say about the whole thing. [more inside]
posted by papayaninja at 6:57 PM PST - 43 comments

Several bees. [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:50 PM PST - 9 comments

Thanksgiving at Dan and Jane's by Dave Eggers. [Lech, 6, under the table, pretends to be dead, in a coffin raised over the heads of hysterical mourners.]
posted by silby at 6:27 PM PST - 10 comments

The Brighton Port Authority was a shadowy musical project lasting from the early 1970s and lasting until the mid 90s, or so it's rumored. The tapes from this project have recently been found and are slowly being released. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi at 6:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Dave Bollinger is a computer artist that specializes in geometry. He creates both still images and short videos. Some videos are silent, like this unusual Pac-Man homage, and some have soundtracks. Some are in black and white and some are in color. His Flickr photostream categorizes still images by style. His current fascination seems to be with cubes and cubic lattices.
posted by Tube at 5:56 PM PST - 5 comments

This one goes to 11. Louder than the "loudest band in the world" but powered by a Hemi, (sound, pops), the most powerful sirens ever built served faithfully through a war that didn’t happen. Others may be more technologically advanced but even today’s loudest ones can’t match the Chrysler (though they may be useful in warning of other types of disaster). [more inside]
posted by SoFlo1 at 5:44 PM PST - 21 comments

The second episode of the current series of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is a special on television advertising (1, 2, 3) (possible NSFW - swearing and nipples) or as George Orwell put it: "The rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:32 PM PST - 26 comments

Fixers are local guides who help foreign journalists get by. Fixers on the Frontline in 6 parts - 1 2 3 4 5 6.
posted by gman at 3:27 PM PST - 9 comments

WR 25 And Tr16-244: Previously Unseen Mammoth Stars Get The Hubble Treatment.
posted by homunculus at 3:19 PM PST - 11 comments

Historic Photos of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
posted by vronsky at 3:04 PM PST - 11 comments

50 strange buildings of the world. What it says on the tin. via.
posted by jokeefe at 2:44 PM PST - 45 comments

A 1926 Brazilian sci-fi novel predicts a U.S. election determined by race and gender. O Presidente Negro envisions the 2228 U.S. presidential election. In that race, the white male incumbent, President Kerlog, finds himself running against Evelyn Astor, a white feminist, and James Roy Wilde, the cultivated and brilliant leader of the Black Association, "a man who is more than just a single man ... what we call a leader of the masses."
posted by Tom-B at 2:20 PM PST - 10 comments

The Little Fox has gas. Giovanna Tinetti using the Hubble Telescope says (in Nature - subscription required) there's Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere of the Jupiter sized, hot, extrasolar planet HD 189733b. Scientists have also found methane clouds in its atmosphere, as well as water vapor. Tinetti (who looks a bit like Kari Byron from mythbusters if you squint) also found evidence of methane.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:47 PM PST - 11 comments

Produced and recorded in the studios of Kootenay Co-op Radio in Nelson, British Columbia, Deconstructing Dinner has been designed to dispense and discuss current food issues. This weekly radio show hosted by Jon Steinman features a wide range of topics revolving around food security. [more inside]
posted by utsutsu at 12:23 PM PST - 4 comments

Fallout Funk
posted by empath at 9:51 AM PST - 26 comments

World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion involves a quest titled The Art of Persuasion. Richard Bartle, co-author of MUD (and pioneer of MMO gaming), speaks out against this: "Basically, you have to take some kind of cow poke and zap a prisoner until he talks. I'm not at all happy with this. I was expecting for there to be some way to tell the guy who gave you the quest that no, actually I don't want to torture a prisoner, but there didn't seem to be any way to do that..." (via) [more inside]
posted by tybeet at 8:18 AM PST - 167 comments

The Photographic Dictionary defines words through the personal meaning found in each picture. M is for mask, E is for ephemeral, T is for twin, A if for alone.
posted by netbros at 7:59 AM PST - 5 comments

A Thanksgiving treat from Lileks. The Gobbler may be the most ill conceived, worst designed hotel to ever grace the American landscape. I sure wish I could have visited there.
posted by COD at 6:05 AM PST - 41 comments

Richard Serra: Man of Steel. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 5:46 AM PST - 43 comments

I often find myself asking, "Who wants to kill me and how can I avoid them?"
It seems that the list is pretty long. There are a whole batch of international threats out to get me. There also appear to be a number of street gangs, happy to do the deed as well. What's worse is that they are spreading. However, since I don't travel abroad and I don't live in a fancy-dancy city like Los Angeles, Chicago or Fargo, I'm probably safe right? Nope, sadly it seems hate groups are everywhere -- in my backyard and probably yours. I think this year I'm having Thanksgiving in the bunker.
posted by BeReasonable at 10:36 PM PST - 42 comments

Gizmine - "the world's largest Japanese gadgets and lifestyle design shop." Viewable by color, theme, price, popularity, or brand.
posted by Manhasset at 10:30 PM PST - 11 comments

India, as she is today, was carved out of British India, in 1947 when the left and right hand sides of the country became the new nation of Pakistan (East and West) respectively. While the history of Islamic influence and subsequent tolerance and intolerance goes back centuries to the first advent of the Mughal invasion, it has been said that the post Independence troubles of the modern nations of India and Pakistan stem from this sundering. In 1971, war brought forth Bangladesh from the former East Pakistan on India's eastern border. The Partition, as this holocaust is known, embedded in current day Indian memory, history, culture, movies, books, TV serials and music, was an unimaginable horror of slaughter and bloodshed. This separation was not in the plans of the Mahatma, and it is said he was assassinated by Hindu fundamentalists for letting it happen. What future awaits the Hindus and Muslims who have lived side by side for hundreds of years?
posted by infini at 9:45 PM PST - 36 comments

The Ievan Polkka ("Eva's Polka"), as sung by the Finnish quartet Loituma (lyrics). Suddenly, in a flash (previously) of brilliance, youtube is inundated with lots and lots of remixes. Most contain Bleach girl Orihime Inoue spinning a leek (now lovingly known as Leek Girl). Others teach you how to dance, play piano, and, of course, sing. But don't forget Rick!
posted by zonem at 7:20 PM PST - 23 comments

Cop Rock, created by Steven Bochco (the same mind that brought us NYPD Blue, LA Law, and Hill Stree Blues), is considered one of the worst tv dramas ever. It ran for only eleven episodes in 1990. What do you think?
posted by mrzarquon at 7:15 PM PST - 61 comments

In a must-see interview for tabletop gamers everywhere, Colonel Louis Zocchi talks about modern mass produced plastic dice and why they utterly fail at being random: Part 1 - Part 2
posted by loquacious at 6:00 PM PST - 84 comments

Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is the first video journal for biological research accepted in PubMed, featuring hundreds of peer-reviewed video-protocols demonstrating experimental techniques in the fields of neuroscience, cellular biology, developmental biology, immunology, bioengineering, microbiology and plant biology, free of charge.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:00 PM PST - 6 comments

The Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art. Check out the Hermitage, Guggenheim, Tate, Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art ... Become a member today.
posted by R. Mutt at 4:17 PM PST - 15 comments

Artist Robert M. Place reveals images from two works-in-progress: The Vampire Tarot, based on the Bram Stoker's Dracula, and one called The Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery. Place already has several gorgeous decks to his name: The Alchemical Tarot. Tarot of the Saints. The Buddha Tarot. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 2:40 PM PST - 35 comments

minim ['mInIm] n: a statement expressed in proverbial or sentential form but having no general application or practical use whatever — compare MAXIM. [via]
posted by parudox at 2:32 PM PST - 93 comments

America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress (2.3 MB PDF). A new report from the Center for Defense Information on the DoD's wastefulness, and suggested solutions. Recommended holiday reading from James Fallows and Andrew Sullivan.
posted by homunculus at 1:40 PM PST - 29 comments

Lori Drew has been found not guilty on felony charges. However, she was found guilty on three misdemeanor counts. (Previously: 1, 2)
posted by Kimothy at 1:23 PM PST - 55 comments

Massive coordinated terrorist attack in Mumbai. The news is pouring in, but not from traditional sources. The latest breaking news seems to be coming from Twitter, many from people on the scene. One local has been snapping photos, and Flickr just gave him a free three-month account to upload the images. Metroblogging in Mumbai has been updating the news as it comes in as well.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:06 PM PST - 569 comments

Garvan Ellison purports to be an expat Ulsterman now living in Chesterfield, England. His persona is that of a funeral director with a macabre sense of humour, who baits sparrows for his cat Zoe, spies on his neighbors Wong, Raj and Marvyn with CCTV, tests electrical outlets by poking a pen knife in the socket, writes odes to Sarah Palin and expounds broadly on his flat earth view of science and religion. His blog entries are a delightful tongue in cheeck variety of the charming, the whimsical and the bizarre.
posted by Neiltupper at 12:24 PM PST - 5 comments

In economic hard times, public libraries generally get a lot busier. With that in mind, here's a handy list of the top 20 things librarians in public libraries wish patrons knew or did (original article here).
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:21 PM PST - 113 comments

If people who have a lot of time on their hands and inner demons to exorcise turn to art as an outlet, the results can be startling, even if they have had no prior art instruction and have to make a paint brush out of their own hair and use coffee as paint, or weave things out of hoarded chip or Ramen bags. Drawing elaborately on handkerchiefs became so common in the mid 20th century it's become known as panos. Welcome to the world of prison art. [more inside]
posted by orange swan at 12:16 PM PST - 12 comments

The Brian Williams Tie Report Archives. "Logging the neckwear fashion decisions of America's most trusted voice in evening news." No, seriously.
posted by dersins at 12:02 PM PST - 11 comments

SchmApple SLAS (Single Link Apple Spoof). [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 9:42 AM PST - 36 comments

Russian professor and information warrior, Igor Panarin, has predicted the collapse and breakup of the USA. (Potential artists' renderings 1 2) The interview was originally reported in the Russian newspaper, Izvestia. (Google Translated) The prediction has been met with varying levels of credulity, scoffed at by some and embraced by others. The prediction, which goes so far as to speculate exactly how the US might reorganize, was posted to Drudge and has offended many bloggers who, while excited by the prospects of secession, are insulted by the insinuation that the south may go Hispanic and not Confederate.
posted by Telf at 8:23 AM PST - 105 comments

Visit beautiful Puntland! "You can find more or less everything in Puntland: mountains, wide beaches, clean lakes, deep forests, world-class historic monuments, and friendly people." Enjoy a traditional Somali breakfast over the daily paper. If you plan on an extended visit, consider taking a course at good ol' PSU.
posted by JVA at 7:38 AM PST - 8 comments

The BBC was given the first look by foreign media inside Baghdad's Rusafa prison.
posted by gman at 7:01 AM PST - 4 comments

Of what purpose is a lap dance? Is it about alcohol and leisure? Is it an exercise in objectification? Is it a question that requires a lap-dancing body (phwoar!) to decide? Or Parliament? Should someone hold a seance and ask Paul Raymond? (previously) [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:58 AM PST - 88 comments

Ever wondered what makes people complain about the media? An Apple ad was recently banned by the ASA as it was felt that the ad exaggerated the speed of internet services. Could the complainants have been genuinely mislead about the phone's services? In the case of one complainant, a man who had queued on release for the first iPhones to arrive in the UK, it seemed an ideal way to fight back against poor customer service. "We arent a cult, we are just a brand..."
posted by mippy at 5:09 AM PST - 23 comments

"This year, Americans are planning to spend over $400 on Christmas gifts. Instead of buying things we can’t afford, here’s a way to do something more meaningful." Via
posted by jbickers at 4:45 AM PST - 42 comments

"Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies as shown by this map.
The resentment rises as villagers are stripped of holdings and livelihood in Laos; and land prices are soaring in Brazil.
Here are some of the biggest deals. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 4:14 AM PST - 14 comments

The Thirties in Colour is a four-part series using rare colour film and photographs to give poignant and surprising insights into the 1930s. [Previously] [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 2:25 AM PST - 15 comments

Wanted: Bug Finding Program [more inside]
posted by orthogonality at 12:09 AM PST - 82 comments

The entirety of the Fleischer/Famous Studios Superman Film Series. In the early 1940s, this series raised the bar for theatrical shorts with its fluid animation and action-packed storylines. It remains a classic series thanks to its high production values and historical significance not only as the first comic-to-film adaptation, but also as an occasional vehicle for American propaganda during the war.
posted by cthuljew at 10:59 PM PST - 21 comments

"Leaves that crawl".... Assimilated chloroplasts give a species of sea slug its deep green glow; and to keep it, Elysia Chlorotica becomes even a little more plant-like....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 9:04 PM PST - 23 comments

A, in M. F. K. Fisher's case, is not for apple—it's for dining alone. The full text of her 1949 series An Alphabet for Gourmets is now available online. [via] [more inside]
posted by AceRock at 8:05 PM PST - 17 comments

Jamie Foxx Performs the Theme to "The Brady Bunch". SLYT.
posted by New Frontier at 7:23 PM PST - 24 comments

From The Economist (remember who they endorsed recently?): What Congo Means for Obama.
posted by allkindsoftime at 7:20 PM PST - 31 comments

"Engineers Rule" and "The Toyota Way": How Toyota and Honda have bested the Big Three.
posted by rollbiz at 5:34 PM PST - 130 comments

The Abominable Charles Christopher. Please enjoy this comic. I think it is delightful in every way.
posted by boo_radley at 3:25 PM PST - 61 comments

Have we jumped over all the hurdles in our ongoing economic fiasco? Probably not, the next hurdle is Credit Cards. [more inside]
posted by Xurando at 3:21 PM PST - 99 comments

"The plays can reassure a soldier, she says, 'that I am not alone, that I am not going crazy, that I am joined by the ages of warriors and their loved ones who've gone before me, and who have done what most in society have no idea our warriors do.' " The Philoctetes Project. (video available)
posted by wittgenstein at 2:54 PM PST - 6 comments

When I heard NPR's remembrance of Tom Gish yesterday, I figured someone would beat me to posting about him here on the Blue for sure, but apparently not. Gish, who died last week at 82, was the editor and publisher of The Mountain Eagle, a rural Kentucky newspaper. While still covering typical small-town happenings over the last 50+ years, he and his wife Pat (and eventually their kids) brought to light myriad injustices, from political corruption to poverty, safety violations in local mines to illiteracy. I found this appreciation, with bottom line proof of the Gish's popularity and influence, despite the death threats, firebombing, boycotts, and other hardships they endured:

"The population of Letcher is less than half what it was when they moved up here," said Ben Gish, editor of The Mountain Eagle and the couple's son. "But circulation has more than tripled."
posted by yiftach at 2:45 PM PST - 6 comments

A man -- Christopher Handler -- has been arrested in Iowa for possession of explicit yaoi and lolicon manga. [more inside]
posted by peacheater at 1:54 PM PST - 155 comments

Heiko Müller - Paintings and Drawings. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 1:05 PM PST - 4 comments

The Bra for Boys blossoms in Japan.
posted by cytherea at 1:02 PM PST - 31 comments

He's a madman, she thought as he made love to her again. Oh my God, after twenty years of being the most rational Bolshevik woman in Moscow, this goblin has driven me crazy! Oh joy! It's time for the annual Bad Sex Award. Shortlist is up at The Guardian.
posted by jokeefe at 10:57 AM PST - 69 comments

The Auteurs is a new web site (in beta) for film lovers--and, for those film lovers, Criterion has relaunched their site. Now with the ability to watch (some of) their films online for $5 (good for a week's worth of watching one title). The viewing cost is also applicable to the cost of buying the same title on DVD.
posted by Manhasset at 8:58 AM PST - 22 comments

You might have seen the Droste Effect before, perhaps even the animated version. But here's a new iteration - a music video.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 8:45 AM PST - 28 comments

Pro-Anorexia Group presence ballooning on Facebook. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:40 AM PST - 159 comments

Offshore wind farm stirs up a tempest. Lines are being drawn in the battle over a proposed windmill development to be built in Lake Ontario two kilometres out from the Scarborough Bluffs? Is this just another case of NIMBYism? Or are wind farms unreliable, dangerous to migratory birds, and a source of health problems for people who live near them?
posted by you just lost the game at 7:20 AM PST - 75 comments

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

Yet the picture of cities—and New York in particular—that has been emerging from the work of social scientists is that the people living in them are actually less lonely. Rather than driving people apart, large population centers pull them together, and as a rule tend to possess greater community virtues than smaller ones.
posted by plexi at 7:19 AM PST - 90 comments

"There's something very shabby about a noble grave... Political power and the power of wealth result in splendid graves. Really impressive graves, you know. Such creatures never had any imagination while they lived, and quite naturally their graves don't leave any room for imagination either. But noble people live only on the imaginations of themselves and others, and so they leave graves like this one which inevitably stir one's imagination. And this I find even more wretched. Such people, you see, are obliged even after they are dead to continue begging people to use their power of imagination." - Yukio Mishima via Kashiwagi in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. On this, the anniversary of Mishima's transformation into a headless god, a collection of video links. [more inside]
posted by eccnineten at 6:59 AM PST - 11 comments

Robert Frank’s Unsentimental Journey. "Published in 1958, Robert Frank’s photographic manifesto, The Americans, torched the national myth, bringing him such comrades as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and—for a controversial documentary—the Rolling Stones. On a trip to China, the 83-year-old rebel of postwar film still defies expectations." [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 6:31 AM PST - 6 comments

Gettin' mashed with Snoop and Martha. SLYT
posted by gman at 6:17 AM PST - 56 comments

Charity fundraising volunteers, known colloquially as "chuggers", are a common sight in downtown London. And charity watchdog group Intelligent Giving believes they should be banned. Chuggers are not without their defenders, of course, or their detractors. Some have already downplayed Intelligent Giving's report, and Mick Aldridge, chief executive of the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, has called it "grossly irresponsible".
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 2:39 AM PST - 60 comments

In the 20 years that we've published our annual list,

we've covered corporate villains, scoundrels, criminals and miscreants. We've reported on some really bad stuff - from Exxon's Valdez spill to Union Carbide and Dow's effort to avoid responsibility for the Bhopal disaster; from oil companies coddling dictators (including Chevron and CNPC, both profiled this year) to a bank (Riggs) providing financial services for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet; from oil and auto companies threatening the future of the planet by blocking efforts to address climate change to duplicitous tobacco companies marketing cigarettes around the world by associating their product with images of freedom, sports, youthful energy and good health. But we've never had a year like 2008.

( via ). [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 1:51 AM PST - 36 comments

ROMANO-Archives has a YouTube channel with over 270 color film clips, called Unknown WWII In Color. "World War ll has usually been seen in black and white, but our recent research has unearthed an abundance of superb color film that shows what it really looked like to those who were there. The Author presents mainly WW2 recently declassified and other previously unavailable material, exclusively filmed in color." They also have over 900 videos of Automobile History USA l lots of pages of images with history, like Jammin' with Betty Boop. [In English and Italian] [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 10:45 PM PST - 18 comments

Pittsburgh celebrates its 250th birthday today (warning: audio). It's too late to see the Festival of Lights, but Fort Pitt Museum has a full day of activities scheduled (and cake!). Historic Pittsburgh offers texts, maps, and 10,000+ photographs of the city and its people.
posted by Knappster at 10:41 PM PST - 18 comments

The SERPENT project Collaborating closely with key players in the oil and gas industry, the SERPENT project aims to make cutting-edge industrial ROV technology and data more accessible to the world's science community, share knowledge and progress deep-sea research. Galleries, video of rare elbowed squid.
posted by dhruva at 9:48 PM PST - 5 comments

Wendy Whitaker is a sex offender. At 17, she had oral sex with a boy, just shy of his 16th birthday. She's losing her house because she cannot live within 1000 feet of any area where children congregate, and the local church runs an unadvertised daycare. In 2006 she sued over the residency restrictions. Last Thursday, she lost. She filed a new lawsuit, saying that her sex offender status is cruel and unusual punishment. [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 6:49 PM PST - 168 comments

Thanksgiving is a few days away and while most will be doing the turkey and trimmings thing and perhaps a ham, in my house we do that along with CFS and tamales. Sound strange? It is afterall, all about the gravy and gravy. YUM! Don't be afraid. Texas love & Happy Thanksgiving!
posted by shockingbluamp at 6:43 PM PST - 23 comments

"With the holiday season almost upon us, the Picture Palace is in a familial, touchy-feely mood. Also, we thought it’d be kind of cool to turn you into a shivering puddle of tears. And so we present to you Michael Dudok de Wit’s Father and Daughter. It won the 2000 Best Animated Short Oscar, along with a whole crapload of other awards. There’s a reason for all those accolades: This wordless, minimalist, beautifully animated eight-minute fable, about a girl who watches her father leave and continues to wait for him, is one of the most powerful things we’ve ever seen. It’s also been a cult item among animation buffs for a long time now."
posted by vronsky at 3:42 PM PST - 26 comments

The mesmerizing live question feed from text118118.com shows questions from curious UK residents. The answers are always polite and reasonable complete and accurate. Sometimes you can see one person submitting the same question or a string of related questions.
posted by closetphilosopher at 3:28 PM PST - 70 comments

“A Dream To Have In Heaven” (Tengoku De Miru Yume - 天国でみる夢) is a non-narrative, surreal manga created by Maki Sasaki. It was published in the November 1967 issue of Garo, a now-defunct alternative and avant-garde monthly manga anthology magazine that peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
posted by defenestration at 1:14 PM PST - 16 comments

Making Iron Man
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:11 PM PST - 42 comments

Rose George wants you to start talking about waste. And no, she isn't concerned with your recycling habits, your fluorescent light bulbs, or the packaging on your electronics. She's concerned with your, ahem, human waste. Ms. George has written a book on the way both first and third world societies deal with sewage, and now Freakonomics is talking with her about it.
posted by aliceinreality at 12:26 PM PST - 30 comments

It's a geek Thanksgiving! On Here & Now, Instructables' Christy Canida shares tools for organizing Thanksgiving dinner - Gantt chart, purchasing calculator, kitchen workstation for workflow management, stastical analysis of turkey cooking, and more. You'll also find results of their Take Thanksgiving to the Next Level contest, like the giant fractal pecan pie, the 20-sided pie-cosahedron, and the recirculating gravy fountain.
posted by Miko at 11:17 AM PST - 29 comments

The Zippy the Pinhead Archive: Are We Having Searchable Fun Yet? lets you search through many years of Zippy daily comic strips by keyword or date, from January 1, 1994 to the near-present. Sundays included. The Roadside Tour lets you search to see if Zippy's been in your part of the world! [Click the "Where's Zippy?" javascript button for detailed location indeces] [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 10:30 AM PST - 29 comments

Will the declining economy trigger a wave of burglaries? The answer seems to be a definitive maybe. There's no doubt, however, that property crime is a popular pastime of late. [more inside]
posted by MrVisible at 10:16 AM PST - 41 comments

Scientists Discover 21st Century Plague? Bartonella bacteria, spread by the brown rat, Europe's largest and most common rodent, are considered emerging zoonotic pathogens because they have the potential to transmit human disease worldwide, including heart disease and nervous system infections. [more inside]
posted by terranova at 10:05 AM PST - 11 comments

Ted Staunton's archive of labels from 78 rpm records. Perhaps most easily explored through the massive "Decades" pages of thumbnails.
posted by OmieWise at 9:58 AM PST - 16 comments

A news segment on StreetWars: the 24/7 watergun assassination game.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 7:10 AM PST - 35 comments

Anatomy of a Meltdown - Ben Bernanke and the financial crisis (in one page)
posted by Gyan at 6:47 AM PST - 61 comments

Britain's Biggest "Gigaholic". [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:39 AM PST - 42 comments

Sentences were delivered yesterday in Israel's Neo-Nazi trial of the 8 members of "Patrol 36" who were active in and around Petah Tikvah. [more inside]
posted by gman at 4:14 AM PST - 29 comments

The Brain Unveiled: A new imaging method offers a spectacular view of neural structures. Diffusion spectrum imaging, developed by neuroscientist Van Wedeen at Massachusetts General Hospital, analyzes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data in new ways, letting scientists map the nerve fibers that carry information between cells.
posted by srboisvert at 4:10 AM PST - 12 comments

"Scandal is our growth industry. Revelation of wrongdoing leads not to definitive investigation, punishment, and expiation but to more scandal. Permanent scandal. Frozen scandal." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 1:37 AM PST - 14 comments

The Top 25 Comic Book Battles, as voted on by the readers of Comic Book Resources. [more inside]
posted by Artw at 11:53 PM PST - 141 comments

Can You Identify Famous Album Covers Based Only on a Mime in A Leotard? [more inside]
posted by Senor Cardgage at 11:13 PM PST - 66 comments

They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album cover photographs. Even their jam sessions are secret, for fear of offending the religious authorities in this ultraconservative kingdom. The AccoLade is Saudi Arabia's "first all-girl rock band."
posted by Navelgazer at 9:15 PM PST - 36 comments

Scientists are now revising earlier projections about the speed at which global warming will impact the arctic ice sheet. By 2013 it could very well disappear in the summer months, opening up new sea lanes for commerce and, potentially, "a quarter of the earths oil and natural gas resources". Several arctic countries are thinking ahead, while it appears others have been for quite some time.
posted by Glibpaxman at 9:14 PM PST - 47 comments

David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah (February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film maker who directed 15 major motion pictures, and created the television series The Westerner, starring Brian Keith and John Dehner. His second film Ride the High Country, " [Starring aging Western stars Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott in their final major screen roles, the film initially went unnoticed in the United States but was an enormous success in Europe. Beating Federico Fellini's 8½ for first prize at the Belgium Film Festival, the film was hailed by foreign critics as a brilliant reworking of the Western genre.] [more inside]
posted by nola at 6:21 PM PST - 25 comments

In a series of sixteen advertisements screened in Japan, Tommy Lee Jones plays extraterrestrial 'Alien Jones', who has taken the form of a man to check on the world of humans, all the while drinking a Japanese brand of coffee named BOSS. I have no idea how Tommy Lee Jones got talked into doing these advertisements, or why. And after watching them for yourself (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16), you probably won't either.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:59 PM PST - 81 comments

minuscule: La vie privée des insectes (warning: auto-play sound). This is a series of short, funny films with no dialogue (so you don't need to know French to appreciate them), combining actual footage with 3d animation. Films include: bouse de là!, catapulte, chewing gum, hyperactive, l'attaque de la sucette rose, les vers sont dans la pomme, libellules, petit repas entre mouches, silence, top départ and zzzeplin. [more inside]
posted by joannemerriam at 3:48 PM PST - 14 comments

It's a bickie, not a cookie. Named after the winner of the 1958 Kentucky Derby, it's Australia's equivalent to the iconic Oreo. How do they make them? How do you eat them? Tim Tams! They almost make up for the Vegemite.
posted by ninazer0 at 3:43 PM PST - 71 comments

Christians AGAINST Cartoons!
posted by defenestration at 12:19 PM PST - 93 comments

Can nonprofit news models save journalism? The advertising-supported, for-profit institutional model of journalism (skip this ad) is on the wane. Except for a few large and successful outlets, investment in comprehensive reporting has suffered from a shrinking bottom line, even as the hoped-for development of citizen journalism has been generally underwhelming. But some see a solution taking shape in not-for-profit, independent, citizen-supported online news organizations that would employ skilled professional journalists. Pointing to the encouraging recent growth of NPR and PBS as news outlets, many industry thinkers are starting to agree that "The only way to save journalism is to develop a new model that finds profit in truth, vigilance, and social responsibility." Editors are beginning to experiment with models like that of Paul Stieger's ProPublica (a sort of reporting clearinghouse), Geoff Dougherty's ChiTown Daily News, The NYC Center for an Urban Future's City Limits, and Scott Lewis' Voice of San Diego. Great idea - will it work?
posted by Miko at 10:30 AM PST - 35 comments

In 1972 the Club of Rome published the famous book Limits to Growth that predicted exponential growth would eventually lead to economic and environmental collapse. It was criticized by economists and largely ignored by politicians. Now Graham Turner at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia has compared the book's predictions with data from the intervening years. According to Turner (PDF report) changes in industrial production, food production and pollution are all in line with the book's predictions of collapse in the 21st century. According to the book, the path we have taken will cause decreasing resource availability and an escalating cost of extraction that triggers a slowdown of industry, which eventually results in economic collapse some time after 2020.(via; previously; previously)
posted by stbalbach at 10:15 AM PST - 71 comments

The perfect Sunday nosh: A short history of the bagel. In an age when allegedly edible breadstuffs that my grandmother would have barely recognized have become ubiquitous, did you know that even the Pharaohs had a yen for the iconic Jewish comfort food that is as much a symbol of New York City as baguettes are to Paris? Bagels turn out to be surprisingly easy to make at home, too, though they won't be the same without a schmear and some nice Nova. (Previously on Ask.) Extra credit: the history of everything.
posted by digaman at 9:52 AM PST - 64 comments

If you've quit smoking and you're trying to get through the early withdrawal symptoms without gaining 20 pounds, one coping strategy is to get busy crafting. Sure, you say, you've made naughty figurines out of your cigarette packages in bored moments before, but now if you're going to craft you want to make something that celebrates your fantastic self-discipline and can serve as a worthy memorial to your renounced habit. If that's how you feel, check out these links. [more inside]
posted by orange swan at 9:37 AM PST - 8 comments

Eric 'MC' Breed, a well known rap artist popular in the 90's, died yesterday at the age of 36. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 9:24 AM PST - 16 comments

Playing for Change - Peace Through Music (flash) is a documentary film by Mark Johnson. He traveled the world and recorded various musicians playing the song Stand By Me. Each musician was charged with layering a single song over the previous artist thus building upon it. Over thirty musicians globally participated in this project and not one artist knew the other or came in contact initially. [more inside]
posted by Sailormom at 9:09 AM PST - 13 comments

Hall & Oates are suing their publisher, Warner/Chappell Music Inc., claiming the publisher failed to enforce the copyright on their song "Maneater" and sue an unnamed singer-songwriter (quite possibly Nelly Furtado) for infringement. The only problem is, Timbaland and Nate "Danja" Hills - the composers of the Furtado track - also work for Warner/Chappel Music. What happens when publishers don't protect songwriters from other songwriters working for the same publisher.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:57 AM PST - 44 comments

Christopher Farmer of Opord Analytical has just posted his solution (PDF) to part 4 of the much studied "Kryptos" cipher. He's recently cracked Zodiac Killer ciphers thought unsolvable for nearly 40 years and has a theory (PDF) about the Zodiac Killer's possible identity that is hard to be ignored. Mr. Farmer freely shares his many discoveries on his website's forum board.
posted by wherever, whatever at 5:21 AM PST - 57 comments

Brain reorganizes to make room for math. But does math easily lead to truth? Is it really just beauty?
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:45 AM PST - 31 comments

Confirmed: Scientists Understand Where Mass Comes From. An exhaustive calculation of proton and neutron masses vindicates the Standard Model. Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations.
posted by homunculus at 1:23 AM PST - 52 comments

Blindspots is a continually-updated collection of movie reviews based around one very interesting concept -- how accessible they are to the visually impaired. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi at 11:20 PM PST - 25 comments

Speaking of robots, here is a trailer for Megaman the Movie, a low budget live action adaptation of the classic NES game. [sort of previously] [more inside]
posted by Caduceus at 10:49 PM PST - 24 comments

What began as a gospel song became Archie Campbell's signature song on Hee Haw, with the help of Gordie Tapp and some surprise celebrity guests.
posted by Knappster at 10:44 PM PST - 19 comments

Pets have long been afraid of anything robotic, whether it be Roomba or Robotic Dog, but times they are a'changing and Pets are fighting back and have learned to overcome.
posted by Del Far at 9:25 PM PST - 16 comments

As the Bay Area looks to become the electric vehicle capital of America, the 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI won the Green Car of the Year Award at the LA Auto Show.
posted by gman at 9:24 PM PST - 28 comments

Everything is prettier as a flow chart. [more inside]
posted by puckish at 8:58 PM PST - 30 comments

A place that is covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy. And with good reason, according to a group of researchers in the Netherlands. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave. They found that they could, by a lot: doubling the number who are prepared to litter and steal.

A story about a series of experiments on The Broken Windows Theory. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:56 PM PST - 23 comments

Now we know what Mike Post has been up to lately. It's a treadmill. Powered by your feet. That you run on. Outdoors. On the road. Kind of like...running...on the road. The mind boggles.
posted by ericbop at 7:41 PM PST - 52 comments

Immersion
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:40 PM PST - 80 comments

This weather forecast rap is one of many funny musical videos by GoRemy (website, blog). Some of his videos make fun of politics, and he was interviewed by Politico earlier this year. If he seems familiar, you may remember him from Hummus: The Rap or his question about taxes which was asked during the CNN/YouTube presidential debates.
posted by Tehanu at 3:10 PM PST - 5 comments

“The Disappearing Male” is a one-hour documentary about one of the most important, and least publicized, issues facing the human species: the toxic threat to the male reproductive system. The whole documentary is on Google Video.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 12:16 PM PST - 117 comments

"We were looking for pretty animals that have eyes, are coloured, or glow in the dark; instead, the most interesting find was the organism that was blind, brainless, and completely covered in mud." Some of the oldest fossil records may need to be reconsidered: Dr. Mikhail Matz of the University of Texas has discovered Gromia Sphaerica, a species of protist, making tracks.... [more inside]
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 10:35 AM PST - 21 comments

Agence France-Presse or AFP is the world's oldest established news agency.
AFP pays tribute to the International Festival of Photojournalism.
Check out the portfolios of photographers such as Olivier Laban-Mattei or Lionel Healling... or... or any of the others here all with captioned slide show.
posted by adamvasco at 9:17 AM PST - 3 comments

Policy Archive compiles research and recommendations from think tanks, universities, government agencies and foundations into one browseable/searchable site. Designed to give the non-wonk layperson free, centralized access to subject-specific information on public policy in the USA, Policy Archive offers quick links to topics like banking & finance, education, labor, and military. Or just browse by who wrote, published, or funded a given bit of research. 16,000+ documents and growing.
posted by Rykey at 7:46 AM PST - 12 comments

The Devil's Whore is a tale set in the English Civil War about a fictional woman, Angelica Fanshawe, and how her life intersects with the real events and key figures of the time, including Charles I and Oliver Cromwell. (Featuring a welcome return to the small screen for John Simm as the mysterious Edward Sexby) [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 5:31 AM PST - 31 comments

World Record BASE Jump: from 650 meters up the Burj Dubai. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 12:20 AM PST - 47 comments

The Insect Close-ups Flickr Pool is full of fascinating pictures. There are all kinds of wonderful images to be found, of spiders, ladybugs, hornets, aphids, grasshoppers, worms, water striders and those superstars of the insect world, bees and butterflies. You can also search a map for pictures by location. If you want to take your own bug photographer Mark Plonsky has written a short how-to guide. He has taken some pretty great photographs of insects himself.
posted by Kattullus at 10:31 PM PST - 14 comments

Chinese Democracy, the sixth studio album by Guns N’ Roses, is being released this Sunday, after over a decade of delays. Chuck Klosterman liked it. John Pareles from the New York Times did not. You can decide for yourself by listening to it here. Or you can pick it up this Sunday at Best Buy. But make sure you collect your free Dr Pepper. [more inside]
posted by emd3737 at 8:00 PM PST - 120 comments

Fire in the sky - a meteor burns up somewhere over Western Canada. Really impressive video here, another video, TV news with more footage here.
posted by Artw at 6:52 PM PST - 65 comments

Psst. Hey, wanna know secret? YouTube is offering 720p HD streaming on select videos. [more inside]
posted by tracert at 6:08 PM PST - 17 comments

It took me a second to realize what this was, but amazed I had to continue looking at Batman and Robin, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and the Pop Art Blonde. Face painting was never like this in my day.
posted by salishsea at 5:44 PM PST - 24 comments

You guys! Psyched about that whole Watchmen movie thing (previously, we've touched on Watchmen briefly, like, once or twice?), kinda wanna read the book, but you just can't see fitting a 400-page comic into your busy, busy schedule? Fortunately for you, there's The Condensed Version. (Via the often NSFW Journalista.)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:40 PM PST - 58 comments

The Tone Generation is a radio series by Ian Helliwell 'looking at different themes or composers in the era of analogue tape and early synthesizer technology'. The original globe-trotting series: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, USA, Canada, Rest of World. Bonus programmes: Expo 58, The RCA Synthesizer. All links are to MP3 files, except the first one. Alternatively, you can slurp down the lot in one go by subscribing to the podcast feed.
posted by jack_mo at 3:15 PM PST - 4 comments

Super Stacker. Flash Friday fun with a physics-based stacking game. (Via JIG).
posted by afx237vi at 2:28 PM PST - 16 comments

Saved by Zero Kills (slyt) [via Consumerist] [more inside]
posted by owtytrof at 2:10 PM PST - 45 comments

People with closed eyes [more inside]
posted by Glow Bucket at 2:02 PM PST - 18 comments

Despite sagging paperback sales in the publishing industry, romance novels -- and particularly hen lit -- fiction featuring older female heroines -- are thriving. In 2006, according to Romance Writers of America, 26.4% of all books sold were romances, generating $1.37 billion in sales. In hen lit aka Matron literature, heroines typically are over-40, widowed grandmothers whose romance yearnings are secondary to family, work, and hobbies.
posted by terranova at 1:40 PM PST - 28 comments

The 7 Greatest Stories in the History of Esquire Magazine via [more inside]
posted by Knappster at 12:41 PM PST - 28 comments

Somali pirates have captured a Saudi oil tanker, demanding a $25 million ransom. Somali pirates are well known and active - as of 30 September, 12 vessels remained captive and under negotiation with more than 250 crew being held hostage. But this time they may have gone too far: by capturing a ship of a Muslim nation, the pirates have drawn the ire of Somali Islamist fighters, who have vowed to combat the pirates. The pirates say they're just doing it for the cash, while some report they're living large. Who are Somalia's pirates anyway?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:25 PM PST - 63 comments

"Ham Radio is a life long learning experience. You never stop learning." Don, W3RDF, is a CW enthusiast who shares with us his love of a hobby that has been a source of many friends from around the globe. With Solar Cycle 24 just beginning, the Ham Bands have been heating up with activity. Perhaps you might want to listen to what they are saying.
posted by jackspace at 12:00 PM PST - 31 comments

The Worst Day of My Life. SLYTP
posted by adrober at 10:48 AM PST - 144 comments

This is my Milwaukee (SLYTP-esque) [more inside]
posted by cobra_high_tigers at 10:39 AM PST - 59 comments

DIGG ATTACK is a game. Lead a small band of good guys (small bluish dots) in a struggle to flee from Digg Stories. Requires your browser support the canvas tag.
posted by boo_radley at 10:18 AM PST - 14 comments

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: --- The Turbaconducken.
posted by empath at 10:10 AM PST - 71 comments

Pilot School. A nice collection of teevee show pilot scripts. Observe the embryonic state of many of the classics of the past few decades, including Buffy, The Wire, Hill Street Blues, Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos and The West Wing. [more inside]
posted by Bookhouse at 9:41 AM PST - 29 comments

Hello.
posted by monospace at 9:07 AM PST - 79 comments

Acko.net is the web home of Steven Wittens, designer of AVS presets for WinAmp, as well as the current Bluebeach theme at Drupal.org. Steven also dabbles in programming; for instance his Farbtastic jquery color picker. Be sure to watch his blog for development jewels like Projective Texturing with Canvas.
posted by netbros at 8:22 AM PST - 14 comments

19-Year-Old Commits Suicide on Justin.TV. [previously.]
posted by chunking express at 6:50 AM PST - 125 comments

Sex: wot's the big deal is a sex exhibition for kids currently taking place at the Cité des Sciences in Paris. Pre-teens can learn about love, puberty, making love and making babies, and they can also experiment a little bit. The show is based on Willies: a user's guide (in French: Le zizi sexuel) by Swiss comics creator Zep, and features the rising star of French playgrounds, Titeuf (NSFW unless you're a French preteen)
posted by elgilito at 6:34 AM PST - 42 comments

In a new twist on trademark disputes, the federal goverment wants to confiscate the trademark of the Mongols Motorcycle Club. The Wall Street Journal (among other people)weighs in.
posted by TedW at 6:26 AM PST - 24 comments

You know, I want you to pick up on this. You know, these lyrics are something else. Just dig this. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:11 AM PST - 19 comments

The White album turns 40.
posted by sleepy pete at 5:16 AM PST - 111 comments

Fringe Friday: Did you know that a fringe around the flag indicates martial law? Any sovereign citizen knows better than to accept the jurisdiction of the American War Flag! Or wait--is it really Old Glory that bows to martial law? Fly your Civil Flag with pride!
posted by shii at 5:02 AM PST - 39 comments

People want to kiss alligators and crocodiles. They do it in Costa Rica and Lousiana and Mississippi. Why do many otherwise normal people want to kiss alligators?
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:35 AM PST - 24 comments

Auditorium is a musical flash game where you influence a stream of particles with gravity-based nodes. A steady stream of particles past a collector enables a layer of music. Good fun! Via Jay is Games
posted by closetphilosopher at 1:54 AM PST - 15 comments

Mongo the Magnificent. "Out of nowhere, believing that it is good for the soul to have one insane idea a day, whether you need it or not, the notion of a dwarf private detective came to me [...] I considered such a character bizarre and absurd, unworkable and unpublishable, and thus a waste of time to spend and length of time trying to develop it. I kept searching, but the damn dwarf just wouldn't go away. [...] It was to be a satire. Halfway through, I discovered a key to the man's character was a simple quest to be taken seriously, for dignity. That touched me, and I started over again, this time doing it "straight" (or as straight as I'm able). I gave Mongo dignity, and in return he gave me a career. The diverse background was, I thought, necessary in order to properly equip him in a "world of giants"."

George C. Chesbro, RIP [more inside]
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 12:25 AM PST - 18 comments

Depression 2009: What would it look like? "Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying suburbs. A catastrophic economic downturn would feel nothing like the last one." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 12:15 AM PST - 48 comments

Pardon the turkey.
It is unverified that the turkey was ever vetted to be the national bird.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:01 AM PST - 75 comments

Attorney General Michael Mukasey was giving a speech tonight at the Federalist Society meeting tonight when he collapsed on stage. Talking Points Memo has a report from an eyewitness. [more inside]
posted by Bonzai at 8:53 PM PST - 167 comments

We had a tale of time travel getting a man out of a speeding ticket. (Previously) Now we have a man trying to pay a bill with a spider drawing --not a speeding ticket this time. (He mentions time travel as well.) [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 8:30 PM PST - 23 comments

We get you real woolly mammoth, very cheap, good quality.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:56 PM PST - 42 comments

The Outsider: The story of Harry Partch. BBC Documentary. "...a documentary about the composer Harry Partch who invented his own compositional method using a 43-tone scale and many instruments that he built by hand."
posted by vronsky at 7:18 PM PST - 15 comments

This site is about capsule pipelines.
posted by brundlefly at 6:04 PM PST - 36 comments

Meet Braddish Billings, the first settler in Gloucester Township, and his family, including the famed palentologist Elkanah Billings. Learn about the Bridge Braddish built, and the community that grew around it. Learn about the way the Billings travelled, occupied their free time, got educated, and tons of other stuff. All thanks to the Billings Estate National Historic Site of the City of Ottawa. [more inside]
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 5:21 PM PST - 6 comments

Influential billionaires like Carl, Thomas, Kirk, and Warren have been losing their shirts. And it's being felt around the world. [more inside]
posted by gman at 4:05 PM PST - 60 comments

The plan isn’t foolproof. For it to work, certain things must happen:
posted by oxford blue at 3:55 PM PST - 59 comments

Theatre of the New Ear. Two radio plays: one by Charlie Kaufman, the other by the Coen Brothers, recorded live and starring Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep. [more inside]
posted by jack_mo at 3:09 PM PST - 18 comments

Polly wants a Prozac. Fred the Parrot tries to bite his neck off after his owner dies, vets prescribe bird-friendly anti-depressants.
posted by BrnP84 at 3:02 PM PST - 22 comments

Come And Visit The Garden Of Earthly Delights
posted by Xurando at 2:31 PM PST - 12 comments

Mark takes us on the A380 (warning: image heavy) from Dubai to New York with meticulous photographic detail. For $7300 you can fly the A380 with access to amenities like showers and a full-service bar, and stroll down to see the plebs in steerage. Arguably the last time a flying hotel was tried in earnest was the post-WWII Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, a staple of Pacific routes until jet-powered 707s appeared on the scene.
posted by crapmatic at 1:12 PM PST - 86 comments

Like a little serenity? "Ambient sound environments at your desktop for relaxation, privacy and solitude". Soothe yourself with the sound of purring or some birdsong , rainforest, storm, sounds of the beach to go with your tea and contemplation. You might pretend you're taking a train trip, on a plane, visiting NYC. Or for fun you could mix them up, pencil writing and windchimes. Each soundscape has a visual to accompany it as well.
posted by nickyskye at 11:58 AM PST - 36 comments

Lady Dottie's a "sixty-something blues queen with body pillows for boobs and more swagger than Space Ghost." Her band, The Diamonds, is a bunch of young hard-rockers. (Think Kings of Leon or the MC5 backing up Etta James.) Their new record kicks all kinds of ass - as do their live shows.
posted by jbickers at 11:41 AM PST - 22 comments

Carolina Chocolate Drops rock the piedmont. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin at 11:19 AM PST - 23 comments

There have been precious few times that a restaurant review had me laughing out loud, even on page 2.
posted by aletheia at 10:52 AM PST - 71 comments

Yugo (now Zastava), the icon of Soviet-era automaking, rolled out its last car on November 11th, 2008, a victim of the global financial crisis. The Kragujevac plant, having endured political crises and NATO bombs, has finally been sold to Fiat. Previously.
posted by swift at 10:25 AM PST - 28 comments

Then, all of sudden, I saw a hand holding a piece of chalk and writing on a black-board something like a mathematical formula. The vision was very clear, but it stayed only for few seconds and disappeared again. The Internet is abound with a new, simple technique for at-home DIY multimodal (vision, sound) Ganzfeld Hallucinations (previously). [more inside]
posted by tybeet at 9:22 AM PST - 45 comments

How do you ask a stranger (not necessarily fluent in English) to recall and describe their private emotions? A research project visually displays anger, joy, fear, sadness, and love.
posted by desjardins at 9:22 AM PST - 10 comments

The latest dance craze to inspire YouTube dance fiends is Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)". There's a Big Girl Remix, a Single Man version (the original became so popular that the Single Man did a version with a more modest outfit at the request of BET), and lots of other individual interpretations. Beyonce has said her video was inspired by another YouTube video - a mashup of a Fosse dance routine performed by Gwen Verdon and the hip-hop song "Walk It Out" (the original Fosse routine with the original music). Videos might be NSFW.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:03 AM PST - 64 comments

Ten years ago Valve released Half Life, to the delight of gamers, modders, critics and people who hate cut scenes. Marc Laidlaw, writer for Valve, talks about the genesis of scientist turned crowbar wielding survivor, Gordon Freeman. Somehow avoided playing it in all these years? You can buy it on Steam for less than a dollar until midnight November 21st.
posted by Artw at 9:00 AM PST - 86 comments

"Can Facebook defeat terrorism?" wonders Matt Armstrong. A conference of both web and social entrepreneurs, policy wonks, and activists will convene to create a how-to guide for changing the world through social networking tools. Jared "Children of Jihad" Cohen was a driving force behind the initiative. We've seen social networking impact an election, while others are already trying to change the world with it. This conference, while exciting and important, raises a few questions. Just look at the list who's convening it: "Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Columbia Law School and the U.S. Department of State Convene the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit." [more inside]
posted by cal71 at 8:34 AM PST - 27 comments

Smoke if you got 'em. Today is the Great American Smokeout, a time to reflect on how great people look when smoking, and the terrible things (NSFW) the additives do to you.
posted by plexi at 7:13 AM PST - 79 comments

Europeana is the new EU digital library. It gives multilingual access to two million digitized books and other items of cultural and historical significance held in over 1,000 institutions in the 27 EU states. There will be 10 million by 2010. Soon after its launch the website froze, its servers overwhelmed by over "10 million hits an hour".
posted by stbalbach at 5:36 AM PST - 21 comments

Tangible evidence of deflation? The prices of commodities, houses and a wide range of consumer goods have collapsed, with observers predicting continued declines. While many point back to The Great Depression as an example of damaging deflation, the recession of 1920-1921, a frequently overlooked period in economic history, is perhaps the best example we've got of a deflationary wave similar to what might now taking place. [more inside]
posted by Mutant at 4:28 AM PST - 92 comments

100 Movie Spoilers in 5 Minutes. (Single Link College Humor Post). "It was all a dream but check this movie out anyways because it's got a chick with three boobs in it."
posted by crossoverman at 2:42 AM PST - 46 comments

The Long Tail wags no more - Chris Anderson, Wired editor and populariser of the Long Tail concept admits that "radical inequality is increasingly the norm as markets get more networked", though it may still persist in some industries. [more inside]
posted by patricio at 2:20 AM PST - 32 comments

New friendly fire coverup: Army shreds files on dead soldiers. "Hours after Salon revealed evidence that two Americans were killed by a U.S. tank, not enemy fire, military officials destroyed papers on the men."
posted by homunculus at 11:58 PM PST - 46 comments

Minnesota's recount of the Senate race between incumbent Norm Coleman (R) and challenger Al Franken (D) began yesterday. Some results are already being reported. One unintended consequence of the recount is the exposure of a shocking write-in challenger: Lizard People.
posted by nathan_teske at 11:02 PM PST - 70 comments

A 4-star rated book on CSS: The Art & Science of CSS is a FREE DOWNLOAD for 14 days from the folks at Sitepoint. Reader reviews give it 4 stars at Amazon. 208 pages. [more inside]
posted by spock at 9:16 PM PST - 30 comments

KVETCH : Am I venting or not?
posted by boo_radley at 7:21 PM PST - 31 comments

I do not want to spend too much time beating a dead war-horse, but your average D&D game consists of a group of white players acting out how their white characters encounter and destroy orcs and goblins, who are, as a race evil, uncivilized, and dark-skinned. To quote Steve Sumner’s essay again, “Unless played very carefully, Dungeons & Dragons could easily become a proxy race war, with your group filling the shoes of the noble white power crusaders seeking to extinguish any orc war bands or goblin villages they happened across.” I would argue with Sumner’s use of the phrase “could become,” and say that unless played very carefully, D&D usually becomes a proxy race war. Any adventurer knows that if you see an orc, you kill it. You don’t talk to it, you don’t ask what it’s doing there - you kill it, since it’s life is worth less than the treasure it carries and the experience points you’ll get from the kill. If filmed, your average D&D campaign would look something like Birth of a Nation set in Greyhawk.

- Race in Dungeons & Dragons by Chris van Dyke, a powerpoint talk given at Nerd Nite. Via Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog where there's a smart discussion going on about the essay.
posted by Kattullus at 7:18 PM PST - 194 comments

Believed to be extincted, the pygmy tarsier has recently resurfaced in a rain forest in Indonesia. More pictures here and video here.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 6:35 PM PST - 22 comments

If plastics, or pesticides, or antidespressants have got you down, you can still make art with it, drink it or cook with it. It's been a strange week for semen. [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 6:25 PM PST - 22 comments

In 1939, King George VI commissioned the Ministry of Information to produce three posters designed to reassure and prepare the British nation for an inevitable war. The posters were designed not so much to deliver any specific instruction, but rather to suggest an attitude - from King to country - towards the unknown. Stiff upper lip, old boy. KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. [more inside]
posted by 6am at 5:42 PM PST - 36 comments

What would you do with eternity and a bunch of rocks? [more inside]
posted by Tobu at 5:38 PM PST - 31 comments

The conservative (post-election) Crack-Up. In the wake of their recent defeats, many American conservatives have formed a circular firing squad, with some arguing that the GOP needs a little less GOD, while others say it's just a matter of returning to their roots. At this point, it looks like the party is headed for civil war and electoral disaster. Democrats and liberals may be enjoying the show these days, but what does the future hold for the GOP? (Previously.) [more inside]
posted by you just lost the game at 3:58 PM PST - 101 comments

Power To The Poster
posted by sciurus at 3:41 PM PST - 13 comments

APIC is dedicated to promoting the collection, preservation and study of materials relating to political campaigns and the U.S. presidency. While this site's appearance may not be, some people's collections and knowledge are impressive. [more inside]
posted by gman at 3:12 PM PST - 3 comments

"A frail old man lost in space and time. They give him this name because they don't know who he is. He seems not to remember where he has come from; he is suspicious and capable of sudden malignance; he seems to have some undefined energy; he is searching for something as well as fleeing from something. He has a 'machine' which enables them to travel together through time, through space, and through matter." The Genesis of Doctor Who.
posted by Knappster at 2:15 PM PST - 48 comments

Dallas Mavericks owner, celebrity dancer, Dairy Queen manager, and bloviating billionaire Mark Cuban has been accused of insider trading. In its complaint, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Cuban of selling his entire stake in Momma.com (since renamed) to avoid a $750,000 loss in 2004. But not even the government has a gag big enough to cover Cuban's mouth. On his blog, Cuban says the SEC is picking on him and presented an excerpt of a deposition of Mamma.com's CEO. And Cuban would like you to believe that he's being politically persecuted for his support of the 9/11 conspiracy film, "Loose Change." Cuban's Magnolia Pictures, which redacted Redacted, was said to be interested in a distribution deal.
posted by up in the old hotel at 12:40 PM PST - 42 comments

The Faroe (Fær Øer) pilot whales slaughter (warning, crude pictures). The Faroe Islands (prev) were nominated in year 2007 by National Geographic as one of the most appealing tourism location in the world. The inhabitans have traditionally hunted pilot whales and other cetaceans for their own sustainment, but according also to their own national statistics (PDF) , the whale hunting business is no longer a significant factor. Some ongoing online petition is trying to put a final end to this practice.
posted by elpapacito at 12:10 PM PST - 37 comments

"The way all of these objects interact and just miss each other in the same environment, it's kind of building a machine out of organic movements." A timesculpture is part music video, part performance art, part kinetic sculpture, and part innovative use of computer and video technology. Its first application? Advertising, of course. [more inside]
posted by [user was fined for this post] at 12:03 PM PST - 28 comments

Overfishing - a global disaster: A Seafood Snob Ponders the Future of Fish while time runs out for Japan's dangerous obsession with the bluefin.
Blue Ocean Institute’s seafood program helps consumers discover the connection between a healthy ocean, fishing, and seafood. Here is a Guide to Good Fish guides., and some political recommendations.
posted by adamvasco at 11:28 AM PST - 14 comments

Culture Of Fear. An interesting look at the security concerns National Football League players harbour in the wake of the death of Sean Taylor, who was robbed and shot within his own home. Previously. [more inside]
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:14 AM PST - 4 comments

Claudia Castillo's new bronchus is the result of stem-cell research. The first hollow tube body part is transplanted with no rejection issues. A lab in Italy stripped the donor trachea of living tissue leaving a collagen matrix. Claudia's stem cells were grown in a Bristol lab, (all 6 million of them) to flesh it out, so to speak. Epithelial cells from her nose & lungs formed the lining. But...... [more inside]
posted by Wilder at 10:35 AM PST - 36 comments

The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway. Why is Helvetica used now, and when did the changeover occur? To answer those questions this essay explores several important histories: of the New York City subway system, transportation signage in the 1960s, Unimark International and, of course, Helvetica.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 10:27 AM PST - 15 comments

Poladroid is a free app for your mac that lets you drag an image onto the polaroid camera in the corner of your screen. it then spits out a polaroid image that develops on your desktop. there's a flickr group for these shots already. [more inside]
posted by krautland at 10:18 AM PST - 39 comments

You may have heard of John Ziegler. A former right-wing talk radio host turned right-wing documentarian, he was once the subject of a well-known David Foster Wallace essay about conservative talk radio. Ziegler later gained some notoriety by slamming Wallace heartlessly after the author committed suicide, calling him an overrated writer and criticizing the press for its coverage of his death. Now, Ziegler has once again made waves by going nuclear in an interview with pollster-watcher Nate Silver over the legitimacy of a commissioned Zogby poll. Silver questions the value of the poll, which contains leading questions, and which Ziegler plans on using in his upcoming documentary to "numerically prove" that Obama supporters are grossly misinformed idiots. [more inside]
posted by billysumday at 9:54 AM PST - 70 comments

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, "are planning to stage a Broadway musical based on the lives and (many) loves of typical members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints." They - "along with Robert Lopez, the co-writer of 'Avenue Q' - have finally settled on a script and are workshopping their new production aptly titled, 'Mormon Musical.'" They've had fun with Mormons before: South Park episode: All About the Mormons? Full episode [21:37]. Clip [08:40]
posted by ericb at 9:53 AM PST - 45 comments

The bacon-and-fried-egg scarf. The Bad Clam. First Prize. Some tasty dreams, but mostly nightmares, are made of the abominations and inspired works found by the bloggers of Craftastrophe. [via MoFi]
posted by not_on_display at 9:38 AM PST - 16 comments

Justice for Audio. Opposing the destruction of great music.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:30 AM PST - 22 comments

Neil Gaiman celebrates 20 years since the first publication of Sandman. Yes it’s that old. Io9 lists five ways in which Sandman changed the comics world.
posted by Artw at 8:58 AM PST - 66 comments

RadioWallah - "Fabulous transistor radios from the fifties." A few more.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:51 AM PST - 11 comments

There are times when you are asked startlingly obvious questions - here is the all-purpose response.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:02 AM PST - 38 comments

NYC Rooftop Beekeeper - At 6:30 in the morning I met David Graves of Berkshire Berries outside a lower Manhattan building whose rooftop plays host to one of the 15 beehives he keeps on roofs around New York City... At Zina Saunder's blog filled with her portrait work. [previously]
posted by jim in austin at 7:28 AM PST - 12 comments

20 photos from the Civil War via listverse
posted by lobstah at 7:20 AM PST - 16 comments

One last goodbye for the memories. Theodore Fulton Stevens has lost his Alaska Senate seat.
posted by daHIFI at 6:14 AM PST - 72 comments

The invisible hand of the Free Market guides insurance payments to hospitals "Call it the best-kept secret in Massachusetts medicine: Health insurance companies pay a handful of hospitals far more for the same work even when there is no evidence that the higher-priced care produces healthier patients. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true: Massachusetts General Hospital, for example, earns 15 percent more than Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for treating heart-failure patients even though government figures show that Beth Israel has for years reported lower patient death rates."
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:46 AM PST - 29 comments

British media goes mental when someone leaks a list of British National Party online. The list is here as news outlets are wary of quoting directly. Given that membership of the BNP is forbidden for those in the Police force amongst other organisations, it's interesting reading. Their leader is interviewed on this morning's Five Live breakfast (about 2hrs in) on the matter, pointing out that as a party standing for election they are as legitimate as any other.
posted by mippy at 3:31 AM PST - 151 comments

YouTubeFilter: The Monty Python Channel: "No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault." l a feast of vids 70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube ( Smart Video Collections) l Book TV on YouTube l Computer History Museum on YT l 100 Awesome Youtube Vids for Librarians l Top 5 Most Inspirational Videos on YouTube l Top 10 Amazing Animal Videos l Top 10 YouTube Hacks l a couple of good YT member collections: TEDTalksDirector's YT vids and Basic Computer HowTo by Help Me Rick on YT l Amazing YouTube Video Tools Collection l Is YouTube the Next Google?
posted by nickyskye at 1:22 AM PST - 23 comments

Art as Visual Research: Art and neuroscience combine in creating fascinating examples of illusory motion.
posted by homunculus at 11:45 PM PST - 7 comments

It's not even Thanksgiving yet and already the 2008 "best of" lists have begun. Here's a list of the Top 60 popular Japanese words/phrases of 2008. "Morning banana" doesn't mean what you think it does. Is Sarah Palin an obaka-aidoru - おバカアイドル ? (via)
posted by tractorfeed at 10:18 PM PST - 14 comments

Fraction is a bi-monthly online photo magazine that promotes work from established artists and emerging artists side by side. In the current issue, I particularly like the work of David Eisenlord and Suzanne Revy. It also features the recently posted Richard Rinaldi piece, Touching Strangers. There are also three archived issues. [A few images nsfw] [more inside]
posted by netbros at 9:25 PM PST - 2 comments

Despite the much-maligned economy, people are seemingly starting the holiday season early this year in Loveland, Colorado by "paying it forward" for strangers' coffee at a Starbucks drive-through. This has happened in 2006 and similar events were debated last year on the blue, which led me to believe it was not a real phenomenon. CNN has the video version of the first link with interviews of those involved. Maybe it's not a PR stunt after all.
posted by knile at 9:05 PM PST - 75 comments

Neil Gaiman helps Jonathan Coulton perform the song "Creepy Doll." [slyt] [more inside]
posted by Caduceus at 8:50 PM PST - 14 comments

30 seconds over Tokyo is a song that is both unpretentious and epic at the same time. Anticipation mixed up with fear, flying, crashing, burning. Nevermind just give it a listen 30 seconds over Tokyo. Rocket from the Tombs, a nasty bit of rock history. Get out a shovel and exhume it's remains. [more inside]
posted by nola at 8:22 PM PST - 18 comments

What's wrong with primary care in the US? With a new survey suggesting that nearly half of all primary care physicians would leave medicine if they had a viable alternative, and with American medical schools not generating nearly enough new doctors going into primary care, in this, their first issue to hit doctors' desks since the election, the New England Journal of Medicine has devoted their entire editorial section to exploring yet another challenge that threatens the stability of the US health care system. Video of the roundtable discussion. Individual essays, at times touching, at times hopeful, from various primary care perspectives in the US and Britain. [more inside]
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:01 PM PST - 47 comments

At a cost of $20,000 a pound (google search prices vary). You have to wonder how much this cost. Poor Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her tool bag But don't worry, NASA tracks NEOs. And then there is the missing spider. Lastly, throwing in a gratuitous link to APOD (because it's cool and I can't wait to see the tool bag show up).
posted by cjorgensen at 5:57 PM PST - 52 comments

BIKE HERO (slyt)
posted by boo_radley at 4:28 PM PST - 67 comments

California Guitar Trio plays a quiet version of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in Dm. Here is another solo electric version by Sean Conklin. Finally here is a passionate acoustic electric treatment by Michael Fix.
posted by RussHy at 4:11 PM PST - 14 comments

You should contact me if you are a skinny woman. If your words are a meaningful progression of concepts rather than a series of vocalizations induced by your spinal cord for the purpose of complementing my tone of voice.... Are you Libertarian? And Lonely? Is the Atlas in your pants "Shrugging"?
posted by orthogonality at 3:15 PM PST - 167 comments

An election of a new President brings forth new ideas on the Vision for Space Exploration. The Planetary Society is lobbying to remove the Moon from the equation, which prompted Apollo astronaut, ex-senator, and geologist Harrison Schmitt to resign from the board in protest. Meanwhile moon-free plans proliferate. What will Obama do? Interesting hints are given in a position paper written by people associated with his transition team. [more inside]
posted by spaceviking at 3:01 PM PST - 70 comments

A Matter of Loaf and Death is the new BBC Christmas short from Nick Park and Aardman. In the mock murder mystery, Wallace and Gromit start a new bakery business, Top Bun. The short, Park's first since 1995, will introduce a new love interest for Wallace, Piella Bakewell, a bread enthusiast.
posted by chuckdarwin at 2:44 PM PST - 33 comments

Super Powers, winner of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short (possibly NSFW - a couple of swear words and adult theme)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:12 PM PST - 12 comments

The End.
posted by william_boot at 1:40 PM PST - 32 comments

Bunny show jumping, or kaninhoppning, started in Sweden and has spread to Finland, Denmark, Norway and other countries. The rabbit who completes the course with the fewest mistakes or fastest time wins. (previously, mostly YT)
posted by joannemerriam at 1:03 PM PST - 33 comments

Sam Calagione, founder and president of Dogfish Head, spent some time talking to the New Yorker about his experiments in brewing, many of which are considered to be "extreme beers." The article (very briefly) portrays Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, as waving a dismissive hand at such brews, but Oliver steps in to say that his opinion was misrepresented. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 11:47 AM PST - 104 comments

Children's Letters to God? Check. [more inside]
posted by Lacking Subtlety at 11:03 AM PST - 54 comments

Inspired by the 88-artist exhibition Africa Remix, Juxtapoz magazine's most recent issue is almost entirely dedicated to contemporary African artists. Highlights include Pieter Hugo's Nollywood photo series, Diane Victor's Smoke Portraits, Abu Bakarr Mansarray's crazy machine sketches, Ransome Stanley's oil paintings, Mikhael Subotzky's prison photography, Wangechi Mutu's collages, Cheri Cherin's large-scale political canvases, and Jane Alexander's human/animal sculptures. [more inside]
posted by pinothefrog at 10:46 AM PST - 7 comments

#$^$ the heck? Fire Joe Morgan, one of the interwebs' most beloved baseball geekery/Sabermetrics/media-criticism blogs, calls it quits (for now). [more inside]
posted by googly at 10:45 AM PST - 17 comments

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google. Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Go.
posted by chunking express at 10:30 AM PST - 28 comments

This is a really creepy mash up of the Rejuvenique infomercial and Joe Cocker's "You are so Beautiful to Me".
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 10:12 AM PST - 28 comments

Andrew Ross Sorkin takes apart GM piece by piece. [more inside]
posted by jourman2 at 9:21 AM PST - 129 comments

Annotated playthrough of Torin's Passage. There are 12 videos so far. See also: Ways to die in the game, including the easter egg message you got if you made a hilarious but stupid choice at the end.
posted by Tehanu at 9:15 AM PST - 11 comments

Georgia and Russia: This is the most balanced and informative discussion I've seen since the invasion over three months ago (MeFi thread). If you've been wanting to catch up, this essay and its many useful links are the way to go. The author, Donald Rayfield, is professor of Russian and Georgian and knows both countries well. (Via wood s lot.)
posted by languagehat at 9:01 AM PST - 12 comments

Thomas Kinkade's 16 Guidelines for Making Stuff Suck [more inside]
posted by Afroblanco at 7:52 AM PST - 218 comments

Composer Max Richter's newest work, 24 Postcards in Full Colour, is a series of ringtones.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 7:47 AM PST - 6 comments

The Kobe 9 Cruise, a Japanese professional baseball team, has drafted Eri Yoshida as a pitcher. She's sixteen years old, a high school student, and will be the first female professional player. [more inside]
posted by rmd1023 at 7:21 AM PST - 37 comments

"Yeah, I did." On November 15, Scott McClellan, former white house press secretary to President George W. Bush revealed to an audience at the Miami Book Fair that President Bush had confided in him that he had personally authorized Scooter Libby to leak the classified information in the Plame affair.
posted by acro at 6:57 AM PST - 101 comments

You may have heard by now about World of Goo, an independent game which can best be described as a "physics/construction puzzle game" that touches on everything from beauty to consumerism to internet privacy. The developer, 2DBoy who had originally released the game under a "no-DRM, don't screw us" policy now estimates a piracy rate of 82%. [more inside]
posted by tybeet at 6:50 AM PST - 46 comments

Jerry Yang, founder and CEO of Yahoo, has stepped down. He recently turned down a $31 a share offer from Microsoft, and with Yahoo shares hovering around $10, some say he was forced out.
posted by plexi at 6:48 AM PST - 27 comments

Ginger Anyhow (blog) has embroidered a series of romantic text messages, capturing the 21st century record of the waxing and waning of a relationship in a pre-industrial era form. (via notcot)
posted by mojohand at 6:42 AM PST - 11 comments

BUNNY CONCERT. 5 bunny in concert. [SLYT, Via]
posted by homunculus at 11:20 PM PST - 27 comments

In 1984, the Cable Franchise Policy and Communications Act (along with legislation dating back to the 70s) forced cable companies to create public access television. Thanks to this foresighted policy, we can all now enjoy programming that might never have existed otherwise. Case in point: Los Angeles's Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Show. Many more examples inside (some videos NSFW). [more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:08 PM PST - 24 comments

Kay S. Hymowitz strikes again. Previously, she wrote an article positing that "that too many single young males (SYMs) were lingering in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, shunning marriage and children, and whiling away their leisure hours with South Park reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie fart scenes."
Now she has a new thesis: That angry, disenfranchised single young men use "Darwinist" philosophy to justify "resistance to settling down" and "unsentimental promiscuity". [via]
posted by shotgunbooty at 10:55 PM PST - 164 comments

David Fishman, 12-year-old food critic, takes himself out to dinner.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:14 PM PST - 90 comments

On The Hour - available for download now The radio precursor to TV's The Day Today - both brainchildren of Comedy's 11th funniest man (ahead of Peter Sellers and Bill Hicks), Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci - is now available for download via iTunes and Warp Records (via DRM-free Bleep). On The Hour also saw the first appearance of Steve Coogan as the hapless sports reporter, Alan Partridge who made regular appearances in "On the Hour" and "The Day Today" before being spun off into the TV shows: "Knowing Me, Knowing You" and "I'm Alan Partridge" [more inside]
posted by JustAsItSounds at 7:46 PM PST - 20 comments

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.
posted by defenestration at 6:50 PM PST - 185 comments

Monday Evening Flash Fun: Fold. Run. Jump. Bend gravity at your will. Looks easier than it really is.
posted by schyler523 at 6:12 PM PST - 16 comments

Ever wanted to play a white radish like a flute? Or maybe a carrot clarinet? Or perhaps a cucumber trumpet?
posted by scarello at 5:53 PM PST - 20 comments

RjDj "is a music application for the iPhone. It uses sensory input to generate and control the music you are listening to. RjDj is mainly listened to with headphones. Think of it as the next generation of walkman or mp3 player." l Michael Breidenbruecker initiated the project, now joined by a team of musical and technological thinkers and coders l "What it’s really about is a new approach to how to listen to music, how to develop musical tools, and how communities own and share that work." [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 5:45 PM PST - 21 comments

Want to be a good neighbor but don't know how? Now there are checklists! (Chicago and SF focus) [more inside]
posted by puckish at 5:09 PM PST - 17 comments

Héroes del Silencio. Miguel Mateos. Caifanes. Soda Stereo. Miguel Bosé. [more inside]
posted by needled at 4:21 PM PST - 14 comments

Make this Christmas special. Spend it in Ralphie's house! Bunny suit and Lifebuoy soap included. For an extra fee, the owner will convince you to lick a metal pole and then shoot your eye out. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster at 2:40 PM PST - 41 comments

Meh. (Previously).
posted by swift at 2:32 PM PST - 61 comments

Super Obama World
posted by KokuRyu at 2:27 PM PST - 30 comments

John Wyndham: The Invisible Man of Science Fiction (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) - documentary about the British science fiction writer best known for The Day Of The Triffids
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:02 PM PST - 30 comments

Luxo Jr. goes blind. (SLYT). [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 1:35 PM PST - 17 comments

Piracy may be on the rise, but it's never really gone away. [more inside]
posted by gman at 1:02 PM PST - 52 comments

Pollan for Agriculture Secretary? It has been suggested (and previously) that Michael Pollan, author of Second Nature, The Omnivore's Dilemma, might make a good Secretary of Agriculture. This would be a dramatic departure for an office that has a decades-long history of steering US agriculture policy to the advantage of the largest agribusiness corporations. Especially given Obama's potential connections to Big Corn, how silly would we be to anticipate real change in US ag policy, relevant as it may be to the economic, energy, climate, and national security issues he campaigned on? Via the Brian Lehrer Show.
posted by maniabug at 11:56 AM PST - 66 comments

"Wally Ballou here, reporting for the Matinob with Ray and Bob from the World Wide Internets..." Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding are better known as Bob and Ray. Spending over four decades on the radio, television, print, and Broadway, beginning in Boston in 1946, they pioneered absurdist, satirical, dry, improvisational sketch comedy, influencing a legion of future comics (and others). The duo was inducted into the NAB Hall of Fame in 1984. They last appeared on the radio in NPR's "The Bob and Ray Public Radio Show" from 1982-1987. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 11:36 AM PST - 27 comments

Trolling the Head of the TSA: Bruce Schneier [previously], consummate voice of sanity on all issues of security, co-authors an article in The Atlantic [previously] demonstrating how weak and ultimately pointless most of the new security practices put in place at airports since 9/11 are by, among other things, boarding airplanes with large amounts of liquid, using fake boarding passes he printed off his computer, and wearing an "I <3 Hezbollah" t-shirt. TSA head Kip Hawley then responds on the TSA's blog. Schneier then responds to the response on his blog. Hawley then leaves a comment to that post. Schneier fires back again in his monthly newsletter. Quite an interesting and intelligent debate, despite both men humorously falling victim to the idioms of the medium and getting increasingly snarky with each passing post. [via this month's crypto-gram, a good read all the way around.]
posted by ChasFile at 11:23 AM PST - 29 comments

Join Devin Friedman at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a city of broken men. During the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany has blossomed into the hub of one of the most amazing and miraculous wartime medical systems in modern history. Each week sees 14 flights into and out of the medical center, delivering dozens of war wounded from the battlefield and back out to the more specialized care centers back stateside; the rapidity of care and transit from the war fronts to stable medical care has decreased the mortality of serious wartime military injuries to just ten percent, from the high-20s/low-30s of previous wars. This is an incredibly nice look at the Landstuhl system from the perspective of a single planeload of injured soldiers.
posted by delfuego at 11:14 AM PST - 5 comments

Obama's win is a racial milestone in world history, but beneath the surface a white backlash is festering in the US, spurring hate crimes around the country and an uptick in recruitment among white supremacists, according to the The Southern Poverty Law Center.
posted by stbalbach at 11:09 AM PST - 97 comments

"Beautiful Sunrises" is a pretty good litmus test for whether or not you like music for reasons I can get behind. If you don't appreciate "Beautiful Sunrises" as a unique and untempered piece of genuine expression, then you probably like a lot of bullshit music. If I could spend five minutes of my life as completely into something as the vocalist of Complete is about being the vocalist of Complete, well then I'd think I had reached some sort of life accomplishment pinnacle. - Steve Albini (quote via this electrical audio thread) [more inside]
posted by anazgnos at 10:07 AM PST - 132 comments

A report presented today to the US Secretary of Veteran's Affairs concludes that Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) is "a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans." While depleted uranium had long been suspected as a cause of the physical and neurological symptoms associated with GWS, the report fingers pesticides and the pyridostigmine bromide pills given to troops to counter the effects of nerve agents. [more inside]
posted by googly at 9:51 AM PST - 10 comments

Phil Gramm is unrepentent. "Mr. Gramm said the problem of predatory loans was not of the banks’ making. Instead, he faulted “predatory borrowers". "Mr. Gramm, ever the economics professor, disputes his critics’ analysis of the causes of the upheaval. He asserts that swaps, by enabling companies to insure themselves against defaults, have diminished, not increased, the effects of the declining housing markets." “This is part of this myth of deregulation,” he said in the interview. “By and large, credit-default swaps have distributed the risks. They didn’t create it. The only reason people have focused on them is that some politicians don’t know a credit-default swap from a turnip.”
posted by Xurando at 9:37 AM PST - 69 comments

£35,000-a-year kidney cancer drugs too costly for NHS: Sutent offers to extend a kidney or GIST cancer patient's life by about 26 months, but the British NHS refuses to fund it, citing "marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost."
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:27 AM PST - 47 comments

Crowd Control
posted by empath at 8:42 AM PST - 29 comments

Faen! (SLYT) Will teach you a useful Norwegian swear word. Warning: will offend Finns, who will find their own favorite curse mocked, and annoy Danes, who will find that the dapper hat-wearing, glasses-doffing Norwegian mispronounces their favorite curse word. (NSFW: Much cursing in English and various Scandinavian languages; brief image of copulating turtles.)
posted by languagehat at 8:19 AM PST - 44 comments

50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography - "Tilt-shift photography is a creative and unique type of photography in which the camera is manipulated so that a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model."
posted by Manhasset at 7:22 AM PST - 48 comments

Squarepusher takes on the Guardian's pop critics.
posted by minifigs at 5:08 AM PST - 99 comments

A Look Inside Two Central Banks: The European Central Bank And The Federal Reserve [PDF], 2003 article comparing and contrasting their basic structure and management from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's magazine Review (blue ribbon for Most Generic Magazine Title). Author Patricia S. Pollard is now with the IMF. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious at 4:37 AM PST - 2 comments

Tickling Thicket: the art of Katty Stone and Yvette Molina. [Via BLDGBLOG and Inhabitat] [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 11:11 PM PST - 2 comments

Guantanamo Bay, or Gitmo as it has often been called, has a long and sordid history of human rights abuses and those that have spent some time there have more than their fair share of stories to tell. But it looks as thought it's all coming to a close as in a major interview with 60 Minutes, Obama has vowed to shut down Guantanamo Bay and rebuild "America's moral stature in the world." [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:02 PM PST - 93 comments

Gold Standard, Way before then, Then, Now, and... [more inside]
posted by Rafaelloello at 7:38 PM PST - 48 comments

Once Upon a Time - a filmed fairy tale starring baby monkeys lost in frightening trees, a witch, crocodiles, a tiger, a "popotamus" and a lion, and even a "tremendously very bad mammoth." (In French, English subtitles)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:04 PM PST - 12 comments

A well designed Japanese video about food security
posted by oxford blue at 6:50 PM PST - 43 comments

Your favorite rock typefaces. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 6:22 PM PST - 17 comments

Babies born in 1954 have more Carbon-14 in their DNA ; trees have rings with a spike of C14 in that year, and even ringless equatorial trees will show an increase of radiocarbon if they were alive in 1954.

In the mid 1950s the United States, Britain, France and Russia tested not quite a million nuclear weapons. Maybe some part of them is still with you.
posted by plexi at 5:40 PM PST - 63 comments

A hidden room sealed inside the Great Pyramid may hold the explanation for how the pyramids were built. Previously, it was believed that the construction took place from the outside, but evidence points to the building starting on the inside and working out. Do you want to build your own pyramid at home? Well, that's considerably easier. [more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:51 PM PST - 27 comments

A lost Beatles track called Carnival of Light does exist and could be released. Sir Paul McCartney has a master tape of the piece, adding: "The time has come for it to get its moment."
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:35 PM PST - 34 comments

Animatsiya in English is weblog (warning: livejournal) with a narrow focus: tracking the production of Russian animated feature films. Russian animation has a long history with output both abstract and obstructed; from the early influence of the Russian avant-garde and the work of small groups of enthusiasts, through Stalin-era Socialist realism and a style known as Éclair that was marked by the use of extensive rotoscoping, to the 1960's and beyond when surreal and politically charged (and unfortunately, in this case, anti-Semitic) as well as unconventionally structured, emotionally fueled films found release. Fortunately, when Pilot Studio—the Soviet Union's first private animation studio—decided to relegate parts of that history to the dumpsters out back, the people were ready to sift through the mess. [more inside]
posted by defenestration at 3:49 PM PST - 6 comments

Ian Anderson Advises You on Kitten Care You may think you remember Jethro Tull but the lead singer changed a bit over the years. As well as recently receiving an (honorary) doctorate in English literature and taking up the cause of wild cats, the multi talented Ian would also like to tell you about Indian food.
posted by mygothlaundry at 3:18 PM PST - 39 comments

Is the Multiverse Real? Discover takes a look at theories that our universe is one of many. This blogger adds some interesting commentary. via
posted by Bookhouse at 2:34 PM PST - 34 comments

Want to sell your pain reliever to mothers? Rule #1: Don't make an ad that pisses off the "Mommy Bloggers". Twitter is currently "Motrin Moms" central- but that's not good news for Motrin.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:28 PM PST - 115 comments

Duanna Johnson broke the news in June when vidotape of her (alleged) beating by Memphis police was leaked (youtube). According to Johnson, the provocation for the (alleged) assault was asking to be called by name rather than as "faggot" or "he/she." Involved in a lawsuit against the Memphis Police Department, she was murdered on Sunday. Answering a call for donations for funeral expenses, the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition raised $5,300 in four hours. There are nagging questions about the circumstances of the case and the level of coverage this case has received in comparison to Prop. 8 protests. (More coverage: bilerico, feministing, the HRC, questioning transphobia.)
posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:13 PM PST - 51 comments

Pictures and descriptions of sea slugs - an absolutely stunning species of marine life
posted by darsh at 2:06 PM PST - 16 comments

John Prine Live in 1980 on youtube--with interspersed interviews from around his hometown: in his 1951 Ford Custom Club Coupe (Automobile), down by the train tracks (Bruised Orange) on the porch ( How Lucky) and at the Scene of the Crime (The Accident). Previously [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:11 PM PST - 13 comments

Star Trek XI, the trailer. (previously) [more inside]
posted by CunningLinguist at 11:44 AM PST - 245 comments

The Kneale Tapes (1, 2, 3, 4) documentary about British science fiction screenwriter Nigel Kneale. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:30 AM PST - 8 comments

The longer the fish can stay out of the water the less likely a predator will catch it. Flying fish are showing up all over the world.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 10:50 AM PST - 27 comments

An Introduction to Sine-Wave Speech Play the first sound and you'll probably hear nothing but squeaks and bleeps. Play the second one and then go back to the first. Cool!
posted by TheDonF at 9:29 AM PST - 62 comments

Georges Barbier (nsfw)(1882-1932) Fashion Illustrator extraordinaire whose prints are easily found on the web now has the first posthumous exhibition of his work on show in Venice. Titled: The Birth of Art Deco Despite his prodigious output there is little biographical detail of his life. Some of his designs were exquisite. ( related ).
posted by adamvasco at 9:10 AM PST - 9 comments

Got some old leather articles lying around that have become dated, worn, or too small? Well, happy days are here again for your old leather goods, because here are some ideas on how to make old leather items into new items you can use. [more inside]
posted by orange swan at 8:37 AM PST - 4 comments

The Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) is a medieval Japanese account of the rise and fall of the Taira clan and has inspired many other works of art. Click on the chapters and scroll down to see Heike illustrations (or start here), see more art or figures inspired by the Heike. Would you rather read? [more inside]
posted by ersatz at 8:29 AM PST - 10 comments

The fashion world scrambles to stay ahead. Michelle Obama emerges as an American fashion icon. She may appear in Vogue. Can she recover from her election night fashion faux pas? This is history in the making.
posted by twoleftfeet at 7:12 AM PST - 79 comments

Why systems fail - Review of the book: Systemantics; how systems work... and especially how they fail by John Gall. New York, Pocket Books, 1978. {via} [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:33 AM PST - 21 comments

How to Run a Con. A neuroeconomist looks at the Pigeon Drop. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 10:48 PM PST - 49 comments

"The beauty in chaos." Photographer SATO Shintaro's Tokyo Twilight Zone and Night Lights.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 9:40 PM PST - 17 comments

Where does the domino theory still apply? Why, Holland, of course, where a new record for most dominos toppled was just set, in their annual Domino Day. See the 2006 competition (and brush up on your Dutch) here: part 1 and part 2. No one can deny, the Dutch have a way with dominos. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:07 PM PST - 10 comments

U.S. Presidents have had an uneven relationship with technology. The Clinton Presidential Library has more than 40 million White House emails on record (but only two are from the man himself). The Bush Administration, on the other hand, junked the Clinton archival process and replaced it with a comically inept alternative that has lost more than five million messages, many concerning official government business. (President Bush, for his part, gave up his longtime address -- G94b@aol.com -- just before his inauguration). Even the Reagan White House had its share of problems with the digital age. Now, as tech-savvy Barack Obama prepares to implement his technology plans, does he have a shot at dragging the Oval Office into the 21st century? Or will he have to surrender his laptop, his email account, and his beloved Blackberry?
posted by Rhaomi at 8:08 PM PST - 38 comments

Alebrijes, first created by Pedro Linares, are brightly-colored Mexican folk art sculptures of fantastical animal-like creatures. [more inside]
posted by dhruva at 7:52 PM PST - 7 comments

"I was distraught. I felt I was actively participating in something so inconsistent with reality that even most conservative talk radio devotees would see this. But in a way, it was merely a more obvious example of how talk radio portrayed reality selectively." A former producer reveals the secrets of talk radio. via
posted by Knappster at 6:19 PM PST - 92 comments

Malcolm Gladwell asks: is there such a thing as pure genius? [more inside]
posted by louigi at 5:42 PM PST - 65 comments

"Lawless Lands": Michael Riley, writing in the Denver Post, investigates the dysfunctional state of law enforcement on Native American reservations, and the shocking consequences for crime victims. Bill Moyer's Journal has followed up with an excellent documentary expose entitled "Broken Justice." [more inside]
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:11 PM PST - 22 comments

Wrists of Fury: Flight Of The Bumblebee on the marimba.
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys at 2:23 PM PST - 31 comments

An experiment published in Biology Letters has been interpretted by the press in different ways. The Daily Mail: "Women over the age of 50 may be less frisky, less nimble and less cute but, as if by way of compensation, they are also a lot less bitchy." The Telegraph: "So today’s research published in Biology Letters, that finds women become less bitchy when they are older, is frankly, unsurprising. The mistake however is that the researchers thought the decline in bitchiness came post-menopause, when they should have set the benchmark as post-puberty." Dr. Petra Boynton's take: "If we don’t take action we’re going to keep on seeing this carnival of poor sex science being promoted. With poor media coverage following as a result."
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:49 PM PST - 33 comments

It’s been said that if you can’t find what you’re looking for, make it yourself. In searching for a list of lists, these guys noticed a lack of sites that aggregate lists, so Listropolis was born. For example, The 10 Worst Places to Get Caught Having Sex. Some of their lists are a little more useful like 20 Essential Sources for Free HD Videos, or the aptly named 7 Big-Ass Holes in the Earth.
posted by netbros at 1:43 PM PST - 21 comments

Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" YT Link is the duo of Alan Vega and Martin Rev at their most anthemic and uplifting, a different side of their confrontational synth-punk. Bruce Springsteen closed his shows on the 2005 Devils & Dust tour with a fantastic solo cover of "Dream Baby Dream," and is sharing a new split 10" with the NYC electronic pioneers themselves.
posted by porn in the woods at 1:13 PM PST - 15 comments

Meat analogue or faux meat comes in a variety of forms with plenty of ways to cook it. Although not the first, Seth Tibbott invented Tofurky back in 1986, with KFC getting in on the action earlier this year.
posted by gman at 12:35 PM PST - 36 comments

When the House of Commons required a portrait of outgoing PM Tony Blair, to whom did they turn? Phil Hale. [more inside]
posted by infinitewindow at 11:22 AM PST - 22 comments

Meet Chikan. He likes to touch young women in the crowded subway of Tokyo. Meet Chikan, Otaku, Pachinko, Yopparai Salaryman, and yes, even Geisha at 51 Japanese Characters. [more inside]
posted by redsparkler at 10:58 AM PST - 30 comments

Letter from Iceland. There you see the Iceland of today – the victim of an economic 9/11 and one of the very few places in the world where the words “financial meltdown” can be used without fear of exaggeration. [more inside]
posted by jason's_planet at 10:50 AM PST - 33 comments

I Can Has Cheezburger... and pathos? : Salon writer Jay Dixit discusses the link between LOLCats and the human condition.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 10:28 AM PST - 42 comments

[An Important SLYT from President-elect Barack Obama] President-elect Obama releases his first Weekly Radio Address over Youtube. This marks the first time the weekly address has ever been released on web video, and the first of his promised web addresses that will be broadcasted throughout his administration.
posted by Weebot at 9:53 AM PST - 52 comments

Failing Hard Drive Sounds. via
posted by sveskemus at 5:55 AM PST - 46 comments

Joyce explained. (via)
posted by kliuless at 5:38 AM PST - 23 comments

TV Offal's songs and the US radio jingles which inspired them. "It's nice in Detroit." "It's nice being Esther." TV critic Victor Lewis-Smith's late night comedy show was short lived but well remembered by those of us who saw it on Channel 4in the UK (cf, Google Video and YouTube).
posted by feelinglistless at 2:49 AM PST - 6 comments

20x200
"We introduce two new pieces a week: one photo and one work on paper. Each image is available in three sizes." Limited edition artworks priced $20 to $2000. An interesting concept with some nice pieces.
posted by Manhasset at 9:46 PM PST - 13 comments

The philosopher and the wolf. "A spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a wolf cub changed Mark Rowlands’s life. From that moment on he found human company never quite matched up." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 9:15 PM PST - 50 comments

Enjoy Risk? Then you may like 300% Leveraged ETFs [more inside]
posted by Rafaelloello at 9:10 PM PST - 30 comments

Is there no end to the shady associations of Barack Obama? Crack journalist Dave Barry has published photographic proof that the president-elect is a Lawn Ranger. What's a Lawn Ranger? Glad you asked. Dave Barry has written about this nefarious organization not once, but twice and their strange and eldritch rites have been profiled on WILL public television of Central Illinois, where the organization has its headquarters, in the town of Arcola, where they parade every year.
posted by Kattullus at 8:59 PM PST - 19 comments

New Scientist kicks off it's science fiction special by asking "Is science fiction dying?", with answers by Margaret Atwood, William Gibson and Ursula K Le Guin amongst others. Meanwhile on the Nebula Awards site Geoff Ryman talks about Mundane SF, and how it was a reaction to a phenomenon he noticed in new SF coming through the Clarion workshop: A lot of it doesn't have much science fiction in it.
posted by Artw at 8:43 PM PST - 70 comments

Enjoy Risk? Then you may like Strategy Game Network [requires registration.] Strategy Game Network has similar gameplay and in addition to the classic map, there are many alternative maps. With 24 hour turn limits it isn't a huge time sink, just play a few minutes a day.
posted by schyler523 at 6:45 PM PST - 17 comments

Wondering which Obama administration job is right for you? The Plum Book (2008 Edition) is a US government publication that lists some 8000 jobs (including salary ranges) in the executive branch that will become available upon the inauguration of President-Elect Obama. (Individual chapters are .pdf files.) [more inside]
posted by BitterOldPunk at 5:18 PM PST - 34 comments

The GDT's* European Wildlife Photographer of the Year; winning image is NSFW. (2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001) *Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen [more inside]
posted by Korou at 4:40 PM PST - 22 comments

A complete archive of French magazine L'Officiel de la Mode, from 1921 to 2008. It's a treasure trove for fans of fashion, photography, advertising and design. [more inside]
posted by jack_mo at 3:44 PM PST - 16 comments

Ernest Kirschner, a 61-year-old business owner from East Haddam, is among thousands of Connecticut residents who may become the new voice of Walmart. When the Benton, Ark.-based retailer formed its own "support group," the New England Customer Action Network, Kirschner signed up eagerly. "I would stick up for Wal-Mart as strong as I can," said Kirschner, a frequent shopper. "I really think they've gotten an unfair shake." Wal-Mart Forms Customer 'Support Group' To Counter Opponents [more inside]
posted by longsleeves at 3:25 PM PST - 21 comments

"Please don't bring your teenager to Nebraska," Gov. Dave Heineman told CNN. "Think of what you are saying. You are saying you no longer support them. You no longer love them."
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:45 PM PST - 78 comments

The laughed at him. Foretelling the doom and gloom of the mortgage crisis as a pundit in these 2006-2007 interviews, Peter Schiff held to a grim economic outlook. Recently in the Washington Post, Schiff writes: "Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets."
posted by thisisdrew at 1:20 PM PST - 33 comments

Mike Wallace interviews Rod Serling in 1959, discussing timidity and censorship in television programming, and Serling's upcoming series The Twilight Zone. Part one. Part two. Part three. (TouTube links)
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:56 PM PST - 13 comments

The Dog Files is a website and video podcast about dogs and the people that love them.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:04 PM PST - 7 comments

Man attempts to kill some bees that have invaded his BBQ, ends up annihilating entire colony of honey bees.
posted by sidartha at 12:00 PM PST - 142 comments

Team Lioness is the name given to a group of female soliders, (and the documentary about them) who were some of the first women in modern American warfare to engage in frontline combat — something that is officially forbidden by the military. "The female support soliders were assigned to the 1st Engineer Battalion and they were recruited to accompany Marine units during raids. Originally, the female soldiers were there to search and detain any women they came upon and to guard the unit's Arabic interpreter. Over time, however, as the situation in Ramadi deteriorated, the Marine units transitioned into a more offensive role, baiting insurgents into firefights in order to draw them out. Until officers higher up the chain got spooked over the possibility of a female soldier killed in combat and quietly disbanded the unit, members of Team Lioness were often right in the thick of things, including some of the fiercest urban firefights of the Iraq War."
posted by nooneyouknow at 11:49 AM PST - 21 comments

Nabokov and the Moment of Truth. VN talks about metaphors of time, great books, and reads the first line of Lolita. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher at 11:33 AM PST - 18 comments

Chicago jam-comics group Trubble Club boasts an all-star line-up of amazing illustrators, collectively creating surreal, hilarious and somewhat disturbing comics. [more inside]
posted by 235w103 at 10:48 AM PST - 7 comments

"I have never considered myself anything but a Soldier." The U.S. names its first female four-star general: Ann E. Dunwoody. [more inside]
posted by jabberjaw at 10:39 AM PST - 40 comments

Scientists make fish "vote" by having them choose an artificial fish to follow. Shocker: There's not a lot of individual decision-making.. I always did say some people are as intelligent as fish..
posted by bondgirl53001 at 9:56 AM PST - 20 comments

Oiligarchy is a resource management game reminiscent of their earlier McDonald's Game. Build your empire and keep the shareholders (all old, bald, white men) happy. Social activism wrapped inside an (admittedly simplified) game! via [more inside]
posted by Eideteker at 8:30 AM PST - 27 comments

Eclipse Aviation yesterday told all of its employees to go home and that they would not be paid for their past two weeks of work. [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot at 6:58 AM PST - 40 comments

Dems eye midnight regulations reversal. Congressional Democrats are eyeing a little-known, Clinton-era law as a way to reverse Bush administration midnight regulations — even ones that have already taken effect. “Fortunately, [the White House] made a mistake,” said a top Senate Democratic aide. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 6:48 AM PST - 75 comments

There are many good swooshing opportunities here.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:15 AM PST - 43 comments

RED's new DSMC (Digital Stills and Motion Camera) System is "completely modular and upgradeable in every way."
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:37 AM PST - 41 comments

Explore painter Vincent Van Gogh's "nocturnal interiors and landscapes, which often combine with other longstanding themes of his art -- peasant life, sowers, wheatfields, and the encroachment of modernity on the rural scene." View "paintings, drawings, and letters from all periods of his career, as well as examples of the rich literary sources that influenced his work." Also includes audio commentary.flash. via [more inside]
posted by hortense at 10:33 PM PST - 7 comments

Rejoice! There are Seattle World's Fair 1962 images, advertisements for the Gayway (which became Fun Forest) section of the attraction, racy construction shots and postcards. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 10:03 PM PST - 14 comments

BURN-E is a short film by Pixar Animation Studios based on a character who was briefly seen in the movie WALL-E. It takes place concurrently with the movie during the sequence when WALL-E and EVE fly around the Axiom starliner, and enter through a door, locking a welder robot outside of the ship.
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:33 PM PST - 94 comments

Using the Web to buy a carton of milk in Nunavut. Satellite Internet in Nunavut (Canada’s newest territory – the White Stripes played there) is slow and has such draconian bandwidth caps (2GB a month) that nobody downloads audio or video. But they use it for every kind of online banking and E-commerce in a territory with barely any retail stores. [more inside]
posted by joeclark at 7:46 PM PST - 15 comments

Want one of the roughly 7,000 jobs in Obama's administration? Hope you've got a pencil and some time to spare. Obama wants any internet "handles" you've used, too, presumably for vetting past snark. But lengthly questionnaires aren't anything new... [more inside]
posted by cobra_high_tigers at 7:19 PM PST - 76 comments

"In Loveland, Colorado -- population 61,000, 92 percent white and heavily evangelical Christian -- Michelle didn't know what to expect when she began to work with the school to facilitate her daughter's transition from a boy to a girl. At first, it was difficult. The school 'freaked out when I told them,' Michelle says. 'When we started with M.J.'s transition, I was envisioning riots.' And so Michelle became an advocate for transgender people -- those who identify as a gender different from the one assigned at birth. Michelle organized trainings for the faculty and staff and prepared 'cheat sheets' in case any of their students asked prying questions. But on the first day of school, nothing happened." - Trans in the Red States by Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Daniel Redman. [via Obsidian Wings]
posted by Kattullus at 7:11 PM PST - 20 comments

Trader Joe's Fan: Recipes, product reviews and more.
posted by invisible ink at 7:08 PM PST - 26 comments

Swedish Dance Bands of the 70's.
posted by mattholomew at 6:45 PM PST - 36 comments

From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family's Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre.
posted by scody at 6:40 PM PST - 12 comments

OCLC, owners of WorldCat, are getting greedy. It's now demanding that every library that uses WorldCat give control over all its catalog records to OCLC. It literally is asking libraries to put an OCLC policy notice on every book record in their catalog. It wants to own every library. It's not just Open Library that's at risk here -- LibraryThing, Zotero, even some new Wikipedia features being developed are threatened. Basically anything that uses information about books is going to be a victim of this unprecedented power[ ]grab. It's a scary thought. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 6:32 PM PST - 39 comments

Proposition 8. Saddened? Curious? Outraged? Happy? Dont Care? On Saturday, November 15 in every state across America and even in cities worldwide there will be a day of action. The response has been so overwhelming the website organizers needed to open up a sister website to handle to traffic overload. In many cases, police are being updated repeatedly by event coordinators with exponential expectations for attendees. [more inside]
posted by Glibpaxman at 6:14 PM PST - 113 comments

Hi there, it’s Gail Westerfield, the writer's super heroine, and I'm feeling groovy thanks to Dr. Michael Mithoefer. Previously.
posted by gman at 4:02 PM PST - 15 comments

Novels are 'better at explaining world's problems than reports'. According to the study "The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge" (HTML or PDF), people should read best-selling novels like The Kite Runner and The White Tiger rather than academic reports if they really want to understand global issues, such as poverty, migration and other issues. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 3:21 PM PST - 59 comments

Fin-Fish blimp will alter your perception of flying. Airship Regatta in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
posted by Surfin' Bird at 2:45 PM PST - 34 comments

The WSJ Photo Journal - The Boston Globe's Big Picture has company. [previously]
posted by kliuless at 2:05 PM PST - 9 comments

First Pictures Taken Of Extrasolar Planets
posted by jason's_planet at 2:02 PM PST - 32 comments

Hannah Jones is a terminally ill 13 year old who has won a court battle in Britain allowing her to die peacefully instead of undergoing the major surgery that could prolong her life.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:16 PM PST - 110 comments

This morning millions of Southern Californians dropped, covered, and held on as part of The Great ShakeOut. The largest earthquake preparedness exercise in U.S. history simulates a 7.8 quake rocking the southland. [more inside]
posted by Curry at 1:06 PM PST - 14 comments

The previously-mentioned Summums want to place their own monument in a park which contains the Ten Commandments, making the Supreme Court's heads explode in a a hilariously weird oral argument^[pdf]: "Scalia: I don't know what that means. You keep saying it, and I don't know what it means. [...] Breyer: Suppose that there certain messages that private people had like "eat vitamins"—and then somebody comes along with a totally different content, "ride the roller coaster," and they say this part of the park is designed to get healthy children, not put children at risk." [more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur at 12:16 PM PST - 110 comments

On June 25, 1964, Janis Joplin visited Jorma Kaukonen at his home in San Francisco. Accompanied by Jorma's wife on typewriter, they recorded six songs. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
posted by Knappster at 11:53 AM PST - 24 comments

Recently, everyone who pre-ordered a certain book on Amazon.co.uk received a letter notifying them "This item has been removed from sale for legal reasons." Amazon.com claims the book is temporarily out of stock. The book? The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology by John Duignan. Interestingly, on November 5th, Tom Cruise attended an "all hands" meeting of Amazon.com bigwigs. Photos. A random coincidence? What about all those one and two-star reviews that kept disappearing from books like Dianetics and Science of Survival?
posted by changeling at 11:52 AM PST - 74 comments

The story of an easter egg in Commodore PET BASIC V2, and other bits of computer archeology from fantastic pagetable.com.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:32 AM PST - 23 comments

99 Bricks is what you get when you cross Tetris with Jenga. Instead of keeping your tower's height to a minimum, the goal is to get it as high as possible with 99 bricks. And the bricks don't stick to each other anymore. One wrong placement and they'll fall all over the place.
posted by grouse at 7:30 AM PST - 29 comments

Jocelyn Testes-Harder is a no-nonsense woman
posted by iffley at 7:17 AM PST - 93 comments

Happy World Usability Day. Download the poster. Take the global transport challenge. Get involved in a local event. Not sure what usability is? These guys can tell you. Usability principals are being applied not only to websites, but to increase the level of accessibility in all facets of life including voting, product development, and how we talk to one another. You're on your own to improve your own usability, though.
posted by angry jonny at 7:07 AM PST - 21 comments

Video blog of people's reactions around the world to the 2008 CNN presidential countdown.
posted by aftermarketradio at 5:48 AM PST - 53 comments

Incredibots. Make crazy machines! Solve puzzles! Share with your friends! And that's just the beta. Similarly [more inside]
posted by DU at 5:11 AM PST - 36 comments

The Royal Society of Chemistry has published their specifications and recipe for the perfect Yorkshire pudding. Unusually for this type of thing, it might not have anything to do with selling anything.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 3:11 AM PST - 55 comments

On Growth and Form (1917) was D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's pioneering effort to explore the mathematical principles that underlie biological form. He studied the similarity between the shapes of a jellyfish and a drop of ink, a splash and a hydroid, between dragonfly wings and bubble froth, the growth of radiolaria and snowflakes, the spirals of nautilus and mollusk shells and sheep horns. More recently, Adrian Bejan's Constructal Theory aims to explain all biological shape from one thermodynamic principle. This month there is an interview with Bejan for the layman. [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:17 AM PST - 16 comments

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you.
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:23 PM PST - 110 comments

"You're a paper doll and you're confronted with a horde of hungry zombies. Whose weapon do you wish you had?" Pick your doll. Dress her up naughty or nice. Pick a pet. Stick around for Mermaid Monday, and have fun. My girlfriend says she'll wear this Cupcake Dress for me. Be sure to check out Hobbit Girl. Or the Original Silk Spectre (Sally Jupiter) from Watchmen and Rachel from Blade Runner. There's the obligatory wtf? And finally Sarah Palin. Sorry guys, she doesn't draw men (even if she likes all the same things you do). [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 7:31 PM PST - 9 comments

Forget all your worries with PALADON - the singing gardener.
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:22 PM PST - 8 comments

A false expert and phony think tank fool bloggers and the mainstream news media. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 6:42 PM PST - 107 comments

Nanobliss "Nanobliss is a gallery of visualizations of small-scale structures of carbon nanotubes and silicon, created by John Hart." I came for the awesome Nanobamas [Flickr set here], but was impressed enough with the rest to share the whole. Enjoy---particularly the informative techniques page. At the very least, have a look at some of the pretty nano pictures.
posted by kosem at 5:31 PM PST - 11 comments

Gee, boss, I'm feeling a cold coming on. I definitely won't be in to work tomorrow. What's that? You saw me at Gamestop and/or Best Buy at midnight? I, er, well, I was dealing with a nasty bug. No, not that one, the other one (no worries, I'll be compensated!). I'm quite talented, you see. If I was in Europe, they'd already be showing me the way to Northrend. Alas, I'm not, and I have to wait until 9pm PST. In the meantime, there are those who've been where I'm going, and have nicely posted a review already.
posted by thanotopsis at 5:02 PM PST - 68 comments

Mitch Mitchell, best known as the drummer in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, dead at 61. The last member of the trio to pass away, Mitchell was found in his hotel room early Wednesday morning. Give the drummer some!
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:43 PM PST - 64 comments

The map to "blue gold" may define or avert future wars.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:50 PM PST - 22 comments

Remember those pesky left feet that kept washing up on Canada's West Coast? One of their counterparts finally showed up. The plot thickens with the knowledge that The Sixth Foot was a hoax... [more inside]
posted by mannequito at 2:12 PM PST - 78 comments

Love the idea of Google Apps, but feel like they already have more of your data than they should? Self-hosted, open-source app OpenGoo just released version 1.0, and it appears to be taking on not just Google Apps but services like Basecamp and Backpack, too. Live demo. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 1:30 PM PST - 22 comments

Is Oakland supposed to...ripple like that? [more inside]
posted by rtha at 12:38 PM PST - 58 comments

Ken Block Gymkhana Practice [video] (an obstacle course for cars)
posted by blue_beetle at 11:45 AM PST - 34 comments

Rosa is a bailarina. For a couple of dollars per song, she dances with strangers in a bailarina bar. It’s a job held by many immigrant women in Spanish-speaking New York, filling a need created by many immigrant men. The man on the phone is typical of her clients. He’s in his twenties, doesn’t speak English, and immigrated to the United States by himself—no mother, no girlfriend, no wife. He works six days a week at a restaurant and sends his money back home to Ecuador. Most of all, he’s lonely.
posted by jason's_planet at 11:32 AM PST - 41 comments

Are you making a living wage? An online calculator from the Poverty in America project's set of tools. [more inside]
posted by geos at 11:10 AM PST - 82 comments

In 2005, Margaret Pomeranz interviewed Wong Kar Wai. In 2007 GoldenDragonPictures posted the unedited footage to YouTube [parts 2 3 4 5 6] wherein he discusses his career to the point of 2046. [more inside]
posted by saturnine at 10:36 AM PST - 13 comments

This morning, New Yorkers were offered free copies of the New York Times--which happen to be fake, including a clever twist on the Times' slogan reading 'All the news we hope to print. The accompanying website may or may not open for you, but Gothamist posted the front page at least. Rumors are that this is the latest work of culture jammers, the Yes Men (whose site is also down today).
posted by adamms222 at 10:14 AM PST - 54 comments

Kiiking means 'swing' in Estonian. Estonian swing culture explained.
posted by grounded at 9:55 AM PST - 20 comments

Everything. Right. Now. Sprint presents an overwhelming, sprawling, entertaining dashboard that both mocks and plays into data overload. See how many people are stuck in elevators while you play pong, hear the latest music, and observe internet buzz - all at the same time (and yes, it is an ad for something). Overwhelmed? A more sedate text-only version of live world statistics can be found at worldometers.
posted by blahblahblah at 9:39 AM PST - 24 comments

Brazilian lingerie leaps into the world of technology with the"Find Me If You Can". Geocachers everywhere rejoiced. The design targets "techno-savvy" women but might sell better to women frequently misplacing their undergarments.
posted by If You Ain't Dutch, You Ain't Much at 9:18 AM PST - 25 comments

Amazing collection of sketches and doodles, drawn on birch bark, created by a child in Medieval Novgorod.
posted by sidartha at 8:37 AM PST - 25 comments

Sneakers: A Short Film Meditation on International Shoe Culture [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:34 AM PST - 9 comments

"It's 1863 and Union soldiers have discovered a hidden valley filled with dinosaurs. Now the Yankees plan to use the dinosaurs as weapons of mass destruction against the South." Presenting Professor Cline's Dinosaur Kingdom at Natural Bridge VA. Providing fun for the whole family, this is "not your father's dinosaur park." [via] [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 8:03 AM PST - 22 comments

"...the best place to hide bulls**t is in a refereed journal that’s not open-access!" The math-physics blog n-category cafe digs into the curious case of M.S. El Naschie. El Naschie is editor-in-chief of the journal Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals, published by the well-respected scientific publisher Elsevier and sold to academic libraries for US$4,520 a year. The problem? El Naschie has published 322 of his own papers in the journal -- papers that John Baez (of "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics" and "The Crackpot Index") describes as "vague, dreamlike imagery," "undisciplined numerology larded with impressive buzzwords," and "total baloney." Is El Naschie a reverse Sokal? Or a Markov process for producing random publishable papers? One thing's for sure -- he knows how to cure cancer.
posted by escabeche at 7:56 AM PST - 48 comments

"The agonizing final hours" of Sean Levert ("Put Your Body Where Your Mouth Is") of the R & B group, LeVert. Deprived of his Xanax, the R & B singer "shrieked delusionally for more than 24 hours before collapsing in the overcrowded jail." [more inside]
posted by Faze at 5:02 AM PST - 129 comments

Gandy Dancers is a fascinating and inspiring look at the music made by the African-American workers in the south who maintained railroad tracks, "lining up" the tracks manually. This hard work required synchronized effort, and the rhythm came from improvised songs. The film features a group of retired Gandy dancers talking about and demonstrating the songs they sang and the work they did.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:48 AM PST - 18 comments

Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs
posted by knave at 4:07 AM PST - 26 comments

The Fed cut 100 bps. BOE cut 150 bps. ECB cut 50 bps. India, Vietnam, The Czech Republic, Switzerland, Denmark, South Korea and other nations have all cut interest rates in recent weeks, with many Central Banks cutting more than once. The G20 is now discussing the possibility of further, coordinated interest rate cuts. As interest rates globally plummet, we are observing what some analysts are calling "The Race to Zero". [more inside]
posted by Mutant at 3:27 AM PST - 86 comments

Microsoft and Linux have been battling for dominance in Africa for some time now. In South Africa, Linux elicited the help of a former Microsoft executive, to which Windows countered with a massive free software giveaway. A more recent front has been in Nigeria, where Mandriva looked set to secure a government contract, until Microsoft allegedly paid $400,000 to have that contract dumped. Microsoft, for its part, has denied the allegations.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:14 AM PST - 40 comments

What happens if you post a letter using coins instead of stamps?
posted by divabat at 2:29 AM PST - 49 comments

Charley Fox, two-time recipient of the Distinguished Cross, died on October 18th in a car accident. Another WWII veteran gone, and as with many, an interesting tale exists in his past. Credited with injuring Rommel (although he didn't know it at the time and it was denied by Germany), it's often thought that the loss of Rommel from Hitler's strategy team helped sway the war for the Allies (though it's wondered if has Rommel lived the July 20 plot against Hitler might have succeeded). After the war, Charley was an advocate for veterans and trained many. He died wearing his uniform.
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:37 PM PST - 12 comments

The Stone of Folly is a wonderful stop motion animation released in 2002. Luckily, for those of us who don't own a copy, it was shown on the Canadian short film show Bravo!Fact Presents. Their website contains a treasure trove of Canadian short film (check the linked video).
posted by Alex404 at 10:44 PM PST - 4 comments

What killed Sgt. Gray? "He survived the war only to die at home. An exploration of his death and his combat unit's activities reveals what can happen to soldiers who feel the freedom -- or the pressure -- to do things in war they can't live with later." -- An American Radioworks documentary.
posted by empath at 10:36 PM PST - 29 comments

Newspaper Website Design: Trends And Examples. News websites can be intriguing to examine from a design perspective. Regardless of what type of news they cover, they all face the challenge of displaying a huge amount of content on the home page, which creates plenty of layout, usability and navigational challenges for the designer. The lessons that can be learned from examining how news websites address these challenges can be valuable for designers who work with other types of websites, including ones with blog theme designs.
posted by netbros at 9:46 PM PST - 9 comments

Now: The Rest of the Genome. "Only 1 percent of the genome is made up of classic genes. Scientists are exploring the other 99 percent and uncovering new secrets and new questions."
posted by homunculus at 7:30 PM PST - 12 comments

The Science of Scent. An entertaining and enlightening TED talk by biophysicist Luca Turin.
posted by louche mustachio at 7:16 PM PST - 20 comments

The "blind watchmaker" may not be as blind as we thought. A team of scientists at Princeton University discovers that organisms are not only evolving, they're evolving to evolve better, using a set of proteins to "steer the process of evolution toward improved fitness" by making tiny course corrections.
posted by digaman at 6:50 PM PST - 65 comments

China Film Journal "a bilingual website dedicated to Chinese-language cinema from around the world."
posted by Abiezer at 6:25 PM PST - 10 comments

The Archive of American Television "produces extensive video oral history interviews with television legends of all professions and makes them available online. To date, the Archive has completed over 2000 hours of videotaped conversations with over 570 Actors, Producers, Writers, Newscasters, Executives, Directors, Craftspersons, and more. ... The interviews are conducted by reviewing the subject's life and career chronologically. They discuss their childhood, early influences, how their career began, and thoroughly cover their television careers, ending with their thoughts on the industry and legacy."*
posted by not_on_display at 4:32 PM PST - 9 comments

Loading... [SLYT]
posted by SheMulp AKA Plus 1 at 3:35 PM PST - 30 comments

A Panoramic shot of a dressing room in Larry Flynt's Hustler Club in New York. A bit NSFW
posted by gman at 3:32 PM PST - 53 comments

My Mom is a FOB: Moms from Asia say the darndest things.
posted by nitsuj at 3:05 PM PST - 48 comments

The End of the Wall Street Era. “We always asked the same question,” says Eisman. “Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.” He called Standard & Poor’s and asked what would happen to default rates if real estate prices fell. The man at S&P couldn’t say; its model for home prices had no ability to accept a negative number.

The author of Liar's Poker on the collapse of the subprime industry.
posted by bitmage at 1:08 PM PST - 57 comments

Google Flu Trends brings us epidemiology through search analytics. The prevalence of certain search terms seems to be a good predictor of CDC flu reports a couple of weeks later. The New York Times has a story on this project.
posted by grouse at 1:03 PM PST - 21 comments

Sometimes, especially in winter, Kenneth Westhues can hear a flock of crows tormenting a great horned owl outside his study in Waterloo, Ontario. It is a fitting soundtrack for his work. Mr. Westhues has made a career out of the study of mobbing. Since the late 1990s, he has written or edited five volumes on the topic. However, the mobbers that most captivate him are not sparrows, fieldfares, or jackdaws. They are modern-day college professors. [more inside]
posted by parudox at 1:03 PM PST - 58 comments

"Their idea is, in broad outline, straightforward. Dr. Crespi and Dr. Badcock propose that an evolutionary tug of war between genes from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg can, in effect, tip brain development in one of two ways. A strong bias toward the father pushes a developing brain along the autistic spectrum, toward a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems like bipolar disorder and depression."
posted by grumblebee at 11:49 AM PST - 43 comments

According to political scientist Wayne Parent, “The South has moved from being the center of the political universe to being an outside player in presidential politics.” Are we finally seeing the end of Nixon's infamous Southern Strategy? For years Republicans have depended on the region to win elections. Some now argue that the G.O.P. has "transformed itself from the Party of Lincoln into the Party of the Old Confederacy." In any case, playing to racism and resentment [PDF] isn't as effective as it used to be. Furthermore, many Republicans have publicly disowned such tactics.
posted by 912 Greens at 11:12 AM PST - 75 comments

11:11. Just in case you haven't already heard about it, people all over the world have been experiencing the most amazing phenomenon in the history of our planet. I suggest that you click on The Rainbow Chamber link to continue.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:40 AM PST - 122 comments

This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than any enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will... My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit... My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will.... Before God I swear this creed. My rifle and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but Peace. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher at 8:55 AM PST - 123 comments

Men Can Stop Rape is part of a growing movement to stop rape, sexual assault, and sexual violence by focusing on educating men. There are efforts to change the climate on college campuses and curriculum at Haverford, Tulane, Kansas State, Idaho State, University of Wisconsin, University of Texas, University of Minnesota, University of Maine, Portland State, Harvard, University of Rochester, University of Delaware, Franklin and Marshall, and Colorado State, to name a few. Want to start your own? Here's how. Not in college? There's [more inside]
posted by lunit at 8:47 AM PST - 277 comments

The Online Annotated Power Moby-Dick explains the more obscure seafaring and whaling terms, 19th Century slang and topical jokes in Melville's epic. Hey, didja know there's a fart joke right there in Chapter 1? [more inside]
posted by Quietgal at 8:29 AM PST - 49 comments

Fashion meets classic children's fantasy: Vogue UK has photographed some amazing scenes inspired by the poems and other works of Roald Dahl, and featuring Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter. For more, see Annie Leibovitz's fashion-filled take on the Wizard of Oz with Kieira Knightley as Dorothy. Also Vogue does Alice in Wonderland, also by Annie Leibovitz with many of the odder characters played by fashion designers. And, in a slightly more sweet vein, the same photographer uses many famous faces to illustrate Disney fairytales. Finally, and a bit darker, are these takes on fairy tales.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:23 AM PST - 15 comments

Bill Viola's video game, The Night Journey, is inspired by "the lives and writings of great historical figures including: Rumi, the 13th century Islamic poet and mystic; Ryokan, the 18th century Zen Buddhist poet; St. John of the Cross, the 16th century Spanish mystic and poet; and Plotinus, the 3rd century philosopher" and "attempts to evoke in the player's mind a sense of the archetypal journey of enlightenment through the "mechanics" of the game experience". [more inside]
posted by pinothefrog at 7:56 AM PST - 10 comments

Further proof (as if you needed it) that some people have too much time on their hands: someone has taken full advantage of the many tools available on Google Maps to create a map of the events in Cloverfield. The narrative at each point is stonerific.
posted by shiu mai baby at 5:24 AM PST - 53 comments

At One Minute Languages you can learn greetings, talking about names, counting, and more in Catalan, Danish, French, German, Irish, Japanese, Luxembourgish, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, and Russian.
posted by sveskemus at 3:34 AM PST - 25 comments

Street With a view On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more... Street View technicians captured 360-degree photographs of the street with the scenes in action and integrated the images into the Street View mapping platform. This first-ever artistic intervention in Google Street View made its debut on the web in November of 2008.
posted by srboisvert at 2:21 AM PST - 25 comments

Bob and Neil have a history of friendly competition. They have, on occasion, shared a stage. Neil has covered Bob. Bob has covered Neil. Neil has name-checked Bob. Bob has name-checked Neil. Neil admires Bob. Bob visited Neil's childhood home.
posted by Knappster at 10:55 PM PST - 33 comments

Your goats? Do you dance with them?
posted by vronsky at 8:59 PM PST - 32 comments

Thrill-seekers swim with crocodiles in Australia Tourists who want to get cozy with a crocodile climb into a clear acrylic cage, dubbed "the cage of death," which is about 145 mm (5.7 inches) thick and 2.8 meters (9.2 feet) high, wearing just a pair of swimming goggles and a swimsuit. [Pictures] [YouTubery] "I can understand how this might be attractive to tourists but has anyone considered the welfare of the crocodile?" [More about saltwater crocodiles] [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 8:22 PM PST - 24 comments

SoftBoard Games: Free, Commercial, and Abandoned Computer Versions of Board and Card Games with Computer AI (Artificial Intelligence) Opponents.
posted by jbickers at 7:29 PM PST - 10 comments

"Good Guide provides the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home." Now in iPhone.
posted by one_bean at 7:21 PM PST - 7 comments

The Tibet Album: British photography in Central Tibet 1920 - 1950 [previously] via The Best of The Asian Studies WWW Monitor [more inside]
posted by tellurian at 6:06 PM PST - 15 comments

Phoenix Mars Lander: This is My Farewell Transmission From Mars.
posted by homunculus at 5:57 PM PST - 51 comments

Do you have a yearning to be online? Do you suffer from difficulty concentrating or sleeping, irritation, or mental or physical distress? According to doctors in China, you might have an internet addiction. [more inside]
posted by DiscourseMarker at 5:50 PM PST - 25 comments

The gift every adult will want. (via log_070329 [NSFW])
posted by parmanparman at 5:30 PM PST - 81 comments

Hundreds of Icelanders make postcards to assure British PM Gordon Brown that they're not terrorists.
posted by hermitosis at 5:21 PM PST - 76 comments

QWOP is difficult. How far can you run?
posted by boo_radley at 5:19 PM PST - 56 comments

First published in 2003, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is a reference book which provides blurbs for a list of critically acclaimed films. YouTuber matthiasheuermann has begun an ambitious, collective project to set selections from each of the films to music. [more inside]
posted by 235w103 at 4:15 PM PST - 23 comments

Gilles Peterson does his thing which you can listen to weekly. Some of his mixes and podcasts are available for download. Dude even digs Obama. [more inside]
posted by gman at 3:25 PM PST - 14 comments

Zilch is a nice little (flash) dice game. Via JIG.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 3:16 PM PST - 37 comments

The Great War Archive goes live today (November 11), the 90th anniversary of the Armistice. Launched by the University of Oxford in March 2008, the initiative invited members of the general public to submit digital photographs, audio, film, documents, and stories that originated from the Great War. Although the dealine for submissions is past, photos can still be added to the project's Flickr group.
posted by Abiezer at 3:11 PM PST - 18 comments

Less Than Three ... oh emm gee. [SLYT]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 3:06 PM PST - 30 comments

The Little Shop of Horrors movie was originally intended to be.... very different. Three-part YouTube link. Amazing.
posted by macrowave at 2:49 PM PST - 38 comments

Working on ADA compliance? Wondering how readers for the blind parse your webpages? Feed them into WebAnywhere, an online screen reader. Unlike other solutions, it is not a browser plugin and is free.
posted by Foam Pants at 1:57 PM PST - 7 comments

Soros on the banking crisis:
"A deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out. When I predicted earlier this year that we were facing the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, I did not anticipate that conditions would deteriorate so badly." - Soros lays out some ideas about what can be done to fix the markets ... Planet money had another nicely done piece on the debacle last Friday.
posted by specialk420 at 12:42 PM PST - 79 comments

Some strange and strangely compelling short-short stories (by a Mefite): Sometimes the sick got well, and sometimes they didn't. It was commonplace for my grandmother to inherit an entire estate, based on the words "All Left to Persis" scrawled across the back of an envelope.
posted by orthogonality at 11:58 AM PST - 22 comments

"‘Bad boy’ Cui Jian, [pronounced Sway Jen] China’s first long-haired rock icon, has pulled off another musical coup by becoming the first artist to adapt hip-hop to the mainland. His hoarse voice has long signified anger, confusion and pain, especially during the 1989 student revolt when his hit single, “Nothing to my Name”, became a veritable anthem. Despite the government’s attempts to silence his voice by routinely banning his concerts, Cui Jian carries on with the rapper’s staccato precision." EAST vs WEST – Hyper and Cui Jian collaboration, a Hyper remix of an original Cui Jian piece - with great Chinese papercut visuals. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:44 AM PST - 19 comments

F.A.O. Schwartz (doesn't everybody think of that first when they hear the name?) has come up with a Design Your Own Muppet Workshop (with appropriate video intro). Limited design options (they're the "Whatnot" Muppet extras, no identifiable characters) and a $90 pricetag for a custom-made Mup, but the design process is still fun (and better than their previous Design Your Own Tutu).
posted by wendell at 11:27 AM PST - 27 comments

Pomegranate is the Answer. James Brett perhaps has an answer to Afghanistan's Opium issue: On the drive back to Peshawar I saw the same farmer in his fields harvesting his crop. I asked my driver to stop the car. On the card I had previously bought I wrote the words ‘Pomegranate is the Answer’ and ran into the field to go and talk to the farmer. My translator called after me “Don’t go in there you could get shot” but it all happened in a second and I called back to him “come on I need you to translate” . Upon reaching a surprised farmer I asked him many questions and talked to him about the affects of Heroin and also the possibilities of Pomegranates. He explained to me about his family , children, how he lived and why he grew opium. I explained how it was possible for him to change his situation working together with other farmers and how this would help the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the world. He appears to be having some success. (previously 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...) via Crooks and Liars
posted by caddis at 11:23 AM PST - 56 comments

Canadian historian Rob MacDougall, on how Americans present movements for social change as the self-evident intentions of the nation's founders:

"[Martin Luther] King went on: 'When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note … a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' And here Sancho [Panza] or Sacvan [Bercovitch] whispers to the guy standing next to him, 'Were they? Really? If we went back in time and asked the architects of the republic–Jefferson and Madison and Washington and the rest–did you mean for this to apply to your slaves too, would they agree? … Because it would have saved a lot of trouble if they’d spelled all this out in 1789.'"

(via)
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:09 AM PST - 39 comments

GOP 2.0 There's no doubt that the internet operation of President-Elect Obama was a key part of his success. While it appears that he is attempting to turn that success into an engine for keeping citizens and supporters engaged with the revolutionary Change.gov,(Previously), the other side also is looking to harness the wave of internet electioneering. [more inside]
posted by Ironmouth at 9:23 AM PST - 160 comments

Long interview with Doctor Who showrunner Russel T Davies on his writing and producing career (at the BBC's Writersroom).
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:37 AM PST - 4 comments

The Loneliness Engine and other invisible games.
posted by flatluigi at 8:13 AM PST - 19 comments

'the plausible impossibility of death in the mind of cartoon characters' via [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 8:08 AM PST - 36 comments

Miriam Makeba, 1932-2008. "Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us" -- Nelson Mandela [more inside]
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:03 AM PST - 46 comments

Time to play The Game. A Flash Monday tour of the absurd.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:31 AM PST - 17 comments

Bruce Wayne "Jobriath" Campbell was mass-marketed [NSFW] to the American public as the first American glam rock singer (glam being a primarily British phenomenon) and the first openly gay rock performer. The publicity push and sexuality were too much for the American public, and his two albums seemed to sink without a trace. In recent years, a glam historian and pop singer named Stephen Paul Morrissey has helped to remaster his music and make it more readily available. Unfortunately, Morrissey's plans to have Jobriath open for him on his first solo tour were curtailed by his premature death from AIDS-related illnesses in 1983. [more inside]
posted by pxe2000 at 6:14 AM PST - 37 comments

"When my friend Richard Renaldi showed me the first images from the new series Touching Strangers I was just amazed. Asking two complete strangers to not only pose with each other, but to also touch each other while doing that... And this in a culture whose discomfort with touching someone you don't know, or touching something that someone else might have touched still baffles me, even after having spent almost ten years in it!" - A Conversation with Richard Renaldi about 'Touching Strangers' [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 6:11 AM PST - 22 comments

Manga fan? Then you already know about this. Otherwise, check out the list of selectables in the upper right hand corner. I think they have what you have been looking for. [more inside]
posted by jimahon at 5:01 AM PST - 26 comments

Tech Columnist Andy Ihnatko takes us along for the ride. For a recent trip from Kingston, RI to the East Village, Ihnatko set up a Nikon Coolpix 6000 to take a picture every 30 seconds - out the train window, then around his neck. The result is a great time lapse journey.
posted by pupdog at 4:58 AM PST - 30 comments

Ain't It Funky is a BBC-produced documentary from 2005 with lots of great performance footage and interviews, as well as period footage from the civil rights era for some historical perspective. James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton and many of their key sidemen are featured. Highly recommended. part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. These same YT clips can also be found all together, embedded at Funk Deli. NOTE: Unfortunately, the audio and video are slightly out of sync on part 1. Parts 2 through 8 lock up just fine, though.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:44 AM PST - 18 comments

Sunday Flash Fun: Run. [more inside]
posted by BrotherCaine at 9:19 PM PST - 40 comments

As much as you may enjoy using your discarded tin cans to have top secret conversations make yourself taller, you'd like to know if there's anything creative to do with tin cans. Here are some ideas to get you started. [more inside]
posted by orange swan at 8:21 PM PST - 31 comments

In 1972 Lady Sings the Blues was released. Ostensibly a biopic about the life of Billie Holiday, it was a travesty of made up history and glaring ommissions. In response to that release a symposium was held on Lady Day's life and work which included storytelling from Artie Shaw (about hiring her in 1938) and Carmen McRae (about her drug life). The CBC recently put together an excellent podcast with these stories and some interview tape from Billie Holiday herself.
posted by salishsea at 8:03 PM PST - 3 comments

[NSFW] The Bathroom Graffiti Project | The Writing's on the Stall [previously] | The Writing is on the Wall | And the Words of the Prophets Were Written on the Bathroom Stalls | It's All in the Head | Microsoft Bathroom Graffiti | Documentary: In Search of Bathroom Graffiti | The Flickr Bathroom Graffiti Pool
posted by not_on_display at 7:47 PM PST - 14 comments

Zombies don't run, says Simon Pegg. Well ours do, says Charlie Brooker, director of Deadset. (also some stuff about the election and skeletor and stuff)
posted by Artw at 7:23 PM PST - 84 comments

In 1972, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were convicted of murdering a prison guard in Louisiana's notorious maximum-security prison, Angola. The warden sentenced them to solitary confinement, where they remained for the next 36 years. Until March 2008, the men had spent at least 23 hours per day in cells that measured only 6 x 9 feet. Woodfox's conviction was recently overturned, evidently through a federal habeus proceeding, and he is awaiting a new trial. NPR did an outstanding job of tracking down people involved and telling a riveting story: Part I, Part II, Part III. No doubt that much of the attention brought to the case is due to the efforts of Jackie Sumell and her Herman's House project. [more inside]
posted by ajr at 7:10 PM PST - 8 comments

GM has been touting the Volt as it's triumphant entry into green transportation, but 2011 is a long way off and the big three aren't doing so hot and neither is the Volt, it would seem. Meanwhile, Dean Kamen shows off a working Hybrid Electric/Stirling Engine car based off the TH!NK, a car Ford canceled over a half decade ago (and shipped to Norway where they still live on). The full Frontline Documentary, Heat, which is about the current state of energy policy, implementation, and the climate (which is not good!) is online and well worth watching. [more inside]
posted by Large Marge at 6:22 PM PST - 54 comments

Steroids Saved My Life. Enjoy watching ten episodes of a pasty, skinny Canadian gain 20+ pounds of muscle, a luxurious tan, a website and a new chemical habit.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 5:02 PM PST - 56 comments

In addition to hosting the stuff we all know and love (loathe?), the anime music videos, the World of Warcraft ego films, the leave Brittney alone guy, youtube is also a medium for distributing indie video. Often combining moderately good production values, bizarre humor and genuinely funny writing, Kim Evey is one such producer/writer/actor, in between doing various TV roles. [more inside]
posted by sotonohito at 4:41 PM PST - 10 comments

The British Cartoon Archive holds more than 130,000 original editorial, socio-political, and pocket cartoons, supported by large collections of comic strips, newspaper cuttings, books and magazines. The collection of original artwork dates back to 1904. The Independent reviews nine of the finest.
posted by stbalbach at 3:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Covered in lava, Goma in the DRC, was destroyed by the Nyiragongo Volcano a few years back. Since then, the aid hub has seen a lot of turmoil. As Rebel General Laurent Nkunda of the CNDP nears Goma, 250,000 have fled the area and disease is rife.
posted by gman at 1:47 PM PST - 7 comments

After the Imperial Presidency. "Will the new president and Congress undo the executive-power plays of the Bush era?"
posted by homunculus at 12:51 PM PST - 83 comments

Adam Smith in Beijing Embedded Flash film 1hr59mins "Is US power in decline? What are we to make of the rise of China? Will a possible equalization of North-South relations herald a more brutal capitalism or a better world? Giovanni Arrighi, Joel Andreas, and David Harvey give their perspectives in this forum, for a discussion of Arrighi's 2007 book Adam Smith in Beijing. The event, filmed in Baltimore, MD, in March of 2008, was organized by the Red Emma's collective."
posted by Abiezer at 10:21 AM PST - 10 comments

You may remember Stan Brock from as the British anaconda wrangler from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (top right video). These days he runs Remote Area Medical, a volunteer airborne relief corps that brings medical, dental, and educational assistance to remote areas of the world. Every year, they go to remote Appalachian Virginia, a one day drive from Washington DC, for a 3 day event at the fairgrounds.
posted by oneirodynia at 9:30 AM PST - 10 comments

What does it all mean? In many ways, today's remix culture kicked off in earnest one weekend in 1983 when two ad men (one a recording engineer) spent a weekend in a studio crafting the first pop record made up entirely of samples in the hopes of winning a $100 remix contest. [more inside]
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 8:26 AM PST - 19 comments

A math professor was explaining a particularly complicated calculus concept to his class when a frustrated pre-med student interrupts him. "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" the pre-med blurts out. The professor pauses, and answers matter-of-factly: "Because math saves lives." "How?" demanded the student. "How on Earth does calculus save lives?" "Because," replied the professor, "it keeps certain people out of medical school."
posted by cthuljew at 8:09 AM PST - 82 comments

Fighting monks: not just in your D&D campaign anymore.
posted by baphomet at 7:59 AM PST - 21 comments

Now that we can dispense with trivia about the U.S. elections, it's time for everyone to get better acquainted with President-Elect Obama: 50 things you should know about Barack Obama vs. Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know. (via Buzzfeed) [more inside]
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:22 AM PST - 112 comments

When you write, will you pick Gentle, Normal, or Kamakaze mode? - “Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you're fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences.”
posted by buriednexttoyou at 7:13 AM PST - 28 comments

Dionisio González makes photographs of imaginary favelas, Filip Dujardin makes photographs of imaginary buildings.
posted by jack_mo at 5:56 AM PST - 6 comments

The beautiful and amazing caped crusader, Tremoctopus. Amazing Cephalopods, that can moonwalk, run, cleverly open a variety of jars and shapeshift. Masters of illusion. Giant octopus encounter. Shark vs. Octopus. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 3:06 AM PST - 60 comments

Sunday Morning Movie - A moving and fascinating documentary, Dark Days is on Google Video. Marc Singer lived in the tunnel, and started filming with the help of his fellow tunnel dwellers. Trivia here. Inevitable Wikipedia link here. [more inside]
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 1:19 AM PST - 18 comments

PILLOWDROME NUMBER OF PLAYERS- Standard play: 2 Tournament play: 3 - Infinite. EQUIPMENT: 2 identical pillows 1 suburban-style kitchen island Alcohol (recommended). STRATEGY: There are two known strategies, and infinite unknown strategies: Go fast and try to catch the other guy. The aggresive player will attempt to catch up to the other, focusing on moving as quickly as possible. This strategy relies upon SPEED. Pillow management. This more defensive policy focuses upon preservation of a balanced pillow. The player circles just quickly enough to avoid the other. This strategy relies upon ENDURANCE.
posted by vronsky at 8:33 PM PST - 22 comments

Very, er, unusual voting results in Alaska. [more inside]
posted by flotson at 7:22 PM PST - 90 comments

It's only 73 days before Inauguration Day 2009. Planning has been going on for a while. Beyonce wants to perform and the Boss plans to release an album on the day. Be sure to call your Congressperson to get your tickets. Make your plans right away, everybody wants to go. If you go, don't forget to say a rousing good-bye to you know who.
posted by Xurando at 7:14 PM PST - 27 comments

Global Headlines. Yes, we've made history. Here is what it looked like, via the headlines of the newspapers around the world.
posted by HuronBob at 5:50 PM PST - 39 comments

SOAPnet.com presents a weekly "Gossip Girl Finger Puppet Parody". Sadly, only season 2 is available.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:40 PM PST - 11 comments

Cecil, a short film by Terri Timely (SLQTP)
posted by ambulance blues at 5:31 PM PST - 10 comments

Yes, hoomon, we cans.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:05 PM PST - 41 comments

Man walks on water from the archives of the Chicago Daily News. [more inside]
posted by winna at 4:26 PM PST - 19 comments

"We should have got nasty a long time ago,". So the mormon church has decided to get itself involved with the politics in California? Some California residents have decided to attempt to have the church's tax exempt status revoked while others are taking the fight more directly to the church. Some have called for a boycott of Utah while possibly the only mormon in Utah who doesn't give a crap about gay marriage has written a very insightful piece.
posted by Talez at 3:41 PM PST - 216 comments

India's lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, has just reached the moon. G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, told reporters, "The last 20 minutes were so critically important, I can say my heart skipped a beat or two." Here are some hi-res photos of Earth, taken by Chandrayaan-1.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:40 PM PST - 29 comments

Official WWI artist, chaos magician.
posted by internationalfeel at 3:36 PM PST - 6 comments

Yosemite National Park - 17 Gigapixels [via] [more inside]
posted by MetaMonkey at 2:54 PM PST - 15 comments

How far do you plan ahead? Are we careering towards another Dark Age? The Long Now Foundation (subject of many previous posts on Metafilter), has finally solved the technical problems in producing a modern day Rosetta Stone. Orders are now shipping. [more inside]
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 1:39 PM PST - 34 comments

The 2008-2009 Vendée Globe starts tomorrow from Les Sables d'Olonne, France. Held every four years, this single-handed, non-stop, round the world sailing race is so competitive that the 2004-2005 edition saw the top 3 finishers separated by less than 29 hours after 87 days of racing! [more inside]
posted by findango at 1:36 PM PST - 4 comments

Bhutan crowns a new King.
posted by homunculus at 12:33 PM PST - 40 comments

A recent study shows that farmer suicides in India have not increased due to introduction of GM crops The Washington based research organization IFPRI claims that "Bt cotton is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the occurrence of farmer suicides. In contrast, many other factors have likely played a prominent role." Their study has been wielded in the empirical arms race by big pharmaceutical corporations such as Monsanto against NGOs that oppose GM modified crops in India such as Gene Campaign and activists such as Vandana Shiva.
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 12:28 PM PST - 13 comments

It was a dark and stormy campaign... A film theorist's thoughts on the narratives of Barack Obama and John McCain. [more inside]
posted by defenestration at 12:27 PM PST - 15 comments

Celebrated Yup'ik Iron Dog snowmobiler and father of five, Todd, has had an illustrious career in the oil and fishing industries. Now that his latest aspirations have been dashed, what will this well dressed man do now? (18 links)
posted by gman at 11:42 AM PST - 46 comments

On a traditional steam locomotive the pistons drive the wheels directly via cranks. An unusual looking series of variants, the geared locomotives, took a different approach - using gears and driveshafts, giving them an advantage in traction at the cost of speed, making them ideal for steap grades and tight curves of logging railroads. The most common was the Shay Locomotive (video), with it's vertical pistons. Other variant included the Climax (video, seen at the Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad) and the Heisler, which had it's pistons in a V-formation (video). Many examples of the geared locomotive can be found at the Northwest Railway Museum.
posted by Artw at 9:41 AM PST - 19 comments

Rethinking Public Opinion - the immense importance of public opinion polling in American politics, and the under-reported problems at the heart of the enterprise, combine to call for a serious critique of the polling industry, its assumptions, and its method
posted by Gyan at 3:26 AM PST - 40 comments

Jozin z bazin Mladek & Banjo Band, worth waiting to 2:00. "The song is about this monster Jozin who lives in the swamps somewhere in Moravia and eats only people from Prague - the city snobs." [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:48 PM PST - 30 comments

View-Master. It's was, for many, their first exposure to 3D. But where did all those little dioramas come from? Well, sculptor Florence Thomas for one, responsible for these Tom Corbett images. More. Via. Previously.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:22 PM PST - 36 comments

Memoirs of an [Australian] Space Engineer is a too-short collection of several old-school engineering stories. [more inside]
posted by troy at 10:44 PM PST - 12 comments

The recent election season in the US was marked by many firsts. One you might not know about: Silverton, Oregon has elected Stu Rasmussen as their mayor. Stu is believed to be the first ever openly transgender mayor in the United States.
posted by tractorfeed at 9:24 PM PST - 23 comments

Perfume, a three-girl Japanese technopop sensation formed in 2001 now consisting of Nocchi, Kashikuya and A~chan, is about to release their ninth single, "Dream Fighter". Perfume's July 2008 single "Love the World" was the first technopop song ever to debut at #1 on the Oricon sales chart. The previous highest debut for techno was Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Kimi ni, Munekyun" 25 years ago in 1983. (original article citing #1 record translated via Google translator) [more inside]
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 9:03 PM PST - 61 comments

Tolerance over Race can Spread, Study Says. ...psychologists have been able to establish a close relationship between diverse pairs — black and white, Latino and Asian, black and Latino — in a matter of hours. That relationship immediately reduces conscious and unconscious bias in both people, and also significantly reduces prejudice toward the other group in each individual’s close friends. This extended-contact effect, as it is called, travels like a benign virus through an entire peer group, counteracting subtle or not so subtle mistrust. A matter of hours...hmmmm... that might explain the subject of this thread.
posted by storybored at 8:00 PM PST - 32 comments

SF artmuseum's zooming interface interesting collection, flash [more inside]
posted by hortense at 7:26 PM PST - 2 comments

389 years ago...
posted by desjardins at 7:18 PM PST - 52 comments

Remember Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Julie Myers , the immigration chief who had some controversy during her tenure and introduced “operation scheduled departure” where illegal immigrants would turn themselves in and who’s organization was refered to (in so many words) as the gestapo by (Dem) Illinois Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez? Yeah, she resigned. [more inside]
posted by Smedleyman at 5:25 PM PST - 34 comments

Seminal Synth & New Wave Sounds
posted by vronsky at 4:57 PM PST - 19 comments

Share photos of your desk. And see others', too. Apparently written in Django
posted by signal at 4:49 PM PST - 9 comments

It's a small cubicle you have toshare, but the view is pretty good.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:40 PM PST - 42 comments

YouTubing this clip of Smedley serving Chilly Willy a tall stack of pancakes [More butter? More butter! More syrup? More syrup! Nice? Very nice!] led me to Chilly's Video Den at Chilly Willy's Sub-Arctic World. [Warning: Comic Sans font and a whole cold-butt-load of .wmv's] [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 4:13 PM PST - 12 comments

The White House Museum’s website offers a fascinating historical chronicle of the interior of the White House. Though the East and West wings are interesting in their own right, it is the evolution of the President’s Residence that offers the most intimate view of the tastes and lifestyles of the various first families. [more inside]
posted by theantikitty at 3:42 PM PST - 21 comments

"In its long history, the White House -- just note the name -- has had a complex and vexing relationship with black Americans." An article that's not quite what you think it is. Read to the end. Just make sure you have a Kleenex handy.
.
posted by jckll at 3:35 PM PST - 41 comments

The Evolution of Pabst Blue Ribbon Advertising
posted by jsonic at 2:47 PM PST - 82 comments

"This toy is so fantastic that it's not just for humans anymore. You can find otters, chimps and dogs -- especially dogs -- playing with it." The National Toy Hall of Fame has inducted the stick.
posted by Knappster at 2:04 PM PST - 44 comments

Transcripts of a troubled mind tells the life and times of Breece D'J Pancake, a brilliant young writer from South Charleston, West Virginia. In a raw, stripped down style, much of his work focused on the people and the language of the Appalachia He committed suicide at the age of 29 and left behind a small, but powerful collection of stories
posted by scarello at 1:21 PM PST - 22 comments