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"The Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution are, by a time-honoured custom, invariably addressed to a "juvenile audience." This term, however, has always been held to be an elastic one, and to include those who are young in spirit as well as those who are young in years. The conditions, therefore, necessarily impose on the Lecturer the duty of treating some subject in such a manner that, whilst not beyond the reach of youthful minds, it may yet posses some elements of interest for those of maturer years." Thus began the preface to Waves and Ripples in Water, Air and Æther (alt. link: Google books), the published version of the 1901 lecture given by J.A. Fleming, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S., providing a good overview of the lecture series that started in 1825 (list in PDF). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:59 PM PST - 20 comments

The Most Serene Republic of San Marino. According to legend, the tiny country of San Marino was founded in 301AD by Saint Marinus of Rab, and is thus the world’s oldest republic. Occupying 24 square miles around Mount Titano in the middle of Italy, it is the fifth smallest country in the world. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 11:41 PM PST - 30 comments

Radio Spiritworld (Inter-dimensional) is the only station broadcasting from the afterlife into the living world. Well, actually it's a half an hour of wonderfully inventive audio-comedy from Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper, writers and creators of Look Around You, who between them have worked on or appeared in all the recent British comedies you love. [iTunes download link]
posted by Kattullus at 9:56 PM PST - 12 comments

Bob Dylan had a radio show, the Theme Time Radio Hour, from May 2006 to April 2009. The archive contains shows on themes such as Thanksgiving Leftovers, The Bible, and Women's Names (click on the arrows to download the full radio show).
posted by Copronymus at 8:40 PM PST - 20 comments

"It's a stretch of pavement both enriched and torn apart by class and ethnic divisions. When you go over a bridge or under a viaduct on this street you've left one country for another. It's the American melting pot at full boil." Halsted Street USA. (1995, 56 minutes, Color)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:22 PM PST - 13 comments

The first pictures of China's "5th generation" fighter prototype were leaked this week. The aircraft, believed to be the J-20, is expected to have its first flight in early 2011. [more inside]
posted by Simon Barclay at 6:54 PM PST - 50 comments

The intro to Duck Tales in Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portugese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish. (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by inedible at 5:02 PM PST - 50 comments

(NSFW) BUTT magazine (previously, previouslier) has undergone a huge redesign this year and asked readers to submit reviews of their sexual encounters. They don't always go well. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 4:39 PM PST - 23 comments

In Memoriam: a toast to some of those who left us in 2010.
posted by ericb at 2:52 PM PST - 22 comments

The Year's Top Moments from Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert, according to TPM.
posted by pecknpah at 1:12 PM PST - 37 comments

Take a shower! (Slave Dad Series) Part 2 MLYT [more inside]
posted by cmoj at 1:07 PM PST - 29 comments

The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity
posted by Tuesday After Lunch at 12:48 PM PST - 38 comments

The scene of the year is a squirm-inducing stunner that manages to make us sympathize with a would-be murderer. [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 12:17 PM PST - 54 comments

You are in a warm, dark, comfortable place. This has been your place since you became aware that you are alive. It's almost time to enter a different world now. In 1986, Activision published a roleplaying computer game called Alter Ego. Unlike the action and fantasy titles that ruled the day, this game simulated the course of a single ordinary life. Beginning at birth, players navigated a series of vignettes: learning to crawl, reacting to strangers, getting a first haircut. The outcome of each scenario subtly influenced one's path, and with every choice players slowly progressed through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Graphically minimalist -- one's lifestream is represented by simple icons, and the scenarios are all text -- the game was nevertheless engaging, describing the world in a playful, good-natured tone tinged by darkness and melancholy. And it had quite a pedigree; developer and psychology PhD Peter Favaro interviewed hundreds of people on their most memorable life experiences to generate the game's 1,200 pages of material. Unfortunately for Dr. Favaro, the game didn't sell very well. But it lives on through the web -- PlayAlterEgo.com offers a full copy of the game free to play in your browser, and the same port is available as a $5 app for iPhone and Android. More: Port discussion group - Wishlist - Vintage review - Original game manual (text or scans)
posted by Rhaomi at 9:51 AM PST - 46 comments

Just in time, perhaps one of the most anticipated online video releases of 2010 has arrived. RedLetterMedia presents the Plinkett Review of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith. (3 parts, 110 minutes) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:49 AM PST - 147 comments

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has declined to pardon William H. Bonney, aka Kid Antrim, aka Henry McCarty, but best known as Billy the Kid. [more inside]
posted by steambadger at 8:11 AM PST - 41 comments

Wormworld Saga, a beautiful online graphic novel by Daniel Lieske.
posted by Artw at 7:35 AM PST - 12 comments

“We want them to enjoy the level of celebrity attention that I usually get,” says George Clooney. “If you know your actions are going to be covered, you tend to behave much differently than when you operate in a vacuum.” —He’s talking about the “anti-genocide paparazzi” of the Satellite Sentinel Project, which has hired private satellites to monitor troop movements around Abyei during the upcoming Sudanese referendum in the hopes of preventing war crimes. Patrick Meier has some thoughts on whether this Panopticon approach might work, and if we could even tell.
posted by kipmanley at 7:35 AM PST - 5 comments

"They're not out to make a quick buck, they're looking to protect the integrity of the franchise and its mythology." 1998's Star Trek Insurrection went through a number of different plots before becoming the film we ultimately saw. Starting out as Star Trek: Stardust, the first take on the idea involved Captain Picard going all Heart of Darkness on a former friend from his Starfleet Academy days in a bid to find the Fountain of Youth. That treatment evolved into a remarkably Avatarish story called simply Star Trek IX in which Picard must go upriver to kill a malfunctioning Data as part of a Federation/Romulan alliance to displace strange alien natives from a planet teeming with a valuable and rare ore (spoiler: Picard actually kills Data in this treatment, and Tom Hanks was supposed to have a major role somewhere). Let the late Michael Piller guide you through the writing of Insurrection in his unpublished book Fade In: The Making of Star Trek: Insurrection (his "last great gift to the fans and to aspiring writers everywhere") in which he presents his original story treatments, story notes from his bosses at Paramount, surprisingly reasonable Trekker-type reactions from actors Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, and much more. First made freely available by TrekCore.com, Piller's family has since asked that it be removed, but you'll still find the file roaming the Internet if you boldly go looking for it. [more inside]
posted by Servo5678 at 6:38 AM PST - 101 comments

Time for a break, Rosie. All the day long, Whether rain or shine She’s part of the assembly line. She’s making history, Working for victory Rosie the Riveter [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 5:31 AM PST - 16 comments

"The first image you have of many of your favourite films is probably a Bill Gold creation." His sparse, iconic poster designs have helped to define movies for over six decades, from Casablanca, Dial M for Murder and My Fair Lady, to A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist and The Sting. His longest-lasting creative partnership was with Clint Eastwood, spanning every Eastwood movie from 1972’s Dirty Harry to 1993’s Mystic River — not forgetting the unforgettable design for Unforgiven. When Eastwood presented Gold with a Lifetime Key Art Award from the Hollywood Reporter in 1994, he simply called Gold "the greatest." A signed, limited edition collection of his greatest works can be yours for just £400. It's not simply a record of the posters he ended up creating, but a fascinating look into the artistic process, from sketch to billboard. When Lars Trodson asked Gold about his phenomenal career in 2009, he answered with characteristic understatement: "I can hardly believe it."
posted by londonmark at 4:44 AM PST - 10 comments

...if all these neocons who worship the Ancient Greeks, like Victor Davis Hanson, really want to know what their precious Greeks were like, those boy-fucking, throat-slitting, 400-verse war-song reciting founders of our glorious civilization and all that, they should go live in a Pashtun village.... Well, the Pashtun are sensible people too. They don’t have much to lose, and they’re not that scared of dying.... They’ve got nothing coming from the whole Thomas Friedman world, and they’d be fools to think they do.

from The War Nerd: Market Lessons from the Pashtun [more inside]
posted by orthogonality at 2:49 AM PST - 46 comments

The last roll of Kodachrome film was given to Steve McCurry, who took the famous Afghan Girl photograph with it, and yesterday was the last day that you could get it processed. here are some of the frames from that roll. previously
posted by delmoi at 2:12 AM PST - 46 comments

In an action "unprecedented in the democratic world" Moshe Katsav, the eighth President of Israel, has been convicted of rape. The former President is expected to appeal the conviction, which carries a minimum penalty of four years in prison. There is little sympathy for Moshe Katsav on a day that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as "a sad day for the State of Israel and its residents." The Jerusalem Post is left with one question: Should the plaques come down?
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:07 AM PST - 39 comments

10 year old Remy eats bone marrow, heart, brains, szechuan peppercorns, scorpion, pig lips, worms, dung beetles, testicles, shrimp heads and other food oddities.
posted by twoleftfeet at 9:23 PM PST - 51 comments

Do American citizens really want the agriculture jobs "illegals" are "taking?" Apparently not... "Only 8,600 people expressed an interest in working in the fields, says Ms Machuca. But they made demands that seem bizarre to farmworkers, such as high pay, health and pension benefits, relocation allowances and other things associated with normal American jobs. In late September only seven American applicants in the “Take our jobs” campaign were actually picking crops."
posted by ShadePlant at 7:05 PM PST - 113 comments

Someone's made a short film out of Charles Burns' Black Hole. [contains nudity, profanity, mildly annoying interface] (via io9)
posted by Eideteker at 6:40 PM PST - 12 comments

Notes from the Road is a Tumblr with "notes, photos & video of the Leonard Cohen 2010 World Tour by: J.S. Carenza III". Also: Emily St John Mandel on the tour, at The Millions: Take This Waltz: Leonard Cohen’s Tour Comes to an End
posted by chavenet at 3:19 PM PST - 7 comments

"We tried to pick images that quickly became popular, generated hundreds of thousands of views, were interesting, and/or somehow changed the Internet as we knew it." Imgur has become the standard among social news and media websites for sharing images. With the weight of 20 billion annual views, Imgur presents The Best Images of 2010. (Anti-memesters beware, the list is full of 'em)
posted by Taft at 2:50 PM PST - 49 comments

Amazon has patented a system that would allow gift recipients to return a gift before they even get it. [more inside]
posted by special-k at 2:12 PM PST - 75 comments

A Gallery of Art Deco bookbindings.
One of the artists was Paul Legrain (who also worked with Rose Adler); was the tutor of Mary Reynolds, accidental surrealist companion and lover of Marcel Duchamp. She was also a bookbinder extraordinaire.
posted by adamvasco at 1:31 PM PST - 7 comments

Eclectic, cheerful and interesting visuals with plenty of links worth exploring to other sites: Vintage | Ephemera | Comics | Children's Illustration | Poster Art from the The Martin Klasch Blogspot. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:31 PM PST - 3 comments

Snowflakes under an electron microscope
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 12:42 PM PST - 47 comments

Patsy Campbell has been fighting her foreclosure in Florida courts for the past 25 years. She has not made a mortgage payment since 1985 while foiling the efforts of several banks to evict her from her home in Okeechobee, Florida.
posted by reenum at 12:20 PM PST - 149 comments

For all the faults of the poorhouse, the system it replaced was perceived to be even worse. In post-Revolution America, if you were poor, you could be "farmed out" at public auction to the lowest bidder. [more inside]
posted by Knappster at 11:59 AM PST - 8 comments

In a more recent action of book banning, Amazon appears to be banning books about incest that are not top rated titles. Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein is available, for example. Covered here as well.
posted by dibblda at 11:11 AM PST - 156 comments

Brace yourself for five piping-hot minutes of inertia.
posted by lukemeister at 10:42 AM PST - 33 comments

Anko is a French bulldog who likes to eat.
posted by bewilderbeast at 10:35 AM PST - 30 comments

After a test flight nearly ended in disaster at the start of the Civil War, Professor Thaddeus Lowe recovered his balloon and headed back North. Recognizing the potential use of air vehicles in the war, he managed to get an invitation to the White House in order demonstrate the capabilities of balloons in the war effort. [more inside]
posted by nomadicink at 10:31 AM PST - 12 comments

During the month of December, tor.com has been publishing essays on the Twelve Doctors of Christmas. Today artist Pia Guerra gives us the gift of an extended metaphor: the fifth Doctor as a Volvo. [more inside]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:30 AM PST - 38 comments

Super style simply strikes you? Jeweler nOir teamed up with DC Comics for a line of sparkly Superhero accessories. Wear Gotham city as a ring or just beat Diana at her own game.
posted by The Whelk at 9:16 AM PST - 30 comments

Wm. M. Chace, former dean at Stanford then president at Wesleyan and later at Emory University, argues affirmative action at the great American public universities is dead, that opposition to affirmative action has drastically reduced minority enrollment at public universities, and only the private institutions can now carry out this public good. (And see Chace’s interesting earlier memoir: 100 Semesters: My Adventures as Student, Professor, and University President and What I Learned Along the Way. [And an earlier MeFi conversation about his article The Decline of the English Department.])
posted by JL Sadstone at 9:04 AM PST - 26 comments

Cosmic Journeys is a documentary series on various astronomical and space-related subjects, e.g. supermassive black holes, Apollo 12, whether the universe is infinite and many more. The creators, SpaceRip have a lot of other, shorter videos online as well. They are indexed here. Most, if not all, of the videos are available in HD.
posted by Kattullus at 8:45 AM PST - 2 comments

The Star Wars Holiday Special edited down to just over 5mins so you can actually watch it (well the low-lights) without too much pain. After than you might want a Star Wars free year.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:00 AM PST - 52 comments

OVer a decade before PSN and XBLA there was Sega Channel. [more inside]
posted by griphus at 7:47 AM PST - 29 comments

Ebert reviews Jamie Stewart's "Man in Blizzard," shot during the recent snows in NYC Scroll down to view Vertov's "Man with a Camera" (version with some nice added music here), which inspired the short. Vertov has inspired many before.
posted by cubby at 7:42 AM PST - 15 comments

SelectArmor, owned by Michele Lynn Ballarin, is a private military company based in Virginia. Her firm is at the center of covert military action in the waters around Somalia. [more inside]
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:05 AM PST - 36 comments

Within that small and very specific sub-genre of musical Americana identifiable as the train imitation, there is one amazing performance, from 1926, that set the standard: Pan-American Blues. The man who recorded it did a fine and fanciful job of evoking the sounds of a fox chase as well, and his rhythmically compelling solo rendition of John Henry stands as testament to the potential for musical greatness achievable by one man and a humble harmonica. He was an African-American who was a founding member of the Grand Ole Opry, a musical institution that we rarely (as in, never) today associate with black people, and his touching and tragic story, documented here, is one that will be of interest to those concerned with the racial, economic and socio-cultural history of American popular music. He stands at one of its more unexpected intersections: his name is DeFord Bailey. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:31 AM PST - 15 comments

One of the 'Dutch' (actually from Aruba and the band from Germany) most prided disco icons, Bobby Farrell, frontman of Boney M., passed away in st. Petersburg. A Crazy Dancer who arguably never got any real money for his success which was the story for this commercial. Most recent appearance of Boney M., a creation of Frank Farian (previously) was probably Ma Baker's sample in Lady GaGa's Pokerface.
posted by stFire at 4:27 AM PST - 24 comments

Jessica McLeod draws incredibly cute, funny, awesome cartoons. Cartoons about educated pigs, space rabbits, bad yetis, and rude flowers. You should be warned, they are very cute.
Mungo Bean: Adventure Pig!, Book 2, Book 3 Part 1, Part 2
Bad Yeti, Yeti Party
Space Rabbits: In Space, Planet Of, Battle for the Planet Of, Tea With A
Miscellaneous comics: The Indefatigable Miss Manners, Working Class Elf, Ghost Farm
She has a webcomic, Activities For Rainy Days [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 3:28 AM PST - 10 comments

"In the late '60's I worked for Bell Labs for a few years managing a data center and developing an ultra high speed information retrieval system. It was the days of beehive hair on the women and big mainframe computers. One day I took a camera to work and shot the pictures below."
posted by channey at 2:38 AM PST - 68 comments

It appears that Sony's PS3 is fatally and permanently hacked. fail0verflow, a team of European hackers demonstrated quite convincingly (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. [more inside]
posted by pjern at 2:25 AM PST - 106 comments

"This is a subject of but small importance; and I know not whether it will interest any readers, but it has interested me."-C. D. Quick... what was Darwin's most popular book? If you answered The Origin of Species, you were wrong. It was his last book, published the year before he died, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observation of Their Habits (illustrations [first presented 1 Nov. 1837, as noted in the record of the Royal Geological Society]). Darwin noted when he was beginning his career that worms churned up soil, causing heavier objects to sink slowly in the soil. He noted that all soil had passed through the alimentary duct of worms. It started off a fashion of cultivating worms by gardeners that continues to the present day. -We recently learned that we owe an element of our unique cerebral cortex, or pallium to our marine worm ancestors. (In amphibians, the cerebrum includes archipallium, paleopallium and some of the basal nuclei. Reptiles first developed a neopallium, which continued to develop in the brains of more recent species to become the neocortex of mammals." [&, ultimately, you and you and we]) [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 1:20 AM PST - 11 comments

"Cablegate Comix" is a series of comics "recounting true stories that came to light on November 28, 2010 — when WikiLeaks published confidential documents of detailed correspondences between the US State Department and its diplomatic missions around the world." 1, 2, 3, 4 [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 10:43 PM PST - 17 comments

In My Darkest Hour There are a number of songs that evoke a similar image... these three share a kinship. Arlo's song is his alone. Billy Joel's "Light as Breeze" was written by L. Cohen. And, the final entry is L. Cohen's , which reverses the image a bit...and then turns it around again..."Suzanne"
posted by HuronBob at 10:14 PM PST - 7 comments

Vadrum drums over some familiar classics ... Mozart's overture to The Marriage of Figaro (original). The William Tell overture (original). Rossini's overture to The Barber of Seville — you'll recognize it at 1:20 (original). Mozart's "Rondo Alla Turca" a.k.a. "Turkish March," from Piano Sonata No. 11, K. 331 (original). [more inside]
posted by John Cohen at 9:32 PM PST - 19 comments

The Last Text [more inside]
posted by P.o.B. at 8:35 PM PST - 35 comments

Muppets With People Eyes. [SLTumblr]
posted by kipmanley at 8:23 PM PST - 55 comments

IN Gear, swinging London of 1960s and SOHO bohemian Coffee Bars of London, 1959. These are a few of the 500+ vintage documentary shorts called "Look at Life" that ran at the Odeon and Gaumont cinemas during the 50s and 60s. (via Dangerous Minds) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 6:41 PM PST - 15 comments

What a Face A tribute to character actors with "distinctive" looks. [via mefi projects]
posted by null terminated at 5:02 PM PST - 80 comments

Mother of disabled children changes country to suit their needs.
posted by maiamaia at 3:41 PM PST - 19 comments

Journalistic flamewar erupts over secret chat logs. It's a disagreement between Salon's Glenn Greenwald and Wired.com's Kevin Poulsen over the proper use of IM chat logs between Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo. Revelant links within. [more inside]
posted by chaff at 2:31 PM PST - 171 comments

What does it mean to be Canadian? It isn't about an ethnicity, a religion, a language, or a shared heritage or history. From CBC's Ideas comes the two-part radio documentary, Being Canadian. "From east to west, public intellectuals and private citizens (both new and old Canadians), tell film-maker Sun-Kyung (Sunny) Yi about the concerns, the questions, and the challenges of living together in a multicultural and diverse society." It is also the story of how and why a Korean family became Canadian, first in the law, and then in their hearts.
posted by Hildegarde at 2:17 PM PST - 120 comments

Scott Pilgrim: The Last Airbender. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 1:32 PM PST - 77 comments

The division of post-WWII Berlin reached everywhere in the city, even underground, sealing stations throughout the long decades of the Cold War. They were the first “ghost stations”, which can now be found everywhere: the Paris Metro (previously), Los Angeles, the London Underground, New York City, and the aforementioned Berlin, remaining as entombed time capsules that are passed by millions every day.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:12 PM PST - 10 comments

Jonathan Blattmachr, one of the country's leading estates and trusts experts, feels that helping his clients reduce their tax liability helps the IRS close loopholes that he and his colleagues use. As with most attorneys, there are some clients who weren't happy with his work, but Mr. Blattmachr pushes on with his efforts.
posted by reenum at 12:00 PM PST - 18 comments

A Minecraft Rube Goldberg Machine. Some of the tricks use include: Controlling Water with Redstone TNT Cannons Holding up sand with torches.
posted by empath at 11:51 AM PST - 36 comments

ELLE does it again. Indian actress and former "Miss World" Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is said to be considering legal action after becoming the most recent victim (previously on MeFi) of the magazine's skin-lightening addiction. In India color is strongly associated with caste, and lightening is a multimillion dollar industry. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 11:39 AM PST - 105 comments

"You'll live on in films forever!" Daniel Radcliffe beheaded on QI christmas special (SLYT)
posted by sarastro at 11:05 AM PST - 36 comments

The Empathy Deficit: "A recent study finds a decline in empathy among young people in the U.S." In fact, the report concludes "empathy levels have been declining over the past 30 years." Podcast on this topic here.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:16 AM PST - 109 comments

19th-century newspaper ads for patented stomach cures and digestive aids [...] foregrounded mince pie as the K2 of digestive summits. But for every published warning on the dangers of mince, the newspapers published a poem, essay, or editorial praising it as a great symbol of American cultural heritage or a nostalgic reminder of mother love and better times bygone—or even, as the State of Columbia, South Carolina, asserted in 1901, a beneficial Darwinian instrument that had "thinned out the weak ones" among the pioneering generations.

So wrote Cliff Doerksen in his wonderful, James Beard award-winning article Mince Pie: The Real American Pie. Doerksen not only gives the history of this once most American of foods, he also makes two mince pies from 19th Century recipes to see if they are indeed all that. This is but one of many great articles Doerksen wrote for The Chicago Reader in recent years (links to a selection below the cut). Sadly, Cliff Doerksen passed at the age of 47 just before Christmas. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 8:26 AM PST - 71 comments

Meet the woman without fear. Growing up as a Buddhist, I was taught a lot about fearlessness and conquering fear (previously). But being fearless may not be all it's cracked up to be. [more inside]
posted by outlandishmarxist at 8:10 AM PST - 32 comments

We never used to go nuts about terrorism.
posted by dougrayrankin at 8:03 AM PST - 62 comments

In 1996 a film was released that combined the animated Looney Tunes with the reality based basketball star Michael Jordan. That film was called Space Jam. Incredibly, Warner Brothers still maintains the movie's website, which is a snapshot of web design from the time period. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:37 AM PST - 69 comments

There's weird taxidermy, weirder taxidermy, and weirdest taxidermy. There's even weird taxidermy auctions. But, all in all, these animals are the same old stuff. Lisa Black however has come up with a new spin on an old concept - steampunk taxidermy. Some images may be NSFW.
posted by stinkycheese at 7:03 AM PST - 16 comments

A video montage tribute to Pixar Animation Studios by video mash-up maker and film-lover Leandro Copperfield. [more inside]
posted by SkylitDrawl at 4:39 AM PST - 18 comments

The Big Picture: 2010 in Photos (part 2, part 3). just in case you missed it
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:09 AM PST - 15 comments

Various harvesting machines: Plum. Cucumber. Potato. Chicken. Green bean. Cherry. Asparagus. Tree. Sugarcane. Tomato. Coal. Carrot (another view.) Grape. Onion. Pecan. Watermelon. Chestnut.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:31 AM PST - 27 comments

Nigeria's film industry produces 50 films a week. "Nigerian films are as popular abroad as they are at home. Ivorian rebels in the bush stop fighting when a shipment of DVDs arrives from Lagos. Zambian mothers say their children talk with accents learnt from Nigerian television. When the president of Sierra Leone asked Genevieve Nnaji, a Lagosian screen goddess, to join him on the campaign trail he attracted record crowds at rallies. Millions of Africans watch Nigerian films every day, many more than see American fare. And yet Africans have mixed feelings about Nollywood."
posted by artof.mulata at 2:35 AM PST - 10 comments

According to The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the US recession which started in December 2007 actually ended in June 2009. But unemployment (not to be confused with under-employment), always considered to be a lagging indicator, has continued to rise. [more inside]
posted by Mutant at 2:31 AM PST - 18 comments

Parenting tips from a teen who grew up going to festivals with her offbeat mama
posted by Knigel at 2:16 AM PST - 65 comments

The book “Traumgedanken” (“Thoughts about dreams”) contains a collection of literary, philosophical, psychological and scientifical texts which provide an insight into different dream theories. To ease the access to the elusive topic, the book is designed as a model of a dream about dreaming. Analogue to a dream, where pieces of reality are assembled to build a story, it brings different text excerpts together. They are connected by threads which tie in with certain key words.
posted by chavenet at 1:10 AM PST - 8 comments

Denis Dutton (Wiki) has died. Denis founded and edited the website "Arts & Letters Daily", gained notoriety, admiration and respect for his strongly held views on Art, Philosophy and Science. He taught at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand from 1984 until his death. He was a founding member of New Zealand Sceptics, a former voice over artist (a skill he would often use to great effect lampooning hollywood) often a provocateur, and was named by Time Magazine in 2004 as "one of the worlds most influential media personalities." 9 February 1944 – 28 December 2010 RIP. [more inside]
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 7:46 PM PST - 56 comments

Don't Stop the Pop: the mashup of the year's top 25 songs, from DJ Earworm! (Previously on Mefi: 2007, 2008, 2009. ) [more inside]
posted by estlin at 7:27 PM PST - 35 comments

HaikuLeaks Cable is poetry 65 haikus in 1830 cables [more inside]
posted by unknowncommand at 6:59 PM PST - 11 comments

The List. After losing his wife Meghan to breast cancer, Adam Warner has set out to complete his wife's to-do list, which has already taken him in a train across Canada and on pilgrimage to India. From the (newly revived) Chicago Public Media program Love & Radio. [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 5:09 PM PST - 9 comments

My younger brother recommended me this incredibly awful educational movie. It's called Rock Odyssey, but I can't find anything about it. Parts 1, 2, 3 (linked above because it's the one with the song), 4, 5.
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:55 PM PST - 12 comments

You may know Mefi's own Lore from Lore Brand Comics (Related but with Monsters Previously) but did you know he is pushing the limits of free avatar creators at Hall Of Lores? Now you do.
posted by The Whelk at 4:42 PM PST - 10 comments

40,000-year-old rock paintings are alive. "These organisms are alive and could have replenished themselves over endless millennia to explain the freshness of the paintings' appearance," Professor Pettigrew told BBC News.
posted by longsleeves at 4:40 PM PST - 22 comments

Google's sheer size and power is staggering - and of course a little disconcerting. But ultimately are they ensuring the internet remains open and user friendly? CBC Radio had a great piece on the Algorithm That Changed World on how Google has helped keep the internet useful and spammers at bay. As a user, I have not found any other search engine that come close in giving me useful results. Intelligent Life's take on Apple vs Google, shows how this open system vs closed system philosophical differences plays itself out with product strategy. Of course, Google's user-centric world can suck if you have ever written a book.
posted by helmutdog at 4:14 PM PST - 106 comments

Jayaben Desai passes away. Ms. Desai came to national prominence in the UK for her leading role in the 1976-78 strike at Grunwick Processing's photo processing labs in North London, a dispute that shattered stereotypes about south Asian women workers in Britain, in the face of police violence, the antics of the McWhirter brothers and ambiguous support from the official trade union movement. [more inside]
posted by Abiezer at 3:33 PM PST - 5 comments

Smiling Victorians is a collection of photos of smiling Victorian (and Edwardian!) people. And one photo of the Victorianest smile of all!
posted by ocherdraco at 3:23 PM PST - 21 comments

Alie & Georgia have an unusual culinary hobby. [more inside]
posted by chairface at 2:43 PM PST - 13 comments

The 4th Amendment Underclothes are a way to send a message to the TSA. Next time you undergo an X-ray body scan, wear these and let the law enforcers know you won't be scanned without at least reminding them what they violate when they do so.
posted by fantodstic at 1:47 PM PST - 61 comments

Patton Oswalt on the death of geek culture.
posted by Artw at 1:44 PM PST - 138 comments

New Year's has always been a day for eating lucky foods. [more inside]
posted by madred at 12:58 PM PST - 21 comments

"Sticks and Stones." Jonsi (of Sigur Rós) did a song for How to Train Your Dragon. Now there's an official music video featuring scenes from the movie. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 12:52 PM PST - 7 comments

Zip Tie Snow Tires: The Cheapest Way To Blizzard-Proof Your Bike [via Lifehacker] [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 12:06 PM PST - 53 comments

An oldie, but a goodie: Michael Lewis goes to Columbia's School of Journalism to see what such schools actually do to prepare their students.
posted by reenum at 11:54 AM PST - 16 comments

The long take, an uncut, uninterrupted shot in film, is seen by some as the counter to CGI, the last great field for cinematic art. The linked page features six clips from 1990 on, plus the opening shot from Orson Welles' 1958 film, Touch of Evil. Alfred Hitchcock's film from a decade earlier, Rope, took the long cut further, with the whole film shot in eight takes of up to 10 minutes each, a decision shaped by the limit of the physical recording media. With digital media, the long take could be pushed further, as with Russian Ark, from 2002. The movie was shot in one long take, with the narrative working through the history of Russia, set within The State Hermitage Museum, and captured in one day on the 4th take. If the long takes are a tad long for you, try the "short" long takes that are one-shot music videos [videos inside] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:25 AM PST - 74 comments

Last week, UConn's women's basketball team beat Florida State to win an unprecedented 89 games in a row. Here's the halftime show from that game. [more inside]
posted by phaedon at 10:35 AM PST - 19 comments

Paul Copansky, a.k.a. Paul from the Diamond Center, reminisces about Ed "Hi Kids!" Barbara, Steven "Top of the Hill Daly City" Matthew David, and Harvard E. "Pete" Palmer, Jr., the adman who put these characters on the San Francisco/Bay Area's UHF band in the 1970's and 1980's. [more inside]
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 10:03 AM PST - 13 comments

Wikileaks may have been the big news, but there were numerous other data breaches in 2010. [more inside]
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 9:56 AM PST - 26 comments

NYC's Dumbest: NYC Sanitation Workers Destroy A Ford Explorer [NSFW language]. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 9:41 AM PST - 180 comments

Happy Holidays to Smiths/Morrissey Fans!
posted by useyourmachinegunarm at 9:16 AM PST - 30 comments

"In many places the concentration [of convicted residents] is so dense that states are spending in excess of a million dollars a year to incarcerate the residents of single city blocks."

Using rarely accessible data from the criminal justice system, the Spatial Information Design Lab and the Justice Mapping Center have created maps of these “million dollar blocks” and of the city-prison-city-prison migration flow for five of the nation’s cities. The maps suggest that the criminal justice system has become the predominant government institution in these communities and that public investment in this system has resulted in significant costs to other elements of our civic infrastructure — education, housing, health, and family. Prisons and jails form the distant exostructure of many American cities today.

See the several linked pdfs.
posted by OmieWise at 8:30 AM PST - 59 comments

A classical music riot is violent, disorderly behavior that usually occurs during the premiere of a controversial piece of music. Here are some famous examples: [more inside]
posted by Ljubljana at 8:06 AM PST - 94 comments

I'm still not sure why it's the list for 2011 when we're still not out of 2010 yet, but here's the latest from Project Censored of 25 under-reported stories.
posted by anothermug at 7:47 AM PST - 19 comments

Oakland County man faces 5 years in prison for hacking his wife's email. So, is email snooping a crime?
posted by morganannie at 7:03 AM PST - 83 comments

Metroidvania flash game with backtracking? Check. Antagonistic motherly narrator? Check. Wonky camera effects? check. Go play K.O.L.M. (via JIG) [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 3:01 AM PST - 9 comments

Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) was an avante-garde Japanese composer who took influences from jazz, pop music, and traditional Japanese music. In his lifetime he composed over 100 film scores, and 130 concert pieces. Just last week, there was a tribute to his work at Carnegie Hall as part of their JapanNYC Festival. A documentary about his work is available on Veoh (requires Veoh plugin) and on Youtube (1 2 3 4 5 6). [more inside]
posted by azarbayejani at 12:05 AM PST - 8 comments

If you're a man, get married and stay married, because married men outlive bachelors (but only if they talk as much as their wives). If you're a woman, have a baby after 40, but don't put anything on your face that you wouldn't put in your stomach. [more inside]
posted by Knappster at 11:43 PM PST - 29 comments

A Real Science of Mind Neurobabble piques interest in science, but obscures how science works. Individuals see, know, and want to make love. Brains don’t. Those things are psychological — not, in any evident way, neural.
posted by shivohum at 10:50 PM PST - 21 comments

Video produced by the California Highway Patrol of the 7.1 1989 San Francisco Bay Area earthquake and the rescue attempts that followed. It focuses on the Bay Bridge and the Cypress collapse. This video has some intense footage, including much that I'd never seen of the rescue efforts. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer at 10:08 PM PST - 22 comments

From the opening frames of this mesmerizing video: "A crazy idea was born. Early sunday on Swordfish 2010 we got a crazy idea of duck-tape our GoPro Hero camera on the tip of a sword and do some swings to see how it looked. We started slow just to see if the camera was holding together, then stepping it up. All recording are done in real speed." The music really makes the video. (via)
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:17 PM PST - 54 comments

Mama Cass Elliott's granddaughter singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" Sometimes a bit of nostalgia combined with a sweet child is just worth sharing.
posted by HuronBob at 9:16 PM PST - 22 comments

Unusual Off-road Locomotion documents vehicles that are often "too eccentric, too expensive compared to the improvements or too far ahead of their time."
posted by brundlefly at 8:48 PM PST - 6 comments

The Line Between Science and Journalism is Getting Blurry….Again by Bora Zivkovic is an excellent, James Burke-ish, essay on science, journalism, and a hopeful future for science journalism. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 8:01 PM PST - 4 comments

Sotomayor, Kagan shift Supreme Court debates to the left. The liberal wing is no longer drowned out by Scalia and his fellow conservatives during oral arguments.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:26 PM PST - 35 comments

Still Life with Animated Dogs is a witty and candid cartoon by Paul Fierlinger, animator of Sesame Street's Teeny Little Super Guy, recounting his life from being a dissident artist in 1960s Czechoslovakia to being a successful animator in the US. He tells his lifestory by talking about the dogs he's owned over the years, Roosevelt, Ike, Johnson and Spinnaker. Warning: Something may get stuck in your eye.
posted by Kattullus at 4:40 PM PST - 8 comments

Take oysters, parboile hem in her owne broth, make a lyour of crustes of brede & drawe it up wiþ the broth and vynegur mynce oynouns & do þerto with erbes. & cast the oysters þerinne. boile it. & do þerto powdour fort & salt. & messe it forth.

Three European 14th Century cookbooks: [more inside]
posted by thirteenkiller at 3:33 PM PST - 46 comments

A quite ugly but intriguing map of English dialects in North America.
posted by nickheer at 3:22 PM PST - 110 comments

The AP reports that the drug policy in Portugal is paying off.
posted by gman at 1:50 PM PST - 39 comments

Al Jazeera's top 10 stories of 2010.
Including top 10 news, features, and opinion stories by reader hits.
posted by Taft at 1:45 PM PST - 17 comments

India's freedom of information act martyrs.
posted by maiamaia at 12:13 PM PST - 10 comments

Retronaut: someone who makes the conscious effort to experience life outside of time and modernity. Artist David McDermott. Chris Wild, keeper of the How To A Retronaut Site, full of arcane anachronisms: WWII in modern Amsterdam, Map of abandoned London tube stations, 50 years of Japanese concept cars, 1940's London in high resolution color images and much more.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:09 PM PST - 8 comments

Ted Chiang is perhaps the finest author in contemporary science fiction -- and the most rarefied. A technical writer by trade and a graduate of the distinguished Clarion Writers Workshop, Chiang has published only twelve short stories in the last twenty years, one dozen masterpieces of the genre whose insightful, precise, often poetic language confronts fundamental ideas -- intelligence, consciousness, the nature of God -- and thrusts them into a dazzling new light. Click inside for a complete listing of Chiang's work, with links to online reprints or audio recordings where available, as well as a collection of one-on-one interviews, links to his nonfiction essays, and a few other related sites and articles. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:11 AM PST - 116 comments

“Box 73 and Box 96 contain interesting manuscripts on drunkenness, swearing, adultery and much more...”. The Bentham Transcription Project is using crowdsourcing to transcribe 40,000 unpublished manuscripts of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who died in 1832 but still sits and watches. (prev) In four months, they've knocked off 435 already. [more inside]
posted by msalt at 11:11 AM PST - 11 comments

Puppies for Christmas. slyt
posted by biddeford at 10:46 AM PST - 43 comments

Thirty inches of snow in thirty seconds. (via Reddit)
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:59 AM PST - 52 comments

The perfect gift for the dog who has everything.
posted by scalefree at 9:48 AM PST - 42 comments

Wondering at the route US vs. German unemployment has taken, I found some clues here and there, but the overriding factor seems to be the German model^[1] and works councils.^[2] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:41 AM PST - 34 comments

Your contribution can take the form of a short essay or story of no more than 350 words, up to six photographs, a painting, drawing, or handmade map. Orion magazine reintroduces reader submitted stories about how we connect to where we live.
posted by greenskpr at 8:04 AM PST - 5 comments

The final hours of the Deepwater Horizon.

But this was a disaster with two distinct parts — first a blowout, then the destruction of the Horizon. The second part, which killed 11 people and injured dozens, has escaped intense scrutiny, as if it were an inevitable casualty of the blowout.

It was not.

David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul report for the New York Times on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. [more inside]
posted by spitbull at 6:14 AM PST - 71 comments

Holiday season getting you down? Perhaps knowing how Brian Butterfield spent Christmas might cheer you up. Bonus feature: the full Peter Serafinowicz 2008 Christmas special, part 1, part 2, part 3. Previously, Brian Butterfield's netsight. Profoundly not safe for work.
posted by Ahab at 12:29 AM PST - 9 comments

Did the Scots visit Iceland? New research reveals island inhabited 70 years before Vikings thought to have arrived. This appears to be the first physical evidence that confirms the stories of celitc monks being on the island when the Norse arrived.
posted by novenator at 11:23 PM PST - 41 comments

For your listening pleasure, I present to you the Zelda Rag, performed (with no prior practice) by Tom Brier. When that gets old, there's also a ragtime adaptation of the horse race theme from the Ocarina of Time that is not to be missed. And if Zelda's too easy, you can try the theme from Ghosts and Goblins. And, finally, an actual rag from Final Fantasy VI: the Spinach Rag. [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 8:55 PM PST - 21 comments

Unsung. Helen Mirren honestly appraises Hollywood at a rewards show earlier this month, but no one told you about it.
posted by parmanparman at 8:06 PM PST - 92 comments

Merry Christmas from lostlevels.org: An unreleased beta of The Legend of Zelda! Videos showing it off: 1, 2, 3. Cutting Room Floor has documented the differences from the release version.
posted by JHarris at 7:29 PM PST - 10 comments

25 years of Christmas Dad tapes his kids reacting to Christmas for twenty-five years and edits it together into a single video. (via)
posted by The Whelk at 7:14 PM PST - 56 comments

The singing sewermen of London would like to remind you to bin it, don't flush it. Warning: contains carolling and traces of rhythm. (hat tip: Boing Boing)
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:24 PM PST - 15 comments

Mr. Gbagbo was not on-board the plane. A French foreign ministry spokesman told reporters, "'the legitimate authorities' of Ivory Coast asked that the plane be grounded and, in his words, 'that it is precisely what we have done.'" [more inside]
posted by sswiller at 3:40 PM PST - 13 comments

The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English and The 100 Funniest Words in English by Robert "Dr. Goodword" Beard. Yes, it's promoting a couple of books, but scroll down to see the complete lists (and a few examples of his write-ups on each). Nothing LOLCAT-ish, you ailurophiles, but good for your abibliophobia. I hope the fine assemblage here at MetaFilter (you are all so becoming and not at all anencephalous) will not beleaguer the author or cause an argle-bargle. Well, I must absquatulate, so, see you later allegator.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:04 PM PST - 73 comments

Animalarium is full of wonderful images and videos, contemporary and vintage, The Insects' Christmas is especially charming. Animals as an endless source of creative inspiration. An exploration of the finest in art, illustration, crafts and design from around the world featuring animals, both real and fantastic [slightly nsfw].
posted by nickyskye at 12:46 PM PST - 2 comments

Everybody knows TVTropes is the best and most time-killing-est way to learn about the clichés and archetypes that permeate modern media. But dear reader, there is so much more. Enter Useful Notes. Originally created as a place for tropers to pool factual information as a writing aid, the subsite has quietly grown into a small wiki of its own -- a compendium of crowdsourced wisdom on a staggering array of topics, all written in the site's signature brand of lighthearted snark. Though it reads like an irreverent and informal Wikipedia, its articles act as genuinely useful primers to complex and obscure topics alike, all in service of the project's five goals: "To debunk common media stereotypes; to help you understand some media better; to educate, inform and sometimes entertain; to promote peace and understanding (maybe); and... to facilitate world domination." Sounds about right. Click inside for bountiful highlights... if you dare. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:00 AM PST - 42 comments

Cinelan 3 Minute Stories are short documentaries on diverse subjects, such as The London Review of Books personals section, 60s martial arts legend and self-styled 'deadliest man alive' Count Dante and The R.O.M.E.O.s, a group of five old friends from New York in their 70s and 80s who go out to eat and talk about stuff. If you have more time New Video Digital has some full length documentaries (and a few other films) such as The Atomic Cafe, Oscar winner From Mao to Mozart, and season one of Michael Moore's The Awful Truth TV series.
posted by Kattullus at 10:27 AM PST - 3 comments

A dude eats nothing but Christmas candy for a week.
posted by gman at 9:45 AM PST - 62 comments

An unknown photographer's work comes to light. [more inside]
posted by zerobyproxy at 4:55 AM PST - 57 comments

Whether you're buying gifts or returning gifts; a holiday message: Why other lines always move faster than your line.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:53 AM PST - 54 comments

Low on money, don't despair, before money there was barter and you can still barter! Bartering for space. Bartering for the use of a car. Bartering food for pints of beer. Bartering books you've read for books you haven't read. Bartering gifts you don't want for gifts you do want. Bartering for dental care. Bartering for baby sitters time. Bartering time on your couch for time on someone else's couch. Bartering time in your home for time in someone else's home. Bartering your UK Council flat for someone else's council flat. Time as a currency alternative. Time banks, bartering your free time for time money. A list of 101 US based timebanks. A timebank in New York. Timebanking in The UK. A bartering exchange. Another bartering exchange. And another bartering exchange.Yet another bartering exchange. A UK based bartering exchange. Obligatory tale of serial bartering: a paperclip for a house. Lest you think bartering is for small transactions only, China barters infrastructure for $9B worth of copper. All the BarterNews you'll need to keep abreast of the fast moving world of barter!
posted by Mutant at 3:50 AM PST - 22 comments

"This is a full recreation of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past using Minecraft. This replication is to scale and is an accurate portrayal of the original SNES game. The map is 512 x 512 x 104. This project took over 100 hours to complete." (Shorter preview version.)
posted by Avenger50 at 3:16 AM PST - 25 comments

Ganondorf has a simple request for Christmas, via Brawl in the Family. (An Musical number in web comic form. Audio and Zelda required.) [more inside]
posted by loquacious at 1:48 AM PST - 6 comments

Watch a concert or take a drive through Haiti with 360-degree interactive video. [more inside]
posted by Defenestrator at 12:08 AM PST - 7 comments

Amanda Palmer and a sock puppet stage a meticulous re-enactment of a scene from Jim Henson's Labyrinth (see the original scene here), with a special guest appearance by a very famous writer as David Bowie's mullet. Happy Boxing Day!
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:45 PM PST - 23 comments

Great Rock and Roll Pauses (permalink) is a short story from Jennifer Egan's collection of linked stories A Visit from the Goon Squad. A 76-page series of PowerPoint slides, it's told by a 12-year-old girl who documents her autistic brother's collecting of Clearmountain pauses, the moments in rock and roll songs when the music dramatically stops and then restarts, which are named after famed music producer Bob Clearmountain. The songs mentioned in the story include: Foxy Lady - Jimi Hendrix; Please Play This Song on the Radio - NOFX; Good Times, Bad Times - Led Zeppelin; Bernadette - The Four Tops; Young Americans - David Bowie; Mighty Sword - The Frames; Supervixen - Garbage; Long Train Runnin’ - The Doobie Brothers; The Time of the Season - The Zombies; Faith - George Michael, Closing Time - Semisonic; Roxanne - The Police; Rearrange Beds - An Horse. More examples can be found in this previous MeFi post and a number of other excellent sites. [more inside]
posted by jng at 10:51 PM PST - 40 comments

A Thousand Ways To Please A Husband With Bettina's Best Recipes from 1917. A Thousand Ways To Please A Family. Free online with retro illustrations and stories. [more inside]
posted by melissam at 8:39 PM PST - 12 comments

Two Christmases previously, but still a classic: Francis Coppola's and William Burroughs's The Junky's Christmas. Now on YouTube in four parts: 1 2 3 4 [more inside]
posted by clarknova at 6:53 PM PST - 10 comments

Japan's Okunoshima Island once produced chemical weapons. After 1945, the facilities where shut down but the buildings remained and the island became famous for something else: Being home to hundreds and hundreds of rabbits. ((via)
posted by The Whelk at 6:27 PM PST - 27 comments

It just isn't Christmas without Space Ghost.
posted by JHarris at 6:23 PM PST - 26 comments

Whitewashing "A Christmas Story": The Lost Black Actors in a New Holiday Classic
posted by ShooBoo at 5:14 PM PST - 21 comments

The users of 4chan recently conducted a survey. The results are pretty much what you'd expect. (cloud link, wait for it to load)
posted by inedible at 4:13 PM PST - 68 comments

This is Bull of Frost (Chys Khan), which is Yakutian colleague of Russian Grandpa Frost (Ded Moroz) and Santa Claus. [more inside]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 2:14 PM PST - 2 comments

Indian satellite rocket explodes after launch.
posted by Taft at 1:41 PM PST - 48 comments

Elizabeth Beresford MBE, creator of the Wombles, has passed away. Whether you're a fan of Elizabeth Beresford, her books (recent covers), the animated shorts (voiced by Bernard Cribbens), or the many, many, songs (by Mike Batt)- remember to keep recycling and a womblin'.
posted by Sparx at 12:43 PM PST - 21 comments

Gorillaz offers their new album, The Fall, for free online listening, for the small price of giving them an email address for their mailing list. (Does not require email verification.) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:53 AM PST - 24 comments

An interview with Jonanthan Blow, creator of Braid, about his upcoming game, The Witness by Simon Parkin in Gamasutra. [more inside]
posted by shadytrees at 9:58 AM PST - 24 comments

Shinchi Maruyama creates "sculptures" by throwing handfuls of liquid into the air and photographing them. [more inside]
posted by gman at 9:24 AM PST - 15 comments

Jingle Bells, gujarati/tamil style. A year ago or so, MTV India released two Christmas-themed bumpers/music-videos, each an animated rendition of the Xmas classic "Jingle Bells" in regional dialects and in regional musical styles: gujarati/tamil and punjabi. [more inside]
posted by LMGM at 8:49 AM PST - 9 comments

REMARKS BY THE FIRST LADY TO CHILDREN WHILE TRACKING SANTA WITH NORAD Every year NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) helps track Santa Claus's movement around the globe [previously]. The transcript of First Lady Michelle Obama's conversations with kids on Christmas as she watches the radar, sent to the White House press list last night, is absolutely adorable. Much more at the Norad Santa headquarters, and an interview with the head researcher at the Department of Energy tasked with tracking St Nick.
posted by jtajta at 7:02 AM PST - 42 comments

Bush's memoir, Decision Points, gets a Foucauldian analysis in the London Review of Books. Awesome quote: "On his first trip to Paris in 2002, Junior, now president of the United States, stood beside Jacques Chirac at a press conference and said: ‘He’s always saying that the food here is fantastic and I’m going to give him a chance to show me tonight.’"(Book mentioned previously.)
posted by GrammarMoses at 6:53 AM PST - 90 comments

Kelley Turgeon's painting of Toronto's iconic streetcars won a contest for the Toronto Star Emerging Artist Cover Contest. Along with $2500 in prize money for the contest winner, the winning painting was also published Friday on the front page of the newspaper. Photographer Brian Labelle noticed because he had taken an eerily similar photograph in 2007. [more inside]
posted by typewriter at 6:46 AM PST - 53 comments

This is surely, without question, the best interpretation of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" ever recorded. The best. Merry Christmas!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:34 AM PST - 24 comments

These days, with Christmas getting more and more commercial, it's occasionally hard to keep track of all the reasons to celebrate. One of the big reasons though is a very special birthday. The birth of something that changed the world. I'm referring, of course, to the birth of the world wide web. [more inside]
posted by sarastro at 10:42 PM PST - 21 comments

Put aside your hate for one evening. O Holy Night by Celine Dion, Susan Boyle, Josh Groban, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Mariah Carey, Jewel, Faith Hill, John Williams, Jessica Simpson, a 7 year old, Eric Cartman, Aretha Franklin & Billy Preston, Steve Maudlin (sp?) [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 9:25 PM PST - 51 comments

This Christmas Eve spare a thought for the Chrildren of Iceland, who will be suffering a traumatising visit from Kertasníkir, or "Candle Beggar", the thirteenth and final of the strange and somewhat sinister Icelandic Santas, or Yule lads, who are the childre of the ogress Gryla. Most of them don't seem to care if you've been bad or good - mainly they want to steal your food and wreck stuff. [more inside]
posted by Artw at 9:11 PM PST - 27 comments

It was sixty-five years ago tonight that a child was born in the little town of Burslem [more inside]
posted by Sailormom at 7:52 PM PST - 27 comments

A Very Gwar Christmas [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 6:52 PM PST - 11 comments

In the 1970s Edwin Land constructed the Moby C: the world's largest instant camera. Not to be confused with its smaller cousin, this one-of-a-kind Polaroid produces incredible 40x80 (1:1) prints. After serving nearly 20 years as "the museum camera", Joe McNally put it to the task of heroic portraiture. He's again employed it to take some beautiful ballerina photos.
posted by clarknova at 6:48 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Amidakuji, or "Ghost Leg," is a lottery party game from Japan. At the top of a sheet there are a number of spaces for people to write their names. At the bottom there are prizes. There are an equal number of each. Between them is a map obscured behind a sheet. The map is made of straight vertical lines connecting the names and prizes. Connecting those lines at random intervals are horizontal lines. When it's time to pick winners, the sheet is removed and players can follow the lines to find their prize. You follow the line from your name down until you encounter any horizontal line, which you must follow, then continue down, continuing to follow all horizontal lines you encounter, until you reach your prize. No two horizontal lines can touch. Provided that, the process is perfectly deterministic and reversable. The same ends are reached whether you follow from the top down or the bottom up. If you have difficulty visualizing this, check the Wikipedia page. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 6:11 PM PST - 16 comments

The recently released motion picture Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is based on two short films by director Jalmari Helander: Rare Exports Inc. (2003) [previously] and Rare Exports: Official Safety Instructions (2005). (NSFW due to naked Santa)
posted by Knappster at 5:24 PM PST - 5 comments

The True Story Behind Christmas
posted by empath at 4:53 PM PST - 9 comments

On Christmas Eve, exactly 100 years ago, Luisa Tetrazzini, the most famous opera singer of her day, sang in the streets of San Francisco as a gift to the city she loved. 250,000 people, most of them survivors of the 1906 earthquake listened in silence as she began with "The Last Rose of Summer," then sang along as she ended with "Auld Lang Syne."
posted by williampratt at 4:27 PM PST - 9 comments

Some tips on how to survive a zombie apocalypse during the holidays...
posted by schyler523 at 3:36 PM PST - 5 comments

This topic is best summarized with a question; what would it be worth to you to have a video of your great-grandparents? How might your children or grandchildren appreciate your efforts at personal archiving? [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 3:03 PM PST - 21 comments

(I've seen the term floating around for a bit, so I figured I'd write up a quick summary. My apologies if its too dumbed down; just trying not to leave anyone behind! Please note, most links NSFW due to language.) Hashtag rap, previously also known as yoda raps (noun, not verb), was officially coined by Kanye West on Funkmaster Flex's HOT97 radio show on November 2. The term--a nod to the way online posts are tagged (especially on Twitter, which Mr. West is a noted user of) using hash symbols in order to categorize the post's content--refers to the recent rise in rap lines which drop the usage of "like" and "as", and instead substituting those words with a pregnant pause (which is sometimes dispensed with), thus truncating what is normally a simile or metaphor into a sort of short setup followed by a (hopefully) funny punchline. [more inside]
posted by jng at 2:40 PM PST - 40 comments

Randolph Carter received an interesting proposition over email. A Nigerian politician offered the scholar a once in a lifetime business opportunity that could provide wealth for both parties if Carter could make a small initial investment. Carter needed the money to finance his research into obscure Polynesian cultures, especially references to a strange god named "Cthulhu"... [more inside]
posted by clockworkjoe at 2:35 PM PST - 15 comments

The Manganiyar Seduction "The Manganiyars are a group of hereditary professional folk musicians from Rajasthan, India."
posted by dhruva at 2:15 PM PST - 4 comments

Many people here in the U.S. have heard Willie Nelson's Christmas song, Pretty Paper (first made famous by Roy Orbison). But few know that it was based on a disabled man who sold pencils and paper in front of Leonard's Department Store (the one with its own subway). Or was it a blind couple? His name has been lost to history even as he is immortalized in song.
posted by TedW at 1:13 PM PST - 4 comments

OMG CHRISTMAS KITTY. Move over Maru, the internet has a new cat sensation: Linus! He taps things. He licks things. . He apologizes to chairs. And sometimes he wears little costumes (wait for the end).
posted by The Whelk at 11:49 AM PST - 36 comments

Flickr user ElectroSpark collects and shares “random bits of vintage ephemera from mid-century vacationers,” with many in the form of charming round-cornered Kodachromes. In particular, his Fairs & Expos set with its collection of holiday snapshots from Brussels ’58, New York ’64 and Expo ’67 in Montreal, are all from a by-gone era. The collection includes both vintage graphics and photos.
posted by netbros at 11:48 AM PST - 5 comments

Evocative photographs by Evgenia Arbugaeva of "nomadic tribes of reindeer herders in my homeland, the Republic of Yakutia, which is located in eastern Siberia." You can read more about the indigenous peoples of Arctic Russia here (as you might guess, the outlook isn't rosy), and if you're curious and want more links, there's a zillion of 'em here.
posted by languagehat at 11:26 AM PST - 7 comments

Originally published in Guitar Player magazine in 1990, here is Jas Obrect's interview: Ry Cooder – Talking Country Blues and Gospel -- I only wish it was online when I made my Dark was the Night post. Now is it is part of the Jas Obrect Music Archive, where you can also find ''Rollin’ and Tumblin' '': The Story of a Song (See also Hambone Wille Newbern - Roll and Tumble Blues for the first recording of those lyrics) -- not to mention Jerry Garcia: The Complete 1985 Interview and Bob Dylan’s ''Highway 61 Revisited'': Mike Bloomfield v. Johnny Winter and Blues Origins: Spanish Fandango and Sebastopol among many, many others. There is quite the cornucopia of interesting, informative music articles there. Check it out--you will dig it.
posted by y2karl at 11:24 AM PST - 8 comments

While elusive on broadcast or cable television, YouTube has the holiday specials you're looking for. John Denver & The Muppets: A Christmas Together (Part 1 2 3 4 5 6). The Christmas Toy (Part 1 2 3 4 5). A Muppet Family Christmas (Part 1 2 3 4 5).
posted by hippybear at 10:39 AM PST - 22 comments

"Pwned by the Owner: What Happens When You Steal A Hacker's Computer" is a DEFCON presentation by Zoz.
posted by Avenger50 at 10:34 AM PST - 108 comments

A Physicist Solves the City [more inside]
posted by Ndwright at 10:24 AM PST - 37 comments

Then That's What They Called Music is a series of posts on the Onion AV Club where writer Nathan Rabin (previously) listens to all of the NOW! That's What I Call Music CDs from 1999 onwards. The essays read like a history of a forgotten world, reminding you of terrible yet infectious pop tunes, and are full of great links, snappy writing and one man's struggle to deal with why the Black Eyed Peas, the most corporate band in America, are so popular. [more inside]
posted by Sifter at 9:42 AM PST - 29 comments

For many years the BBC had a tradition of showing a dramatisation of a classic ghost story at Christmas. This tradition is being continued this year with Whistle and I'll Come to You being shown tonight staring John Hurt. An adaptation of the same classic MR James story was shown in 1968 staring Michael Hordern beginning the tradition (1, 2, 3). [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:14 AM PST - 22 comments

Stop and smell the roses. In this time of hectic preparation for year's end, last minute Christmas shopping, wrapping, baking etc. let us not forget the gift of idleness and its endearing virtue. Some may disagree, but what is the use of progress if it fails to offer time for relaxation and contemplation? Sit back, relax and enjoy your time off from the daily toil. Christmas is upon us with the message of peace on Earth and goodwill toward men. (thanks be unto the Presurfer for this Christmas gift) [more inside]
posted by caddis at 8:29 AM PST - 5 comments

Tom Scholefield (a.k.a. Konx-om-Pax after a publication by Crowley) is a Glasgow-based artist who works in a number of different media. Much of his work is in a colourful quasi-futuristic style he calls hyperreal. A lot of his work is in collaboration with musicians, either to create cover art or music videos. He also DJs, and has made several mixes available.
posted by Dim Siawns at 8:21 AM PST - 2 comments

Koolaid Man in Second Life: “Maybe the Internet is for me what Paris in the 20s was for Joyce, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein or New York in 50s was for Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg.” Jon Rafman (previously with the 9eyes Google Streetview blog) gives guided tours of Secondlife, and records some of his experiences. Being related to Secondlife, some content is naturally not work safe. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 8:21 AM PST - 12 comments

Pope’s child porn 'normal' claim sparks outrage among victims. Pope Benedict XVI said this week that as recently as the 1970's, pedophilia was "theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” but conceded that in 2010 it's gotten pretty bad, and brought "humiliation" on the church. Understandingly, victims feel differently.
posted by rodmandirect at 8:15 AM PST - 101 comments

"Two New York City men feel a tremendous responsibility to respond properly when they mysteriously receive hundreds of letters addressed to Santa Claus at their Chelsea apartment." [more inside]
posted by pwally at 7:04 AM PST - 54 comments

Christmas Eve Gift! [more inside]
posted by nimsey lou at 7:02 AM PST - 10 comments

It is late on Christmas Eve in Hong Kong; scarcely an hour to go before the 25th. I'm unsure how accurate some of these are, but no matter, it's the spirit that counts: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
posted by bwg at 6:57 AM PST - 5 comments

World War One Christmas Truce MP3 (via)
posted by nam3d at 5:51 AM PST - 17 comments

Fritz Leiber Jr. was born 100 years ago today. An actor (and son of an actor) and writer, he is best known for his characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (old school website). Project Gutenberg has some stories. Previously on Metafilter. [more inside]
posted by maurice at 4:36 AM PST - 19 comments

World's Oldest Optical Illusion Found? A 15,000 year old piece of an atlatl (spear chucker) shows definite signs of being a Gestalt shift optical illusion (as demonstrated here, here, and in the classic duck/rabbit picture). Although not as well defined as modern optical illusions (like the really tripped out Neave Strobe), it likely demonstrates a stage of cognitive awareness in human psychological development.
posted by novenator at 3:59 AM PST - 12 comments

For the Love of Elephants *starts with a short ad* Shot on location in Kenya, For the Love of Elephants closely observes the process by which an orphaned elephant named Sities survives the first days of recovery after arriving at an elephant rehabilitation centre near Nairobi, Kenya. previously [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 11:05 PM PST - 5 comments

There are lots of great films in the public domain and many of them are online. OpenFlix has 600, including a bunch of Chaplin, sci-fi and horror B-movies, film noir and HD versions of The Kid, M and Night of the Living Dead. Drelb has 400, including Buster Keaton's The General and Steamboat Bill Jr., episodes of Bonanza and Dragnet and Three Stooges shorts. Crazeclassics has over a 100, including The Third Man, Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors, Bringing Up Baby and To Kill a Mockingbird. Ampopfilms has 80, including His Girl Friday, Reefer Madness, Destination Moon and the 1954 animated version of Animal Farm. Gravitas Ventures has 35, notably Vampyr, Death Rides a Horse and Borderline.
posted by Kattullus at 10:03 PM PST - 19 comments

SLYT: Awesome Silent Monks singing the Halleluia chorus! Did this really not make it here yet? Totally awesome, but delete with prejudice if it's lame or a double. If not, Happy Holidays to everyone!
posted by trip and a half at 9:17 PM PST - 23 comments

Howjsay.com is a unique online speaking dictionary that offers clear pronunciations of English words, phrases, slang terms, technical terms, brand names, proper names, profanity, and many foreign words, including common variations and alternatives. Astoundingly, the sound files are not computer-generated -- every single one of the site's 138,152 entries are enunciated in the dignified tones of British academic and polyglot Tim Bowyer, who has steadily expanded its glossary over the years using logs of unsuccessful searches and direct user suggestions. The site is part of Bowyer's Fonetiks.org family of language sites, and is also available as a browser extension and as a mobile app for iPhone/iPod and Blackberry.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:30 PM PST - 27 comments

High Society Mini-site to accompany an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection on the history and culture of mind-altering drugs. Includes image galleries, essays and a quiz.
posted by Abiezer at 8:08 PM PST - 2 comments

The Guardian Review literary quiz. It may be a little easier than the venerable quiz down the page. And if it isn't, it still looks like fun.
posted by goofyfoot at 7:55 PM PST - 13 comments

Jarvis Popovich takes requests and "gives credit to the asker." He doesn't know how to play guitar and is willing to prove it! He has a facebook fan page and one of those twitter accounts. I give you: Songs Butchered Beautifully. (Over 100 songs and counting.)
posted by cjorgensen at 7:49 PM PST - 17 comments

Bill Sienkiewicz's David Lynch's Frank Herbert's DUNE.
posted by Artw at 5:17 PM PST - 44 comments

Do you like Superheroes? Do you like dinosaurs? Yeah? Well, today is your lucky day, captain! Check out Superhero Dinosaurs!
posted by SkylitDrawl at 4:08 PM PST - 14 comments

Pat Robertson calls for the legalization of marijuana.
posted by gman at 4:03 PM PST - 81 comments

Uncanny Valley Clown Baby. Also, fun alternate uses of 3-D beard visualization tool, Hige-Chen.
posted by hermitosis at 4:03 PM PST - 20 comments

Having trouble explaining to non-technical folks why net neutrality is important, or wondering about it yourself? This simple and appealing single serving site is a 2-minute primer on the idea, and should help!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:59 PM PST - 29 comments

Philosophical Sweep: to understand the fiction of David Foster Wallace, it helps to have a little Wittgenstein.
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:41 PM PST - 29 comments

In keeping with the holiday spirit, a story of a teenage boy doing right by somebody else, just because he can.
posted by COD at 2:40 PM PST - 32 comments

YouTube has a fair number of recordings of well-played classic arcade games. Dig Dug, Mr Do!, Mr Do's Castle, Do! Run Run, Lady Bug Part 2, Bagman, Super Bagman, Q*bert, Venture, Zoo Keeper, Moon Cresta, Scramble, Make Trax, Phoenix, Rastan. click through for more [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 1:44 PM PST - 35 comments

A Beijing graphics design house makes with the stylish and creepy in a Neil Gaiman adaptation of his tongue-in-cheek mini-story, "Nicholas Was."
posted by Kitteh at 1:32 PM PST - 9 comments

Meet the Ethical Placebo: "A provocative new study called 'Placebos Without Deception,' published on PLoS One today, threatens to make humble sugar pills something they’ve rarely had a chance to be in the history of medicine: a respectable, ethically sound treatment for disease that has been vetted in controlled trials." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 1:09 PM PST - 75 comments

A few days ago, Los Angeles Times food critic, S. Irene Virbila, was photographed and kicked out of Jordan Kahn's new Beverly Hills restaurant, Red Medicine. [more inside]
posted by PBR at 12:30 PM PST - 83 comments

List of Libre Games. Open Game Systems. Compendium of Free Role Playing Games. Free RPGs at 1000 Monkeys, 1000 Typewriters. Tired of role-playing game books the size and price of textbooks? You've got a lot of alternatives. [more inside]
posted by Zed at 12:23 PM PST - 18 comments

Kasio Kristmas (2 3 4 5) Traditional Christmas Songs played on a casio keyboard by a man in a conehead mask.
posted by The Whelk at 11:33 AM PST - 10 comments

Connecticut was once the home of the national bell business, with more than 30 bell foundries based in East Hampton alone. Now a lone survivor, Bevin Brothers Manufacturing, is thriving there, manufacturing everything from cow bells with college logos for the football season to traditional sleigh and dinner bells. (Lifted from girlhacker)
posted by growabrain at 11:26 AM PST - 6 comments

Japanese woodblock print images | wonderful vintage commercial graphics | the Folk Museum Kawachinagano | old books | ceramics and laquerware from The Digital Archive Project of Osaka which has an interesting online museum to explore with some excellent art and illustrations. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:58 AM PST - 5 comments

ESPN baseball writer Jayson Stark presents his Strange But True hitting feats of 2010. Only in baseball's...umm...unique scoring system could someone get caught stealing 3B, and then safely steal 3B on the next pitch. Warning: both links contain auto playing video with ads at the top.
posted by dry white toast at 9:44 AM PST - 24 comments

Do you sometime^s feel underdressed at parties and or other would-be swanky deals? Do you want people to come up and tell you "This is a really volcanic ensemble you're wearing, it's really marvelous"! If so, just in time for the great annual suits and ties, black-tie, tuxedo festivities and the mythical 'Masquerade Ball' (Perfect Shoes. Perfect Waistcoat. Perfect Gloves. Perfect Mask. Don’t be shy, and don't forget to shake your tail.); the ultimate custom attire for the ultimate romantic look on new years eve, (or any other high-fashion affair) this genderless outfit is perfect for anybody; guaranteed to accentuate fluid curves, sharpen up your style, yet also bring forth that natural sharp angular profile, assured to put natural beautiful shiny skin-plates on display. Begin assembling today, if you want to assemble in time! That is all (oh yeah, brush your tongue-jaws before you go out, all of them).
posted by infinite intimation at 9:40 AM PST - 11 comments

In late 1999 Kevin Rowland, vocalist and mastermind behind Dexys Midnight Runners released an album called My Beauty. It had been a bewilderingly long time since his last LP – eleven years. Everything about My Beauty, however, was equally bewildering. [more inside]
posted by mintcake! at 8:39 AM PST - 45 comments

The snowpocalypse has hit Britain, again, and you've still not bought a snow shovel. Naturally, all the shops have sold out and have no idea when they'll get more. Let the Internet help you by sending you a reminder for next year...
posted by mr_silver at 8:39 AM PST - 57 comments

From Castletown, it's the quiz of the year! It's back and as hard as ever!
posted by biffa at 7:08 AM PST - 95 comments

Mary, Joseph and the shepherds are all gathered around the baby Jesus in his manger, as loudspeakers emit the occasional animal sound for extra, rustic effect. But this is Catalonia, and no crib is complete without one additional figure. He is known in Catalan as the caganer.

posted by empath at 7:03 AM PST - 42 comments

Maturl Remrit: A Dwarf Fortress Tale. [more inside]
posted by griphus at 6:48 AM PST - 31 comments

109 Cats in sweaters. You're welcome.
posted by shiu mai baby at 6:46 AM PST - 76 comments

Bianca is a 24-year-old software writer and escort from Toronto, Ontario. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario and lived in Dublin, Ireland for many years. She likes cash, properly compiled HTML and four star or higher hotels. She dislikes claims of latex allergies. [more inside]
posted by clearly at 6:11 AM PST - 65 comments

A previously unknown kind of human—the Denisovans—likely roamed Asia for thousands of years, probably interbreeding occasionally with humans like you and me, according to a new genetic study. More.
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:05 AM PST - 30 comments

THE HOMEMADE XMAS VIDEO by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones from 1986 (1, 2, 3, 4)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:05 AM PST - 3 comments

Puppies vs spring door stops.
posted by bwg at 3:20 AM PST - 25 comments

"Snowball Cam has no visible moving parts but [is] able to roll across most terrains, even up hill." A new generation of spycams - very mobile spycams - have been prowling the northern arctic islands of Norway for an upcoming BBC TV program on polar bears. Bilzzard Cam has two electric motors that propel it across the snow - on skis - at speeds up to 40 mph. When threatened by the bears, it releases the onboard decoy device - the Snowball Cam - seen in action here.
posted by woodblock100 at 1:43 AM PST - 34 comments

A new working paper entitled "The Effects of Same-Sex Marriage Laws on Public Health and Welfare" by economists Hugo Mialon, Andrew Francis and Handie Peng at Emory University finds that same-sex marriage bans reduced tolerance for gays and increased the MSM syphilis rate, perhaps by making monogamy less common. The authors also find that same-sex marriage bans tended to reduce tolerance for cohabiting sex, as well as reduced abortion and teen pregnancy, although these effects on teen pregnancy appeared to be very short-lived. They ultimately find no consistent evidence that same-sex marriage bans had any effect on marriage or divorce. A link to the paper can be found here, and a link to their legal appendix here. [more inside]
posted by scunning at 12:13 AM PST - 38 comments

Crew from NASA's International Space Station send holiday greetings to all people of planet Earth.
posted by Taft at 10:09 PM PST - 29 comments

Now that winter is officially here, maybe you're thinking about warmer times, and your vegetable garden. Here are some online tools and resources to help you plan your next bumper crop. Mother Earth News Garden Planner is an online app that can help you layout your garden, and once you've done that, it'll tell you when you should start planting, based on your location. It even takes into account things like successive sowing and crop rotation, all with an eye towards organic farming practices. (Don't like associating with the Mother Earthers? The same app is available via GrowVeg.com.) Considering more unusual varieties this year? How about heirloom varieties? Seed Savers Exchange | Victory Seeds | Seeds of Change. And of course, there's always Burpee for your more garden variety seeds. And be sure to check out these composting tips. Or if all of this is just too much work, you can always sign up for a share in a nearby CSA.
posted by crunchland at 9:29 PM PST - 22 comments

At 89, radio and TV announcer Fred Foy is dead. The booming intro voice for the Lone Ranger, and later the Green Hornet television series, Foy was also Dick Cavett's announcer, for several years. [more inside]
posted by paulsc at 7:35 PM PST - 15 comments

Halfway through the third book of the Hitchhiker's Guide series, there is a throwaway reference to a doomed starship, one whose incredible splendor was matched only by the cosmic absurdity of its maiden-day annihilation. But the story didn't end there. Unbeknownst to many fans, this small piece of Adamsian lore was the inspiration for an ambitious and richly-detailed side-story: a 1998 computer adventure game called Starship Titanic. Designed by Douglas Adams himself, the game set players loose in the infamous vessel, challenging them with a maddening mystery laced with the devilish wit of the novels. The game was laden with extra content, including an in-depth strategy guide, a (mediocre) tie-in novel by Terry Jones, a whimsical First Class In-Flight Magazine, and even a pair of 3D glasses for one of the more inventive puzzles. Key to solving these puzzles was the game's groundbreaking communications system -- players interacted with the ship's robotic crew through a natural language parsing engine called SpookiTalk, whose 10,000+ lines of conversational dialogue spawned 16 hours of audio recorded by professional voice actors, including John Cleese, Terry Jones, and even Douglas Adams himself in several cameos (spoiler cameo). Want to experience the voyage for yourself? Then watch this narrated video playthrough (intro (ads) - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9? 10 11 12 13) ...or click inside for a information on how to run the game for free on Windows, Mac, and Linux (along with a bunch of other goodies!). [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 7:28 PM PST - 109 comments

Never-seen Hells Angels Photos, 1965 - LIFE photographer Bill Ray and writer Joe Bride recall the weeks they spent with Sonny, Buzzard, Hambone, Big D, other Angels and their "old ladies." Of the 36 photos in the gallery, only one had been previously published. (via Daily Jive) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 7:08 PM PST - 78 comments

Do you like the wholesale destruction of everything you cherish? Do you like roguelikes? Then you're in luck because two new roguelikes are yours to play, the zombie-apocalypse city survival fest Rogue Survivor, and the Gamma Worldesque ASCII-Fallout-analogue Caves of Qud. Both are still in beta, both will keep you away from the dinner table over the holidays.
posted by Kattullus at 6:24 PM PST - 23 comments

The credibility of Skeptoid podcast creator, Brian Dunning, has come under fire from the Science Blog / Skeptic community after he posted a questionable podcast regarding DDT. A comprehensive fact check in two parts hit the web soon thereafter, followed by other critiques - suggesting that Dunning's objectivity may be tainted by conservative / libertarian political leanings. [more inside]
posted by jnnla at 5:55 PM PST - 36 comments

If you own a car built before 2007 or any small gas engines, you may be replacing them soon.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 5:51 PM PST - 66 comments

The Wikileaks Cablegate scandal is the most exciting and interesting hacker scandal ever. I rather commonly write about such things, and I’m surrounded by online acquaintances who take a burning interest in every little jot and tittle of this ongoing saga. So it’s going to take me a while to explain why this highly newsworthy event fills me with such a chilly, deadening sense of Edgar Allen Poe melancholia.

But it sure does.

Bruce Sterling on the world of post-Wikileaks diplomacy.
posted by Artw at 5:12 PM PST - 394 comments

The Hideous Financial Monster, by Te Waka Huia.
posted by Evilspork at 4:51 PM PST - 13 comments

Sydney's Siberia a digital poem by Jason Nelson. (via @neilhimself)
posted by juv3nal at 4:15 PM PST - 3 comments

And just think: When your shitty kid marries someone you violently disapprove of 20 years from now, this song -- with its references to blowjobs and songs that were ground into the ground before the kid was a twinkle in your eye -- will serve as the couple's first dance. As you watch your offspring and new in-law twirl around the dance floor, you will reach for a glass of Champagne Loko (President Kid Rock won't try to ban the stuff until he's up for re-election in 2032) and wonder how everything went so, so wrong.

The Village Voice presents the 20 Worst Songs of 2010. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:32 PM PST - 169 comments

Young, gay and homeless in L.A. County (Photo Essay)
posted by kylej at 3:05 PM PST - 31 comments

Merriam-Webster Online has come up with its take on the top word of the year -- plus nine others that are close to the top. (I'm partial to no. 10, furtive, myself.)
posted by anothermug at 3:05 PM PST - 25 comments

The next time your computer won't do what you want, just give it a stern talking-to.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 1:59 PM PST - 26 comments

This morning, firefighters responded to a reported fire in an abandoned laundry building on Chicago's South Side. There was a major collapse of the rear wall which caused the roof truss to fail. A "mayday" transmission (8 minutes in) prompted a 3-11 alarm response to rescue at least four firefighters were trapped in the rubble. Two firefighters, Edward Stringer and Corey Ankum, were killed. 14 other firefighters were injured, 4 critically. Many of the injured were hurt while frantically searching for their comrades. [more inside]
posted by rollbiz at 1:13 PM PST - 54 comments

"The Simple Software That Could —but Probably Won't—Change the Face of Writing." James Somers on Google's Etherpad (previously).
posted by Avenger50 at 12:38 PM PST - 48 comments

Just in time for the holidays, Santabot. But can Santa pass the Turing Test, (previously)?* From the same guy who brought us God Chat (also previously). *Short answer: Nope.
posted by misha at 12:29 PM PST - 23 comments

Rifftrax's new holiday release (preview highlight clips) tackles one of the most notorious bad movies of recent years, the infamous Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, filmed at a struggling Flordia amusement park and produced by a porno director. More on the movie: Agony Booth, Invasion of the B Movies, WFMU's Out Of Context Cinema. (Unfortunate note: the full version is $10, but includes the movie itself.) (Side link: The park SatICB was filmed at, Pirates World, went out of business when Disney World opened up. The locations seen in the movie are all condos now. Before it closed they were known to host rock concerts, archive.org hosts a video of the Grateful Dead playing Pirates World) [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 12:25 PM PST - 18 comments

In 1974, a Cleveland Browns season ticket holder was frustrated with a new fad of throwing paper airplanes in the stadium, and wrote to the Browns to let them know. The Brown's response likely failed to alleviate his concerns.
posted by CharlieSue at 11:29 AM PST - 54 comments

This year's top holiday duet doesn't feature Mariah Carey or Will Ferrell. It's Rodney the Mailman [local news] and Andrew WK [original], live from the Chicago offices of the Onion AV Club in their Holiday Undercover project. In typical Andrew WK style, a slightly... different version is also available.

But this is not Rodney's first appearance -- nor are these covers few and far between. [more inside]
posted by Madamina at 11:05 AM PST - 3 comments

Sweet and simple - be merry and Let It Dough! (goofy SLNYT filter)
posted by peachfuzz at 10:56 AM PST - 6 comments

One Page Magazines. Wired. The Economist. Time. Vogue.
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:38 AM PST - 58 comments

Deep in Cathar country lies Bugarach and it's Magic Mountain. As reported in UK Daily Telegraph, The mayor of the picturesque French village has threatened to call in the army to seal it off from a tide of New Age fanatics and UFO watchers, who are convinced it is the only place on Earth to be spared Armageddon in 2012.
posted by adamvasco at 10:21 AM PST - 25 comments

Missoula District Court: Jury pool in marijuana case stages ‘mutiny’. 'A funny thing happened on the way to a trial in Missoula County District Court last week. Jurors – well, potential jurors – staged a revolt. They took the law into their own hands, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t about to convict anybody for having a couple of buds of marijuana. Never mind that the defendant in question also faced a felony charge of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs. The tiny amount of marijuana police found while searching Touray Cornell’s home on April 23 became a huge issue for some members of the jury panel. No, they said, one after the other. No way would they convict somebody for having a 16th of an ounce.'
posted by VikingSword at 10:21 AM PST - 45 comments

"Designed by Giant Robot head guru Eric Nakamura and his friend Len Higa, the car was stripped down and operated on extensively, with a simple goal in mind: transform this Scion car into one giant Nintendo Entertainment System. " The Scion Gallery and Giant Robot team up to curate "Pixel Pushers" a show about the 8-bit aesthetic. The Scion gallery's tour of the show.
posted by The Whelk at 9:24 AM PST - 7 comments

Visually sumptuous, Gurafiku is a collection of visual research pertaining to Japanese graphic design. Assembled by the designer abroad; Ryan Hageman. Some of the categories: Ukiyo-e | Illustration | Typography |Manga | 1960's | 1970's | 1980's |1990's. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:21 AM PST - 6 comments

Feeling outflanked this holiday season? Perhaps you need to brush up on your stratagems. But how many stratagems do you need? [more inside]
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 8:37 AM PST - 32 comments

This clip of the baby preacher has been floating around the internet for a while. If you've never seen it before, it's memorable - this toddler, too young to be able to talk, is imitating a preacher in front of a church congregation. [more inside]
posted by rodmandirect at 7:25 AM PST - 60 comments

"People that like Spider-Man and super heroes and villains and violence and kissing would like this play." A six-year-old girl reviews -- sorry, "re-piews" -- the injury-plagued production of Julie Taymor's Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, currently in previews in New York.
posted by escabeche at 6:40 AM PST - 46 comments

How do you get a Comic Sans user to stop, just stop? An eloquent, well-designed, appeal. With stickers! [more inside]
posted by pompelmo at 5:56 AM PST - 168 comments

A new paper about bees in Biology Letters, Blackawton bees concludes with "We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before." The authors are 25 children between 8 and 10 from the Blackawton Public School, becoming the youngest scientist to be published in a Royal Society journal.
posted by rpn at 3:54 AM PST - 16 comments

"This ascension took 143 tries and was damn hard, I tell you. Look at the conducts if you are curious why." [more inside]
posted by vapidave at 2:02 AM PST - 51 comments

What species of food is 2000 years old, has evolved copious adaptive variations, and still tastes delicious as ever? [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 1:23 AM PST - 31 comments

Chinese punk you ask? No, we're not talking about heroin. This is Chinese punk. [more inside]
posted by dubusadus at 11:47 PM PST - 27 comments

The UConn Women's basketball team just won 89 games in a row. Doing this broke a 36 year old NCAA record. [more inside]
posted by colfax at 9:24 PM PST - 37 comments

Getting to advanced reading level content. As pioneered by Adrien Chen of Gawker, by far the most interesting application of the tool is its ability to rate the overall level of material on any given site, simply by dropping site: [domain.com] into the search box.
posted by Muirwylde at 9:15 PM PST - 51 comments

Extra, by Ken Ishii. [NSFW]
posted by boo_radley at 9:10 PM PST - 31 comments

Vanishing Act. Paul Collins tells the story of Barbara Newhall Follett. The daughter of authors Wilson Follett and Helen Follett, Barbara began writing at the age of 4. As she grew older, she developed a private language of her own, evolved from her view of the world of nature. Her first book, The House Without Windows, was published when she was twelve. In December 1939 Barbara walked out of her apartment and was never seen again. "Some prodigies flourish, some disappear. But Barbara did leave one last comment to the world about writing—a brief piece in a 1933 issue of Horn Book that earnestly recommends that parents give their own children typewriters. 'Perhaps there would simply be a terrific wholesale destruction of typewriters,' she admits. 'An effort would have to be made to impress upon children that a typewriter is magic.'" The entirety of her known writings now resides in six boxes at the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library. (via longreads)
posted by ocherdraco at 7:37 PM PST - 33 comments

DANCING ALONE TO PONY (somewhat NSFW due to solitary bumping and grinding)
posted by oinopaponton at 6:18 PM PST - 24 comments

When you see a song from 1924 called "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy", you just wanna hear it, right? Then, maybe, read some contemporary observations on it. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:44 PM PST - 35 comments

"This page shows a scale model of the solar system, shrunken down to the point where the Sun, normally more than eight hundred thousand miles across, is the size you see it here. The planets are shown in corresponding scale." [more inside]
posted by bwg at 5:36 PM PST - 63 comments

A space wardrobe - images of the National Air and Space Museum’s collection of spacesuits from throughout the history of American space exploration.
posted by Artw at 5:00 PM PST - 9 comments

Neal Fegan, of the Montana Transit Authority, designs custom-built, one-of-a-kind velocipedes with an 8-point steering system. [more inside]
posted by gman at 4:28 PM PST - 17 comments

"The Star Wars Christmas Special" by Gamervision finally rights the wrong that was "The Star Wars Holiday Special" (which is available on YouTube, should you want to go there: Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3).
posted by SkylitDrawl at 4:05 PM PST - 24 comments

"Dungeons and Drawings," in which two artists reinterpret the D&D Bestiary.
posted by brundlefly at 3:03 PM PST - 27 comments

"And she was like 'oh my gosh I'm going to have the son of God'. And then she was like 'no I can't, I'm not married and stuff.'" The Christmas story, told by Kiwi kids.
posted by embrangled at 2:40 PM PST - 51 comments

The fitness enthusiast. The pundits. The blogger. The celebutante. —Webcomicker Dylan Meconis (of Portland's own Periscope Studio) has been dragging the Danse Macabre into the new millennium, one day at a time.
posted by kipmanley at 2:09 PM PST - 16 comments

Craig Rowin asks: "Please Give Me One Million Dollars" (2, 3)
posted by The Devil Tesla at 1:20 PM PST - 34 comments

The anti-gay donations that Target apologized for? They never stopped.
posted by hermitosis at 12:51 PM PST - 87 comments

1884: Yesterday's Future. A story of outstanding heroism in the face of deception, subterfuge and treachery. Conjuring up the belief that it was made forty years before film was even invented, 1884: Yesterdays Future tells of a future that might have been but never was. Directed by Tim Ollive, the film is a mix of animation, puppetry and two dimensional and three dimensional computer generated imagery (CGI) set against backgrounds created using stunning artwork, model sets and period photographs from the Hulton Picture Library division of Getty Images. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:46 PM PST - 5 comments

Welcome to the Hunger Games. Some call this trilogy the next Twilight, though others beg to differ. Either way, Stephenie Meyer is a fan (as is Stephen King) and the upcoming movie is generating all kinds of buzz, even two-plus years before its scheduled debut. [more inside]
posted by cereselle at 12:00 PM PST - 95 comments

30 Years of BAD National Geographic Pictures - Some of the highlights of Bruce Dale's 30 year career at National Geographic including 10 trips to China beginning in the late 1970's, the hologram cover for the 100th anniversary edition, and mounting a camera on the tail of a jumbo jet for in-flight photographs.
posted by roaring beast at 11:46 AM PST - 25 comments

(NSFW) In the 1980's, a brilliant university student named Issei Sagawa went ahead and killed and, uhm, ate one of his fellow classmates. VBS TV interviews Issei Sagawa, who became a celebrity in Japan after walking free, having been deemed "sane, but evil" by a team of psychologists in France. "Was Sagawa suffering from a mental disorder? Was he really a sexual psychopath? Probably both. By his own admission, Issei Sagawa says that he had to possess a caucasian woman completely, and the only way this overwhelming need could be truly satisfied was by eating her." [more inside]
posted by fantodstic at 10:48 AM PST - 106 comments

In 1933, a mysterious benefactor posted an ad in the local Canton, Ohio paper, offering some Christmas funds to people who might otherwise shy away from asking for aid, even in those tough times. That Anonymous Giver went by the pseudonym "Mr. B. Virdot," and ended up giving some money to 150 families and people in town who wrote in with their personal stories. The unknown person's identity was never revealed, and his true identity was not even known to his grandson, until the mysterious benefactor's daughter gave her son, Ted Gup, a battered suitcase full of letters and checks signed by "Mr. B. Virdot". The mysterious man was Samuel J. Stone, a Jewish man whose family had fled Romania when he was young. Stone had done well in the United States, and owned a small chain of clothing stores in 1933. The story of the mysterious gifts hasn't faded from Canton, and on November 5 of this year, Stone's grandson, Gup, gave a public talk to the community and decedents of the original recipients of Virdot's gifts. And now, Canton residents are bringing back the spirit of Virdot. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:37 AM PST - 16 comments

Amazing 450 page presentation created in Google Docs. From Google Demo Slam: three animators took three days to create a presentation that would make Powerpoint and Keynote cry. via Engadget
posted by sweetkid at 10:37 AM PST - 32 comments

Sherman's March and America is a digital representation of historian Anne Sarah Rubin's project on how Americans have remembered General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864. The funnest part are the interactive maps. Clicking on the yellow-highlighted pins opens up a video exploring the significance of that spot on the map. Each map represents a different genre of memories of the march (civilian, soldiers, fiction, etc). My favorite is the narrative of the events in Milledgeville, Georgia on the Soldiers Map, featuring plastic toy soldiers and burning cardboard buildings.
posted by marxchivist at 10:34 AM PST - 16 comments

Food Court Flash Mob sings the "Hallelujah" chorus. This time things go poorly. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 9:08 AM PST - 37 comments

Brian Burke is tormented by how much terror you can squeeze into ten seconds. Ten seconds in a car careening into oncoming traffic on a stretch of Indiana highway just shy of the Ohio border. Ten seconds sailing sideways through sheets of falling snow, straight at a reinforced truck. Ten seconds with the same unthinkable ending every time. [more inside]
posted by BZArcher at 9:05 AM PST - 29 comments

Idris Elba was cast to portray Heimdall in the upcoming Thor movie. This has got the Council of Conservative Citizens (an American white nationalist group) all in a tizzy, since traditionally the Norse gods were all white, since Norsemen were, well... just about all white. Gabe raises the point - can a racist clock be right twice a day? via
posted by FatherDagon at 7:27 AM PST - 297 comments

Jafar Panahi is back in prison. The acclaimed Iranian director, one of the leading figures in the Iranian New Wave, was jailed this week for six years — and banned from filmmaking for 20 years — after his prosecution for allegedly working on a film about the disputed Iranian presidential election of 2009. (The New Republic recently trumpeted his status as "the filmmaker laureate of The Green Movement.") Another filmmaker, Muhammad Rasoulof, received a six-year sentence on similar charges. "This is a catastrophe for Iran's cinema," Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi told the Guardian. [more inside]
posted by Joey Bagels at 6:54 AM PST - 9 comments

Baltimore scandal! Denise Whiting, the owner of Cafe Hon and originator of "Hon Fest" has stirred up controversy in Charm City by trademarking "Hon". People are really, really, up in arms, including the editorial writers of the Baltimore Sun and another business down the street. Denise Whiting responds. More of her defense here.
posted by josher71 at 6:24 AM PST - 80 comments

"I can sense stars, and their whispers amid the roaring of our own Sun." So goes one poetic status of the Voyager 2 twitterfeed, which appeals to my sense of wonder like nothing else on the internet. Interstellar space probes and microblogging go hand in hand in the 21st Century.
posted by Kattullus at 5:21 AM PST - 23 comments

Thought to be first entered in April 2009 by a team of British explorers, Hang Son Doong is now believed to be the world's largest cave. Interactive map.
posted by paulsc at 4:24 AM PST - 37 comments

It's crazy how a simple mirror filter can transform a video into something else. (via.) [more inside]
posted by Phire at 4:18 AM PST - 26 comments

Dsankt (previously, previously-er) explored the Paris Metro for quite some time, and came back with great photos and a series of posts on what's down there. [more inside]
posted by vivelame at 3:37 AM PST - 7 comments

The smell of the Moon. Space. Pharaohs. Graffiti. Anger. Rain. Phantoms. Cancer. The Middle Ages.
posted by Paragon at 3:17 AM PST - 17 comments

MOAR HOUSE AND WHATEVER [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 12:02 AM PST - 6 comments

Labyrinths – not to be confused with mazes – are being rediscovered as tools for contemplation, meditation, reflection, and community well-being, as well as inspiration for architecture, music, dance, ritual, business, and visual art. [more inside]
posted by velvet winter at 11:34 PM PST - 18 comments

John Dolan remembers teaching at - and getting fired from - the American University of Iraq - Sulaimani, a conservative, English-language university in Iraq. Former Interim Provost and Chancellor of AUI-S John Agresto responds to Dolan's article. Dolan responds to Agresto. More on AUI-S from Counterpunch.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:12 PM PST - 40 comments

Sure, it was cute when Bambi slipped all over the ice, but the story usually ends less adorably. Upon finding a deer stuck on the ice, you can chip away the ice and let it swim free, winch it off the ice by the leg, or even blow it off the ice with a helicopter, but it probably won't matter—the deer will die anyway, and you'll just end up getting in trouble. Just this week, eight tiny reindeer fell into a lake at a Christmas park. Their entombed bodies are protruding through its icy surface for all the visiting kids to see. (Maybe coyotes did it.) People have been rescuing deer from the ice every winter for decades and decades and decades. If you want things to end well, let the professionals handle it.
posted by waldo at 8:25 PM PST - 52 comments

Everyone take a moment to enjoy the last night of the open internet
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:20 PM PST - 137 comments

"...it can be predicted that male and female astronauts will engage in sexual relations during a mission to Mars." And then there are the babies....Martian babies. Sex On Mars: Pregnancy, Fetal Development, and Sex In Outer Space
posted by wallstreet1929 at 7:12 PM PST - 58 comments

Legendary hip hop producer DJ Premier interviewed in the XXL Icon Interview and The Smoking Section. Remarkably candid conversations about his life in East Coast hip hop, with interesting stories about his work with Jay-Z, Biggie, Puff, Nas, Jeru the Damaga, Group Home, Suge Knight, Christina Aguilera and of course, Guru. On finding records to sample: "Well, there’s still diggin’ spots. If you’re in that world like I am, you know the spots, you see everybody—Just Blaze, Alchemist, Large Professor, Pete Rock—we still pop up in those spots. You got Big City records, you got Turntable Lab, you still have A1, you got Academy, you know. I’m not gonna tell you all the digging spots."
posted by the mad poster! at 5:56 PM PST - 11 comments

Short vids by photographer Noah Kalina: Chinese Herb store, (A guy standing still in the midst of movement), Seltzer (wonderfully NSFW!), Space Rail, Earl, The Floss Boss (also NSFW, due to some pubic hair & candy floss combination), a cat. 30 more, there… From his blog: A fitting portrait of Julian Assange by Phillip Toledano, a Giant Sesame Bagel Admiring Its Own Beauty... [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 5:30 PM PST - 5 comments

Alpacas with (post-)punk hair [more inside]
posted by pompelmo at 5:15 PM PST - 12 comments

Vimeo Video School is a fun place for anyone to learn how to make better videos. Start by browsing the Vimeo Lessons, or find specific video tutorials created by other members.
posted by netbros at 4:53 PM PST - 4 comments

Awesome first person video of skiing in great conditions... with a parachute
posted by mathowie at 4:08 PM PST - 43 comments

BBC Correspondent Brian Hanrahan, who rose to fame during his coverage of the Falklands Conflict in 1982, has died at the age of 61. [more inside]
posted by penguin pie at 4:06 PM PST - 10 comments

Though it was eclipsed in press coverage by the repealing of DADT, congress congruently relaxed regulations on community based, Low Power FM radio stations. [more inside]
posted by furnace.heart at 2:45 PM PST - 46 comments

A Foreigner's Guide to American Culture After De Tocqueville, just about every European sent to the United States has treated the posting as an invitation to help diagnose the country's faults and suggest ways in which they might be fixed.
posted by modernnomad at 1:40 PM PST - 162 comments

"We gathered our favorite cutting-edge content creators from across the internet and gave each of them a deceptively simple mission -- tell a short story in an innovative way." Showtime presents: Short Stories. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:38 PM PST - 4 comments

Minimalist logos on labels. I didn't realize this was possible, but I want to eat Nutella even more now.
posted by Leta at 1:27 PM PST - 59 comments

It's holiday time! Perhaps you'd like to add some DIY decoration to your gifts. Let's make some "Literary Leaf Gift Tags." Which book should you make them from? Oh, any old book will do—say, this one looks splendid. Et voila! Gift tags that are perfect for the literate aesthete, complete with mentions of "gaunt human skulls" and "slave labor camps." [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 12:57 PM PST - 8 comments

Life Flashes By (Mac, Windows installers, .slg file and SLUDGE engine for linux) is an introspective It's A Wonderful Life/Christmas Carol-like kickstarter funded interactive story by Deidra Kiai (reviews 1,2,3). [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 12:50 PM PST - 3 comments

Carol of the Bells is a well known, traditional handbell song. Carol of the Belts, not so much. (NSFW, SLYT). From Here Come the Mummies.
posted by SLC Mom at 12:45 PM PST - 17 comments

Stephen Harper once referred to the Canadian Senate as a "dumping ground for liberal cronies". He has now appointed his 36th senator, more than double the number of appointments by his predecessor, Paul Martin. Of further interest is that while 5/17 of Martin's appointments were members of the opposition party all 36 of Stephen Harpers appointments were directly affiliated with the conservative party. His most recent appointments? A Priest and a former CFL Comissioner
posted by sarastro at 12:36 PM PST - 35 comments

If you lived in Canada in the 80s and 90s, then the holiday season meant one thing: Give like Santa, save like Scrooge.
posted by mightygodking at 11:25 AM PST - 42 comments

Some 10 minutes after driving Chris Williams's Packard-engined Behemoth my hands were still shaking, my voice was croaking and the cool autumn wind was chilling my sweaty overalls. My face was cherry red from the infernal heat of the engine and my eyebrows singed from its 24 flaming exhaust stubs. In my entire career I have never driven anything as visceral, as physical or as sheer bloody terrifying as Mavis, the 42-litre Packard-engined Bentley.
posted by veedubya at 11:03 AM PST - 46 comments

First Time to the Nether! (SLYT) If you like hearing people being endearingly excited and/or Minecraft, you'll like this.
posted by jragon at 10:43 AM PST - 56 comments

So what does the question "Why don't you believe in God?" really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking "what makes you so special? How come you weren't brainwashed with the rest of us?"

Ricky Gervais explains why he's an atheist.
posted by swift at 10:40 AM PST - 307 comments

Werner Herzog Reads Twas The Night Before Christmas. Previously in the series, Werner Herzog Reads Where's Waldo, Werner Herzog Reads Madeline, Werner Herzog Reads Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and Werner Herzog Reads Curious George. Covered previously on Mefi: 1, 2, and 3. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 10:11 AM PST - 15 comments

Oil-absorbing booms from the BP oil spill are being recycled into plastic parts for the (now in production and delivered to customers) extended-range EV Chevy Volt.
posted by SirOmega at 9:28 AM PST - 22 comments

Must Be Santa was originally recorded (song on YT) in 1969 by Mitch Miller, with simple call-and-response lyrics that were a hit (song on YT) for Lorne Greene in 1966. The catchy song is amusing for small children, and cute when sung by groups of kids. With minor lyrical tweaks and a rowdy polka style (live clip), Brave Combo liven up the Christmas classic. Leave it to Bob Dylan to take it further. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:26 AM PST - 14 comments

Jonah Keri looks at the unconventional methods being used by the Texas Rangers to improve the durability and effectiveness of their pitching staff.
posted by reenum at 8:58 AM PST - 13 comments

Total Lunar Eclipse Tonight! "A rare event not seen in 372 years will occur early Tuesday morning, when a total lunar eclipse coincides with the winter solstice."
posted by xtian at 8:29 AM PST - 84 comments

Steambirds: Survival (flash) is a sequel to Steambirds, the steampunk turn-based shooter, and is as addictive as patent medicine.
posted by klangklangston at 8:25 AM PST - 9 comments

CBS investigates the next financial meltdown: The coming crisis with U.S. state budget shortfalls. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 7:14 AM PST - 119 comments

Check out this 60 Mminutes segment about people with superior autobiographical memory, who can remember virtually every day of their life. [more inside]
posted by nomadicink at 7:13 AM PST - 38 comments

... the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators. The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing. (previously)
posted by Joe Beese at 6:26 AM PST - 79 comments

And now, the latest digital short from The Lonely Island- I Just Had Sex (Feat. Akon).
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:24 AM PST - 37 comments

Meet the top 100 global thinkers of 2010.
posted by klue at 4:34 AM PST - 36 comments

Various international toilet rules: Where do I put the paper?
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:14 AM PST - 40 comments

The British Government wants to ban porn from the internet. The move would force ISPs to block all pornographic content unless users had 'opted in' (providing a handy list of people who wish to view pornography) and is said to be motivated by a desire to combat the early sexualization of children. There is no word on how 'porn' is to be defined.
posted by unSane at 4:01 AM PST - 134 comments

This evening in Charleston, SC, a Secession Ball! When they don their "period formal" hoop skirts tonight some ladies may rue the fact that have no slaves to pull their corsets tight. The ladies and their escorts, many of whom are members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who would like us to believe that the Civil War was not about slavery. The NAACP, and others disagree. The NAACP has organized a peaceful protest.
posted by mareli at 3:44 AM PST - 115 comments

folktek do beautiful things with sound and sculpture that are so unique as to defy description
posted by mhjb at 1:18 AM PST - 10 comments

Right Wing astroturfing A non-scientific analysis of the patterns in forum board discussions on a variety of topics. The gist: discussions of issues in which there's money at stake (like climate change, public health and corporate tax avoidance) are often characterised by amazing levels of abuse and disruption by rightwing libertarians who are pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation. Discussions of issues in which there's little money at stake tend to be a lot more civilised than debates about issues where companies stand to lose or gain billions.
posted by novenator at 12:14 AM PST - 79 comments

Two years ago, Deepwater Wind proposed a wind farm off the shore of Block Island, Rhode Island which would have been the country's first offshore wind farm. Ever since, one legal battle after another has brought the project all the way to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 9:06 PM PST - 26 comments

A 3 hour podcast interview (part 2 here) with British comics legend Pat Mills, most famous for the anti-war WW1 strip Charley's War, the creation 2000ad and many of the most enduring characters within it, superhero hunter Marshall Law and numerous other comics. His work usually combines combines dark humour, a dash of left wing politics and ludicrous amounts of violence, now as much as ever with puritan zombie hunter Defoe. Subjects discussed in the intreview include the death of artist John Hicklenton, being Irish-English, Sláine and the comparitive lack of celtic heroes in modern popular culture, Oliver Cromwell and the Levellers. Bonus link: 20 pages of Metalzoic, Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neills "lost" story.
posted by Artw at 9:00 PM PST - 18 comments

"At the time, in the field that we flopped into, the artists wrote and performed all of their own material,” Felice recalled. “Then, after a while, the road got to them. They couldn’t think, they couldn’t doodle around on the front porch with a guitar, they couldn’t stroll through the woods and get inspired. So Boudleaux and I were the first people who came to Nashville who didn’t do anything but write. We were the factory." What do the songs Love Hurts, Rocky Top, Bye Bye Love, and Wake Up Little Susie have in common? Why, they were all written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, of course! Perhaps best known for the hits they penned for the Everly Brothers, The Bryants were an American husband and wife songwriting duo whose compositions, mostly country music, are estimated to have been on hundreds of millions of records sold. Let's get to know them a bit better, shall we? [more inside]
posted by ORthey at 8:09 PM PST - 13 comments

The History of Monuments (slight artistic nudity) is a 42 meter long mural by Wang Qingsong. Before clicking "more inside" try to guess what materials he used to make the work... [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 6:27 PM PST - 15 comments

MeFi's own Elizabeth Pisani, of The Wisdom of Whores, on Big Data and the End of the Scientific Method (PDF).
posted by Weebot at 5:36 PM PST - 28 comments

Christmas and Toy Catalogs: 1942-1992 (Warning: heinousness inside). But wait, there's more vintage Christmas advertising.
posted by bwg at 5:07 PM PST - 35 comments

When Parents Attack Text.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:48 PM PST - 121 comments

Misinformation and the 2010 Election - A Study of the US Electorate. The key findings of the study are:

1. Perceptions of Misleading and False Information An overwhelming majority of voters said that they encountered misleading or false information in the last election, with a majority saying that this occurred frequently and occurred more frequently than usual.

2. Evidence of Misinformation Among Voters The poll found strong evidence that voters were substantially misinformed on many of the issues prominent in the election campaign, including the stimulus legislation, the healthcare reform law, TARP, the state of the economy, climate change, campaign contributions by the US Chamber of Commerce and President Obama’s birthplace. In particular, voters had perceptions about the expert opinion of economists and other scientists that were quite different from actual expert opinion. [more inside]
posted by caddis at 1:54 PM PST - 50 comments

A Humanitarian Gift Guide: Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like a scarf from a brothel survivor. [more inside]
posted by MrBCID at 1:16 PM PST - 25 comments

Connecticut is apparently no longer part of New England. [more inside]
posted by auralcoral at 12:32 PM PST - 149 comments

Creep, a devastating (and oddly seasonal) animated short by Alex Heller. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 12:09 PM PST - 53 comments

The Flowing Great Wall is an ongoing photo series by Wang Wenlan, the Director of the photography department at The China Daily. [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 11:06 AM PST - 4 comments

Knitting a sweater is like saying "I love you" 150,000 times in a row. But it's too late for most of us to turn yarn into sweater this year (even those of us who crochet really fast). If you didn't schedule your holiday crafting successfully, here are some excuses for not crafting. Don't knit or crochet? Gift ideas for your favorite crocheter or knitter.
posted by asperity at 9:39 AM PST - 52 comments

Neil Gaiman wants a Christmas tree, just one problem, he's Jewish. And he's not the only one debating this issue. There's a discussion over at slate.com on whether or not Jews should own a Christmas tree.
posted by Fizz at 9:07 AM PST - 130 comments

The Great Typekit Table — Finding a good Typekit font for long blocks of text is hard, but Sleepover has done it so you don't have to. They've pared it down according to two simple rules: first, the font has to have lowercase, uppercase, bold, italic, and bold italic; second, the font can't be handwriting, script, or monospace.
posted by netbros at 7:00 AM PST - 37 comments

Initiating Calculations... Developing rhyme scheme... (nsfw audio)
posted by nanojath at 6:56 AM PST - 20 comments

In recession-hit Saginaw, MI, the initial setting of Simon and Garfunkel's "America", mural painter Eric Shantz has begun painting the lyrics to the song on abandoned buildings.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 5:46 AM PST - 41 comments

The TSA let a loaded gun get on an airplaine. (also, also, also) [more inside]
posted by knz at 3:07 AM PST - 130 comments

But street football doesn't really exist any more, Cooper admits. "Many children have never played outside. And in some cases their parents haven't either." He cites a 2009 survey by the charity Living Streets which found that only half of five- to 10-year-olds had ever played in their street, whereas nine of out 10 of their grandparents had. How the increasing professionalisation of soccer at all levels in the UK has led to the death of park and street footie for ordinary kids.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:46 AM PST - 22 comments

Kitten wearing a tiny hat. Tiny plaid ninjas [Flash]. Tiny houses and tiny apartments. Tiny train set. Tiny horse. Tiny wind turbine. Tiny food [slideshow]. Tiny Breakout [Flash]. Tiny plastic soccer players and tiny streakers. Tiny Obama family. Tiny car. Photographs of really tiny things. Tiny trucks pulling realistic sushi rolls. Tiny actual cupcakes, tiny knitted cupcakes. Tiny fingernail art. [more inside]
posted by NoraReed at 11:03 PM PST - 28 comments

Streets of Fire (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) is a 1984 film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross. It was described in previews, trailers, and posters as "A Rock & Roll Fable." It is an unusual mix of musical, action, drama, and comedy with elements both of retro-1950s and 1980s. ... The film was promoted as a summer blockbuster but failed critically and commercially, grossing only USD $8 million in North America, well below its $14.5 million budget. Its dynamic musical score by the likes of Jim Steinman, Ry Cooder, and others, as well as the hit Dan Hartman song "I Can Dream About You", however, has helped it attain something of a cult following among fans.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:27 PM PST - 59 comments

Psycho Killer dance - Tengobaila sure does like improvisational, spontaneous, informal, interpretive, freestyle dancing ... and she has uploaded 857 videos to prove it, find your fave. (Via B3TA) [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 9:03 PM PST - 27 comments

Meet the Gifford Children's Choir out of Racine, Wisconsin as they perform Still Alive from Portal. [more inside]
posted by Evilspork at 7:48 PM PST - 42 comments

digitalculturebooks is an imprint of University of Michigan Press which releases scholarly books under a creative commons license. They've got 19 books published already and more on the way. Among those on offer are poet and English professor Kevin Stein's Poetry's Afterlife: Verse in the Digital Age, anthropologist Bonnie A. Nardi's My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, English professor Buzz Alexander's Is William Martinez Not Our Brother?: Twenty Years of the Prison Creative Arts Project and English professor Elizabeth Carolyn Miller's Framed: The New Woman Criminal in British Culture at the Fin de Siècle. If you don't want to read a whole book they also have essay collections, such as Civic Engagement in the Wake of Katrina and Best Technology Writing 2008, which includes pieces by, among others, Cass Sunstein, Robin Meija and Walter Kirn. [previously, Rock Paper Shotgun scribe Jim Rossignol's This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities]
posted by Kattullus at 7:35 PM PST - 6 comments

The most detailed photo of the surface of the sun looks like this. It was taken by the team at CA's Big Bear Solar Observatory. They have some other neat images of our nearest star at their website. [more inside]
posted by fantodstic at 5:02 PM PST - 46 comments

My brother often informs me that I live 'the life of Riley'. The other night while re-reading Bill Bryson's Made in America I noted he mentioned the origin of the phrase was a popular 1880s song (possibly 1883) Is That Mr. Reilly? by Pat Rooney, in which "the hero speculates on what he would do with a fortune", and revived for use during WWI. Curious, I found several possible origins, though the song remains the top contender. Dictionary.com defines life of Riley as "a carefree, comfortable, and thoroughly enjoyable way of living. The term became popular and eventually 'The Life of Riley' was used as the title of an American radio sitcom (Wiki), followed by a movie and television series. It was used again with the alternate spelling 'The Life of Reilly' in 1995 as the title of a short film from Ireland, and in a 2006 movie starring Charles Nelson Reilly. In 2009 'The Life of Riley' was the name of a British television comedy. Now that's a phrase with staying power. It's the name of an Irish band, an online store in the UK, it was used by a sign maker, and quite obviously, as the moniker of several drinking establishments, such as the Life of Riley Tavern in Portland, Oregon; The Life of Reilly - Irish Pub & Restaurant in Baltimore, in the United Kingdom as the 'Life Of Riley' in Glasgow, Lanarkshire; and 'Life of Reilly Pub' in Harrow, Middlesex; and with a strange possessive at the 'Life of Reilly's Pub and Grill' in Long Beach, New York. Let's also not forget the mysterious MeFite LifeofRiley, whose stats stand entirely at zero. My main reason for writing all this is to ask: how many Mefites use this term? I do, but unfortunately my brother is wrong: I don't live the life of Riley. I might one day, if I win the lottery . . .
posted by bwg at 5:00 PM PST - 29 comments

Fantastic weekly music news and interview program Sound Opinions presents the 2010 edition of their annual Holiday Christmas Spectacular, featuring weird and wonderful holiday tunes curated by record collector Andy Cirzan. [mp3 link to show, approx 1 hour] This year, they're also offering a limited time download of Andy's 2-disc compilation. (Get it quick -- download disappears Jan 1.)
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM PST - 4 comments

The Onion presents: The People Who Mattered In 2010 [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:08 PM PST - 83 comments

People who enjoyed Rap News 5 - Wikileaks & the war on journalism which covered the Iraq War Logs (featuring, er, Donald Rumsfeld and Bill O'Reilly) will probably enjoy the new episode Rap News 6 - Wikileaks' Cablegate (featuring, er, Hillary Clinton, Alex Jones and others). [more inside]
posted by memebake at 2:59 PM PST - 11 comments

Katja's Aurora Page. Katja Gottschewski, German expat somewhere in Norway, posts an immense amount of awesome aurora pictures on her blog-homepage. [more inside]
posted by Namlit at 2:50 PM PST - 4 comments

This post is a) NSFW or grandmothers, b) Derivative of previous stuff on Metafilter. Having said that, here goes: Canada is a Spanish production company. They do ads, fashion and the best videos I've seen in a very long time. You'd do well to start here. [more inside]
posted by Cobalt at 2:09 PM PST - 27 comments

"The message to [t]his generation is very clear: don’t get any fancy ideas about being an engaged citizen. Go back to your X-Box and X-Factor, and leave politics to the millionaires in charge." - Johann Hari of the Independent reporting on an unnerving trend in the UK. [more inside]
posted by rubyrudy at 1:35 PM PST - 52 comments

Your apps are watching you
posted by peacay at 12:31 PM PST - 79 comments

Jessica Harper, whom most mefites will recognize as the star of Phantom of the Paradise and Suspiria, has reinvented herself as The Crabby Cook and recently released a book full of recipes and survival tips. Among the treasures on her YouTube channel: fun with her young relatives in "Christmas Cookie Crisis."
posted by hermitosis at 12:01 PM PST - 16 comments

Atheist Camille Paglia slams atheist Christopher Hitchens for not doing his research and suggests we should value the bible like literature.
posted by aunt_winnifred at 11:52 AM PST - 95 comments

Daniel Mustard has had quite a year. From homelessness on the streets of New York, to singing Creep on Opie and Anthony's homeless shopping spree, to getting sober, to getting a record contract. Is this the American dream?
posted by Xurando at 11:10 AM PST - 10 comments

In the 1920's, there was a series of race cars developed by Count Louis Zborowski, Chitty Bang Bang I through IV. Though in the film version of Ian Fleming's book the name came from the sound the cars made, there is some conjecture that the name is based on a bawdy WWI song. Zborowski died before finishing Chitty Bang Bang 4, (also known as the Higham Special). The car killed its next owner in a particularly grisly fashion and was buried on the spot by his horrified friends. [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 11:10 AM PST - 18 comments

Videogames reach the uncanny valley with the facial animations (yt video) in Rockstar's L.A. Noir, their 1940s Los Angeles set detective game.
posted by Artw at 10:24 AM PST - 77 comments

Fried GnoccAAAAH! (SLYT, fun starts at about 1:00.)
posted by griphus at 9:52 AM PST - 36 comments

TEH GOOGLE IS KILLING TEH CAPSLOCK OMG
posted by macadamiaranch at 9:45 AM PST - 95 comments

Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric and Davin Wood (composer on "Awesome Show, Great Job!") are going to release an album as Heidecker & Wood. It includes an eight minute Christmas suite that they just released for free. It straddles the line between parody and nostalgic tribute kinda amazingly.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 9:17 AM PST - 15 comments

The Senate has cleared the way for a final vote to repeal the U.S. military policy, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 8:53 AM PST - 773 comments

"What do we see when we look straight at the sun and then close our eyes? That's right, a bright moving disk that lasts several seconds. Every child knows this afterimage effect. We use the afterimage effect for a completely new brand experience, for the first advertising commercial that doesn't use a directly visible logo, but by doing so generates a more intensive connection to the target group. We developed a cinema ad for BMW motorcycles that turns spectators into astonished fans. It does this by using an afterimage of the brand to literally get inside people's heads."
posted by grouse at 8:41 AM PST - 53 comments

Teeny tiny apocalypse. [more inside]
posted by rtha at 8:26 AM PST - 23 comments

Open.mapquest.com uses OpenStreetMap (previously, -er, -erer, -est) data served through MapQuest's own server, and any edits feed back into the main OpenStreetMap database. [more inside]
posted by scruss at 8:18 AM PST - 13 comments

This year the IceHotel, built out of 30,000 tons of snow and 4,000 tons of ice, features a Tron room. Cool does not even begin to describe it. [more inside]
posted by dabitch at 7:34 AM PST - 15 comments

The Watson Artificial Intelligence system has been discussed on MeFi before. The Jeopardy AI will get a chance to prove its skills in early February when it squares off against Jeopardy titans Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter for the prize of a million dollars.
posted by grandsham at 9:30 PM PST - 31 comments

Discoveries spanning five continents and three oceans cap the United Nations' International Year of Biodiversity (Many of which are little things [list of the described species]) [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 9:16 PM PST - 8 comments

It may take years, but some researcher will travel to Pakistan’s tribal areas and produce a definitive study on what it’s been like to live amidst an aerial bombardment from American pilotless aircraft. When that account inevitably comes out, it’s likely to find that 2010 — and especially the final quarter of 2010 — marked a turning point in how civilians coped with a drone war that turned relentless. (previously: 1,2)
posted by Joe Beese at 7:20 PM PST - 147 comments

Dream of the 90's is a short music video promoting the upcoming sketch comedy series Portlandia, starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. [more inside]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 6:44 PM PST - 71 comments

Burial & Flight I BEGAN THIS SERIES TEN YEARS AGO in rural Kenya. When I started photographing, I thought I was working on a localized story about how HIV was destroying African society. Over the years, as I broadened my travels to China and Mexico, I began to see similarities in the composition of villages wherever I went. Only later did I fully realize that the quiet moments I documented in the African bush, Mexican plains, and majestic Chinese mountains represented small pieces of a great shift.
posted by metagnathous at 6:11 PM PST - 5 comments

Mocknick Productions Literary Agency is an example of a breed of "agents" that charge writers to represent them, and is listed on the Writers Beware list of Thumbs Down Agencies. His agency does have one unique feature though: the public face of the agency is a sex doll virtual hostess. [more inside]
posted by happyroach at 5:25 PM PST - 27 comments

The House of Sharing is a place for the Halmoni to to live together and heal the wounds of the past while educating the future generations of the suffering they survived.

The View From Over Here details her visit to the House of Sharing, a therapeutic group home and museum for surviving "comfort women", who were systematically raped by the Japanese military during World War II. The museum displays art for and by the survivors. Via Ask a Korean. [more inside]
posted by ignignokt at 4:34 PM PST - 5 comments

Knoword is a game where it's good to be loquacious.
posted by tehloki at 4:17 PM PST - 52 comments

Visdüm Tooten, a short film by Don Hertzfeldt. [more inside]
posted by ooga_booga at 4:08 PM PST - 12 comments

Let the bodies hit the flooooor! SLYTParrot. [more inside]
posted by ambulance blues at 4:06 PM PST - 18 comments

It's been 30 years since the last log drive. Log drives were a way of life in the woods. In Quebec, Idaho, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont, Minnesota and Connecticut. The last one in Maine was 1976. [more inside]
posted by woodjockey at 4:05 PM PST - 18 comments

I think I have something in my eye. SLYT [more inside]
posted by bwg at 3:26 PM PST - 37 comments

we'll soon be done with troubles and trials . something with the magic, the music, the message comes through.... [more inside]
posted by By The Grace of God at 3:24 PM PST - 1 comment

Friday Flash Fantasticness: Neutral has released another new room escape game, Linkage. Enjoy! [more inside]
posted by phunniemee at 3:06 PM PST - 15 comments

Sad news out of California today for the avant-garde and experimental rock world: Rocks Off has learned from multiple online sources that Don Van Vliet of influential rockers Captain Beefheart passed away today at the age of 69 after a battle with multiple sclerosis. Van Vliet's management confirmed his death to Rolling Stone.
posted by chavenet at 2:22 PM PST - 167 comments

Planet Hunters lets users comb through data from the Kepler mission in search of exoplanets. [via Bad Astronomy]
posted by brundlefly at 2:15 PM PST - 4 comments

The Cassini team announced a possible cyrovolcano on Titan. A key difference between this find and cyrovulcanism on Enceladus is the probable existence of a thousand-meter peak and lobe-shaped flows similar to terrestrial vulcanism. Their video release explains the evidence with 3-d models of the features. More speculative, Guillaume Robuchon speculates that Pluto might have liquid water under an icy surface, assuming it has enough of a rocky core to support heat production through radioactive decay.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:51 PM PST - 23 comments

Even one of the greatest lines ever spoken in a movie can become hopelessly clichéd when repeated enough times, right, Toto? (SingleYouTubeContaining58Clips) [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:47 PM PST - 29 comments

Keenan Cahill's been posting his lip-sync videos to youtube for a while now. Last month he had a special guest star step in (a little over a minute in).
posted by yeti at 1:10 PM PST - 22 comments

After nixing the idea a year ago, Chevy is again toying with the idea of bringing back the El Camino in 2015. The car will be modeled after the Holden Ute, a popular vehicle in Australia.
posted by reenum at 12:59 PM PST - 68 comments

The Proposal. "After a decade of being together, I finally proposed to my long time love Sara. [This] movie trailer was shown on December 12th, 2010 at 4pm at the Red River Theater in Concord, NH. Sara had no idea." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:33 PM PST - 59 comments

It's Friday, which means it's time for some meat eating, surfing, burger flipping fun. (flash)
posted by aspo at 12:00 PM PST - 8 comments

Cassetteboy - Festive Christmas 2010 (NSFW audio) (previously 1 2 3) (bonus NSFW Harry Potter trailer)
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:56 AM PST - 2 comments

Gold dispensing ATM machines are becoming more popular. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 11:55 AM PST - 94 comments

Steve Albini: Don't Call Me Producer
posted by boo_radley at 11:49 AM PST - 18 comments

Welcome to Isle of Tune. A music sequencer for the modern colonial. (Flash)
posted by eyeballkid at 11:34 AM PST - 10 comments

There was a brouhaha around the name of a particular micro-genre, tossed out amongst other titles for a new genre variant: rape-gaze. The discussion started with a listing of genre names applied to the band Salem, a band whose debut album ranked high in some year-end charts. That specific genre title was coined by the group Creep, who chose the label themselves as some alternative to the more prevalent "witch house" genre title. More music and music pondering inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:18 AM PST - 63 comments

Not you. (SLYT)
posted by mhum at 11:08 AM PST - 26 comments

Why Foie Gras is not Unethical (via The Browser)
posted by lucia__is__dada at 10:18 AM PST - 103 comments

Friday Frivolity: A highlight reel of clips from the BBC show Walk on the Wild Side, featuring voiceovers for animals so you finally get to know what's really going on in all those nature documentaries. This BBC playlist has previews for a lot of the individual episodes. (I got region-blocked on a few of those videos, but most seem to work fine.) [more inside]
posted by kmz at 9:18 AM PST - 13 comments

Dragon Magazine's "Sage Advice" column ran for over 30 years, offering advice to DMs and players about anything and everything within the D&D world. Comics Alliance has compiled The 11 Strangest D&D Questions Ever Asked, culled from this searchable archive.
posted by hippybear at 8:51 AM PST - 126 comments

My Cardboard Life is an adorable web comic with a lot of texture. [more inside]
posted by Sibrax at 8:47 AM PST - 9 comments

The Irish Banking Crisis: A Parable - What happened when the Irish stood up to the bankers in the 1970s? cf. Why Wall Street won't get shrunk & The Inequality That Matters [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:42 AM PST - 37 comments

Early in 1903, the success of the New York production of the musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz got composer Victor Herbert and librettist Glen MacDonough thinking. They thought that it might be possible to duplicate that success by applying a Christmas theme to Baum's story and then sprinkling in a few Mother Goose characters. Later that year the resulting show, Babes in Toyland, was a rousing success. Thirty years later it was made into a movie starring two of the greatest motion picture actors of the era, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, produced by Hal Roach. But this post isn't about either of those productions; it's about the worst production. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 7:17 AM PST - 21 comments

Leandra Medine is 21 and lives with her parents on the Upper-East Side. She also has an amusing hobby, or maybe a feminist fashion statement. Either way, Leandra is repelling men. [more inside]
posted by timory at 6:56 AM PST - 156 comments

In the wake of Glenn Greenwald's post about the inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention ("For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell"), Jeralyn at the criminal justice blog Talkleft offers a detailed argument that both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and relevant case law suggest that "Bradley Manning should not be in maximum security or solitary confinement." As the Justice Department tries to build a case against Julian Assange based on his contacts with Manning, what do we really know about the 22-year-old queer intelligence analyst being held at Quantico who says he leaked the Collateral Murder video and all those diplomatic cables? [more inside]
posted by mediareport at 5:49 AM PST - 239 comments

The George Ewart Evans collection of oral interviews on rural English life. 250 recordings of interviews and songs made by oral history pioneer George Ewart Evans between 1956 and 1977, many in Suffolk, with a smaller number in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Reginal Hoskins the thresher, Annie Cable the kitchen maid, Baron Rhodes of Saddleworth. They're all pretty fascinating.
posted by OmieWise at 5:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Couple on a Bench. Drifting Apart Spooner. Laughing Sailor comes to Life. A Peacock. The Bear who saved the World. The Mechanism of Lady Automaton. Smoking Head. More from The House of Automata.
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:22 AM PST - 5 comments

Biome Terrain Mod is a modification for Minecraft that allows tweaking the world generation parameters for the regions in the game. The Minecraft Forums are running a contest to find cool generation settings. Some of the results are quite striking.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 3:54 AM PST - 94 comments

Is "Muslim" a derogatory term? An online reputation defense company warns a San Francisco civil rights group that a Google search for their name pulls up a "derogatory comment."
posted by anirvan at 3:51 AM PST - 52 comments

FFF! Sudoku Combat - race head to head to complete the grid. [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 3:36 AM PST - 4 comments

"Among medieval artistic media it was the microchip": the historian Alexander Murray on ivory carving. The Gothic Ivories Project, a new website launched this week by the Courtauld Institute in London, aims to build a database of every surviving ivory sculpture made in Europe between 1200 and 1530. The 400 objects currently on the site, ranging from combs to chesspieces, include some images of astonishing beauty and intricacy.
posted by verstegan at 3:09 AM PST - 10 comments

Vision Machine by Greg Pak, a free comic about the not-so-distant future.
posted by cthuljew at 2:01 AM PST - 6 comments

Since approximately 26% of Canadian children age 2-17 are now considered obese, few would disagree that drastic measures are warranted. A dude and his wife have decided that the best way to inspire kids to get some exercise outdoors is to run daily marathons across the country. [more inside]
posted by sarastro at 1:01 AM PST - 41 comments

Sugar collecting is an interesting hobby. The thought of collecting sugar packets sparked my curiousity at first and now I enjoy all types of sugar information. Sugar really has been important through the ages, as a commodity, a sign of wealth, a metaphor for happiness. On my site, you will find historical information, facts and pictures, etc. To me, I see sugar more as a decoration [also, previously] instead of a food. The concept of sugar can be so universal. Embark upon an adventure through this website and take a look at sugar through my eyes. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 12:20 AM PST - 14 comments

Beyond the Real Life is a World of Warcraft fan movie, blending live action and special effects with in-game footage. The follow-up to a 2006 short called The Edge of Real Life, Beyond the Real Life tells the story of Tank the warrior and Bubbleballs the paladin on a quest to save Tank's love interest after she is kidnapped by a Horde mage. The acting and writing aren't in danger of winning any awards, but the mix of machinima and live action is very well done, and there are some pretty good gags in there, both WoW-related and otherwise. (via RPS)
posted by The Pusher Robot at 11:45 PM PST - 5 comments

"Normal" human pregnancies last 40 weeks, right? Well, no; they can vary quite a bit by the mother's race, age, number of previous children, family history of delivering early or late, home state, work habits, and even the fetus' HLA type. So where does that "40 week" thing come from? Oh, dear. So check out this super-nerdy pregnancy statistics website, from an engineer mom who is collecting data from the public (see the raw data and auto-generated graphs, and read the FAQ about the survey, with more cool graphs). Looking for day-by-day probabilities on when that baby's due? This would be your stats table with daily prediction (adjust dates at top of page as needed). Of course, you could always shut up your constantly inquiring relatives and friends another way.
posted by Asparagirl at 9:49 PM PST - 44 comments

Rooster Teeth's Immersion is like Mythbusters for video games, and isn't afraid to ask the hard questions: What is it like to drive a real world car from a game's 3rd person perspective? Do the clothes worn by women in Japanese fighting games offer any protection whatsoever? What is it like to be Mario in a outside version of a side-scrolling platform game?. Finally, would Xbox Live-style trash talk would distract a real Special Operations soldier?. [˙ǝdou˙pɹɐɥ oslɐ ˙uoıʇɔǝʇoɹd ou ˙pɹɐɥ sʇı :sɹǝʍsuɐ]
posted by blahblahblah at 9:26 PM PST - 22 comments

Word Lens REPLACES text viewable in your iPhone camera with its translation, in real time, with formatting intact. Be sure to watch the demo video. Pretty much straight up magic. The app itself is free, but Spanish->English or English->Spanish dictionaries are $5 each, via in-app purchase. It's been a while since my jaw has dropped like this from any piece of software.
posted by 3rdparty at 7:37 PM PST - 94 comments

Land Girls and Lumber Jills is an exhibit at Scotland's National War Museum. It explores the history of the Women's Land Army and the Women's Timber Corps. These two organizations were formed during the First World War to compensate for shortages in male laborers in agriculture and forestry, respectively. The museum's exhibition ties in a collection on flickr, interviews and a book available for order online. Other sources online will allow one to hear audio samples of the Land Girls' stories, read Land Girls' and Lumber Jills' memoirs and watch old propaganda clips about them or more recent documentary videos (more on YT). Officially commemorated in 2008, these civilian service organizations have also been the subject of a film, "The Land Girls" (trailer), an ITV sitcom, and a BBC series (Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The British Women's Land Army model was successfully replicated in the U.S. with the Woman's Land Army of America (whose members were known as "farmerettes") and in Australia with the Australian Women's Land Army.
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal at 6:06 PM PST - 8 comments

What happens when an alligator bites an electric eel? (SLYT) hattip: Boing Boing [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:09 PM PST - 136 comments

Douglas Burgdorff is a director who makes disturbing short films (all links not safe for work) about: the color red, partying, drugs, drugs and skateboarding, friendship, lollipops, and... um... Taylor Swift? Not for the faint of heart, nor the easily disgusted. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 4:57 PM PST - 13 comments

The Digital Version Of The Nativity Story, told through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps, GMail, Foursquare, Amazon and more. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 3:51 PM PST - 18 comments

Mass Brawl on Ice! [SLYT] KHL teams fight 6 seconds into game.
posted by Fizz at 2:23 PM PST - 83 comments

Best Music Writing 2010 - Links inside! [more inside]
posted by chaff at 2:22 PM PST - 14 comments

An open letter to all fans of Science Fiction from Tom Hunter, Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award - The Arthur C. Clarke Award, the yearly award for best Science Fiction novel published in the UK, could be in trouble.
posted by Artw at 2:15 PM PST - 26 comments

“There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.” - C.A.R. Hoare, from the Top 50 Programming Quotes of All Time.
posted by Slap*Happy at 2:09 PM PST - 39 comments

In December 1966, ABC 's Stage 67 broadcast a teleplay of Truman Capote's beloved short story, "A Christmas Memory." It won both an Emmy, and Peabody, and was narrated by the author himself. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
posted by timsteil at 1:47 PM PST - 6 comments

More, perhaps, than any other rock star of his generation, Jagger has made it his business to understand and control the mechanics of his own stardom.
posted by Joe Beese at 1:46 PM PST - 22 comments

Chinese ghost cities. Big bubble.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:13 PM PST - 45 comments

If you've ever watched the movie "The Battle of Britain", you surely must remember Squadron Leader Evans, a man with a horribly burned face. That role was played by William Foxley, his only appearance in film, and that was really what he looked like. In 1944,. Bill Foxley was navigator in a Wellington bomber which crashed shortly after takeoff. He got out of the wreck safely, but he heard a crewmate screaming inside and went back in and dragged the poor fellow out. In doing so he was horrifically burned, destroying his face and badly ruining both his hands. He lost one eye and the cornea of the other was badly scarred, leaving him nearly blind. As a member of the "Guinea Pig Club" he underwent almost 30 surgeries over three years to fix his hands and rebuild something like a face, which is what you saw in the movie. Bill Foxley got on with his life, and this week he died at age 87.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:11 PM PST - 21 comments

Dostoyevsky's "Der Idiot" copied by hand Martin copied the entire book "Der Idiot" of Dostojewski by hand. He exchanged the main figure Myskin with his own name: Martin.
posted by riley370 at 1:04 PM PST - 32 comments

Yahoo to shut down Del.icio.us, other sites. After a series of layoffs, Yahoo announced internally that a number of Yahoo products would be shut down, and others merged into existing features of the Yahoo main site.
posted by zabuni at 12:52 PM PST - 260 comments

Faces from the Past is a blog of beautiful images of fascinating people, including Djuna Barnes, Audrey Hepburn, Louise Brooks, Sappho and Eve. [more inside]
posted by Morrigan at 12:41 PM PST - 7 comments

'Phone-Wielding Shoppers Strike Fear Into Retailers.' 'A revolution in retailing—what Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chief Executive Mike Duke has dubbed a "new era of price transparency"—and its arrival is threatening to upend the business models of the biggest store chains in America. Until recently, retailers could reasonably assume that if they just lured shoppers to stores with enticing specials, the customers could be coaxed into buying more profitable stuff, too. Now, marketers must contend with shoppers who can use their smartphones inside stores to check whether the specials are really so special, and if the rest of the merchandise is reasonably priced."The retailer's advantage has been eroded," says Greg Girard of consultancy IDC Retail Insights, which recently found that roughly 45% of customers with smartphones had used them to perform due diligence on a store's prices. "The four walls of the store have become porous."' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:37 PM PST - 108 comments

CreatureCast is a collaborative blog and podcast from evolutionary biologist Casey Dunn, who uses it as a teaching tool at the Dunn Lab at Brown University. The Lab investigates ways in which evolution has produced a diversity of life, and the blog includes neat, invertebrate zoology-related videos that may cover anything from "mating when you're stuck to a rock" to Flying with Squid to Multicellularity to Diving for Jellies. (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:24 PM PST - 2 comments

Director Blake Edwards, Dies at 88. A prolific writer and director, honorary Oscar recipient, and husband to Julie Andrews, Edwards died of complications from Pnuemonia. He was the director of such classics as Days of Wine and Roses, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Victor/Victoria and, of course, the Pink Panther film series. Does your dog bite?
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:17 PM PST - 57 comments

A busy day for Google, as it soft-launches BodyBrowser (latest betas of Safari, Firefox and Chrome required.). Using a combination of HTML5 with the <canvas> tag with WebGL (essentially plugin-free OpenGL for 3D on the web), BodyBrowser makes the human body as accessible as a mapping application.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:09 PM PST - 12 comments

Google's new Ngram Viewer lets you track the history of words in six languages, including several flavo(u)rs of English. Whether it's the rise and fall of a single word, the evolution of technology, or the mysterious seventeenth-century proliferation of fart jokes, there's a lot to play with. More at the Official Google Blog.
posted by theodolite at 11:34 AM PST - 74 comments

Favimon: Like Pokemon with favicons. [via mefi projects]
posted by sveskemus at 10:58 AM PST - 39 comments

LinkedIn has analyzed the millions of resumes stored on the site and revealed the top 10 most overused, cliched, buzzwords used on resumes this year. Number 1 is "Extensive Experience."
posted by COD at 10:42 AM PST - 87 comments

"Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasts information to Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East in twenty-eight languages. Much of the information comes from the places where those twenty-eight languages are spoken.... Reporters are also working, sometimes clandestinely, in countries where RFE/RL bureaus aren’t allowed. The mission is to tell people living in those countries what is happening to them." -- Facts Meet Freedom: On the Air in Afghanistan, by P. J. O'Rourke
posted by valkane at 10:28 AM PST - 12 comments

A shady "male enhancement" peddler is the unlikely subject of a landmark case holding that e-mails are not subject to warrantless searches. [more inside]
posted by *s at 10:25 AM PST - 13 comments

Back on August 15, 2010, Aesop Rock kicked off a sprawling collaboration effort, with input by 28 artists, with an eclectic collection of videos spanning from music videos to odd clips and a Kimya Dawson recording studio dance party, works by photographer Chrissy Piper, and lots of music, from unreleased tracks, remixes, and mixtapes. There's even a post about being manhandled by a nude model, written by the Dwarvs front-man Blag Dahlia. Going back to the beginning of the site, the second post was a collection of facts about bats, and the only obvious connection back to the tragic impetus for the title of this ongoing collaboration (900 bats) -- over 900 bats were torched to prevent disruption of work on the ongoing renovations of the historic Bala Quila (also spelled Bala Qila) fort in Alwar, Rajasthan, in north-eastern India. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:13 AM PST - 4 comments

Ken Rex McElroy for years had terrorized the small town of Skidmore Missouri, and was considered the town bully. He had been charged with more than 20 felonies, robbing, raping, burning, shootings. He intimidated people by driving by at night and firing a shotgun blast, putting a rattlesnake in their mailbox, etc. He was murdered on July 10, 1981. No one in town would identify Ken Rex's killer and no one has ever been charged with his killing, though there has been intense speculation about who did it. There have been various dramatic depictions of the crime. Is vigilante justice ever justified?
posted by Xurando at 9:53 AM PST - 143 comments

Photos of female aircraft workers, 1942-1943.
posted by hermitosis at 9:44 AM PST - 31 comments

PhDChallenge.org proposed a challenge: To have the phrase "I smoke crack rocks" included in a peer reviewed academic paper. The winner is Gabriel Parent from Carnegie Mellon, who included it in his paper [PDF].
posted by reenum at 9:08 AM PST - 53 comments

The Day Niagara Falls Ran Dry
posted by morganannie at 8:05 AM PST - 44 comments

Forming (NSFW - cartoon nudity) is a webcomic by Jesse Moynihan (NSFW) that tells the history of the evolution of man via the machinations of various alien entities whose familiar names (and unfamiliar stories) have been recorded in various religions throughout time. [more inside]
posted by lyam at 7:49 AM PST - 24 comments

Do you enjoy The Criterion Collection's packaging design? Do you like Eric Skillman's design blog, where you've seen the process for such design as Night of the Hunter, Stagecoach, and Che? Have you already fallen in love with Sam Smith's design blog, where you've seen him work through things like Modern Times, House, and Everlasting Moments?

Then you will probably hate Fake Criterions, a Tumblr blog showcasing Criterion designs for such notable films as The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Ernest Goes to Jail, and Three Ninjas.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:27 AM PST - 51 comments

Defenestration: we've seen posts mentioning it in the Blue, but not one dedicated to the idea in full. Even Mefi's own defenestration hasn't done a proper post on it (but please, Sir, no need to throw yourself out the window over it). The first thing to note is just how awesome the word defenestrate is, from the Latin de- (out of) + fenestra (window), which came to fame via Prague (live reenactment in July 2009; plus a nifty Lego version) and in this movie clip (actual defenestrations begin at 6.39), but history is filled with notable defenestrations (Wiki), such as the one in 1993 where "Toronto lawyer Garry Hoy fell to his death after attempting to demonstrate the strength of his office tower's windows", and of course someone has cobbled together a Top 10 List (and let's not forget the opening credits of SCTV or the fate of one John Locke). We don't hear much of it these days (although in October 2010 the news reported a story of mass self-defenestration owing to Satanism, a tale that that later was, er… thrown out the window), but defenestration has become an art landmark in San Francisco, and naturally it is classic Hollywood staple (Ten Memorable Movie Defenestrations). It has even been used at xkcd. While I have at times defenestrated objects, I am pleased to say I have never been defenestrated myself. And lastly, you have to appreciate the clever geek pun of defenestrating your computer, which doesn't mean tossing it out the window, but instead replacing Windows with an alternative OS such as Linux.
posted by bwg at 7:03 AM PST - 51 comments

His radio station was shut down. His medical license was revoked. So he ran for Governor. (Time, 1932), and almost won. Twice. "Dr". John R. Brinkley, the goat gland doctor, (previously on Metafilter) had six weeks. He also had a plane, a huckster's skills, a staff skilled in promotion, and lots of chutzpah. [more inside]
posted by julen at 6:43 AM PST - 10 comments

Two brothers pull off the heist of the century when they steal money from a criminal kingpin. The kingpin retaliates by abducting one brother's girlfriend. Now the brothers and their two close allies must team up and rescue her, deal out some pain, and get away with their lives. You may think this sounds vaguely familiar, but you've never seen Nintendo's classic Super Mario Bros. depicted like this. Presenting The Brothers Mario [SLYT; contains strong language and scenes of violence; rated M-for-Mature].
posted by Servo5678 at 6:33 AM PST - 34 comments

Chrome for a Cause. From now until December 19th, every tab you open on Chrome with this extension installed will help raise funds for five different charities (The Nature Conservancy, Charity: Water, Doctors Without Borders, Un Techo para mi Pais and Room To Read).
posted by fight or flight at 4:50 AM PST - 35 comments

Santastic V Yet more holiday mash-ups, alternate treatments and bootleg remixes. [more inside]
posted by Mwongozi at 2:54 AM PST - 12 comments

The Local Government Act 2000 brought directly elected mayors to the UK. Take up was limited and success was mixed. If you were lucky you got Stuart Drummond. If you were unlucky you got Peter Davies. Davies, the mayor of Doncaster, is widely seen to have exacerbated existing problems in the town.

This week, the Localism Bill was introduced to Parliament promising referenda on directly elected mayors in the twelve largest cities in England. In advance of this, council leaders are being turned into 'shadow mayors'. The problem? The leaders don't actually want these new powers.
posted by ninebelow at 2:27 AM PST - 9 comments

*Santa* is a Concept, not an idea. It's an Emotion, not a feeling. It's both Yesterday and Today. And it's Tomorrow as well. Santa winds infinite Possibilities around finite Limitations to evoke the essence of invention and the Odour of Nostalgia. It has the complexity of Simpleness and the Simplicity of complexitiveness. It begins with the Hiss of Power and ends with the Ah of Surprise. *Santa* is.
posted by creeky at 1:51 AM PST - 18 comments

Beastie Boys Annotated [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 1:26 AM PST - 43 comments

Please enjoy a bit of the (somewhat negative) oeuvre of The Misfits, chief rivals of Jem & The Holograms. Were their songs truly better? You be the judge. [more inside]
posted by mintcake! at 11:53 PM PST - 29 comments

A lawfirm perusing the New York Times archives has examined how physician W. J. Mayo, famed industrialist Henry Ford, anatomist and anthropologist Arthur Keith, physicist and Nobel laureate Arthur Compton, chemist Willis R. Whitney, physicist and Nobel laureate Robert Millikan, physicist and chemist Michael Pupin, and sociologist William F. Ogburn foresaw the year 2011 from the year 1931, with commentary. [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:46 PM PST - 13 comments

MusicNewsFilter: This year's inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame are: Alice Cooper, Neil Diamond, Darlene Love, Dr. John, and Tom Waits. Among those who will have to wait until next year: Bon Jovi (in the first year he was eligible), the J. Geils Band, the Beastie Boys and Donna Summer.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:54 PM PST - 114 comments

Election night, Kenya, 2007. The votes roll in, and at some time around 11pm, as victory seemed imminent for the opposition candidate, all televisions in the country went black. When broadcasts resumed in the morning, the incumbent had materialized enough votes to soundly win the election. In the aftermath, a wave of violence broke out in which some 1,300 people were killed. In opposition to a domestic investigation of the violence, Kenyan MP's chanted 'Don't be vague; go to the Hague!' Now, three years later, some officials are a bit less enthusiastic. A series of articles on the ICC investigation of political violence in Kenya: I II III IV [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 6:27 PM PST - 5 comments

The Brick House is a design blog by Morgan Satterfield. The subject? "It's pretty simple: just focus on not spending over $100 on any one item."
posted by bhamrick at 5:12 PM PST - 57 comments

Augmented reality for the color blind. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 5:06 PM PST - 68 comments

Armor Games has just released another entry into the launch genre (Penguin Sports, Hedgehog Launch, IntoSpace, etc.) called, simply enough, Flight.
The game is wrapped around a storyline told with cutscenes, starting with a girl who wants her mother home for Christmas. Folding the letter into a paper airplane, she launches it out the window, where it travels around the world, with others adding their wishes to it. As with other launch variants, boosters keep you aloft, and you can purchase upgrades adding to - and replacing - your plane. [more inside]
posted by Old'n'Busted at 4:58 PM PST - 28 comments

Full Utah Phillips concert from 2007: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. If you don't know who Utah Phillips is, be prepared to meet one of the great performers of our age, telling funny stories and cracking jokes, singing great songs, and generally being a world treasure. If you want to know more about this great singer, songwriter, and peace and labor activist, you can watch an hour long documentary on him from Democracy Now that was made after he passed away in 2008. [previously]
posted by Kattullus at 4:45 PM PST - 26 comments

Papal gymnastics. Just your typical day at the Vatican. Topless muscle-bound gymnasts perform for the Pope, appreciative cardinals and waving nuns. Make your own jokes.
posted by illy at 4:42 PM PST - 45 comments

Does the language we speak shape our thoughts? The Economist is hosting an interactive online debate running all this week. Lena Boroditsky, a Stanford psychologist, supports the motion that it does, while Mark Liberman, a linguist from the Univ of Pennsylvania opposes it. Elsewhere you can read a WSJ article in which among other things Boroditsky argues that Japanese and Spanish speakers have a different sense of blame, and listen to a lively in-depth seminar at the Long Now Foundation. All her articles and papers are available in PDF online.
posted by philipy at 4:35 PM PST - 72 comments

Better Than the Van - free places to stay for bands on tour. Sorta like Couchsurfing, but for travelling musicians.
posted by dobbs at 3:41 PM PST - 16 comments

The Harrier Jump Jet makes its final flight over England. The venerable Jump Jet, famous for its hovering capability, is to be decommissioned - along with the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal - as part of Britain's cost-cutting measures. It will be replaced by the F35 Joint Strike Fighter. Another story w/video. Is this "the beginning of the end of plane-making in Britain"? [more inside]
posted by schoolgirl report at 3:13 PM PST - 40 comments

Robert Erskine Childers was the creator of the modern spy novel, a loyal son of Empire, a fierce exponent of Irish Home Rule, an excellent sailor, a gunrunner, an Anti-Treaty partisan. He died by firing squad in 1922.
posted by Iridic at 2:56 PM PST - 11 comments

The music video (SLYT) for the New Pornographers' single "Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk" turns the cheerful, bouncy pop tune into an elegy for the ravaged Gulf Coast. (The NPs previously.)
posted by eugenen at 2:19 PM PST - 23 comments

Need a little political philosophy? Why not try this conversation on economics, the human person and democracy between conservative Catholic legal scholar Robert George and the always fascinating African-American studies professor and philosopher Cornel West? [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 1:52 PM PST - 8 comments

bolo`bolo is a book about an anarchist utopia, the name of the utopia itself and the plural of that utopia's organizational unit - the bolo. ... Bolo`bolo is also a plan for a transformation from our current state, the planetary work-machine, to another social organization mode based on local organization and a microclimate of cultures that form the unit of social cohesion.
posted by Joe Beese at 1:17 PM PST - 100 comments

Today the Internet affords you the opportunity to watch a ladybug play with sprinkles!! (SYTL)
posted by SkylitDrawl at 12:20 PM PST - 77 comments

The New York Times presents an interactive map of America's population separated by race, income, and education, according to census data from 2005 to 2009. One dot for every 50 people. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by schmod at 12:08 PM PST - 79 comments

Menagerie is a an exhibition of black-and-white portraits of of zoo animals by Anne Berry. Ms. Berry uncovers a deep gravitas in her animal subjects hauntingly reminiscent of Civil War daugeurrotypes (like this rhinocerous) or the breezier portraits of Margaret Cameron (like this deer). (Whatever you do, don't miss the gorilla.)
posted by Faze at 12:07 PM PST - 10 comments

Not in the headlines: Swedish parlor philosophy of fair play, law and order, slooowly explained by police chief John Lind. [more inside]
posted by Namlit at 11:33 AM PST - 8 comments

United States Artists is a new Kickstarter-style funding network specifically for artists. USArtists is partially funded by Mark Bradford. Bradford's involving site is here, but be aware that it autoplays chill-out music and is FLASH INTENSIVE.
posted by klangklangston at 11:30 AM PST - 9 comments

The Speakularity is coming. So says (MeFi's own) Matt Thompson of NPR, posting at NiemanLab as part of its series, Predictions for Journalism 2011. Constant social feedback plus machine learning could improve automatic speech transcription to the point where it’s finally ready for prime time. And when it does, the default expectation for recorded speech will be that it’s searchable and readable, nearly in the instant. I know this sounds totally retrograde, but I think it’s something like the future.
posted by beagle at 10:51 AM PST - 21 comments

For their January 2011 "Meaning of Life" issue, Esquire has relaunched their "What I've Learned" online archive featuring "wisdom and damn good advice from more than a dozen years" of 300+ celebrity interviews. Plus a video starring Daniella Ruah, of the show NCIS: Los Angeles, lip-synching advice from the archive: The Greatest Things Ever Said. (Video) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:44 AM PST - 18 comments

The death penalty in America is “a strange social fact that stands in need of explanation.” John Paul Stevens served as Associate Supreme Court Justice from 1975 to 2010 and became a beacon for progressive and liberals. Here he writes on the death penalty, reviewing David Garland’s new book Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition.
posted by JL Sadstone at 10:19 AM PST - 55 comments

The Bra Mask. The Youth Condom. The Train That Never Stops. The Meat Dress. The New York Times' unveils The 10th Annual Year In Ideas. (Including The Megalobster!)
posted by Scoop at 10:02 AM PST - 39 comments

Twitter Year in Review. The 10 Most Retweeted tweets of 2010. And The 10 Most Powerful tweets of 2010. [Via]
posted by morganannie at 7:36 AM PST - 64 comments

The railgun is a long-range, high-energy gun launch system that uses electricity rather than gunpowder or rocket motors to launch projectiles capable of striking a target at a range of more than 200 nautical miles with Mach 7 velocity. [more inside]
posted by three blind mice at 7:00 AM PST - 122 comments

After hearing of a recent heist in which a bandit wearing a motorcycle helmet robbed the Bellagio of $1.5 million in chips (the 10th Vegas casino robbery this year), I remembered the scene from Ocean's 11 where Reuben expounds upon why it is nigh impossible to steal from a Las Vegas casino. But that simply isn't true. Granted, no one has infiltrated a casino for a massive $160 million haul, but sizable losses have occurred over the years: 18 Casino Heists: The Strange, The Surgical, and The Stupid; 5 Most Famous Casino Heists in History, Top 10: Epic Las Vegas Heists; 13 Real Heists from Around the World (there is duplication of mentioned events on these sites, as well as non-casino-related crimes). Casino Security (Wiki) may be high tech (Google .pdf quickview), but it's not unbeatable (Casino insider tells (almost) all about security). Of course, there are other ways to steal from a casino, but you might still get caught. And it's hard to find much lore about successful robberies, mostly because casinos don't want that kind of publicity. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 6:53 AM PST - 37 comments

Do you use Boy Words or Girl Words? My point is that kids get it. That this world is changing and that kids GET it. There are kids being raised to simply ask about gender if they are uncertain. Have you ever heard a person refrain from using a pronoun for an entire conversation instead of asking? It’s one of the most awkward things ever. Kids aren’t OK with that nonsense. They just ask. Via.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:45 AM PST - 185 comments

(American Big Box Retailer) Target's recent holiday TV spots feature original music from several indie music acts, including Guster, Bishop Allen, and Blackalicious. They've collected the songs from the ads, plus several more, into a free-to-download album. [Direct Download if you're squicky about visting Target's site] [more inside]
posted by snapped at 6:40 AM PST - 37 comments

In 2002, the Hartlepool United F.C mascot, H'Angus the Monkey (so named because local fishermen once hanged a monkey in the mistaken belief it was a Napoleonic spy), was elected to the office of Mayor of Hartlepool with promises of free bananas for schoolchildren. In 2010, the man behind the monkey suit, Stuart Drummond, was elected for his third term and has been voted among the ten best mayors in the world. [more inside]
posted by MuffinMan at 4:29 AM PST - 16 comments

Anémic Cinéma is the only film that Marcel Duchamp is credited with directing.
It's a short, just over six minutes, and was made using rotoreliefs.
You can play with some here and here.
Optical illusions present images which are "true" but inconsistent.
Inconsistency, Anemic Cinema, and the Rotoreliefs - Michael Betancourt. (Duchamp previously 1; 2;)
posted by adamvasco at 4:09 AM PST - 4 comments

Silverpop Systems Inc, an email marketing firm with 105 customers has had its database systems hacked last week. [more inside]
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:45 AM PST - 47 comments

Google's pilot program for Chrome OS is well underway, with the new operating system being distributed on free Cr-48 Notebooks, to generally favourable impressions. Chrome OS relies heavily on cloud computing, where software and data live on servers and are accessed by a client, and product manager Caesar Sengupta going as far as to say they will have failed if cloud computing does not become the norm. Not everyone is happy about that thought through, with Richard Stallman warning it may be a trap. Like the Cr-48s attractive design but not so sure about ChromeOS? You could always sneak Ubuntu onto it.
posted by Artw at 11:49 PM PST - 94 comments

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait presents "The Top 14 Astronomy Pictures of 2010". [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 11:35 PM PST - 10 comments

The Cell: An Image Library collects visualizations of single-cell structures, mechanisms and events. (via) [more inside]
posted by jjray at 10:35 PM PST - 3 comments

guitar It doesn't get much better than this.... I would suggest you close your eyes as you listen..
posted by HuronBob at 8:11 PM PST - 73 comments

Please dismantling burger(?) . you have only screwdriver. The tool you can use is the screwdriver. (Flash) [more inside]
posted by eyeballkid at 8:03 PM PST - 51 comments

Insert Coin is a new stop-motion animation by Ninja Moped (who made the equally impressive 8-bit trip). The animation, featuring only quarters on a black blanket, is so flawless that it is generating some discussion among Net skeptics and counter-skeptics. [more inside]
posted by dgaicun at 7:44 PM PST - 53 comments

Back in April 1986, Tonight Show host Johnny Carson stole a truck. The owner eventually got it back, but the incident resulted in a messy televised trial that gripped the nation. Then in February 2004, the victim recounted the story to Conan O'Brien. [more inside]
posted by Servo5678 at 7:29 PM PST - 29 comments

Dear John, Love, Bennett: A video love letter from Bennett to John Matrix of the 80's action movie Commando. (SLYT)
posted by Arthur Phillips Jones Jr at 6:42 PM PST - 19 comments

Theo de Raadt: I have received a mail regarding the early development of the OpenBSD IPSEC stack. It is alleged that some ex-developers (and the company they worked for) accepted US government money to put backdoors into our network stack, in particular the IPSEC stack. [more inside]
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 5:48 PM PST - 94 comments

Ants: Nature's Secret Power [Hulu] [more inside]
posted by phunniemee at 4:04 PM PST - 13 comments

A set of instructions for impatient cheapskate oenophiles
posted by zennie at 3:26 PM PST - 42 comments

A map of the world drawn entirely through Facebook connections. "All of the country borders are entirely drawn using Facebook friend connections."
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:17 PM PST - 57 comments

There is a firestorm in Bedford, New Hampshire, because a parent wants the school board to take the book "Nickel and Dimed: Not Getting By In America" off the reading list for a high school personal finance class. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 3:13 PM PST - 126 comments

He is one of a handful of U.S. and European scientists searching for universal patterns hidden in human conflicts — patterns that might one day allow them to predict long-term threats. Rather than study historical grievances, violent ideologies and social networks the way most counterterrorism researchers do, Aaron Clauset and his colleagues disregard the unique traits of terrorist groups and focus entirely on outcomes — the violence they commit. Call it the physics of terrorism.
posted by chavenet at 2:59 PM PST - 19 comments

"Today you.... tomorrow me." Have you ever picked up a hitch-hiker? A redditor shares a moving story. [more inside]
posted by papafrita at 2:56 PM PST - 71 comments

Filmography 2010 (SLYT) [via] [more inside]
posted by AceRock at 2:08 PM PST - 8 comments

From June until August they hid out in their camp in the scrub oak up in the foothills, avoiding the search parties. Then they began coming down into the city by day, passing within a quarter-mile of Elizabeth's home. They walked the streets dressed as religious pilgrims from the New Testament. Mitchell had a long beard and a walking stick. Elizabeth and Wanda covered everything but their eyes. And no one figured it out. This American Life contributor Scott Carrier profiles the Messianic cult of Brian David Mitchell, the abductor of 2002 media icon Elizabeth Smart.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 1:47 PM PST - 60 comments

When John Van Antwerp MacMurray was dispatched to Asia in 1925 as the American Envoy to the Republic of China, he brought a Kodak motion picture camera with him.
posted by Iridic at 1:47 PM PST - 4 comments

But the sheer magnitude of the thefts — 11,528 appliances, to be precise — over a relatively brief period suggests to some in city government and the recycling industry that a more organized enterprise may be at work as well.Who, then, is stealing the household appliances of New York City?
posted by R. Mutt at 1:39 PM PST - 52 comments

Kosovo's prime minister, Hashim Thaci - who swept elections just a few days ago - is allegedly the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Uh, the Postal Service began receiving Letters to Santa Claus more than 100 years ago. In 1912, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock authorized local postmasters to allow postal employees and citizens to respond to the letters through programs such as Operation Santa, Letters To Santa & Globe Santa. Individuals or Groups fill out a form, and then basically make a kids' wish come true. Some letters get replies. Some Letters go to Macy's. Some busy elves even stay up all night to help. Like Tonight.
posted by Israel Tucker at 12:48 PM PST - 16 comments

Should-we-eat-it-filter: A 2,400-year-old vat of soup has been discovered in China. [more inside]
posted by jocelmeow at 12:19 PM PST - 62 comments

Last Thursday, thousands of prisoners in Georgia's state prisons went on strike - refusing to leave their cells or do work. It could be the largest prisoner protest in history, yet it is going unreported by the mainstream media. [more inside]
posted by BZArcher at 12:11 PM PST - 99 comments

Ewart Scott Grogan was a British-born figure of controversial sorts, the kind of fellow who would either end up buried in Westminster Abbey-or hanging from a yard-arm. After he survived as soldier in the Second Matabele War, he went on to be the first European to traverse the distance of the African continent from the South in Cape Town to Cairo in the North to win the hand of his bride-to-be from a skeptical father. He started the trek with the uncle of his bride-to-be in February 1898. Two years later, Grogan returned to London, a lone hero (the uncle turned back part way through). In 2007, MeFite Julian Smith retraced Grogan's path, "in part to dispel [his] own pre-wedding jitters," and wrote a book about Grogan's journey, and his own. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:06 PM PST - 5 comments

Restrepo is a feature-length documentary that chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, "Restrepo," named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. This is an entirely experiential film: the cameras never leave the valley; there are no interviews with generals or diplomats. The only goal is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 90-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 12:04 PM PST - 35 comments

"John Jacobson teaches his original choreography for the song Planet Rock. Planet Rock is an original composition of John Jacobson and all credit goes to him. The original video is also available for free viewing on his website. Enjoy the video, and may your double dream hands stay dreamy!"
posted by SkylitDrawl at 11:31 AM PST - 16 comments

'What's a home worth?' 'There are problems in appraisal land that transcend weak housing markets and debt-ridden borrowers, and that are causing home buyers and would-be refinancers to miss out on low rates and dream houses. "There's been a pendulum swing in appraisals comparable to the one we've seen in mortgage credit, from foolishly lax to overly restrictive," said Walt Molony of the National Association of Realtors. He reported that as recently as October, one in 10 member agents said they'd had a contract canceled as a result of a low appraisal, 13 percent said they'd had a contract delayed, and 16 percent said they'd had a contract negotiated to a lower sales price as a result of a low appraisal.'' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 10:36 AM PST - 90 comments

movies. [SLYT] By Good Neighbor. [more inside]
posted by phaedon at 10:28 AM PST - 10 comments

I LIKE to hear of wealth and gold, And El Doradoes in their glory; I like for silks and satins bold To sweep and rustle through a story. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 9:52 AM PST - 9 comments

BAD WRITING - the movie [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 9:48 AM PST - 17 comments

The second Humble Indie Bundle just got put up for sale. This time, the bundle contains Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos and Revenge of the Titans - all DRM free. You decide what you want to pay for the games, and as with the previous bundle, you can choose to let part of your payment go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and/or the Child's Play Charity. [more inside]
posted by ymgve at 9:47 AM PST - 66 comments

Dmitar Sasselov is an astrophysicist, Director of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard and a co-investigator of the Kepler space telescope project to find Earth-like planets around the Cygnus constellation and discover extraterrestrial life. But no matter how successful the Kepler project may be, it still won't answer the most fundamental questions of astrobiology: How diverse is life in the universe? If alien life exists, will it have Earthly DNA and proteins? Or will it run on something else? So Dr. Sasselov has decided to collaborate with two synthetic biologists, asking them to create a life form based on mirror-image versions of what we know as the essential building blocks of living things on Earth. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:36 AM PST - 13 comments

Julian Assange has been freed on bail of £240,000. A number of supporters were present, and some others contributed funds towards the bail amount.
posted by steviehero at 8:12 AM PST - 413 comments

"The Festival of Lights is an annual event taking place in Lyon between 8th and 11th December 2010. The people of Lyon place candles or little candle lamps in their windows in honour of the Virgin Mary. The origins of the festival date back over 150 years, to 1852 when a statue of the Virgin Mary on Fourviere Hill was to be inaugurated."
posted by IndigoJones at 7:57 AM PST - 5 comments

Every zombie kill in The Walking Dead in 69s (NSFW) [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:56 AM PST - 83 comments

Atheist Bus Ads Rattle Fort Worth (SLNYT) [more inside]
posted by Dragonness at 7:45 AM PST - 116 comments

Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection in 'Berlin patient', say doctors. Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.
posted by Fizz at 7:23 AM PST - 33 comments

Today marks 60 years since Frosty the Snowman was released. It was recorded by singing Cowboy Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys a year after his iconic recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". [more inside]
posted by inturnaround at 7:15 AM PST - 24 comments

A top-ranking American diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, dies. [more inside]
posted by mooselini at 6:56 AM PST - 40 comments

You didn't much like Raptorize and were hoping for something about real raptors (not F-22 fighters), therefore I am pleased to give you the goods on Birds of Prey. Raptors are birds that hunt (or scavenge) for meat, not plant life, and share several physical traits (although they can vary in size from miniature (pygmy) owls to Andean condors). Eagles and hawks (accipitridae), among the largest birds of prey in the United States), falcons (falconidae), condors, harriers, kites, ospreys (pandionidae), owls (tytonidae and strigidae), secretary birds (sagittariidae) and vultures (cathartidae) are all raptors; all have hooked beaks, fantastic visual acuity and sharp talons. The word raptor comes from the Latin rapere (to seize), apt description of their hunting style. Raptor breeders abound, as do raptor associations (quite a list at the Global Raptor Information Network). Rescue and rehabilitation organizations nurse injured raptors back to health; you can Adopt-a-Bird, and even donate regularly to help the birds via your very own Raptor Center Credit Card. Failing that, you can always help others learn more about conservation of these magnificent and beautiful creatures. And if you are super keen, you can attend the Winter Raptor Fest 2011. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 6:38 AM PST - 22 comments

The Christian left is a term originating in the United States, used to describe a spectrum of left-wing Christian political and social movements which largely embraces social justice. "We will not be profiled or pigeonholed and we will not ‘Be Quiet.’ We’re Christians. We’re Liberals. Please get used to it. Thank you."
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 5:54 AM PST - 142 comments

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly. Well, right or wrong they sing either way.
posted by punkfloyd at 4:26 AM PST - 12 comments

Kerfuffle in the LA Art Scene- the possibility that both the mural and its whitewashing are the art - from artist Mario Muller's Truffle Hunting
posted by pt68 at 3:21 AM PST - 14 comments

A leaked document shows the EPA under the Bush administration approved the pesticide clothianidin for widespread use on many crops, including corn, despite the findings from EPA scientists that it was a bee-killer. It may be responsible for the recent "Honeybee Depopulation Syndrome," which has been negatively affecting agriculture throughout North America. Previously.
posted by Slap*Happy at 2:01 AM PST - 41 comments

13 awesome and awful pilots for sci-fi series we never got to see.
posted by cthuljew at 1:29 AM PST - 61 comments

What Should Design Researchers Research? Report from 2020
posted by Artw at 11:43 PM PST - 11 comments

The Dating Game’s 10 best celebrity contestants. (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by gman at 7:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Enrique Morente, a controversial, influential giant among flamenco singer-songwriters, died today in the Madrid clinic La Luz, where he had been in an induced coma for the last several days. He was said to have been suffering from stomach cancer, and last week had entered the hospital for surgical intervention for hemorrhaging. [more inside]
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:43 PM PST - 4 comments

Serge Daney (1944 - 1992) is often cited as one of the greatest film critics. After joining the legendary film magazine Cahiers du cinéma (which he would eventually edit) at age 20, Daney wrote extensively on the changing place of movies in culture, on directors new and old and on television, war and even sports. He founded the film magazine Trafic before dying of AIDS in 1992.

Though some of his essays have been officially translated and a small book of his writings has been published in English, the vast majority of his work remains untranslated into English. That hasn't stopped a devoted group of cinephiles from taking matters into their own hands. [more inside]
posted by alexoscar at 5:57 PM PST - 12 comments

Google presents: TeachParentsTech.org (via the official Google blog). You'll never have to teach your parents how to copy and paste, attach a file to their email or transfer files again.
posted by peacheater at 5:40 PM PST - 68 comments

Giving What We Can is a movement founded by Toby Ord , a 31 year old Oxford academic on slightly more than average income who plans to give away a million pounds during his lifetime. [more inside]
posted by philipy at 4:40 PM PST - 52 comments

A very bad day for libraries: Today's Supreme Court deadlock casts Doctrine of First Sale into doubt for products made abroad. The Supreme Court today deadlocked on the question of whether Costco committed copyright infringement by selling Omega watches produced and purchased overseas. In effect, this deadlock upholds the 9th Circuit appeals court ruling that the First Sale doctrine does not apply to products produced outside the United States. Thinking of selling, lending, or transferring ownership of something originally produced overseas -- like, say, a book? This ruling calls the legality of such sales into question. [more inside]
posted by artemisia at 3:35 PM PST - 153 comments

You'd better get the robot those letters so he can be awesome. One of the most technically challenging banner games JayIsGames has developed, Robot Wants Jig is a metroid-ish platformer in which you acquire upgrades by collecting the letters of JAYISGAMES and unlock new areas of the map. A map of the game world is below in case you get hopelessly lost. [more inside]
posted by tehloki at 3:15 PM PST - 17 comments

To Eat Less, Imagine Eating More
posted by morganannie at 3:07 PM PST - 39 comments

12-year-old Nicky Wishart wanted to save his youth centre from being shut down due to funding cuts. This gets him questioned and tracked on Facebook by British anti-terror police.
posted by divabat at 1:43 PM PST - 44 comments

“A member of the armed forced wrote our bib numbers on our foreheads and arms in permanent marker, presumably to facilitate the identification of our dead bodies.” What happens when a gay man in his 40s and his boyfriend decide to run the nearly insane Tough Mudder obstacle course amid a sea of generally shirtless “non-homosexuals.” Tasks include manhandling lubed-up monkey bars, fording ice-cold lakes, and conquering steep mud hills. (It almost – but doesn’t quite – include falling into a burning ring of fire.) [more inside]
posted by joeclark at 1:28 PM PST - 48 comments

"If I had to choose sides today, I'd choose the Taliban," [Hamid Karzai] fumed.
posted by klue at 1:27 PM PST - 48 comments

There are generally two approaches to thinking about games: narratology and ludology. The first emphasizes story, the second play. The next time I played Super Mario, on the Wii (you can order all the vintage games), I found myself in a narratological mode. Mario reminded me of K. and his pursuit of the barmaid Frieda, in Kafka’s “The Castle,” and of the kind of lost-loved-one dreams that “The Castle” both mimics and instigates.

The New Yorker profiles the father of modern video games, Shigeru Miyamoto. (via Kotaku)
posted by incomple at 1:11 PM PST - 37 comments

Merry Christmas music from the North Point iBand, using borrowed iPhones and iPads
posted by growabrain at 12:38 PM PST - 9 comments

Excited for the 3D Yogi Bear movie this holiday season? Me too. Here's an alternate ending! (Possibly NSFW.)
posted by naju at 12:11 PM PST - 83 comments

Looking for a winter vacation get-away? How about going to Chernobyl? "Tours to Chernobyl are extreme tourism, plenty of curious people are looking for extreme adventures," he said. previously
posted by Xurando at 11:52 AM PST - 35 comments

Zombie Baby, Fucking Jane Austen, The Last Witch Hunter, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, American Bullshit, Better Living Through Chemistry... just some of the titles that made this year's Black List, a list of the best unproduced screenplays of the year as voted on by industry insiders. LA Times and Deadline Hollywood have pieces on it and here's an October audio interview with Franklin Leonard, creator of the Black List. In past years, aspiring screenwriters could find PDFs of the scripts online. It's gonna be a lot harder now.
posted by dobbs at 11:50 AM PST - 42 comments

Approximately 40 books dealing with LGBT issues were vandalized with what appeared to be urine in Lamont Library on the Harvard campus on November 24, according to a report filed Friday by the library security staff to the Harvard University Police Department. Something similar (minus the peepee) happen in San Francisco, where they took the books and made Art!
posted by Blake at 11:13 AM PST - 68 comments

DJ Assault (born Craig De Sean Adams, aka Craig Diamonds "The Street Narrator") is a Detroit-based music producer, who was part of a movement to bring ghetto-tech, aka booty house, from the urban streets of Detroit to the suburban club circuit. With his Jefferson Ave. label, he's bringing it directly to you, via the internet, for free. Four albums, 22 EPs, 11 DJ mixes, and three bonus collections of rap and "accelerated funk", all streaming and downloadable. [Warning: most music is NSFW or those sensitive to repetitive, crude lyrics]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:49 AM PST - 25 comments

BMJ Christmas Edition Every year the British Medical Journal publishes a series of tongue-in-cheek papers for Christmas.

• Reflections of Father Christmas’s GP
• Mozart’s 140 causes of death and 27 mental disorders
• Pie sharing in complex clinical collaborations: a piece of cake?
• Primary Care: A modest proposal
• The IKEA pencil: a surprising find in the NHS
• Dr Watson: a regular reader of the British Medical Journal
• Red for danger: the effects of red hair in surgical practice
• A Christmas tree cataract
• Can he fix it? Yes, he can!
• Integrative medicine and the point of credulity

posted by alby at 10:45 AM PST - 7 comments

Astronomy Domine
See Emily Play
Lucifer Sam
Matilda Mother
Flaming
Pow R. Toc H.
Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk
Interstellar Overdrive
The Gnome
Chapter 24
Scarecrow
Bike

[more inside]
posted by swift at 10:37 AM PST - 58 comments

Geoff Apps has been building and riding his own distinctive cross country cycles since the late 1960s. Unlike the members of the Rough Stuff Fellowship, who traditionally used touring or road bikes, Geoff's designs come from his background in motorbike trials (previously). After more than twenty years off the market, his latest design will soon go into production: the Cleland AventuraTT.
posted by scruss at 10:29 AM PST - 17 comments

Localfilter: Today in Tokyo, legislation passed that will further restrict manga and animation "glorifying or exaggerating illegal sexual acts." Ten of the biggest comics companies are protesting the Tokyo International Anime Fair, sponsored by the city, responding that a focus on their mode of expression is unfair. Blogger Dan Kanemitsu reports.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:04 AM PST - 53 comments

Beethoven is so much more than Für Elise and the Fifth symphony. [more inside]
posted by Namlit at 9:54 AM PST - 24 comments

A Federal Judge in Virginia has ruled the mandate in the recently passed Affordable Health Care Act unconstitutional. This unlikely result means that the Supreme Court will be in the position to decide whether or not all or part of the health care reform remains intact. Some argue this development may reflect the success of broad-reaching Republican efforts in recent years to tilt the political alignment of the Federal judiciary. Others, naturally, disagree.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:43 AM PST - 203 comments

Geeky Bibliopegy. Custom hand-bound journals and albums, featuring Buffy, Firefly, Doctor Who, etc. Check the blog for additional details on many of the volumes.
posted by kmz at 9:08 AM PST - 5 comments

Max Spaiser of The Suits of James Bond presents: The Template for 007. More on Dr. No costuming: 2-eyelet derby, 2-button turnback cuff, trilby.(Clothes on Film previously)
posted by shakespeherian at 8:57 AM PST - 27 comments

250-year-old birch bark canoe found in barn to be returned to Canada. While we are on the subject, you could do worse than to spend an hour today watching this fascinating 1971 documentary on a Birch Bark Canoe builder. (Not terribly often you come across a video captioned in Cree.) More YouTube Birch Bark Canoe building goodness.
posted by spock at 8:51 AM PST - 27 comments

"Hann sells his Afghanistan tours as a chance to see the country's rugged outback while sleeping on dirty teahouse floors and tackling the country's roads in minibuses that buck like mechanical bulls ... Obviously, Hann's tours attract adventurous travelers, but they're not adrenaline freaks or war junkies. Most are past middle age, unmarried, fairly mild-mannered, and childless," Damon Tabor on tourism in Afghanistan.
posted by geoff. at 8:47 AM PST - 17 comments

Single sentence animations. The Bastard.
posted by stbalbach at 7:46 AM PST - 4 comments

The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles' second film, has inspired a legend around the lost footage excised by the studio to make it more appealing to audiences. The film's making is a cautionary tale in letting the studio have creative control, and the finished product pained Welles to his dying day. The mythical status of the lost footage has inspired a few to try and track it down. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 7:26 AM PST - 25 comments

Prog 1 to Prog 1500- Every cover of the British science fiction comic 2000AD from the years '77 to '06 in 3 and a half minutes. (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:55 AM PST - 28 comments

Lawrence has decided to watch the movie Julie and Julia every day for a year. [link via Bookslut]
posted by drezdn at 6:48 AM PST - 100 comments

"Tubal Cain" was the name of a Christian version of the Roman Vulcan. It's also the nick of YouTube user and retired shop teacher mrpete222 in his many videos covering machine shop tips and procedures. [more inside]
posted by DU at 6:36 AM PST - 19 comments

Italy’s government teeters on the brink: tomorrow (Tuesday) a no-confidence vote should decide whether we have another three years of bunga-bunga partying, "escort" (= prostitute) scandals and international gaffes from the leader of this NATO partner and founding EU member, or whether Silvio Berlusconi will be sent home. Some think it’s a hilariously stupid (SLYT) to suggest he might step down. [more inside]
posted by aqsakal at 4:39 AM PST - 40 comments

Dancing with Cats is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats to dance with them, or why. [more inside]
posted by greatgefilte at 3:58 AM PST - 37 comments

Audio slideshow: Photography of Sir Wilfred Thesiger Sir Wilfred Thesiger took nearly 40,000 photographs during his eight decades of travels throughout Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Now, to mark 100 years since his birth, Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum is displaying some of his most striking images.
posted by Lezzles at 3:53 AM PST - 9 comments

W Magazine has Ryan Trecartin to make a fashion spread. [more inside]
posted by artof.mulata at 3:48 AM PST - 8 comments

I enjoyed Green Sangha's Plastic State of Mind.
posted by serazin at 10:03 PM PST - 13 comments

Raptorize: every week is raptor week. Via photographi-ca on Flickr. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 10:02 PM PST - 20 comments

Japan Air Raids "is an ongoing project to build a digital archive dedicated to the international dissemination of information about the World War II air raids against Japan." They have seeded it with quite a bit of material (e.g. Target Tokyo, narrated by Ronald Reagan in the documentary and propaganda section) and promise there is much more to come. [Warning, some images may disturb] [via]
posted by unliteral at 9:13 PM PST - 21 comments

Stephen H. Kanner, FAIA. The late architect Stephen Kanner made wonderful buildings in Los Angeles.
posted by xowie at 7:12 PM PST - 7 comments