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In the wake of their Webby nominations for their Bohemian Rhapsody video (previously), Nerdist Podcast interviews The Muppets. [46m, actual interview starts at 10m40s] Listen on the website, or find download links on the page to take it with you.
posted by hippybear at 11:24 PM PST - 4 comments

In 1980s New York, two songs - Planet Rock and Let The Music Play - hit the Latino club scene like an earthquake and the aftershocks created a new genre of dance music - Freestyle. Characterized by funky electro-style breaks made on a Roland 808, with Latin rhythms and uplifting vocals about love and loss, often sung by unknown and untrained singers, the sound has remained a force in pop music and has influenced house and breaks music to this day. [more inside]
posted by empath at 10:32 PM PST - 36 comments

Celebrate the eight-hour work day, dance around a pole, affirm your patriotism to beat the reds, build your community through candy and flower filled baskets, and get caught in flagrante delicto: it's a very special day. Previously, previously
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 10:09 PM PST - 31 comments

The Data-Driven Life. "Ubiquitous self-tracking is a dream of engineers. For all their expertise at figuring out how things work, technical people are often painfully aware how much of human behavior is a mystery. People do things for unfathomable reasons. They are opaque even to themselves. A hundred years ago, a bold researcher fascinated by the riddle of human personality might have grabbed onto new psychoanalytic concepts like repression and the unconscious. These ideas were invented by people who loved language. Even as therapeutic concepts of the self spread widely in simplified, easily accessible form, they retained something of the prolix, literary humanism of their inventors. From the languor of the analyst’s couch to the chatty inquisitiveness of a self-help questionnaire, the dominant forms of self-exploration assume that the road to knowledge lies through words. Trackers are exploring an alternate route. Instead of interrogating their inner worlds through talking and writing, they are using numbers. They are constructing a quantified self."
posted by homunculus at 8:15 PM PST - 57 comments

Pan Am’s Helvetica dreamtime. How I unearthed a forgotten chapter in corporate design history.
posted by puny human at 8:12 PM PST - 21 comments

This is a zip file, the contents of which is the zip file you started with. An explanation of how one would create such a thing appears here.
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:01 PM PST - 66 comments

China Miéville has won his third Arthur C Clarke award for his crime/weird fiction novel The City and The City - making him the first person to win the prize three times. Somewhat emotional video of him accepting the prize, where he thanks one special crime reader in particular, his mum, who passed away before it's publication. 10 Questions about China Miéville. An A-Z of China Miéville - 1, 2. An extract from his next novel, Kraken. A Bas Lag Wiki. A discussion of the best genre crossovers. An out of season Christmas tale.
posted by Artw at 6:31 PM PST - 71 comments

A mixtape a week for a year... Detroit Techno, Giorgio Moroder, Quebecois Disco, Kraftwerk, Bobby Orlando, Synth Pop and loads more.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 5:58 PM PST - 29 comments

The Adventist-Style Vegan Dinner Loaf calculator. For all your Adventist-style vegan dinner loaf calculating needs.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:27 PM PST - 34 comments

I'd rather measure the diameter of a dove than go barter-shopping with a frilly lion. (Lots of Previously.)
posted by blue funk at 4:04 PM PST - 21 comments

Frankenstein Defeats Evil Computer. Mysterious Grass-Roots Gal-Revolt Rocks Gotham! Are Hippies Slowing Down Space Progam in Protest? Headlines ripped from the pages of such great newspapers as the Daily Bugle and the Gotham Gazette await you at Dateline: Silver Age.
posted by gamera at 2:58 PM PST - 16 comments

Provoking pro-choice advocates, Oklahoma passed two highly restrictive abortion laws on Tuesday. One (rtf file) requires doctors to show women an ultrasound of their fetus and point out its physical characteristics — even if the patient was impregnated through rape or incest. The second (rtf file) stipulates that doctors cannot be sued if they decide to lie to an expectant mother regarding her baby's birth defects. A third requires clinics to post signs telling patients they cannot be forced to have an abortion. The first law prompted an immediate lawsuit from Tulsa's only abortion clinic. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 2:42 PM PST - 165 comments

Dutch Marines capture Somali pirates with all the action caught by the team leader's helmet videocamera.
posted by darkstar at 2:40 PM PST - 39 comments

And you thought Germans didn't know how to have fun. [more inside]
posted by Cobalt at 2:28 PM PST - 32 comments

In the black. Maggie Anderson, and her family spent a year trying to patronize only black-owned businesses. Featured in the local papers, you can read about the project and their own views on their website.
posted by Carillon at 1:46 PM PST - 128 comments

The demolition of the Dallas Cowboys' Texas Stadium [previously], in panoramic 360-degree video, from the 50-yard line. That is all.
posted by Rykey at 1:02 PM PST - 44 comments

RIP: Joe Sarno, one of the progenitors of sexploitation in the 1960s. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:30 PM PST - 13 comments

Since 1945 the proprietor-free Guardian has supported all 3 major parties, and after an editorial meeting last week, they have declared for the Liberal Democrats. The Economist yesterday published their support for the conservatives: Who Should Govern Britain?, which only really leaves The Independent with any question over who they'll back. [more inside]
posted by gregjones at 11:40 AM PST - 47 comments

On June 27, 1898, all but unnoticed, a Canadian seaman named Joshua Slocum sailed his rebuilt oyster boat Spray into Newport, Rhode Island, completing a 3-year, 46,000 mile voyage conducted solely by dead reckoning that made him the first man to ever achieve a solo circumnavigation of the world. His account of the feat, Sailing Alone Around The World (HTML with illustrations, plain text, EPUB, audio), was described by Arthur Ransome as "one of the immortal books". In 1909, Slocum set out in the Spray for the West Indies. Neither he nor the craft were ever seen again.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:12 AM PST - 27 comments

That’s so weird! is a Canadian sketch comedy series on YTV. Pitched at the young teen audience, anyone who likes their humour broad and zany will enjoy this. Some favourite sketches are Daniel Book (a 17-but-still-7 Daniel Cook), Logan and Wilf (teen boys parodied) and the Cafeteria Ladies. The show was recently picked up by Boomerang Latin America and Nickelodeon Australia. A whole new generation of Canuck sketch comedy takes off, eh?
posted by No Robots at 10:08 AM PST - 13 comments

On the Monster Hour, there was this monster that used to come out and try to kill everyone in the audience. No one would expect it, not even the producers who were told by the monster he would play a few blues tunes on the piano.

Surrealism done right, by Zachary Schomburg. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 9:28 AM PST - 39 comments

Henry Luce's original prospectus for LIFE magazine, written with the help of poet Archibald MacLeish:

To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things—machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man's work—his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed;

Thus to see, and to be shown, is now the will and new expectancy of half mankind.

To see, and to show, is the mission now undertaken by a new kind of publication, THE SHOW-BOOK OF THE WORLD, hereinafter described.

posted by ocherdraco at 9:25 AM PST - 8 comments

Making of Friskies "Adventureland": The creative types behind the insane commercial explain themselves and the six month odyssey that led to the commercial's creation (kitty green screen! turkey dance choreography!). If you haven't seen it yet, The Awl liveblogs the ad. Slate chimes in too, with some quotes from execs explaining what the hell is going on.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 9:13 AM PST - 105 comments

Apple to shut down Lala May 31st. [more inside]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 8:57 AM PST - 138 comments

A Seattle Landmark is closing. The Lusty Lady and its marquee has been a mainstay in downtown Seattle since the 80’s. It may be the only peep show to feature monthly art shows. The San Francisco location was unionized in the 90’s and remains open. It was was sold to the employees in the early 21st century and is now cooperatively owned. The Lusty has also inspired a book and a movie.
posted by josher71 at 8:29 AM PST - 35 comments

New Order's 1990 official World Cup song, World In Motion, promised a new, actually listenable era in football songs. So what has England seen since then? The endearing Three Lions for the hopes of Euro '96. Fat Les' Vindaloo celebrated the marriage of matches and curries. Meat Pie Sausage Roll celebrated the meal options of your average footie ground. On The Ball celebrated the meteoric rise of Ant and Dec. In 2006, we had a novelty cover of a novelty song, the unspeakable, the unelectable, and the so bad it loops round to genius. [more inside]
posted by mippy at 8:07 AM PST - 29 comments

The remix artist Pogo (Previously Previously) goes a little darker and danicer in his latest offering, Skynet Symphonic, entirely built from Terminator 2 clips.
posted by The Whelk at 7:54 AM PST - 20 comments

Hand Drawn Maps "These humble maps can be beautiful. They can also be messy, indecipherable, inaccurate, and unattractive ... The crucial advantage of the handmade map is that it is designed for a particular person confronting a particular task. " [via]
posted by dhruva at 7:37 AM PST - 16 comments

Where music geekery and typographical geekery intersect: Rock That Font looks knowledgeably at the typography of notable album covers.
posted by acb at 7:29 AM PST - 7 comments

The New York World’s Fair of 1939 and 1940 promised visitors they would be looking at the “World of Tomorrow”. (second link is similar to the second one here)
posted by gman at 7:06 AM PST - 21 comments

Who fights the powers of evil with the incandescent glory of light? Who rescues helpless athletes and utility workers across the Seattle metropolitan area? Who gets a 20-cop motorcade escort for his bad-ass customized Delorean? Why, it's America's newest super hero, Electron Boy! [more inside]
posted by Sublimity at 6:23 AM PST - 35 comments

Father of the Anthora, dead at 87. Known to people outside of New York mostly from Law and Order episodes, the Anthora is one of the most recognizable symbols of the city, the blue and white paper coffee cup with a Greek design and "We are happy to serve you" written on the side. "The Anthora seems to have been here forever, as if bestowed by the gods at the city’s creation. But in fact, it was created by man — one man in particular, a refugee from Nazi Europe named Leslie Buck. " For use outside of NYC, you can order the paper version in bulk or get a ceramic replica from MOMA.
posted by octothorpe at 5:01 AM PST - 61 comments

Get Kony. Sam Childers, former outlaw biker, current evangelical preacher, has set up an orphanage in war-torn Southern Sudan. More controversially, he's on a vigilante crusade* against Joseph Kony and his "outmatched but unstopped" Lord's Resistance Army. [* sound loads immediately on site]
posted by availablelight at 5:00 AM PST - 12 comments

The Klencke Atlas of 1660 (video), the world's largest book.
Grayson Perry's Map of Nowhere (video)
Many more maps and videos at the BBC's The Beauty of Maps site.
Would you like to see these maps in person? The British Library has just opened their exhibition Magnificent Maps where you can see these among 80 treasures from their map collection, many never seen before.
posted by vacapinta at 4:43 AM PST - 12 comments

Hey, let's join Ze Frank's social network for two.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 4:25 AM PST - 7 comments

Modern Britain
posted by lungtaworld at 3:46 AM PST - 14 comments

Tim Minchin is not keen on the Pope. Quite rude. No, actually very rude. And yes, it's a single link to a YouTube video. NSFW.
posted by MrMustard at 2:04 AM PST - 39 comments

Having trouble understanding or producing humor? Microsoft is here to help.
posted by lifeless at 11:50 PM PST - 67 comments

The Rosetta Project is an online collection of mostly children's books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries complete with illustrations (previously). [more inside]
posted by sleepy pete at 11:33 PM PST - 4 comments

This is what soldiers get up to when they get bored.
posted by divabat at 11:22 PM PST - 46 comments

Einstein on the Beast. Evening High. Lil' Tut. Highlights from a dj BC album, Glassbreaks, that samples Philip Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach. (Previously.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:55 PM PST - 35 comments

are you a fan of single-serving sites and vulgarity who can't decide what to eat tonight? What The Fuck Should I Make For Dinner (nsfw, swearing in large text) is here for you. [more inside]
posted by heeeraldo at 9:51 PM PST - 25 comments

"As a public service to those of you who may someday find yourself in the exhilarating-slash-nerve-racking position of having a meal with Bill Murray, here is a guide so that you may avoid our mistakes."
posted by dhammond at 9:46 PM PST - 68 comments

George , the heart-warming story of one man and his battle against himself. (SLYT)
posted by blue_beetle at 8:29 PM PST - 15 comments

Growing Up Heroes featuring; The Hulk: She Ra: Captain Aces : Dr. Zeus: Princess Leia: The Masked Avenger: Supergirls: Batman: Doctor Doom
posted by puny human at 8:04 PM PST - 9 comments

The European map is outdated and illogical. Here's how it should look.
posted by armage at 6:27 PM PST - 45 comments

Juliet, Ophelia, Desdemona: All three met an untimely fate. This could have been avoided if they had a sassy gay friend. [MYTL] [more inside]
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 6:05 PM PST - 34 comments

Given the seeming homogeneity of many hit songs, it might come as a surprise that some very strange and unconventional songs have found their way to the top of the pop charts in the past. Some are novelty songs, some are just weird... [more inside]
posted by LSK at 6:02 PM PST - 53 comments

The Worst Of Perth showcases the worst in public art, architecture, design, fashion, car culture, graffiti and suburban landscape in and around Perth in Western Australia, with the occasional public victory over bad art. Substantially NSFW.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:22 PM PST - 16 comments

The Copenhagen Wheel project transforms ordinary bicycles into hybrid electric bikes that also function as mobile environmental sensing units. [via digital urban] [more inside]
posted by gruchall at 5:09 PM PST - 15 comments

Songs From the Black Hole is a sci-fi rock opera written by weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and originally intended to be the followup to their self-titled debut. Never officially released, the album has become known as a one of rock's "mythical lost masterpieces," akin to the Beach Boys' SMiLE. [more inside]
posted by ludwig_van at 4:19 PM PST - 26 comments

If you hire illegal aliens at your business, the federal government can seize your property. In a rare move, the U.S. government is seeking to confiscate the property of an iconic San Diego restaurant that allegedly had a practice of knowingly hiring illegal aliens.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 2:27 PM PST - 114 comments

It's been estimated that the average UK adult is now registered on more than 700 databases and is caught many times each day by nearly five million CCTV cameras. So how hard would it be for an average citizen to disappear completely? That’s the subject of a new documentary film: Erasing David, (Trailer: YouTube, Vimeo) which premieres this evening in the UK on More4. It's also now available worldwide online at the iTunes store and through several Video On Demand services, as well as through Good Screenings. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 2:15 PM PST - 16 comments

The free box is a webseries about eccentric housemates in portland. It has three 10-episode seasons, and a fourth in preproduction.
posted by djduckie at 1:40 PM PST - 16 comments

Jani, a hindu man in western India, claims not to have taken in any food or water for 70 years. He has been under 24 hour surveillance since April 22 by a hospital team. This video goes into a little more detail.
posted by mdn at 1:37 PM PST - 79 comments

Slate has introduced a tool to analyze the news sites you read online. The tool is based on a paper that studied ideological isolation in news consumption online and off. It analyzes your history to determine which sites you read and looks at readership data to determine how much of an echo chamber, if any, your choice of news sources creates. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 11:42 AM PST - 71 comments

Purvis Young, the street artist who adorned neighborhoods in Miami with his vibrant, expressionistic depictions of urban life, has died at the age of 67.
posted by cross_impact at 11:24 AM PST - 4 comments

In honor of the museum's 50th anniversary, the Anne Frank House has created a virtual tour of the Secret Annex and the rest of the house. The complete manuscript of Anne's diary has also gone on display at the museum for the first time.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:14 AM PST - 18 comments

This guy makes mashups of American pop music, Korean pop music, and Japanese pop music. (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by specialagentwebb at 9:40 AM PST - 9 comments

Past Thinking about Earth-Like Planets and Life [pdf], presenting a brief history of thought on finding extraterrestrial life-like phenomena, is the first chapter of James Kasting's new book, How to Find a Habitable Planet. He participated in a discussion on BBC's The Forum.
posted by jjray at 9:30 AM PST - 23 comments

Yesterday, in a highly split decision with six separate opinions, the United States Supreme Court overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling in Salazar v. Buono. The issue at hand? Whether the location of the Mojave Memorial Cross represented an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The Ninth Circuit decided that it did, but its ruling has been called into question by the high court on several levels. [more inside]
posted by Riki tiki at 9:09 AM PST - 103 comments

HP buys Palm for $1.2 Billion.
posted by Michael Pemulis at 8:54 AM PST - 99 comments

How I Met Your Motherboard
posted by gwint at 8:07 AM PST - 15 comments

Here's Why We Don't Allow Flash On The iPhone And iPad . An open letter by Steve Jobs. Some previous discussion here, here.
posted by mazola at 7:12 AM PST - 957 comments

Bali's "Kuta Cowboys" get unwanted attention. Bali draws plenty of older women seeking romance (see: Elizabeth Gilbert), and more often than not, they end up in the arms of "Kuta Cowboys" - tanned, muscled, swaggering local men who offer no-strings-attached intimacy to female tourists. [more inside]
posted by micketymoc at 4:55 AM PST - 34 comments

"This is an Islamic country - if you're caught drinking or they smell alcohol, you will be lashed." But people drink anyway.
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:58 AM PST - 45 comments

A Saint for Lost Souls. "The barrio of Tepito, where it's said that everything is for sale except dignity, has been one of Mexico City's roughest neighborhoods since Aztec times. Famous for its black market and its boxing champions, Tepito is a place where residents learn to fight early and fight hard. These days it has also become the epicenter of Mexico's fastest-growing faith: Santa Muerte, or Holy Death, a hybrid religion that merges Catholic symbolism with pre-Hispanic worship of the skeletal Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl, Lord and Lady of the Dead."
posted by homunculus at 11:20 PM PST - 36 comments

Do you like free music, and a whole lot of it? You might want to check out netlabels.
23seconds is a netlabel from Sweden, with music ranging from introspective but fun indietronica to brash electroclash to feel-good Gothenburg disco, all for free (as in beer.)
But what's a real goldmine is their massive netlabel catalogue, with a listing of over 150 labels. Happy downloading! [more inside]
posted by dunkadunc at 10:09 PM PST - 18 comments

Solar eruption with chance of rain: The movie.
posted by edgeways at 9:47 PM PST - 25 comments

Im a fan of Songs You Already Know. If you make another, could you please make a song for "Song for when you're overwhelmed"? A nice sweet calmdown song. An audio-hug. A song that huddles around you and whispers "shhhhhhh, calm the fuck down. s'okay".
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:12 PM PST - 35 comments

Short segments from Wodaabe - Die Hirten der Sonne. Nomaden am Südrand der Sahara (Herdsmen of the Sun), a 1989 documentary by Werner Herzog.
posted by puny human at 7:52 PM PST - 6 comments

Doing Time, Doing Vipassana is a powerful 52-minute documentary (1 2 3 4 5) in which Goenka's form of meditation is once again introduced in India's largest prison. [more inside]
posted by gman at 6:57 PM PST - 19 comments

Arise, Sir Peter. Renowned film director Peter Jackson was invested by the Queen's representative in New Zealand yesterday, as a Knight Bachelor Companion of the Order of Merit. Modern Knighthoods are principally a British and European convention, exported to the Commonwealth colonies, and seen by some as a continuation of social class. Labour discontinued them in 2000 in favour of more egalitarian titles (and with associated republican ideals), however they were restored in 2009 by the right-wing National party government, to a mixed reception.
posted by wilful at 6:48 PM PST - 38 comments

So this new critter, the Symbion pandora, has such a bizarre life cycle and is just so bloody weird -unlike anything we had come across before- that its discovery in 1995 lead to the creation of a whole new phylum in the Animal Kingdom. Meet the little monsters.

If your weird-o-meter is humming, keep reading Zoologger, a new column in NewScientist magazine that writes about about weird animals from around the globe. Selective abortion in pipefish, single-cell giants that enslave bacteria, amphibious cats, you name it.
posted by Cobalt at 6:43 PM PST - 38 comments

Something very strange has been happening across London clubland this Spring. The Antsignal has gone up over the city, and the Antpeople have crawled out from their mounds to hail the unexpected return of their insect overlord. An Adam Ant Exclusive by Simon Price [more inside]
posted by a.steele at 5:57 PM PST - 27 comments

The Fretless Fader is an incredible new XY turntable control interface being developed by John Beez
posted by mhjb at 5:45 PM PST - 28 comments

Chan Sung Jung is a MMA fighter. He has an unorthodox style. And he keeps coming at you regardless of the pace. They call him the Korean Zombie.
posted by ishmael at 5:06 PM PST - 36 comments

Jeff Koons, Charles Ray, Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Therrien are just a few of the artists who, over the past thirty years, have used Carlson & Co. to engineer and fabricate large scale, technically complex sculptures. Last week Carlson & Co. laid off its 95 employees, and will close.
posted by R. Mutt at 4:02 PM PST - 24 comments

Orange juice, consumed in 70 percent of American homes, isn't quite as all natural as the "Not From Concentrate" on its label implies. According to Alyssa Hamilton's book Squeezed, raw juice is often heated, stripped of its volatile compounds and flavor-rich oils, and stored for as long as a year before it reaches the consumer. Something called "the flavor pack" is used to return most of the "natural" aroma and taste to the product. Why? Without these infusions, Hamilton writes, processed orange juice would be "undrinkable".
posted by exhilaration at 2:44 PM PST - 125 comments

I CANT LIVE WITHOUT YOY. Armed with air guitar, U2's With Or Without You, and a video camera that he can type overlays into, a kid professes his everlasting love to KELY KELLY.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 2:25 PM PST - 78 comments

Actor, Playwright, Artist, Comedian, Magician, "Man of A Thousand Voices" (including Mighty Mouse,) "Beloved Herring Maven"

Mr. Ira Stadlen (Stage name: "Captain" Allen Swift) has passed away at the age of 87. Throughout his career, Mr. Stadler voiced characters in more than 30,000 television and radio commercials, as well as cartoons such as Underdog, Tom and Jerry and Diver Dan, but some might remember him most as the man who saved Howdy Doody. His nephew has posted a remembrance on his blog, which includes a link to a "novelty 45" mp3 recording of Swift's "Are You Lonesome Tonight." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 2:03 PM PST - 13 comments

Surviving at the Base of the Pyramid A look at the ways and means those at the Base of the Pyramid across the developing world earn a living by the repair, reuse, repurposing, resale and recycling of goods. Like Dharavi; home to more than a million people.and a thriving business centre propelled by thousands of micro-entrepreneurs who have created as many as 4500 to 5000 small scale industries most of which recycle the discarded waste of Mumbai’s 19 million citizens. Ideas like The Safe Bottle Lamp project. winner of 2009 BBC WorldChallenge. Indian social entrepreneurs are going global cooking gas from pine needles- solar powered hearing aids. and in San Diego CA Carbon Manna Unlimited have announced the establishment of the "Micro" Revolutions Institute(SM), the world's first think tank to focus exclusively on developing novel, sustainable, open-source, low-cost and immediately implementable micro-economic, micro-financial and micro-ecological paradigms or mechanisms to benefit the Developing World.
posted by adamvasco at 12:27 PM PST - 6 comments

Eating local, organic foods may not be the best option. The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions stem from food production, not transportation, and production inputs for organic food are typically higher. Third world countries that have a food system that is organic and local by default are suffering from lack of infrastructure and investment in basic production technologies that could improve nutrition for millions of people. [more inside]
posted by stinker at 12:17 PM PST - 151 comments

Chimpanzees mourn, freak out, and even lose sleep over a relative's death. Includes footage. Also, lol.
posted by DZack at 12:05 PM PST - 62 comments

The ID system lies in the roots and the chemical cues they secrete. Scientists have found that plants will determine if their neighbors are siblings/family and if so, will not complete for resources as aggressively . [more inside]
posted by Eicats at 11:51 AM PST - 18 comments

Super Mario Crossover - Play Super Mario Bros. as Bill S, Samus, Link, Simon, Mega Man or, of course, as Mario. [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 11:40 AM PST - 68 comments

The Expansionist Party of the United States ("XP") is a "small, international organization founded over the telephone February 19, 1977 by two gay men in two different boros of New York City." (One of the founders is L. Craig Schoonmaker, known to some as the guiding spirit of Homosexuals Intransigent!.) XP's mission: "to enlarge the United States geographically." First step: Welcoming Canada Home. [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses at 11:21 AM PST - 60 comments

February 1966 was the best month in comics ever
posted by Artw at 11:20 AM PST - 42 comments

Dexter High School's student newspaper causes parental squall. An anonymous parents group called Clean Up DHS wants to quash student free speech because of an article in a recent issue of the student-run The Squall. The article in question (p. 4, February 2010) is about a local teens-only club. Where's the rub? [more inside]
posted by beelzbubba at 11:17 AM PST - 25 comments

Emerging from a debate on "epistemic closure" (of the conservative mind) John Quiggin looked beyond the dead horses and gazed upon the need "to offer hope, in the form of goals that can excite enthusiastic commitment to a progressive alternative." Matthew Yglesias pondered and penned a response providing a glimpse of the very big picture... [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:11 AM PST - 17 comments

Rivers Cuomo Messes You Up Forever: The six stages of breaking up with an ideal.
posted by oinopaponton at 11:09 AM PST - 100 comments

Dutch PSA uses augmented reality to make a point about aggression against public service employees. (SLYT)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:17 AM PST - 38 comments

Couch Cushion Architecture; A Critical Analysis in two parts. Complete with grades.
posted by cashman at 9:52 AM PST - 12 comments

The five worst Army men of all time.
posted by william_boot at 9:50 AM PST - 82 comments

Every day, I draw on a 3x5 index card. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 9:37 AM PST - 20 comments

"The social world is led by women," states Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Jenna Goudreau for Forbes reports on recent studies and data which suggest that men and women are motivated to use social media for different purposes. According to experts, women use social media to connect and share, while men are interested in gathering information and "increasing their status." via Jezebel
posted by la_scribbler at 8:58 AM PST - 78 comments

May 1st is National Homebrew Day. Hundreds of thousands of people in America brew their own beer, wine, mead and other alcoholic beverages. Want to try out the hobby? Here's a great community, and here's a great guide. [more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:19 AM PST - 64 comments

"The written word hasn't kept up with the age. The movies have outmanoeuvered it. We have the talkies, but as yet no Readies." So wrote Rob Brown in 1930 in his book The Readies. Putting his money where his mouth was, he made a prototype readie, which has since been lost. Brown's story is recounted by Jennifer Schuessler in The New York Times. Brown expert Craig Saper has created a replica Readie online, which includes amongst others texts by Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, F. T. Marinetti as well as translations from Horace by Ezra Pound. [Some of the texts shock modern sensibilities]
posted by Kattullus at 6:15 AM PST - 17 comments

Gordon Brown didn't realise his radio mike was on and accidentally called the woman he'd just spoken with a "bigot". The Guardian's take; The Daily Mail. Is this Brown's Prescott moment?
posted by handee at 6:10 AM PST - 157 comments

Pentecostal minister Clovis Salmon, known in Brixton as "Sam The Wheels" due to his wheel-making skills, came to Britain from Jamaica in the 1950s. From the 1960s to the 1980s he used his Super-8 camera to film Brixton daily life and church scenes, including the aftermath of the 1981 riots.
posted by criticalbill at 6:09 AM PST - 7 comments

Kalamazoo Residents against T&J Towing is a facebook group with over ten thousand members. Initially, Justan Kurtz said the towing company took down his parking pass so they could tow him. The facebook group quickly filled up with gripes about shady practices, but the towing company says they have done nothing wrong. Now, T&J Towing is suing Kurtz for $750,000. Perhaps a SLAPP suit is not the best course of action. So, First Amendment Right, or libel? [more inside]
posted by rebent at 11:56 PM PST - 57 comments

A small slide show of partisan monuments on the territory of former Yugoslavia. via: [aesthetic interlude] and [grain edit]
posted by tellurian at 10:37 PM PST - 12 comments

The final night flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavor [more inside]
posted by humannaire at 9:35 PM PST - 24 comments

[Warning: Not Safe For Work. NSFW. Nudity, graphic sexual content, and that's just the beginning.]
Sexy Losers (1999-2009) -- a send-up of all things hentai, four panels at a time. Featuring the Lighter Side of [ incest • necrophilia • chronic masturbation • coprophilia • watersports • bukkake • sex tricks • sex dolls • tentacle porn • and so on... ]
posted by not_on_display at 7:38 PM PST - 69 comments

Each issue of Lapham's Quarterly (previously) has original and whimsical info-laden "Charts & Graphs". 76 of them are online (click "previous" to move forward). [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 7:21 PM PST - 10 comments

Working With Studs is a radio documentary about Studs Terkel. You will like it. Good production and tech notes, courtesy of Transom.org
posted by timsteil at 6:32 PM PST - 14 comments

A touch screen you don't touch. From Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, a gesture-controlled handheld device that responds thereminically to the motion of a finger held above the screen. Watch to the end for the remarkable 3-d painting app. From the people who brought you the pitching, batting, and dribbling robots. Previous Ishikawa awesomeness on Metafilter.
posted by escabeche at 6:31 PM PST - 21 comments

An essay on sleep and loss by Bill Hayes, author of Sleep Demons. The essay is part of a NYT series All-nighters, which has also included work from Mefi favorite Christoph Niemann (previously) and other sleep deprived contributors.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 6:08 PM PST - 13 comments

At the foot of the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai there's a fountain. At night, this fountain does what fountains do. Well, not just any fountain. Baba Yetu | Time to Say Goodbye | Bassbor Al Fourgakom | Dhoom Taana. If you can, watch in 1080p in fullscreen.
posted by netbros at 5:41 PM PST - 33 comments

One of the greatest football matches of all time, Greek Philosophers vs German Philosophers is going to be replayed.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:24 PM PST - 22 comments

"The first ten minutes of Up, with superior white goods": John Lewis' new ad, intended to show the whole life of a customer, is far more emotional than anything that's trying to sell you stuff ought to be. (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by mippy at 4:08 PM PST - 164 comments

Confused about the complexity of American military strategy in Afghanistan? Fret no more: PowerPoint to the rescue! [NYT story]
posted by Kskomsvold at 2:59 PM PST - 49 comments

In an exclusive interview with MTV, Ridley Scott releases further details on his latest project: two 3D Alien prequels, which will have a non-Ripley female lead and focus on the story behind the first movie's "Space Jockey." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:54 PM PST - 254 comments

"Open your minds, earthlings, and prepare to be launched headfirst into an alternate universe. A place where robots fall in love with humans. Where your tour guide into this alternate realm is a demure lil thang with a bold set of pipes. 'I'm an alien from outer space,' declares Janelle Monáe on the first song of her debut album, Metropolis: The Chase Suite (Special Edition). Yes, Toto, we are no longer in Kansas anymore. Or even planet Earth." [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 1:18 PM PST - 59 comments

"A visualisation of the northern European airspace returning to use after being closed due to volcanic ash." (SLV)
posted by Taft at 12:51 PM PST - 32 comments

The legend of American singer//songwriter//actor//badass Kris Kristofferson has already been established here on Metafilter. Now (and until May 4) you can listen to the entirety of Kristofferson's soon-to-be released album of previously unreleased tracks Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends: The Publishing Demos 1968-72 over at NPR.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 12:07 PM PST - 22 comments

When "The Dark, Dark Hours" episode of General Electric Theater aired live from Hollywood on December 12, 1954, Ronald Reagan and James Dean were just two actors yet to find the roles that would define them. – The Atlantic has a six-minute video clip and some background.
posted by The Mouthchew at 12:01 PM PST - 6 comments

April 27th is World Tapir Day! Take a few minutes to celebrate our prehensile-schnozzed fellow mammals by learning some facts, viewing some cuteness, or supporting the cause.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 11:24 AM PST - 35 comments

Journey into Manhood is a program designed to rid Christian men of their attraction to other men. The program is rooted in the belief that homosexuality has its source in gay men's early relationships with their parents and peers. The program is endorsed by the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, whose writings on "Childhood Gender-Identity Deficit" seems to have greatly influenced the JiM program. Straight, atheist writer, Jim Cox, decided to investigate the program. He writes about his experience here: What Happened When I Went Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp
posted by Panjandrum at 9:52 AM PST - 184 comments

An essay on perceptions of the human body, written before Lady Gaga was Lady Gaga Love her or hate her, there's a lot more going on in her head then the average pop star.
posted by The3rdMan at 9:14 AM PST - 173 comments

The first massively parallel evolutionary circuit has been built. Brain-like computing on an organic molecular layer. I, for one... overlords... you know.
posted by cross_impact at 8:51 AM PST - 42 comments

Kid who doesn't exist looks to future No birth certificate. No Social Security number. No official identity.
posted by fixedgear at 8:33 AM PST - 58 comments

This is a small collection of Soviet Animated science fiction from the 1980s, including the work of Vladimir Samsonov, Mikhail Titov (whose "Сражение" is one of Stephen King's "Dollar Babies"), Vladimir Tarasov, Nazim Tulyakhodzayev and Anatoly Petrov. [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 8:28 AM PST - 14 comments

John Cage's piece 4'33'' was originally written for piano but has been performed by a full orchestra. In modern times its movements have been interpreted by the guitar, harmonica, nose flute, ukulele, and toy piano. It was pretty exciting to watch Cage perform 4'33" live, but I still enjoy dancing to the party mix!
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:04 AM PST - 193 comments

Geocities is Back!!!! and they've taken over the world! from the crafty folks at Wondertonic.com...make sure to read their terms of use before browsing the site. some autoplaying music... [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:42 AM PST - 22 comments

Longform.org is "a curated collection of great longform pieces..." [more inside]
posted by sciurus at 4:37 AM PST - 8 comments

Better late than never A report by Police Commander John Cass says an unnamed SPG officer dealt the fatal blow to Blair Peach.
posted by marienbad at 4:09 AM PST - 16 comments

Unblinking Eye and APUG: Alternative Processes for Photography
posted by vostok at 2:54 AM PST - 10 comments

A short documentary about Ryan Henry Ward, the prolific Seattle muralist. Facebook. Flickr.
posted by Artw at 10:23 PM PST - 4 comments

A Vision of Britain Through Time Sections on Travel writing, Statistical Atlas, Historical maps and Places among others.
posted by mlis at 10:20 PM PST - 10 comments

Eric Belanger, of the Washington Capitals defines "never give up" attitude by getting hit in the face, losing several teeth (including pulling one out with his bare hands), and returning to the ice to finish out the game.
posted by djduckie at 9:49 PM PST - 57 comments

A Glimpse of the World
All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways built, ports deepened, commercial contracts signed -- all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China, whose appetite for commodities seems insatiable. Do China's grand designs promise the transformation, at last, of a star-crossed continent? Or merely its exploitation? The author travels deep into the heart of Africa, searching for answers. [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:11 PM PST - 20 comments

Super slo-mo documentary film camera put to nefarious use (warning: Flash and audio). 105 fans of the NZ band Shihad were filmed with a Phantom HD camera while strapped to a chair and surprised with blasts of air and water at 40x slower than real life for this music video.
posted by FreezBoy at 7:03 PM PST - 28 comments

Why don't rabbits burrow rectangular burrows? Why didn't early man make rectagular caves?

Archigram are amongst the most seminal, iconoclastic and influential architectural groups of the modern age. They created some of the 20th century's most iconic images and projects, rethought the relationship of technology, society and architecture, predicted and envisioned the information revolution decades before it came to pass, and reinvented a whole mode of architectural education – and therefore produced a seam of architectural thought with truly global impact.

The Archigram Archival Project is an online, searchable database of all the available works of Archigram [and much, much more] for study by architectural specialists and the general public. [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 5:29 PM PST - 24 comments

Unwords.com maintains a collection of words that individuals and other apostrophascists have made up at some point in time to adjectize things that aren't associated with a term in the English language, or to describe them with a term that is a fuzzword, or to describe things that make one ghastipate... a fictionary, if you will. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 5:12 PM PST - 33 comments

There are many Lady Gaga parodies online, but this one is particularly topical. Scott Brown and Sarah Palin in Senate Vote.[SLYT]
posted by mccarty.tim at 4:50 PM PST - 46 comments

Queer Kids: A Project by M. Sharkey. About the project .
posted by kylej at 4:39 PM PST - 18 comments

The fire is out on the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon. But since the rig sank last Thursday, Coast Guard officials believe about 13,000 gallons (7,400 bbl) of crude oil per day is coming out of the exploratory hole drilled by the rig, about 41 miles offshore from Plaquemines Parish, LA. "An early suggestion that damage would be minimal because the fire was consuming most of the fuel 'does have the potential to change,' BP official David Rainey told the New York Times." [more inside]
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:02 PM PST - 93 comments

In 2001, Marc Bertrand was tasked by the National Film Board of Canada with creating 26 one-minute films about science. The only constraints were that he had to use both archival footage and animation. The result was Science Please!

And because the NFB is awesome, you can watch all 26 of them online: Part 1 | Part 2 | Or, in French [more inside]
posted by 256 at 2:06 PM PST - 17 comments

Here, There Be Spoilers: As "L O S T" Ends, Creators Explain How They Did It, What’s Going On. (Previously on MeFi)
posted by zarq at 1:46 PM PST - 223 comments

Her full name is María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Moquiere de les Esperades Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Najosa Rasten, but she's better known to the world as Charo. According to Wikipedia, "One of Charo's regrets is that because of her flamboyant stage presence, she has been overlooked as a serious guitar player." So here' some Charo on guitar: [more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:56 PM PST - 38 comments

The Tea Party's Toxic Take on History (single link Slate) The piece has interesting internal links. The points about history distortions are at the end. Here's a little more about the author. The Tea Party is a significant preoccupation for him. Previously (briefly!) on Metafilter, but taken down at poster's request.
posted by bearwife at 12:55 PM PST - 117 comments

The Story of Dynamite (1925) and The Story of Gasoline (1924): two unusual silent films from the enormously varied and fascinating PublicResource.org's youtube channel. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 12:03 PM PST - 2 comments

How Steve Jobs Got Sick, Got Better, And Decided To Save Some Lives (previously)
posted by Baldons at 11:27 AM PST - 47 comments

In the grand tradition of John Wayne¹, Mickey Rourke is in talks to play Genghis Khan in an upcoming biopic. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 11:23 AM PST - 71 comments

After the gum is gone, you still have the bubble gum cards. Browse a collection of scanned cards from the 1960s (Ugly Stickers and Ugly Names), 70s (Monster Initials, Marvel Super Heroes) and the 80s (Pee Wee Herman). The initials series have word generators (IE only!): Love Initials, Mod Initials, Monster Initials (similar, previously). [via] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:47 AM PST - 18 comments

Fools' Gold: An Oral History of the Insane Clown Posse Parodies. "[T]he group is enjoying a resurgence in attention, if not popularity, from a wave of Internet comedy videos poking fun at their music and their legions of harlequin-faced fans, who call themselves Juggalos... Here, Insane Clown Posse, the writers of “Saturday Night Live” and the creator of “Juggalo News” retrace the path of this unlikely media circus."[previously, previouslier] [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 10:34 AM PST - 105 comments

Happy 5th birthday YouTube! WYNC's Brain Lehrer Show has put together a list of their favorite videos form the last 5 years. Mostly political - some pandas.
posted by The Whelk at 10:14 AM PST - 10 comments

MIA's new video for "Born Free." (Vimeo; NSFW) [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:57 AM PST - 115 comments

She recently made a speech at the Speech at the Oxford Union; her philanthropy gets a big “pass” from aidwatchers. She tells the Wall Street Journal about it, and she’s spending millions on schools in her home country and beyond. Also she has some wealthy friends joining her. Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll and Pies Descalzos the foundation she founded when she was 18.
posted by adamvasco at 7:21 AM PST - 53 comments

Showing Off is a series of videos, audio clips and articles in which noted music journalist and Frankie Goes to Hollywood mastermind Paul Morley explores various facets of music. Each month has a theme, [warning: most links have autoplaying video] Michael Jackson, Kraftwerk, classical music, disco, The Beatles, folk music, The X Factor, the Noughties, the next big thing, UK hip hop, jazz, and dance. Here is some of what's on offer: MeFi faves Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip on hip hop, These New Puritans' Jack Barnett, Johnny Marr on folk (parts 1, 2), but isn't all just interviews, there are also a lot of performances, e.g. Michael Nyman and David McAlmont, Badly Drawn Boy, Susanna Wallumrød covers Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, and Cornershop cover Norwegian Wood.
posted by Kattullus at 7:18 AM PST - 8 comments

The Super Punch Tarot is nearing completion! This deck is a group effort illustrated by dozens of artists (including our own The Whelk's spin on the Two of Wands), organized by John Struan.
posted by hermitosis at 6:55 AM PST - 21 comments

The floppy disc is about to go to the great slot drive in the sky. Japanese sales of floppies have dropped from a record 47 million disks in 2002 to 12 million in 2009. So why not use those discs to make a bag, celebrate dead media by hacking together a Game Boy and a 3.5" drive, or admire the sleeve of New Order's Blue Monday? [more inside]
posted by mippy at 4:06 AM PST - 143 comments

Her Majesty's Ambassador to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen Timothy Torlot survived a suicide bomb attack earlier this morning. The explosions which occurred approximately 800m from the British Embassy on Thaher Himiyar Street occurred at around 08.10 local time. Tim Torlot has been in the media in recent months due to his somewhat surprising personal affairs – namely moving his pregnant mistress into the official residence. To add flames to the fire Jennifer Steil - an American journalist has done what journalists do and written a memoir covering her time in Yemen and the affair. This in a deeply conservative country where adultery is punishable with death by stoning and the human rights record is poor. Yemen is deemed a high risk country and it is known the ambassador travels with an armed British Protection officer and an armed Yemeni Protection officer whenever he leaves the residence. Yemen recently namechecked in the second Live leaders debate by the Prime Minister as another territory of concern will come under the spotlight once again.
posted by numberstation at 1:37 AM PST - 23 comments

There is such infinite dirty pleasure in burning a righteous kook. An introduction to the sometimes violent phenomenon of surfer localism and the strict enforcement of surf etiquette. A Tragicomedy of the Surfers' Commons?
posted by eddydamascene at 11:02 PM PST - 45 comments

Da N-Viro Thugz Present "The Answer", examining the plastic coffee cups sold at Humber College along with your drink. [more inside]
posted by Sallysings at 9:55 PM PST - 20 comments

cleanternet: for a cleaner and safer internet.
posted by homunculus at 9:05 PM PST - 58 comments

Most people consider the remote control helicopter quite intimidating. As a beginner, your first few hovers are pure white-knuckle terror. Thanks to negative pitch, these little helis can fly inverted. And some people can do truly awe-inspiring freestyle routines (this style of flying is called "3D"). Part of the reason they're so intimidating is that nearly every crash is a total writeoff. Keep in mind, these aren't Radio Shack toys; they sometimes kill people [more inside]
posted by Netzapper at 8:46 PM PST - 27 comments

Here's a mostly working replica Star Trek Phaser. Original series, of course. Build pics and description here.
posted by loquacious at 7:42 PM PST - 68 comments

Floyd Dominy, a man obsessed with damming the West, is dead at 100. [more inside]
posted by heurtebise at 5:12 PM PST - 29 comments

A kind of Hump Day manqué. Travis Matthews started out directing semi-explicit, often naked video interviews, shot in their own bedrooms, of the scruffy, impoverished, underexercised gay intellectuals who are a core readership of Butt magazine (previously; before that). Thus begat In Their Room (SFW), which “veers into the bedrooms of eight different men where you see them doing everything from the most banal to the most erotic.” Sounds like a smashing idea for a feature film in the “amateur porn” genre, does it not? After an open casting call for a guy willing to bottom, whom he duly found, Matthews has released a 20-minute trailer (definitely NSFW).
posted by joeclark at 2:31 PM PST - 20 comments

George Gerbner, a pioneer in the research of TV's effects on society, advocated a theory called Mean World Syndrome. According to this theory, exposure to the media leads people to believe the world is more dangerous than it actually is, because of violent programming and terrifying news programs. This is part of cultivation theory, the idea that humans are brought up in a culture of stories, reflect those stories, and that TV is now our main storyteller.
posted by mccarty.tim at 11:18 AM PST - 85 comments

Five years before Toy Story proved to the world that pure CGI -- a field long relegated to the role of special effects -- could be an art form in its own right, Odyssey Productions attempted to do the same on a slightly smaller scale. Drawing on the demo reels, commercials, music videos, and feature films of over 300 digital animators, the studio collated dozens of cutting-edge clips into an ambitious 40-minute art film called The Mind's Eye. Backed by an eclectic mix of custom-written electronic, classical, oriental, and tribal music, the surreal, dreamlike imagery formed a rough narrative in eight short segments that illustrated the evolution of life, technology, and human society: Creation - Civilization Rising - Heart of the Machine - Technodance - Post Modern - Love Found - Leaving the Bonds of Earth - The Temple - End credits (including names and sources for all clips used). But that was just the beginning... [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:17 AM PST - 61 comments

Here are three first approaches ^[PDF] to the macaron. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 11:12 AM PST - 44 comments

“In all honesty, we don’t know when it’s coming back for sure” - The US Air Force's first launch of the X-37b reusable space vehicle has provoked much speculation, with some even wondering if the Pentagon is reviving Nazi space-bomber plans. But was the launch of spaceplane an attempt to mask the launch of another secret weapon?
posted by Artw at 10:49 AM PST - 54 comments

Last night I was flipping through the TV channels, and I ended up watching part of a strange rock musical from 1974 called Phantom Of The Paradise... [more inside]
posted by spoobnooble at 10:40 AM PST - 45 comments

Stephen Hawking thinks that talking to aliens is a bad idea. [more inside]
posted by Night_owl at 10:20 AM PST - 132 comments

"Welcome to the simplicity movement, the ethos whose mantras are "cutting back," "focusing on the essentials," "reconnecting to the land" - and talking, talking, talking about how fulfilled it all makes you feel." Charlotte Allen of In Character about the Simplicity Movement, magazines, wild boars, virtue, and 350$ riding boots.
posted by The Whelk at 10:02 AM PST - 71 comments

In the capital of Turkmenistan stands an enormous statue of a book. Every evening at 8PM, the statue swings open and a recently deceased dictator's magnum opus, the Ruhnama, is broadcast throughout the square while a video from within the statue shows his image. Four years after the death of Turkmenbashi, the state continues to portray his book as a sacred text and has coerced foreign business partners to translate it into 22 languages. A team of Finnish filmmakers snuck into Turkmenistan to discover the continued presence of the Ruhnama. (YouTube, 10 parts, part 5 has no audio)
posted by shii at 9:16 AM PST - 14 comments

Homeless man Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed several times in the chest while saving a woman from a knife-wielding attacker in New York City. He then bled to death while dozens of people walked by -- one stopping to snap a picture of the dying man with his cameraphone before leaving the scene. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:05 AM PST - 79 comments

Alan Sillitoe dies. The acclaimed English working class writer was perhaps best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) and short story The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1959) (as both were later successfully adapted as films), but Sillitoe was also playwright, poet, travel writer and children's book author. D. J. Taylor does the man justice in an article for the TLS from 2008 when Sillitoe turned 80.
posted by Abiezer at 7:29 AM PST - 16 comments

Imagine if the tea party was black. [more inside]
posted by duvatney at 5:34 AM PST - 140 comments

America & Nation Building: John Clint Williamson, a career federal prosecutor, now serving as the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, gives a TEDx talk on how to rebuild failed states, from the Balkans to Iraq. Sounds similar to Thomas P.M. Barnett's call for a U.S.-run International "SysAdmin". Williamson's speech at Seton Hall: SLYT
posted by joetrip at 3:56 AM PST - 5 comments

The Benedict Condom: The British Government has apologised to the Pope over official documents that mocked his forthcoming visit to the UK by suggesting he should bless a gay marriage and even launch Papal-branded condoms. [more inside]
posted by aqsakal at 2:34 AM PST - 57 comments

The World's Ugliest Statues -- I think #5, in New Jersey, is the one I find most offensive, but they're all hideous.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:45 PM PST - 144 comments

It is not our role to take power. It is our role to make the powerful frightened of us. And that's what we've forgotten. Give up that dream! Chris Hedges talks neoliberalism and neofeudalism, the civil rights movement, Camden, Obama, Clinton, Tea Parties, moral nihilism, inverted totalitarianism and corpocracy, NAFTA, welfare reform, health care, labor, poverty, Yugoslavia, post-industrial capitalism, economic crisis, imperial collapse, socialism, and democracy, among other things. [more inside]
posted by gerryblog at 6:52 PM PST - 51 comments

SLYT: Helen Reddy and Kenny Rogers sing 'Tulsa Turnaround' in 1972 on the First Edition's Canadian musical variety show, Rollin' on the River.
posted by box at 2:25 PM PST - 10 comments

Pitchfork TV presents I Need That Record! (one week only), Brendan Toller's documentary feature examining the plight of independent record stores in the U.S. Featuring Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Ian Mackaye (Fugazi/Minor Threat), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group) Chris Franz (Talking Heads), Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers), Pat Carney (The Black Keys), Bryan Poole (Of Montreal), and many more figures of the indie record making/selling scene. Plus the wild animations of Matthew Newman-Long! (previously mentioned)
posted by shoesfullofdust at 2:05 PM PST - 19 comments

Many Americans' understanding of the idea of reparations for African slavery in the U.S. stems from Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's field order that slaves made refugees by his march through the South be given parcels of Charleston's former sea island plantations and one of a surplus of Army mules. [more inside]
posted by toodleydoodley at 12:36 PM PST - 55 comments

Archie Comics Introduces Openly Gay Character (not from The Onion)
posted by wittgenstein at 12:26 PM PST - 69 comments

The Daily News has posted a 215 image gallery of photos by serial killer Rodney Acala 66, convicted of the murders of 4 women and a girl in California. Authorities suspect there may be many more victims; possibly up to 20, killed between the years of 1971 to `79. The NYPD has released the photos in hopes of identifying possible victims & closing a bunch of cold cases. Thus informed, I find these photos deeply haunting; most are basic, boilerplate snapshots typical of their era, while others have a bizarre dreamlike quality (i.e.- in #3 in the posted series a young woman appears unfocused & wraithlike, her raised arms framed by trees, in #9 a subject bending over backwards at first appears to hung upside down, mouth vanished by foliage) several subjects in the series appear again & again. Alcala's photos reveal him as a pretentious manipulative hack, whose unintended best are evidence of the beast within. 21 women featured in a previous series of 120 shots have been found alive.
posted by vurnt22 at 12:25 PM PST - 92 comments

Yesterday, Arizona Governor (R)Jan Brewer signed into law a bill that effectively transforms police into immigration agents, giving them the power to stop people on suspicion of being in the country illegally, and making failure to carry immigration documents an arrestable offense. The bill, supported by the usual suspects, but condemned by many including the President and the Mexican government, will undoubtedly face significant legal challenges.
posted by diocletian at 11:44 AM PST - 299 comments

Your Old Crap Website - This blog is to celebrate the time when web design wasn’t limited by web standards and convention, and when the office geek was given full reign to set up the website on his own since the bosses probably couldn’t see the point in having one.
posted by Artw at 9:42 AM PST - 45 comments

Oscar Wilde in his own words. Beethoven in his notes. Jerry Garcia in his cassette tape. Fernando Valenzuela made entirely out of the innards of a single baseball. Erika Iris Simmons does amazing things with old cassette tape, playing cards, books etc. Her Flickr stream and website.
posted by nickyskye at 9:26 AM PST - 13 comments

Chris Ware was commissioned by Fortune to illustrate their May cover. His "hilarious, beautiful, meticulous" submission, which included "Guantanamo Bay prisoners, Mexican factory workers, and a few potshots at business execs and money-grubbing politicians," was rejected. Hi-res Flickr version here. Previously (1, 2)
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 4:12 AM PST - 75 comments

China’s partnership of stability in Xinjiang As news breaks that Wang Lequan has been replaced as Party secretary in Xinjiang (a fall for the long-serving hard man some expected last last year, though only last month Wang was bullish in interviews about major new central investment in the western border region), Tom Cliff has a timely and informative short background piece up at the East Asia Forum that gives some of the context behind the move.
posted by Abiezer at 1:55 AM PST - 12 comments

A Turing Machine [SLYT]. [more inside]
posted by daniel_charms at 1:38 AM PST - 40 comments

You! The one who is moving now! Answer! (SLVimeo, yelling Klingons) [more inside]
posted by Tesseractive at 7:20 PM PST - 58 comments

Serenity Tales: fan comics based on Joss Whedon's Firefly. [via Comics Alliance]
posted by brundlefly at 5:22 PM PST - 34 comments

"It's the ultimate Gordian knot ... There is no other system in the world as complex as the Delta." [more inside]
posted by Groovytimes at 5:19 PM PST - 34 comments

Flash Friday: remember Miami Shark? That awesome game where you played a shark and the shark totally destroyed everything in its path? The makers of that fine game have now given us Sydney Shark, and marsupials, parachutists, aliens, and a windsurfer looking suspiciously like John Kerry will never be the same again.
posted by mightygodking at 4:48 PM PST - 23 comments

On April 24, 1990, the Discovery shuttle launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit around Earth, where it's been for 20 years. This spring, NASA has been rolling out more pretty pictures, videos and even an IMAX movie in its honor. The Hubble has contributed to hundreds of studies about our universe. As we celebrate its legacy, let's reflect on a bit on its past and future. [more inside]
posted by i8ny3x at 4:29 PM PST - 22 comments

Dwarf Fortress was recently updated. You probably tried to get addicted, but couldn't figure out what was going on. Me too. Here's an illustrated summary of the kind of things we're missing out on. Previously
posted by mccarty.tim at 4:19 PM PST - 76 comments

19-year-old weightlifter Pat Mendes of Nevada snatches 200kg. Mendes is the only American to ever snatch 200kg, and is within 16kg of the world record. [more inside]
posted by ludwig_van at 4:13 PM PST - 82 comments

Earlier this week GOP Senate candidate Sue Lowden -- who wants to replace Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) -- "made the case for paying doctors with chickens, rather than checks from the insurance company." When questioned if Lowden really advocates 'barter' as a viable solution for health care reform, her communications director, Chrystal Feldman, confirmed that it is indeed her position." Curious as to how many chickens you'll need to receive care from your primary care physician? Use the Lowden Medical Procedure to Chicken Converter to find out. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 3:23 PM PST - 118 comments

Follow the money attempts to detect and visualize the structure of large-scale communities in the US based on the flow of money using data from Where's George? [via]
posted by gruchall at 2:35 PM PST - 9 comments

MOONWALK ONE - A surprisingly groovy look at the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in a full length documentary that contains a lot of rare and not often seen footage of the preparations and launch of the first manned mission to the moon. Warning: Also contains lots of theramins, trippy optical effects, faux bohemians and some really blowy narrative.
posted by loquacious at 2:10 PM PST - 22 comments

Having zombie problems again? Perhaps a bloodless coup has installed you as dictator of your HOA? Don't worry - Spanish for Everyday Situations has you covered. (NSF lovers of correct Spanish grammar.)
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 1:48 PM PST - 14 comments

RIP Dugout Dick
posted by fixedgear at 1:33 PM PST - 29 comments

YouTube allows fair use defense. Under a new policy, users claiming fair use in videos previously taken down due to a copyright claim will be restored, and the claimant forced to file a formal complaint under DMCA. [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 1:07 PM PST - 56 comments

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch — This clip is raw from Camera E-8 on the launch umbilical tower/mobile launch program of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969. This is an HD transfer from the 16mm original. The camera is running at 500 fps, making the total clip of over 8 minutes represent just 30 seconds of actual time. [more inside]
posted by netbros at 10:48 AM PST - 85 comments

The Glass Box versus The Commonplace Book: Steven Berlin Johnson returns to his old school to talk about two possible models for the future of text online and whether the Internet really does encourage echo chambers.
posted by yerfatma at 10:18 AM PST - 8 comments

Want to share your credit card purchases with your friends on facebook? Blippy does that. Want to share your credit card numbers with everyone? Blippy also does that.
posted by Brent Parker at 9:24 AM PST - 170 comments

Whenever a natural disaster happens, there are people eager to blame it on other people who are behaving in ways they don't like. Well, in the wake of an Iranian cleric blaming immodestly dressed women for causing an earthquake, there's a push-up proposal to test this hypothesis. [more inside]
posted by rmd1023 at 7:33 AM PST - 88 comments

Here in the US, each state has a state bird, flower, fish, rock, soil, and Wisconsin just passed a bill to add the first state microbe, bacterium Lactococcus lactis. Of course the Lactococcus lacti would be a hero for Wisconsin, because Lactococcus is used to make chedder cheese. [more inside]
posted by Wolfster at 7:20 AM PST - 29 comments

The Anachronism "On a sun dappled summer day a science expedition propels two children toward an enigmatic encounter at the edge of their known world. Arriving on an isolated beach, they stumble upon the shipwreck of a robotic squid submarine." A short film, project site, via.
posted by dhruva at 5:44 AM PST - 17 comments

"They come from nearby Florence or Siena by bus and carve "Edward Forever!" into the walls while laughing giddily." The small Italian town of Volterra struggles to retain its authenticity amidst New Moon Tours and dungeon shows. Pictures. "'Vampires don't have souls,' Boelen points out. 'But Volterra does.'" [more inside]
posted by Omnomnom at 3:59 AM PST - 81 comments

Martian clocks and calendars have been discussed in the writings of various authors over the past one hundred years. This article recounts the history of Martian timekeeping from 1880 to 1998.
posted by vostok at 3:49 AM PST - 10 comments

While Metal Gear Solid is considered "one of the best and most important games of all time," its myriad descendants have been polarizing players for almost a decade. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has a particular knack for inspiring people to write convoluted screeds about its flaws. In contrast to most of the game's criticism, James Clinton Howell and Jerel Smith's Monstrous Births: A Formal Analysis of Metal Gear Solid 4 attempts to interpret the game and explain its creators (often peculiar) decisions. (previously)
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 12:13 AM PST - 35 comments

The Creature that Crawled on the Sky - Part 1, Part 2. More Skeleton Harvester.
posted by Artw at 10:29 PM PST - 11 comments

In 1957, Peter Kubelka was hired to make a short commercial for Scwechater beer. (Previously)
posted by Minus215Cee at 10:27 PM PST - 27 comments

One of the best indie comics of the 1990s is back - as a webcomic True Swamp, the mad and beloved comic created by Xeric-Award winner Jon Lewis, is back in circulation after a years-long hiatus. Indie comics fans rejoice
posted by Geameade at 9:10 PM PST - 9 comments

A color-changing card trick. (Related to this old favorite.)
posted by Upton O'Good at 9:05 PM PST - 24 comments

"What are you f**king playing at?” Mr Murdoch asked Mr Kelner in a loud voice and in front of dozens of bemused journalists."

This week, 300,000 copies of the UK's Independent newspaper were distributed for free advertising the paper's claim to editorial independence stating, "Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election – you will".

According to the Financial Times, Murdoch's son James subsequently stormed into the Independent's newsroom brandishing a copy of the edition, protesting it besmirched his father’s reputation. "Lively times," the Guardian observes.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:19 PM PST - 62 comments

The Story of Bohemian Rhapsody: Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. (From BBC Three.) Oh, and... [more inside]
posted by zarq at 6:14 PM PST - 67 comments

Yeah, yeah, it starts with a cow. But really, where did your milk come from? Decode the product info on your milk or other dairy product, then pinpoint its origin at Where is My Milk From?
posted by gemmy at 4:42 PM PST - 42 comments

The One Page Dungeon Contest has selected this year's winners (24mb .pdf). [more inside]
posted by fleacircus at 4:19 PM PST - 22 comments

Last season, attendance fell some 10%, and empty seats have pockmarked this year's races... average viewership of Sprint Cup races on network television has fallen a remarkable 25%... this year's broadcast of the Daytona 500 was the lowest-rated Great American Race since 1991. NASCAR: A Once Hot Sport Tries to Restart Its Engine.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:23 PM PST - 97 comments

In 1957, Frank Herbert was a journalist and writer of short stories, on his way to Florence, Oregon to do an article about the U. S. Department of Agriculture's attempts to control sand dunes that were shifting. The USDA was searching for something to stabilize the dunes, and they came upon European beach grass. Herbert's research was for an article tentatively titled "They Stopped The Moving Sands." The article was never completed, but his research of dune stabilization lead to larger ecological matters, and eventually the novel Dune. This year marks the 45th anniversary that novel. The world of dunes, both fictional and real, has changed quite a bit in the years. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:11 PM PST - 100 comments

In Afghanistan, the bacha bereesh -- "boy without a beard" -- is dressed in women's clothes and taught to dance like a woman at weddings or parties. After the dancing is over, the boy is often shared as sexual chattel among his male audience (the bacha bazi) which is often composed of powerful warloads. The underground practice, though illegal, is widespread despite Taliban homophobia. The PBS series Frontline went inside the world of the bacha bazi, who seemed willing enough to talk about the forbidden practice. [54-minute flash video, well worth watching.] [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 1:04 PM PST - 79 comments

A Better Block. For a weekend, local urbanism advocates in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas transformed a block into a complete street. Reactions from city officials have been positive. Also: photos from the event and associated Art Crawl, and a deeper look at the event and what it means.
posted by kmz at 12:28 PM PST - 16 comments

The Restoration of Stephen Baldwin
posted by nitsuj at 12:28 PM PST - 200 comments

Movies in Frames: Reducing motion pictures to just pictures - 4 pictures, to be precise
posted by lizbunny at 12:19 PM PST - 19 comments

Filmmaker Donald Glut loves dinosaurs. He loves his collection of dinosaur memorabilia, so he finds an online community to share it with. Donald Glut, happily, also likes to share his dinosaur collection with scantily-clad babes (somewhat NSFW)
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:30 AM PST - 30 comments

American TV watching statistics.
posted by DZack at 11:29 AM PST - 58 comments

When we write this up, I'll guarantee you, before the ink is dry, some 22-year-old is going to come out and figure six different ways to get around what I've just written. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd on the proposed Restoring American Financial Stability Act [.pdf] [more inside]
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 11:07 AM PST - 35 comments

The Havasupai Tribe of Grand Canyon won a $700,000 settlement from Arizona State University, plus the return of remaining blood samples, regarding the use of members' blood and DNA for research. The Havasupai had originally contacted researchers at ASU concerning the Type II diabetes that has ravaged that tribe and others, particularly in the Southwest. [more inside]
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:01 AM PST - 96 comments

"All Islanders looked the same to her, she explained. She couldn't tell them apart. So none would be allowed in." In Anchorage, police uphold the right of businesses to deny service based on race. [more inside]
posted by stinker at 10:55 AM PST - 135 comments

As part of the current retrospective of her work at MoMA, Marina Abramović is performing "The Artist is Present," in which she sits in a chair at a table for the duration of the museum's opening hours and invites visitors to sit across from her for as long as they wish. Watch the performance live. Photographer Marco Anelli has been taking photos of the participants for the museum, noting the duration of their participation: 5 min., 10 min., 391 min. [via kottke] [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 10:09 AM PST - 53 comments

It's lambing season. Did you know that lambs can jump really high? Ever seen a lambpede? [more inside]
posted by clavicle at 9:56 AM PST - 47 comments

Tim Gunn Critiques Superhero Costumes. [SLYT]
posted by tocts at 9:52 AM PST - 48 comments

The creators of South Park were threatened (or "warned") by Muslim extremists (cached, scroll down for article including photo of dead Theo VanGogh) not to depict the Prophet Mohammad. Parker and Stone thought they'd be able to air the episode by putting Mohammad in a bear suit, but Comedy Central censored the episode due to the threats. The clip in question is not hosted at South Park's website, but exists elsewhere online. This is not the first time South Park has dealt with censorship of Mohammad's image. (previously)
posted by desjardins at 9:39 AM PST - 103 comments

This charming little video might just put a smile on your face.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:27 AM PST - 49 comments

First there was Ida, the first molecule to self-replicate. (that's one hypothesis, anyway.) From Ida, eventually, came the Last Universal Common Ancestor, or Luca. The first substance to store information about itself in the form of a genetic code. Luca may be the form of Life from which all Life has evolved.
posted by cross_impact at 8:40 AM PST - 32 comments

In 1865, after the end of the Civil War, Col. P. H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, asking him to return to work for him. In reply, Jourdon Anderson told Colonel Anderson exactly where he could stick his offer. This letter was part of The Freedmen's Book (full download in many different formats) which was distributed to those freed after and during the Civil War, so that they would know stories of other freedmen who had done well, including Touissant L'Ouverture, Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass. The book was put together and published by Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist, women's rights activist, Indian rights campaigner and all around awesome person. She became famous in her own time for her cookbook The Frugal Housewife, but today her best known work is Over the River and Through the Woods. The Freedmen's Book was part of an effort by abolitionists after the war to educate freed slaves. The American Antiquarian Society has a great website about that movement, Northern Visions of Race, Region and Reform, which has plenty of primary sources and images galore.
posted by Kattullus at 6:58 AM PST - 91 comments

After a seven-year hiatus full of rumor and speculation, Christian singer-songwriter Jennifer Knapp has returned to touring and recording. Apparently, some rumors were true. [more inside]
posted by anthom at 6:54 AM PST - 63 comments

The Full English: "[...]a mad, bad, salt-soaked road trip from culinary heaven to hell and back"
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:41 AM PST - 47 comments

The Franklin Institute Hawk Cam is giving viewers a close up look into the lives of a family of red tailed hawks who built a nest on an Institute window sill. Even better, there are babies! [more inside]
posted by The Straightener at 5:08 AM PST - 27 comments

The downfall of "Downfall"?! (SLYT) More info on this from the LA Times. This is why we can't have nice things.
posted by markkraft at 1:44 AM PST - 91 comments

A generating function is a way to keep track of a lot of related numbers all at once... The study of generating functions is an art and a science known as 'generatingfunctionology,' and its bible is free for all to download. [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 1:00 AM PST - 24 comments

"A quality dungeon adds more value to a home than a stainless steel kitchen" (SLYT) very slightly NSFW
posted by mock at 12:54 AM PST - 20 comments

My Favorite Numbers by John Baez
posted by vostok at 12:17 AM PST - 23 comments

Every number from 1 to 9,999 has a special meaning. (much mathematical terminology, scrolling)
posted by zardoz at 9:41 PM PST - 69 comments

1. Always be calm and cool. 2. You have the right to remain silent. 3. You have the right to refuse searches... 10 Rules for Dealing with Police. [more inside]
posted by alms at 7:00 PM PST - 109 comments

Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrance at Owl Creek Bridge" is considered "one of the most widely read, widely anthologized, widely taught, and widely admired short stories in all of American literature." As well as TVTropes' earliest example of [SPOILER] a Dying Dream. An Oscar and Cannes award winning short film was made from the story, "La Rivière du hibou" that was aired on American TV as an episode of "The Twilight Zone" (part one, two, three). Since then, it has been read by 'Front Porch Al' on the CBC's "As It Happens", and been the basis of umpteen other short films. Recently, the original film was 'mashed up' with Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick", and now the story has gotten the full Music Video treatment, for the (not really related) song "Unlovable" by Babybird, directed by Johnny Depp. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:43 PM PST - 55 comments

Giving away $10 every day to a different stranger for a year isn't as easy as it sounds, but Reed Sandridge is attempting to do just that, for a project he's calling "The Year of Giving." He then documents their stories and what they plan to do with the money on his blog. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 5:32 PM PST - 33 comments

Watching Westerns in Iran: True Dub is a short reminiscence of watching John Wayne movies (among other things) dubbed into Farsi. From Bidoun Magazine. Discovered via Unte Reader, which has the slightly condensed version between its covers this month.
posted by loosemouth at 3:17 PM PST - 9 comments

"Yes, we want" -- Who owns global English? Post on The Web of Language by Dennis Barron, Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois. Barron writes about the linguistic control of English playing out on the global stage. Included among the topics is the perception of "error" and Engrish. (Previously)
posted by la_scribbler at 2:30 PM PST - 86 comments

Going To Pot: Could Legalizing Marijuana Solve California’s Deficit? [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:01 PM PST - 133 comments

CSS Tips I Wish I Knew When I First Started - Seven JavaScript Things I Wish I Knew Much Earlier In My Career
posted by Artw at 12:31 PM PST - 65 comments

McAfee's latest DAT update quarantined the svchost.exe file on millions (or maybe 800,000) of corporate Windows XP systems, rendering them inoperable (sort of).
posted by mrgrimm at 12:26 PM PST - 119 comments

Dorothy Height, civil rights pioneer, died yesterday at the age of 98. Height was a pioneer for both African Americans and women. Her list of achievements is impressive and daunting. More recently, she spoke in favor of same sex parenting. Here is a slideshow of images of her groundbreaking life.
posted by bearwife at 10:32 AM PST - 24 comments

"Grassroots maps" made by people with digital cameras and helium balloons.
posted by Miko at 10:22 AM PST - 16 comments

The Wolf At Our Heels. The centuries-old struggle to play in tune, and the battle between equal temperaments and historical tunings.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:53 AM PST - 35 comments

The antics of print-on-demand publisher PublishAmerica have been covered here before, but it seems they've reached a new low: using Haiti quake relief to get authors to buy more copies of their own books. [more inside]
posted by kmz at 9:40 AM PST - 4 comments

1980s sitcom actor Scott Baio (who considers himself a 'Conservative' and a Constitutionalist'), along with his wife, has sparked an awkward battle with the website Jezebel. "Earlier this month, Mr. Charles in Charge released unto the interwebs a right-leaning tweet about finishing his taxes. Amused, the good ladies over at Jezebel included his missive in their daily roundup of ridiculous things celebrities say (in 140 characters or less). So far, so good, right? Wrong. You see, Jezebel did not include all the self-serving positive messages Baio sent out, and that, it appears, caused an irreparable rift in the Facebook-Twitter continuum. Enter wife Renee Baio..." [more inside]
posted by ericb at 9:12 AM PST - 212 comments

Can't get enough of the Darwyn Cooke New Frontier aesthetic? Etsy artist "Roganjosh" offers more midcentury modern superhero posters. (Mostly Marvel, though.)
posted by kimota at 9:11 AM PST - 24 comments

Following Pennsylvania's lead, Georgia is poised to ban the involuntary implantation of microchips into people. With SB235 passing both the state house and senate, it is now up to Governor Sonny Perdue to sign it into law (or reveal that he's in the pocket of Big Microchip). The transcript of testimony before the house in favor of this legislation is truly eye-opening. Rachel Maddow had it re-enacted on her show.
posted by adamrice at 6:22 AM PST - 142 comments

MINDS ON THE EDGE: Facing Mental Illness is a multi-platform media project that explores severe mental illness in America. The one-hour television program zeros in on wrenching and confounding situations that are playing out every day in homes and hospital ERs, on city streets and school campuses, in courtrooms and in jails, as Americans struggle with the challenges of severe mental illness. The distinguished panel includes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Nobel Prize winning neurologist Eric Kandel, along with attorneys, doctors, legislators and other experts in the field. Several of the panelists have personal, as well as professional experience, in living with mental illness. A Fred Friendly Seminar.
posted by prefpara at 5:24 AM PST - 19 comments

The Reopening of the South Fork Bridge after flood in Nov. 1940. But some point at the chap on the right of this photo, and ask - what era did he come from? With his snazzy hooded sweater, sunglasses, stamped t-shirt and compact camera, he looks like he doesn't fit somehow.... An error level analysis suggests that it's not Photoshopped, but Forgetomori goes through the image in detail, pointing out how nothing he's wearing is technically out of time.
posted by radioedit at 2:01 AM PST - 175 comments

Anne Spencer (1882-1975) (video tribute from the State Library of Virginia) was a Harlem Renaissance poet, a gardener, a librarian, and an activist. Her work was influential among her peers and successors - as was her legendary and beloved garden in Lynchburg, Va, where she lived for her entire adult life. She wrote only 50 known poems - 25 to 35 of which were published in her lifetime - on topics that were important to her - the beauty of nature, racism and equality, and her faith, including these 8 of her better-known poems , Before the Feast of Shushan, and Lady, Lady. Many of her poems were reprinted in anthologies, but the controversial White Things (c. 1918, published c. 1923, inspired by a particularly horrible lynching of a pregnant woman) was never reprinted. [more inside]
posted by julen at 10:21 PM PST - 7 comments

Big Trouble in Little China: the history, the cult, the complete soundtrack, the RPG, the video game, the comic book, the geopolitical metaphor.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:05 PM PST - 101 comments

Stand By Me Bono and Springsteen... You'll remember this version
posted by HuronBob at 8:52 PM PST - 17 comments

On a snowy Valentine's Day weekend in Michigan Sid Meier creates a game in 48 hours called Escape from Zombie Hotel! He's there to judge a 48 hour game design contest at his alma mater, University of Michigan but decides to also work on a game alongside the student teams. He also talks about his career, focusing on his early days. This is the third installment of motherboard.tv's Oral History of Gaming series. The first profiles Ralph Baer, the inventor of the first home gaming console, and the second is about Eric Zimmerman, designer of Sissyfight. Sadly, the awesome-looking Escape from Zombie Hotel has note been released, but the oher games designed during the contest are available here. [via Rock Paper Shotgun]
posted by Kattullus at 8:51 PM PST - 18 comments

With AIDS, Time to Get Beyond Blame. Criminal laws related to exposure to or transmission of HIV are on the books in 32 American states, and in many other countries. In January, Darrin Chiacchia was charged with knowingly exposing a partner to HIV without warning him beforehand. He faces up to 30 years in prison. The high profile case has drawn criticism of the laws from those who believe they discourage testing, increase stigma, and intentional infections are sensational but rare and difficult to prove. Others have argued the laws do little to protect vulnerable populations and are bad legal policy. In the sensational but rare category: Nushawn Williams, who completed his sentence last week but remains incarcerated.
posted by availablelight at 7:12 PM PST - 70 comments

Artist and podcaster Len Peralta (with assistance from Paul and Storm) has embarked on the Geek A Week Challenge, an eventual set of 52 trading cards covering all your favorite geek heroes, including MeFi's own jscalzi.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:38 PM PST - 26 comments

The new focus on the Liberal Democrats sees the Daily Telegraph's Cristina Odone profiling Dr Evan Harris. That's "profiling" in the sense that the FBI might profile a criminal. A criminal the papers are calling Dr Death. [more inside]
posted by DNye at 5:37 PM PST - 71 comments

How does an ecosystem rebound from catastrophe? Thirty years after the blast, Mount St. Helens is reborn again. Interactive Graphic: Blast Zone. Also see National Geographic's feature article from 1981, chronicling that year's eruption. Previously on MeFi [more inside]
posted by zarq at 5:10 PM PST - 18 comments

Yesterday (April 15), Representatives Doyle (D-PA), Waxman (D-CA), Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), Harper (R-MS), Boucher (D-VA) and Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (HR 5037), a bill that would ensure free, timely, online access to the published results of research funded by eleven U.S. federal agencies. -Alliance for Taxpayer Access. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 4:30 PM PST - 25 comments

Shimer College, one of the smallest, oldest and most uncompromising "Great Books" schools in America, has just foiled a hostile takeover attempt and fired its president. [more inside]
posted by Bureau of Public Secrets at 3:45 PM PST - 68 comments

[lets start this off] Everything is Terrible presents several comedy VHS tapes with everything left out but the sexism, racism, and homophobia. The Great Ray, COMEDY ON A VHS TAPE MACHINE!!!?, Rush Limbaugh Sure Is Funny, and Gross Jokes. [applause] [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla at 3:33 PM PST - 18 comments

It's a hummingbird feeder that you wear on your face.
posted by mudpuppie at 2:33 PM PST - 65 comments

Set to launch this summer, Right Network will feature content "to entertain, engage, and enlighten Americans who are looking for content that reflects and reinforces their perspective and worldview." In an ad for the network, Kelsey Grammer lists some things that "just aren't right," including "big government," "more taxes," "trillion dollar deficits," "bureaucrats," "overspending," "bailouts for billionaires," "flightless birds," and "partisan politics," among others. [more inside]
posted by albrecht at 2:21 PM PST - 121 comments

It's the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, and it's time for the US to take a good, long, hard look at itself. [more inside]
posted by WalterMitty at 2:04 PM PST - 58 comments

Google now provides a map of government requests to access user information or take down material from Google and YouTube. This is being heralded as a big step towards transparency unmatched by any similar company, and Google explains how the system works. The US requests information about 20 times a day (including subpoenas and search warrants from local and state governments), but Brazil leads with the most take-down and data requests, because of Orkut's popularity there.
posted by blahblahblah at 1:59 PM PST - 14 comments

In 1968 Stewart Brand launched an innovative publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. It was groundbreaking, enlightening, and spawned a group of later publications.The collection of that work provided on this site is not complete — and probably never will be — but it is a gift to readers who loved the CATALOG and those who are discovering it for the first time. [more inside]
posted by Nothing... and like it at 12:32 PM PST - 41 comments

Wait! Look, what do you see? A new crucifix has been hung behind the altar at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Oklahoma City. It has caused quite the stir. [more inside]
posted by the_royal_we at 11:44 AM PST - 190 comments

Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe
posted by vostok at 11:17 AM PST - 99 comments

The Icarus Project is Robert Harrison's " home brew project to send a camera high into the stratosphere to take pictures of the Earth from near space". Found via this AskMe answer; previously there was Project Icarus, with a similar goal.
posted by TedW at 10:05 AM PST - 13 comments

(Warning : Hockey Inside) CBC Sports | Coach's Corner / Don Cherry | Full Games | Morning Highlights | Inside Hockey | Think Hockey / Hockey Tips | Peter Puck | PJ's shot of the game [note: scroll down to see play lists]
posted by MechEng at 9:49 AM PST - 49 comments

Suppose ... that the right picture is that characters who take themselves to be deliberating and initiating various deeds come to look like somewhat pathetic figures frantically pulling various wires and pushing various buttons which are, unknown to them, not connected to some moving machine they are riding, on a course completely indifferent to anything such characters pretend to do (or much more indifferent than the riders believe) ... The first thing to say is that this is not an academic exercise. The problem I want to raise has become especially interesting in the last hundred and fifty years or so, because, under the influences, first, of the so-called “Masters of Suspicion” – Marx, Nietzsche and Freud – and in our own day under the influence of everything from structuralism and various “anti-humanisms” in European philosophy to evolutionary biology and the neurosciences (experimental results, brain imaging, Benjamin Libet’s famous experiment and so forth), many seem to have concluded that in an ever expanding range of cases, it only seems to us that we are “running any show” as conscious agents in any even metaphysically modest sense; it only seems that we could be actually leading our lives.
posted by nasreddin at 9:37 AM PST - 101 comments

"When a company or individual receives a surprise subpoena on a Friday from the SEC, it is usually designed to ruin their weekend plans. Yes, the SEC can get personal in its own way...Back in the day as the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie, I received a surprise subpoena from the SEC late Friday afternoon. I had to wait until Monday before my attorneys had time to advise me on a course of action." Ex-white collar felon Sam Antar blogs about the SEC's recent move. [more inside]
posted by inkyroom at 9:01 AM PST - 49 comments

After the fiasco of their premier episode - a lavish live production of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye during which a corpse unwittingly got up and walked off stage on camera - CBS's Climax! Mystery Theater was looking to adapt something less high-profile. Say, the debut spy thriller by a struggling British journalist willing to let the rights go for $1000. The result: 1954's "Casino Royale", starring Barry Nelson as Jimmy "Card Sense" Bond of American intelligence, Michael Pate as his British counterpart Clarence Leiter, and Peter Lorre as the first-ever Bond villain. Now on Youtube 2 3 4 5 6
posted by ormondsacker at 8:46 AM PST - 19 comments

Known today mainly for hosting Web Soup on G4 (and MTV's Singled Out back in the mid '90s), Chris Hardwick also blogs at Nerdist and has recently started a podcast featuring long-form (hour-plus) interviews with such funny-smart characters as Andy Richter, MetaFilter's own Adam Savage, and his Soup-master/nemesis Joel McHale. Fresh Air this ain't. [more inside]
posted by kittyprecious at 8:06 AM PST - 25 comments

What If The Very Theory That Underlies Why We Need Patents Is Wrong? - This article discusses Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation , a working paper by Carliss Y. Baldwin and Eric von Hippel, suggesting that some of the most basic theories on which the patent system is based are wrong, and because of that, the patent system might hinder innovation. [more inside]
posted by infini at 7:57 AM PST - 42 comments

420 Room Search is a place to find 420 Roommates/alternative living situations, as well as a Green Book. [more inside]
posted by gman at 7:31 AM PST - 43 comments

Guru of Gang Starr - Keith Elam, has died from cancer. His passing is complicated by the sometimes bizarre actions of his business partner Solar (not to be confused with MC Solaar) during Guru's seven week hospital stay. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 7:22 AM PST - 72 comments

The Answer, My Friend. Your own personal Best Bob Dylan Album calculator.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:51 AM PST - 59 comments

Suddenly everything you eat or drink tastes horribly bitter and metallic, with the bitterness persisting at the back of your tongue after each swallow. The symptom recedes somewhat after a few meals but still persists after days. What's wrong with you? Brain tumor? Liver failure? First check if you ate pine nuts a few days ago - if so, you've probably just got pine mouth. [more inside]
posted by dfan at 6:02 AM PST - 36 comments

The Pope's Cologne - Does what it says on the bottle.
posted by saladin at 5:55 AM PST - 38 comments

Danger Mouse was a British animated series that ran from 1981 to 1992. It chronicled the exploits of our hero, the titular eyepatched mouse, and his faithful assistant Penfold ("Codename: The Jigsaw, because when faced with a problem he falls to pieces."), as they fought the evil Baron Silas Greenback (a frog). [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 5:35 AM PST - 93 comments

Play Pen - It's a Wiki-based pixel-art user-created point-and-click freeform adventure game/story/experience. Look, just go there and do something.
posted by Jimbob at 3:08 AM PST - 18 comments

Chai Why? The Triumph of Tea in India : "But whereas I initially supposed tea-drinking to be as Indian, and perhaps as old, as the Vedas, I have come to know that it is, in the longue durée of Indian history, a very recent development; one that (in many parts of the country) did not much precede my first visit, or that even followed it."
posted by dhruva at 8:42 PM PST - 17 comments

Life as a Comic is series of short videos by Rob Paravonian (famous for The Pachelbel Rant) about what it's like to be a working stand-up comic. It has recently started up again after a long break. Here's the first episode which is about doing gigs at venues which aren't full-time comedy clubs. Direct links to the rest of the episodes, all of which are in quicktime-format, below the cut. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 8:27 PM PST - 14 comments

In 2007, Macleans reported that the oversupply of education graduates was contributing to the teaching job shortage in Ontario. What has been to rectify the situation? Not much, according to new reports that "Retired teachers working in 10 [Ontario] school boards [...] collected $108.3-million in the 2008-09 school year from taxpayers on top of their government-subsidized pensions, taking advantage of a system rife with loopholes that leaves new teachers scrambling for crumbs." [more inside]
posted by gursky at 7:31 PM PST - 33 comments

When Raymond Dunn, Jr. was born in 1975, he had a fractured skull, an undersized brain, and severe developmental disabilities due to a lack of oxygen. He was not expected to survive his first year. [more inside]
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:45 PM PST - 59 comments

Ron Turner (1922 to December 1998) was an artist and author from the UK, with a extensive list of credits. He script, letter and created the artwork for a number of series, though that proved to be too much for the quick turn-around time required for publishing. He excelled when he could focus on the artwork, as seen with Rick Random, who first appeared as part of Super Detective Library in the 1950s. "The first detective of the space age" returned in the late 70s with 2000 AD. Ten story arcs from the 1950s and 60s were collected in quite a tome, featuring new cover art. Though Turner was well known for his pulp Sci-Fi artwork that graced comic and book covers, he only produced two covers for Super Detective Library, and neither were suitable for a Rick Random compendium.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:12 PM PST - 4 comments

A 1989 NYU student film (shot by Judah Friedlander) asks "Who is Chris Rock?" (via)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:10 PM PST - 17 comments

Bad credit or no credit? No Problem! Are you on welfare? Social Security? No Problem! You have to see the Special Man!
posted by grapefoot at 5:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Flickr user CaseFace123 asked people to make a sign expressing their thoughts feminism and then pose with it. Some are inspired, some are upset, some are confused, and others run the gamut. (via feministing)
posted by revmitcz at 4:56 PM PST - 51 comments

"All the greatest hits from the past 40 years use the same four chords." From Australian comedy group Axis Of Awesome. [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:11 PM PST - 88 comments

Jason Rohrer's Sleep is Death (discussed previously) has been awake since Friday, and one thing is certain: This is not a game. It's improv theatre. And though it costs $14 to participate, sitting in the audience is free.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 3:37 PM PST - 12 comments

Pedal Pumping Porno (Both sort of / not really / but kind of NSFW)
posted by zarq at 1:51 PM PST - 40 comments

There are mysterious noises in the sea. NOAA has six unidentified underwater sounds (and their kinda creepy spectrographs) on their website, recorded by the sonar arrays that used to hunt submarines, but which are now are used for research. The most famous of these is The Bloop, a sound of seemingly biological origin, yet many times louder than the loudest biolocial noise. With an origin in an empty stretch of the the Pacific Ocean, it gives Cthulhu watchers something to think about. Another once-mysterious sound, The Boing has been identified as coming from minke whales. Yet the sounds known as Slow Down, Julia, Train, and others remain intriguing mysteries. [prev.]
posted by blahblahblah at 1:51 PM PST - 40 comments

"I found a small print of Whistler's painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother, at a neighborhood garage sale. The same weekend, I found a leopard coat and hat, a 1950s cat painting, and what looked like the exact chair from Whistler's painting." Photographer Aline Smithson's series of portraits of her 85-year-old mother.
posted by doift at 1:21 PM PST - 9 comments

Wildlife photographer mauled by African lion, with pictures recovered from the body. Of course, this is not exactly what it seems, and there are other pictures as well.
posted by davejay at 1:06 PM PST - 20 comments

The Cooperative Correspondence Club started in the 1920s as a postal version of an internet forum - members, all mothers from across the UK, wrote articles about their life - motherhood, husbands, the war and health - until the 1990s. Contributing under pseudonyms, they felt able to discuss topics that were then taboo, and recruited Jewish and working-class members in order to better understand the experiences of women from all walks of life. [more inside]
posted by mippy at 12:08 PM PST - 10 comments

Dede Allen, editor of such films as Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon and Night Moves has died at the age of 86.
posted by brundlefly at 11:41 AM PST - 22 comments

They Fled from Our War. "Among the many consequences of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the plight of millions of Iraqi refugees is seldom mentioned. The stories of such people as Burhan Abdulnour, whom we met in Sweden in 2008, have hardly been told."
posted by homunculus at 11:11 AM PST - 11 comments

So You Need a Typeface? [more inside]
posted by cowbellemoo at 10:20 AM PST - 37 comments

Sure, guys, that’s totally based on an elephant’s trunk, and not from an overwhelming desire to have the greatest Comicon outfit ever.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:00 AM PST - 18 comments

Carl Macek, who created Robotech, brought Akira to America and was a co-founder of Spumco, passed away this Saturday.
posted by Artw at 9:51 AM PST - 52 comments

What appears to be a next generation iPhone was found in a Redwood City, CA bar. Gizmodo get their hands on it. Oh my.
posted by hollisimo at 9:35 AM PST - 345 comments

Atomic Test Archive. Histories of atomic testing by country, with video and photographic archives. The Information Films page is interesting: One can envision 50's dad smugly admiring his tidy yard through freshly vapourised retinas. Also: the one-hour declassified Ivy Mike film at the internet archive.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:20 AM PST - 7 comments

An archive of (nearly) every 120 Minutes (and its successor Subterranean) playlist. The 120 Minutes archive includes playlists for 585 episodes of MTV's seminal alternative rock show and its successor, Subterranean, spanning 1986-2007. The archive includes links to video search for each track played, interviews with those behind the program, a history of its development and demise, and the full video of the series finale. Looking at some of the early episodes, should be enough to crush you under a wave of nostalgia and longing for the days when MTV was what it says on the tin.
posted by CharlesV42 at 6:56 AM PST - 47 comments

Hey Guys! A collection of greetings from Youtube "beauty gurus".
posted by fpatrick at 6:00 AM PST - 63 comments

In 1966, Motown songwriters Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield wrote a song about Strong's relationship troubles, and Smokey Robinson & The Miracles recorded it. Motown CEO Berry Gordy thought the song was "horrible" and shelved it. The song was "I Heard it Through The Grapevine." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 5:56 AM PST - 39 comments

"Make no mistake, if the Liberal Democrats actually won the election – or held the balance of power – it would be the first time in decades that Murdoch was locked out of British politics." - David Yelland, former editor of Rupert Murdoch's The Sun, writes in The Guardian. [more inside]
posted by memebake at 5:46 AM PST - 62 comments

The Victorian Dictionary: A motley collection of primary source documents and reference materials about Victorian London by historical thriller author Lee Jackson. Read the 1841 Census, browse peroid advertisements, zoom in on the 1881 Pocket Guide to London or just learn some dirty words.
posted by The Whelk at 5:35 AM PST - 17 comments

The professor, his wife, and the secret, savage book reviews on Amazon 'An extraordinary literary "whodunnit" over the identity of a mystery reviewer who savaged works by some of Britain's leading academics on the Amazon website has culminated in a top historian admitting that the culprit was, in fact, his wife.'
posted by Abiezer at 5:05 AM PST - 52 comments

The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time.
posted by The Mouthchew at 4:35 AM PST - 89 comments

Wacky Races ran on CBS from September 14, 1968 to January 4, 1969 The cartoon was unusual in the large number of regular characters, twenty-four in total: the twenty-three people and animals spread among the 11 race cars, plus the unseen (and never identified) race announcer. Another unusual feature of the series is that the stars of the show are the villains as opposed to the heroes. Whizzin' To Washington (Pt. 1, Pt. 2), Real Gone Ape (Pt. 1, Pt. 2), Idaho a Go Go (Pt. 1, Pt. 2).
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:54 AM PST - 37 comments

One thing is going to become clear in the coming years, Braun says: if you want to lose weight, you don’t necessarily have to go for a long run. “Just get rid of your chair.” "...Exercise does have an important role in weight loss. That role, however, is different from what many people expect and probably wish." And quite nuanced too. Turns out it's different for men and women and it matters what kind of exercise you do. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:25 PM PST - 113 comments

SLYT Doody/Kaufman No matter what you expect, this won't be it.
posted by HuronBob at 8:10 PM PST - 21 comments

Lawrence Welk was a drug fiend
posted by philip-random at 7:45 PM PST - 66 comments

"Con men used to travel town to town hawking medical remedies said to be made of Chinese snakes. Snake oil was useless and dangerous. So the FDA was created to put a stop to it and other food and drug scams. But, today, quack medicine has never been bigger. In the 21st century, snake oil has been replaced by bogus therapies using stem cells. Stem cells may offer cures one day, but medical charlatans on the Internet are making outrageous claims that they can reverse the incurable, from autism to multiple sclerosis to every kind of cancer."* Video Part 1 [13:15] || Part 2 [11:49]. [more inside]
posted by ericb at 5:43 PM PST - 31 comments

"The 9:30 Club became the place in Washington where the misfits could go and nobody would judge them. The scene became bigger as MTV opened the doors to this kind of music. But the 9:30 Club was on the ground floor."

Today's Washington Post magazine features an oral history of the 9:30 Club, in celebration of its 30th anniversary. (Alternate link to just the text of the article.)
posted by Ike_Arumba at 5:03 PM PST - 58 comments

PlayGroundology: "scours the web for all things bright, beautiful and occasionally tarnished about the world of playgrounds." [via] [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 1:06 PM PST - 14 comments

The Rise and Fall of Frank Ma, Last of New York's Asian Godfathers: How a Chinese immigrant became a crime lord, ordered a hit that left the wrong men dead, sparked a 16-year international investigation and finally landed in prison for the rest of his life.
posted by zarq at 12:50 PM PST - 43 comments

The UN Commission established to investigate Bhutto's assassination has released its report. The Report says her murder was avoidable, and holds responsible General Musharraf's government for failing to protect her and destroying evidence from the crime scene. In response, Musharraf, in self-exile in London, is threatening to sue the UN panel. The present Government has started to take action against those accused who are still in the country.
posted by Azaadistani at 12:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Sonoma County CA separates elderly gay couple and sells all of their worldly possessions. Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county's actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. [more inside]
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:15 PM PST - 96 comments

Shocking photos of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 and more volcano pictures from Marco Fulle taken on April 14th, 16th, and 17th.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:14 AM PST - 130 comments

Your dreams of rapping superstardom are stymied by your Scottish sound, so what do you do? Simple: reinvent yourself as a West Coast wild boy, with American accent and history to match. Keeping it real might be murder, but even when it all falls apart, at least you got to tour with Eminem and D12 – and you can salvage something by writing a book about it all.
posted by Len at 10:49 AM PST - 67 comments

Scareware comprises several classes of scam software with malicious payloads, or of limited or no benefit, that are marketed to consumers by scaring them. One frequently seen version is rogue security software that deceives users into paying for the fake or simulated removal of malware. The N. Y. Times site inadvertently displayed a scareware message last September. [more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:27 AM PST - 59 comments

Instead of letting corporal punishment fall out of fashion or banning it outright (like the majority of areas in the US have done) a small Texas city has brought back paddling and it sounds like it's working just fine. Is this a trend we can expect to see continuing? Or is it a punishment that might soon be federally banned?
posted by DoublePlus at 9:17 AM PST - 111 comments

A crew from Google is capturing images of the Vail and Beaver Creek mountains for its Google Maps' Street View with its own snowmobile mounted with a special camera. Shortly before the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in February, Google decided to branch out to ski resorts, using a snowmobile to capture images of Whistler ski area. Vail and Beaver Creek are the first American ski resorts to be included in Street View.
posted by netbros at 7:43 AM PST - 9 comments

Service dogs for PTSD are changing the lives of both former veterans with PTSD and their trainers (audio/picture version and article version). [more inside]
posted by Wolfster at 7:14 AM PST - 16 comments

Dan The Man... if computer games were more like real life. (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:08 AM PST - 108 comments

MAD Magaziner Jack Davis' multi-page montage of everything on NBC in the Fall of 1965, including the Huntley-Brinkley Report, Johnny Carson, Hullaballoo, Dr. Kildare, Andy Williams, My Mother The Car, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, I Spy, Dean Martin, Camp Runamuck, The Man From UNCLE, Flipper, I Dream of Jeannie and Get Smart. (missing from the reconstructed pic are the Sunday shows, including Bonanza and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color). via Mark Evanier
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:54 AM PST - 21 comments

Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization - David Eagleman [video]
posted by MetaMonkey at 9:08 PM PST - 59 comments

The 90’s were a pretty foul decade for anyone that didn’t want to groom some stubble and rock out. Our Trent had no hesitation, good for him. Depeche Mode managed to get a bit of beard on as well. The rest of us had to find jobs in advertising. Music took a swerve backwards as a flood of ‘alternative’ and ‘indie’ guitar bands jangled their way through territory that had been explored long ago, settled and populated with malls. I know, I used to work on album covers for major label compilations of “20 BANDS THAT SOUND LIKE NIRVANA”.

Tom Ellard (of the now defunct Severed Heads) has a blog. Topics include Kurt Cobain, academic conferences, piracy, privacy and contemporary experimental music. [more inside]
posted by Syme at 8:23 PM PST - 57 comments

With Matt Smith making his US debut as Doctor Who tonight, showrunner Steven Moffat gives an interview to Tor.com. Meanwhile in the UK viewers have just had their first sight of a controversial new Dalek redesign.
posted by Artw at 6:27 PM PST - 266 comments

"Hostages Rescued By Courageous Racist" and other news from the First-Person Observer.
posted by empath at 3:56 PM PST - 38 comments

Here's a video (YT) from Nike's newest Japanese ad campaign with DJ/musician Daito Manabe and friends remixing Also sprach Zarathustra—with shoes (and some help from Ableton Live). Daito Manabe's blog [in Japanese] offers some additional photos. (via Engadget)
posted by reductiondesign at 3:28 PM PST - 12 comments

Worried about climate change? Don't sweat it. Technological. Profitable. And, dare we say, beautiful.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 3:21 PM PST - 15 comments

You may have heard about Romeo Agents, the male employees of the East German Ministry for State Security (also known as MfS or Stasi). They were unleashed on female federal employees in West Germany, with whom they began long-term relations and then began using as sources. That tactic has apparently been used in the United States as well; David Cay Johnston writes about the real legacy of Daryl Gates, the former chief of the LAPD. Gates died Friday. [more inside]
posted by krautland at 3:10 PM PST - 37 comments

Fergie Olver was a well-known Canadian sportscaster, who used to hang with the likes of Wayne Gretzky. When not working on Toronto Blue Jays broadcasts, he co-hosted the 80s game show Just Like Mom with his wife, a former Miss Canada. Like fellow game show host Richard Dawson, Olver had a penchant for kissing his contestants on the lips. One problem: his contestants were prepubescent girls. The results are more than a little unsettling.
posted by kalimotxero at 12:39 PM PST - 76 comments

Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie on the danger of defining a place or a people by a single story. From TEDGlobal 2009 and via Feministe.
posted by peacheater at 12:30 PM PST - 8 comments

Lacemaking in 19th-century Britain relied heavily upon child labour. Large numbers of children attended 'lace schools' from an early age, working long hours in miserable conditions. An 1860s parliamentary report on child labour describes their world. [more inside]
posted by Catseye at 10:43 AM PST - 15 comments

Drawdio: A Pencil that Lets You Draw Music
posted by brundlefly at 9:06 AM PST - 27 comments

Crack shack or mansion? [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 8:44 AM PST - 82 comments

Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies. graphic pictures under the fold
posted by desjardins at 8:13 AM PST - 55 comments

Scott Stapp sings "Marlins Will Soar."
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:06 AM PST - 44 comments

Eighteenth century obstetric engravings by Jan van Rymsdyk Dutch illustrator van Rymsdyk (also spelled van Riemsdyk) was working in England when he made 31 engravings for William Hunter's The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus. Recent research suggests Hunter and his fellow pioneer of obstetrics William Smellie may have been responsible for the murders of some 40 pregnant women in order to gain corpses for their anatomical research.
posted by Abiezer at 6:41 AM PST - 18 comments

Antony Flew has gone to meet his maker. Or not. Previously, on "the world's most notorious atheist who changed his mind." Flew was a philosopher who was known as the originator of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Some doubted the conversion was what it seemed to be. Antony Flew on the afterlife.
posted by availablelight at 6:14 AM PST - 40 comments

Death Metal Lyric or William Blake Quote?
posted by wittgenstein at 5:50 AM PST - 12 comments

Can it be that all cartoons resolve to one common sentiment?
posted by pjern at 4:49 AM PST - 39 comments

dotfiles.org is a place to upload, download, and share your dotfiles.
posted by vostok at 3:09 AM PST - 28 comments

CK Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business in the University of Michigan passed away on 16th April 2010 after a brief illness. His core competency was strategic insight and vision and his legacy to the world, the concept of the Bottom of the Pyramid, which changed the way big business viewed the teeming, huddled poverty stricken masses of the former third world as micro-innovators, micro-producers and so, micro-consumers in their own right. Among others, his work inspired Ratan Tata as the Nano turned conventional wisdom of automobile manufacturing on its head and paved the way for Indian industry to focus on the high volume/low margin potential of their domestic market. In 2009, he was named the "world's most influential thinker" . Though not uncriticized for his theories on the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, one can acknowledge his role in overcoming the "tyranny of dominant logic" that the poor should not simply be recipients of charity but demanding customers in challenging environments. RIP, sir. {previously, previously}
posted by infini at 2:50 AM PST - 14 comments

Predator vs *: Na'vi, Tintin, Punisher, Batman, Jason, Ewoks, Spiderman, Power Rangers, Alien, Wikipedia, Wikipedia vs Predator, Robocop, Predator.
posted by zippy at 1:04 AM PST - 20 comments

Talk Show
A Turn For the Worse
Pictures From the Daily Mail
Tales of the Unexpected
A Strange Theory of Light and Matter
[more soon]
posted by carsonb at 11:42 PM PST - 11 comments

Roman ingots to shield particle detector. "Around four tonnes of ancient Roman lead was yesterday transferred from a museum on the Italian island of Sardinia to the country's national particle physics laboratory at Gran Sasso on the mainland. Once destined to become water pipes, coins or ammunition for Roman soldiers' slingshots, the metal will instead form part of a cutting-edge experiment to nail down the mass of neutrinos." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 11:15 PM PST - 22 comments

Movie critic Roger Ebert has previously said that he doesn't think video games can be art, an opinion at odds with the gaming community. In a recent blog post, Ebert clarifies his position. [more inside]
posted by hellojed at 11:03 PM PST - 214 comments

Gil Scott-Heron, Godfather of Rap. Parts 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 and 6.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:59 PM PST - 19 comments

Albert Einstein died 55 years ago, on April 18, 1955, of heart failure at the age of 76. His funeral and cremation were intensely private affairs. Only one person, LIFE photographer Ralph Morse, managed to capture the events of the day Einstein died.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:57 PM PST - 17 comments

We've had a post on bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding previously, but perhaps we could do with an update. Last year she played at the White House for Stevie Wonder's Gershwin Prize concert and again for the Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word (previously). In December she performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and, according to wikipedia, her February 6 performance on Austin Cty Limits (PBS [US only?], with Madeleine Peyroux) made her the most-searched person, and the second-most-searched item on Google the next day. [more inside]
posted by Someday Bum at 8:32 PM PST - 7 comments

K.D. Lang singing Halleujah Leonard Cohen's Halleujah may be one of the most powerful songs I heard in the past few years. This version by K.D. Lang was a pleasant surprise...
posted by HuronBob at 8:21 PM PST - 94 comments

Rhett and Link love local commercials, and, with a sponsorship by MicroBilt, they want to visit your town to make one! Don't worry [NSFW], they've had experience doing this kind of thing in the past. • Rhett and Link's website and YouTube channel are chock full of fun stuff besides commercials--why, they even helped me learn all about regional variations of southern BBQ! • [ many previous appearances ]
posted by not_on_display at 7:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Every Painting in the MoMA on 10 April 2010 (SLYT)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:24 PM PST - 19 comments

StarCraft II (previously) has yet to be released, but that hasn't stopped the open beta in Korea from being played so extensively that standout players and strategies are becoming clear well in advance of the limited US beta. Moreover, tournaments are taking place and, while probably inaccessible to those unfamiliar with StarCraft, many matches are available to watch in very high definition on YouTube, complete with surprisingly professional and insightful commentary by SC veterans.

Despite not being a major SC fan, I found myself embarrassingly absorbed by a monster 47-minute Terran vs. Protoss battle, TheLittleOne vs. LiquidNazgul: parts one, two, three, four. It's an excellent crash course in SC2 culture and terminology as well as a fun watch and great match. There are many more.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:21 PM PST - 94 comments

The Johnny Cash Project : animating the music video for Ain't No Grave with frame-by-frame contributions from visitors. Draw your own too.
posted by divabat at 6:15 PM PST - 10 comments

Noah Kirkman was stopped by the police while riding a bicycle without his helmet... He then spent the next two years trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare... trying to go home. The Kirkman family has been locked in Kafkaesque bureaucratic limbo since a misunderstanding ruined an idyllic summer vacation in small-town Oregon in 2008. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 5:23 PM PST - 23 comments

Winiwarter's laws of genesis [more inside]
posted by cytherea at 4:53 PM PST - 36 comments

Sonic the Hedgehog, mmmmm yeah baby. A walk through for Sonic 1 with one smooth mutha
posted by dead cousin ted at 4:07 PM PST - 24 comments

After more than 160 years of treating patients, historic St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City's Greenwich Village filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday and will close its doors to new patients. The last remaining Catholic Hospital in NYC, St. Vincent's was originally founded in 1849 to serve the poor. The effect is already being felt at other hospitals in the area. But despite the filing, there was still time for one last cry: Abigail Jancu was the the last baby ever born in St. Vincent's maternity ward.
posted by zarq at 3:27 PM PST - 21 comments

Weighing 607 pounds, Bruce Snowdon was a sideshow fat man from 1977 to 2003, billed as "Harold Huge". His death on Nov. 9, 2009, at the age of 63 marks the end of a long tradition dating back centuries. [more inside]
posted by gman at 2:13 PM PST - 40 comments

Sports fans in Philadelphia have a bad reputation. They booed when their long-time star quarterback Donovan McNabb was drafted. (Something he took personally for years.) They booed and threw snow balls at Santa Claus. They booed when Michael Irvin lay motionless on the field with a neck injury that would end his career. They fought so much at football games that, for a time, their stadium had its own criminal court. Adding to this glorious legacy, at last night's Phillies game, a man allegedly stuck his own fingers down his throat and intentionally projectile vomited on a father and his two daughters who were cheering for the Washington Nationals.
posted by Damn That Television at 2:08 PM PST - 121 comments

Hanafuda (Koi Koi) is a flash game that plays with the hanafuda deck of cards. (As a trivia side note, hanafuda cards were the beginning of Nintendo.) Once you're familiar with the deck, you can play Minhato, a java game that uses the same cards. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston at 12:39 PM PST - 19 comments

Morally reprehensible, conflicted, Kick-ass the movie opens today. [more inside]
posted by bonehead at 12:31 PM PST - 349 comments

BART Police stripped of Tasers. After a sergeant attempted to taser a 13 year old boy, fleeing on bicycle, BART has decided to remove Tasers from the BART Police force. “What are you going to do about Tasers? What are you going to do with officer who does something silly like shoot their Taser out of a window at the victim?” asked Sweet. “BART does not have enough insurance to pay for some of the things we do.” Previously.
posted by yeloson at 12:22 PM PST - 58 comments

It suddenly dashed towards me and rips my shiny new camera from out of my hands, then swims off. Single link YouTube of an Octopus's directorial debut.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 11:27 AM PST - 64 comments

Yesterday, the leaders of the three largest political parties in the UK engaged in a live televised election debate for the first time in history. Most commentators seem to agree that Nick Clegg, the leader of Britain's perennial third party the Liberal Democrats, made the best impression in yesterday's first of three weekly debates leading up to the general election on May 6. The progressive-leaning Guardian even goes so far as to claim that he is now prime ministerial material.

This being Metafilter you will undoubtedly ask, "how does Cory Doctorow figure into all of this?" Well, he agrees with Nick on the Digital Economy Act. Then again, Nick is agreed with quite a lot.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:05 AM PST - 54 comments

"If you like orchestral music and have a heart in your fucking chest, you will like this record." Mike Patton, former front man of Faith No More, frequent John Zorn collaborator, founding member of Mr. Bungle, is releasing an album covering old Italian pop songs in May, called Mondo Cane. A live performance can be streamed from Youtube. [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:38 AM PST - 42 comments

Ultra Monster art by Takayoshi Mizuki: Japanese monster-kaiju art from the 70s. Warnring: Contains Dino-Tank
posted by The Whelk at 9:28 AM PST - 30 comments

How To Look Punk [PDF]. Lots of good fashion tips from 1977. Don't forget your punk alias. [via]
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 9:24 AM PST - 41 comments

Nobody is saying anyone is ripping anybody off. They are just SIMILAR is all. [more inside]
posted by WPW at 9:07 AM PST - 45 comments

Alex Masket is an autistic young man and prolific artist using Duct Tape, Stick-On Letters, and Legos, among many materials. His work has a suprising vibrance and rhythm. Inspiring, especially for fans of Duct Tape and Outsider Art. Listen to an interview with his parents here. (Hat Tip to the latest Utne Reader)
posted by cross_impact at 9:06 AM PST - 8 comments

"This is a story about a different thing. Something I call Man to Man (M2M)" This blog entry describes the events of a clay pigeon shooting outing as experienced by young woman of color. She muses about whether she should have removed her invisibility cloak and called out the M2M business at play.
posted by la_scribbler at 8:57 AM PST - 126 comments

SEC sues Goldman Sachs for fraud . GS has already come under fire for "betting against" financial products it was marketing, a practice that apparently helped it prosper from the real estate bubble but come out relatively unscathed. The SEC now says that one such product was designed specifically so that a Goldman business partner, Paulson & Company, could take a short position on it. Investors were apparently not advised of this fact. Goldman's stock was off more than 10% in the half hour following the announcement. [more inside]
posted by grobstein at 8:50 AM PST - 48 comments

Something you might want to see before summer concert season starts. People Dancing at Concerts. Drink responsibly, the internet is watching.
posted by donajo at 8:44 AM PST - 41 comments

"In Magnasanti the most advanced construction techniques were employed to achieve a near optimum population density configuration." Remarkable video of Sim City 3000, beaten.
posted by jbickers at 8:01 AM PST - 79 comments

Video of University of Maryland student John McKenna being punched, kicked, and beaten with clubs by Prince George's County police. McKenna was charged with disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer; the police report claims that he had punched the officers and their horses, and that his injuries were due to being kicked by the horses. The video shows otherwise.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 6:37 AM PST - 110 comments

Passive Aggressive Library Signs Everyone loves librarians, don't they? In honor of National Library Week, here's a collection of threatening library signs. Librarians can be VICIOUS. Some librarians hate those signs more than you'd think: Ten Signs I Hope I Never See in Libraries Again. And just in case you missed them, Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library if you worry about PATRIOT related issues.
posted by Blake at 4:53 AM PST - 111 comments

Cat Roulette Single Link, Multi-Youtube. No requirement to be a cat yourself, or to own a cat.
posted by dinty_moore at 4:52 AM PST - 11 comments

London hosts "Last Night of Mephedrone" party [FB link] Today a UK-wide ban on the drug Mephedrone, otherwise known as Meow Meow, becomes law, meaning a potential five year prison term for those caught possessing the substance. But several police forces are saying that they will operate a week-long amnesty while others are saying they will target dealers rather than seeking out users. London's biggest meph-heads are gathering tomorrow night to use up their stash in one final blowout, and according to them a "Central London club has offered us their venue for free and is even supplying Philip Starck brushed aluminium tables and Tiffany silver keyfobs from which to do our bumps of Meph". Apparently "one of the biggest DJs on the M-CAT scene is doing a set of specially sped-up meph sounds for at least 16 hours" and they're inviting requests - from "Love Cats" to "Stray Cat Strut".
posted by skylar at 4:45 AM PST - 65 comments

Born 88 years ago in a bear cave in Eastern Oregon, Virginia Beavert now teaches a language with no textbooks, no study abroad programs, and no dubbed TV shows. The only surviving elder of the Yakama who knows the sacred songs and parables of the "Dreamer Religion", Waashat, Beavert researches and teaches Sahaptin (Ichiskíin Sínwit). [more inside]
posted by fraula at 3:51 AM PST - 12 comments

This week Microsoft unveiled the Kin, formerly Project Pink (previously), which emerged out of the troubled Sidekick (previously). Built on the same foundation as the Zune HD, making it the first in-phone use of the NVIDIA Tegra, the phones operating system is a cut-down version of Windows Phone 7 with a focus on photo sharing and social networking. Will the Kin make Microsoft cool again? Perhaps. Of course all eyes are still on the Smartphone market, and how Windows Phone 7 will compare to the iPhone. Some see a clear lead for WP7 from a developers perspective, others are more doubtful.
posted by Artw at 1:09 AM PST - 49 comments

In "honor" of Confederate History Month, The Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates presents a contemporaneous indictment of the American institution of slavery in the form of a fund-raising letter for the education of freed slaves. The content is presented without editorial in the original post, but there is a very interesting discussion of related issues in the comments section below. (via)
posted by The Confessor at 11:41 PM PST - 26 comments

Chronic Citizen: Erik Davis interviews Jonathan Lethem on Phillip K. Dick. (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:40 PM PST - 11 comments

Betting Against the American Dream. In 2005, just as Wall Street started to get cold feet about the housing market, the Magnetar hedge fund helped create a new wave of billion-dollar mortgage-backed securities, pushed bankers to include riskier sub-prime mortgages, and then shorted the securities, making millions when the bubble finally burst. Traders on both sides of the deals pocketed enormous fees even if their banks went under when the securities failed. Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica, This American Life, and NPR's Planet Money track down some of the big winners in the housing/financial crisis. No time to read or listen? It seemed so much like a scheme from The Producers, they even recorded a show tune to explain it all. (Previously, 2, 3)
posted by straight at 9:36 PM PST - 30 comments

In recognition of World Homeopathy Awareness Week I give you "The Science of Homeopathy" Also, from the horse's mouth "homeopathy awareness week 2010". James Randi of course gets his licks in as well. [more inside]
posted by nola at 9:22 PM PST - 27 comments

Polyrock "could be pitched as Talking Heads under the tutelage of Philip Glass." With cover art that looked like it had been dollar bin for years, Polyrock may have been doomed from the beginning. Somehow their obscure, angsty-but-therapeutic sound has yet to be stolen, despite a semi-recent CD re-release. Romantic Me. No Love Lost Live. (Better than that "No Love Lost," if you can believe it). Cries and Whispers. Love Song. Changing Hearts. Bucket Rider. Working on My Love. [more inside]
posted by activitystory at 9:07 PM PST - 11 comments

Computation doesn't require complicated electronic circuitry. It can be done with mechanical gears, fluids, marbles, tinkertoys and dominoes, even the human eye. Recently folks have been building computers inside of virtual realities. It's been done with Minesweeper, Little Big Planet, and perhaps most ambitiously, a complete 8-bit computer built within Dwarf Fortress.
posted by empath at 9:06 PM PST - 50 comments

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES -- By this memorandum, I request that you take the following steps: 1. Initiate appropriate rulemaking, pursuant to your authority under 42 U.S.C. 1395x and other relevant provisions of law, to ensure that hospitals that participate in Medicare or Medicaid respect the rights of patients to designate visitors. It should be made clear that designated visitors, including individuals designated by legally valid advance directives (such as durable powers of attorney and health care proxies), should enjoy visitation privileges that are no more restrictive than those that immediate family members enjoy. You should also provide that participating hospitals may not deny visitation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. The rulemaking should take into account the need for hospitals to restrict visitation in medically appropriate circumstances as well as the clinical decisions that medical professionals make about a patient's care or treatment. -- BARACK OBAMA [more inside]
posted by peachfuzz at 8:52 PM PST - 98 comments

Now that Stevens, a Northwestern Law grad, is retiring, all eight remaining Supreme Court justices hail from either Harvard or Yale law school. Is it time for some educational diversity on the court? Many think the court needs to expand its educational horizons. Complaints aren’t limited to the Justices themselves. Both Congress and Justice Thomas are concerned with a lack of different educational backgrounds among the clerks.
posted by HabeasCorpus at 8:01 PM PST - 41 comments

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. (c. 2007 SLYT TED talk)
posted by snsranch at 7:54 PM PST - 5 comments

Who rules America? Wealth, income and power Next time you hear "Fair and Balanced" Fox News whining about the socialist wealth redistribution agenda of the Obama "regime", refer back to this. Goes a long way towards explaining why 47% of Americans don't pay income tax.
posted by Daddy-O at 7:45 PM PST - 60 comments

The Truth According to Wikipedia (SLYT)... A 48-minute documentary about Wikipedia, the internet, democracy and knowledge.
posted by mondaygreens at 7:42 PM PST - 9 comments

Those familiar with the equestrian discipline of dressage, might imagine it as populated exclusively by stuck up riders and spoiled, excessively shiny overbred horses. A few mule trainers beg to differ. [more inside]
posted by bunnycup at 7:12 PM PST - 17 comments

English-speaking fans of lucha libre may have gotten hooked through MST3K's take on "Samson" versus the Vampire Women (prev), or seen the Incredibly Strange Film Show's el Santo episode. [more inside]
posted by jtron at 6:58 PM PST - 8 comments

Pandora, Prometheus, and Pessimism. "Pessimism deserves serious consideration in today’s culture of Oprah-quick-fix happiness, Prozac induced euphoria, and unjustified optimism for our species. Unlike Oprah and Prozac, pessimism is not easy to swallow. It is time we consider this tradition in a culture steeped in farcical, puerile conceptions of happiness; an environment where every person who is able to grin on a book-cover can tell us how to achieve happiness now; where angels or god or some other fairy-tale character cares about our actions in this world. Life is not a grand, heroic narrative with a happy ending. It is not a place where we are overcoming obstacles in order to achieve a time in our lives of perfect serenity. In order to combat such serious obstructions to clear-thought, boundaries to reality and gateways to delusion, pessimism can help us shape our thoughts on matters which resonate with all us rational, bipedal apes."
posted by homunculus at 6:07 PM PST - 63 comments

The Obama and Biden tax returns are already on line. The President and First Lady made a lot of money, and they also paid a lot in taxes, as well as donating generously to charity. The Vice President and his wife made a lot less, and apparently didn't keep track of all their cash donations. Here are the returns for the Obamas and the Bidens (pdf format). (P.S. -- Dick Cheney's reported income in office outstrips the President's.)
posted by bearwife at 5:06 PM PST - 25 comments

ColdChef (2006): "Also, Dr. Ivor van Heerden is the fucking man. And he wrote a hell of a book, which will probably eventually get him fired." It did. van Heerden is suing LSU for wrongful termination, and the AAUP is investigating. [more inside]
posted by DiscourseMarker at 5:00 PM PST - 20 comments

Lady Gaga covers Coldplay. Choir covers Lady Gaga. Classical Lady Gaga. [MLYT]
posted by mccarty.tim at 3:34 PM PST - 93 comments

Dazzling new 3D buildings for New York City in Google Earth [via]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:00 PM PST - 22 comments

Why aren't we furious about email's dysfunction? Spam just keeps getting worse. And it's been bad for a long time. The spam/virus anti-spam/anti-virus arms-race continues to generate profits for spammers and anti-spammers at everyone else's expense. Attachments maybe weren't a good idea. And neither was the reply-all button. Attempts at "fixing" email are the subject of ridicule, and perhaps deservedly so. Google Wave was released as an alternative to email; few seem to care. What gives? Are we really stuck with this crap?
posted by fartknocker at 2:50 PM PST - 129 comments

For a little welcome diversion from your political, financial, climatological and other worries, how about orificial hirudiniasis? Here's a new species of nose-dwelling leech. Its ancestors may gave lived in Tyrannosaurus rex noses but our new friend here will be perfectly happy in yours. (The linked fulltext research paper is from the Public Library of Science's flagship peer-reviewed online journal PLoS ONE, but it's the Beeb's notice that has the absolutely OMG EWW pix.) Nature is so cool.
posted by jfuller at 1:56 PM PST - 50 comments

When the economy is bad, you can scream, strike or sing. [more inside]
posted by QIbHom at 12:29 PM PST - 10 comments

The National Labor Committee, a watchdog group that investigates working conditions at foreign factories producing goods for US corporations, has released a report on the KYE Factory in Guangdong, China. KYE manufactures outsourced products for Microsoft (their biggest customer), HP, Best Buy, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech, and ASUS. The report focuses heavily on the workers producing Microsoft products. In response, Microsoft says they will investigate the allegations, as their vendor code of conduct (pdf) bans much of the abuses uncovered by the report. Photo Slideshow / NLC report summary [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:03 PM PST - 53 comments

Comic Book Cartography is more than maps of make-believe lands. It also covers cutaways ga-lore, robot schematics, and diagrams of Batman's utility belt. In the same vein, there was The Marvel Atlas Project (M.A.P.), and though it is now offline, some pictures have survived. There is also the two-part Marvel Atlas, a subset of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The Atlast of the DC Universe is limited to Earth, (sourced from the DC Heros RPG book and Secret Files & Origins Guide to the DC Universe 2000), and Mapping Gotham is a single blog post which collects some maps from Batman's world, as found from a variety of sources. The Map Room collected a few more, some which require some digging into the archives. [more, previously]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:46 AM PST - 28 comments

Dog Sledding (SLYT, not what you think)
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:42 AM PST - 35 comments

Northwest Coast Archaeology [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 11:13 AM PST - 8 comments

Is the Tea Party movement politically active in your community? 50% of the Tea Party thinks so. 51% of the rest of the community says no. Explore what other agreements and disagreements the Tea Party has with the rest of the country.
posted by DU at 10:16 AM PST - 240 comments

The Most Awesomest Thing Ever. The Most Awesomest Thing Ever is scouring the universe for the Most Awesomest Thing. Ever. By endlessly pitting two things against each other, we’ve created a stage set for destruction. You will battle, winners will emerge. Only the strongest shall reach the hallowed halls of the Most Awesomest.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:03 AM PST - 74 comments

Happy National High Five Day 2010! [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:47 AM PST - 7 comments

The Radium-Age Apocalypse Microfiction Contest
posted by brundlefly at 9:36 AM PST - 4 comments

iggy [the cat] investigates an ipad. slyt. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:04 AM PST - 57 comments

Moving Remy in Harmony - Pixar's Use of Harmonic Functions. [more inside]
posted by Wolfdog at 8:44 AM PST - 38 comments

Dr. Benjamin Hooks, Whose Moral Leadership Bridged Populations, Dies at 85. Dr. Hooks was the first African-American judge in the South since Reconstruction, the first African-American appointed to the board of the FCC, and executive director of the NAACP from 1977 to 1992. [more inside]
posted by JeffK at 8:24 AM PST - 12 comments

Oppugn.us is a site where you can read nerdy rants.
posted by chunking express at 8:19 AM PST - 13 comments

It's been verified by the band - Peter Steele, frontman of reknowned gothic/doom metal band Type O Negative, is dead of heart failure at age 48.
posted by FatherDagon at 8:04 AM PST - 59 comments

December 9, 2001, at a singular event called Muppet Fest, Muppet performers and special guests came together to perform a very special edition of The Muppet Show - a live performance. Until now, those of us who could not attend were only able to read the script, but recently a (slightly edited) video of this unique performance has turned up on YouTube: Part 1 [more inside]
posted by anastasiav at 7:22 AM PST - 30 comments

Photographs of New York City from the 1940s in color via the Charles W. Cushman collection. The Lower East Side. Downtown - 1960. Landmarks and Times Square (via)
posted by The Whelk at 7:08 AM PST - 19 comments

The Single Mother's Manifesto. "But wait, some will say. Given that you have long since left single parenthood for marriage and a nuclear family; given that you are now so far from a life dependent on benefits that Private Eye habitually refers to you as Rowlinginnit, why do you care? Surely, nowadays, you are a natural Tory voter? No, I’m afraid not..." J.K. Rowling on welfare, patriotism, and the upcoming UK election. (via Crooked Timber)
posted by No-sword at 7:04 AM PST - 48 comments

You're breakfast. From Parra of Rockwell. NSFW, unless your work consists of gorgeous hand-drawn typography and voluptuous bird women cavorting together.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 6:54 AM PST - 27 comments

Air traffic in much of northern Europe halted – due to ash from a volcanic eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. The volcano under the glacier erupted for the first time in 200 years last month and whilst Iceland is renowned for its volcanic and geologic activity the sheer ferocity of the latest eruption (thought to be 20 times more powerful than the initial eruption on the 20th March) and prevailing wind conditions have culminated in the current traffic chaos. Flightradar24.com shows the current impact on the skies. Whilst the particles will disperse at high altitude and pose no threat to those on the ground, the volcanic ash is very dangerous to aircraft . Not only is there the problem of it clouding pilot vision but the ash can cause engine malfunction and damage the delicate airframe skin. One silver lining in all this is the anticipated glorious red sunset that should follow.
posted by numberstation at 2:40 AM PST - 147 comments

Rats process musical information. [more inside]
posted by idiopath at 10:52 PM PST - 23 comments

The Library of Congress will be archiving all public tweets ever published. They'll be doing this after a six-month delay. LOC announced this via Twitter first, naturally. Notable scholars consider some problems and open questions. [more inside]
posted by tarheelcoxn at 10:07 PM PST - 81 comments

Debuting 20 years ago, In Living Color launched the Hollywood careers of Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey, David Allen Grier, most of the Wayans family, Jennifer Lopez and Rosie Perez. The comedy might not have aged all that well, but the musical performances and parodies are still a lot of fun. [more inside]
posted by empath at 8:57 PM PST - 79 comments

Ben Wilson's Chewing Gum paintings and Slinkachu's sculpture rewards the attentive pedestrian. The former paints tiny pictures on sidewalk gum. The latter sets up tiny urban tableaus with humor and sly social critique. Pays to watch where you walk. (hat tip -- Raw Vision)
posted by cross_impact at 8:56 PM PST - 5 comments

Something of a rarity on film, Jim Henson and Frank Oz get a chance to "ham" it up without a script, when The Muppet Movie director James Frawley requests some camera tests to see how the puppets look when filmed on location. The hilarious result: Part One | Part Two
posted by evilcolonel at 5:57 PM PST - 85 comments

Henry Giroux has written a compelling article about teachers and their importance to our country.
posted by HuronBob at 5:07 PM PST - 59 comments

Platypus Comix has compiled images from around the Internet of prototype game consoles and peripherals spanning from the original NES all the way to the Sony PlayStation 3. You'll see the NES's tape recorder, a touch pad for the Sega Genesis, the infamous Nintendo PlayStation, a PlayStation Portable you can clip to your backpack ("...or whatever reckless thing they thought you'd try."), a Wii controller with just one large button, and the embarrassing PS3 "serect" button. [more inside]
posted by Servo5678 at 4:17 PM PST - 38 comments

Mass application of bacon as applied to Star Wars AT-AT Walker As interesting as this is in itself, the venemous nature of some of the comments is wide ranging and toxic, making the whole exercise another rich internet moral experience.
posted by petecart at 2:48 PM PST - 102 comments

The main goal of Project Vedos is to study and teach alternative printing processes in photography and printmaking.
posted by vostok at 2:27 PM PST - 3 comments

Robert Hodgin's Magnetic sculptures: "These forms are created with cylinder magnets, spherical magnets, and ball bearings. Magnetism is the only thing holding the forms together. They are fairly fragile and picking them up will likely crush them. All of the forms I created were variations of the 12 sided dodecahedron. This particular platonic solid seems to be the form the magnets are happiest with." [via]
posted by dhruva at 2:27 PM PST - 11 comments

DUI? Dealing Drugs? Better Call Saul! Have you or someone you know been affected by the tragedy of Wayfarer Flight 515? SAUL CAN HELP! Also related: Check out Saul's philanthropic causes. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 1:18 PM PST - 70 comments

In 2009, four Buddhist nuns (Bhikkunis) were secretly ordained in Australia - the first ever ordination of Bhikkunis in Australia, and a first for the Thai Forest tradition anywhere. London-born Ajahn Brahm, a long-time supporter of women's equality in Buddhism, facilitated the ordination. For this he was expelled from his community, the Wat Pa Phong Sangha, and his monastery's status was revoked. This video summarizes the conflict, and is possibly the first use of the Downfall meme related to Buddhism. This March, more nuns were ordained in the UK for the first time since the Australia controversy, but they're still not equal to male monks. This blog post discusses sexism, fundamentalism, and the conflict between East and West. The modern opposition to bhikkhuni ordination is no ancient Buddhist tradition. It can be traced no earlier, so far as I am aware, than the abhorrent 1928 ruling against bhikkhuni in Thailand, made by monks who thought it reasonable to arrest nuns and throw them in jail for ordaining. [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 1:10 PM PST - 72 comments

Guy Kewney was an early and prolific writer in UK technology publishing, most renowned for his ‘Newsprint’ column in Personal Computer World (Guy’s take on PCW’s history and decline & more writing for The Register). He died last week. His most recent project was newswireless, his personal blog wryly and honestly recorded his illness, and he was a respected and much missed man (Teblog has a list of the many tributes). [more inside]
posted by Huw at 1:05 PM PST - 7 comments

Following on from Jonathan Wilson's excellent column The Question (previously), Zonal Marking illustrates and explains how a football match is won and lost, often with same-day analysis and emphasis on individual players. [more inside]
posted by Errant at 1:02 PM PST - 25 comments

Echo Bazaar is a place where you can play The Greatest Game, or seek your Ambitions, or, what the heck, just Seduce an Artist's Model! Ever since London was dragged one mile below the Earth's surface -- and one mile closer to Hell -- by a huge flurry of billions of bats, finding your fortune in the city has been something of a different beast. [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 12:19 PM PST - 43 comments

The show Glee has created a remake of Madonna’s original Vogue music video, starring Jane Lynch. It's part of a promotional campaign for their upcoming (4/20) “Madonna” episode. Available at: Hulu, Fox, and Yahoo. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:46 AM PST - 107 comments

Journeys to the Internal Space Station (SLBP) [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 11:38 AM PST - 29 comments

There are lots of bullet hell shmups out there. But have you ever wished you could play one as the boss? Now you can.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:19 AM PST - 19 comments

"HERES A HANDY TIP FOR NOT FORGETTING ABOUT DRE, JUST WRITE IN YUOR MOLESKINE 'REMEMBER TO PICK UP DR DRE ON WAY HOME FROM WORK'". Confused by Twitter? Don't see the point? MeFi's own Greg Nog single-handedly validates the micro-blogging site with his #twurts. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 9:53 AM PST - 129 comments

Baltasar Garzón is a Spanish judge known for his cases on human right abuses by south american dictatorships under international law, specially the case against Augusto Pinochet. Now, after admitting a case against abuses during Franco's Era, he is facing accusations by extreme right groups of deliberately ignoring the Amnesty Law of 1977, possibly questionable under the same universal jurisdiction that gained him international renown. In a controversial decision, the case has been admitted by the Spanish Supreme Court, and so Garzón is facing the possibility of up to 20 years of suspension. [more inside]
posted by valdesm at 9:40 AM PST - 14 comments

Last US sardine cans being packed in Maine. The Stinson Seafood Plant in Prospect Harbor, Maine was the last sardine cannery in the US, packaging Beach Cliff brand sardines (the "world standard for excellence in sardines"). The cannery shuts down this week. Of course this received a fair amount of coverage in Maine, including hopes that a new owner might buy the cannery as recent as a week ago. There's an interview with one of the long-time employees as well as a time-lapse video of the canning process. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 9:13 AM PST - 56 comments

Mathematics Illuminated is a set of thirteen surveys in varied topics in mathematics, nicely produced with video, text, and interactive Flash gadgets for each of the topics.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:32 AM PST - 8 comments

Team Society League
posted by jtron at 8:28 AM PST - 10 comments

Nate Neilson is a name that is not only unfamiliar to most people, it's unfamiliar to many of his biggest fans. That's because he went by the nom-de-brick of "nnenn". Neilson was a huge presence in the online Lego community, regularly putting out amazing and unique Lego creations on a regular basis, including entire building genres. He was also the driving force behind Novvember, a month-long celebration of the "Vic Viper" (from the videogame "Gradius") in which he and others "riffed" on a basic central design to see how many interesting variations on it they could make. Sadly, Neilson passed away recently following an automobile accident. Many of his online fans only learned this way of his real name, his job as a stay-at-home-Dad with two sons, and his other artistic outlet. He was a huge presence in the online Lego community, and he will be greatly missed. There is a fine eulogy for him (along with an overview of his work and influence) over at the premiere Lego site, The Brothers Brick. (And yes, his icon was a Lego rubber band holder.)
posted by Legomancer at 7:44 AM PST - 23 comments

Finish with a flurry! (SLYT) Brad McWilliams went undefeated in over 700 street fights and shows you the secrets that will let you do the same.
posted by ignignokt at 6:58 AM PST - 55 comments

Cilantro haters, it's not your fault
posted by AceRock at 6:52 AM PST - 184 comments

Topher wants to know why Melbourne's water supply system doesn't include a gravity-fed pipeline from Tasmania.
posted by flabdablet at 5:12 AM PST - 59 comments

Zsa Zsa Gabor will probably die this year. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi will definitely die. Fidel Castro and Eli Wallach may or may not die this year. Geez, I don't want to make #1 on the Death List.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:21 AM PST - 54 comments

Tactile Mind is a pornography magazine for the blind. While porn for the blind has been done before, this is the first offering with raised pictures of naked bodies.
posted by grandsham at 12:02 AM PST - 52 comments

On the eve of the 65rd anniversary of the end of World War II, RIA Novosti presents images in memory of WWII heroes compiled from photographs taken by war correspondents in 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. Ships trains planes and people
posted by hortense at 11:38 PM PST - 19 comments

The votes are in, the people have spoken. An official commemorative health reform t-shirt design has been chosen and is now on sale at Organizing for America. The Vice President must be so proud.
posted by booksherpa at 8:50 PM PST - 47 comments

Music & Murder: Martin Bashir investigates Insane Clown Posse.
posted by dunkadunc at 8:20 PM PST - 97 comments

Welwitschia mirabilis lies around the Namibian coastal desert like misshapen heaps of horticultural debris, either singly or in untidy clumps. Each plant has two huge leaves lolling out from its gaping trunk that collect moisture from the sea fogs. These plants would win no awards for beauty - the Regius Keeper of Kew Gardens described them as "one of the ugliest" plants brought to England, and it's hard to disagree with the Daily Mail's description of it as "hideous ... leprous ... snaking and sinister". None the less, it is a tourist attraction in its own right and supports the Namibian coat of arms where it symbolises fortitude and tenacity. If you're still hanging out for some Welwitschian goodness, here's a video and lots more photos on Wikimedia Commons. You can even try growing one yourself!
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:21 PM PST - 31 comments

Natalie Tran (communitychannel on youtube) is a bit of a Youtube sensation, with more Australians subscribing to her channel than any other. She has made over two hundred videos on a variety of subjects. Whether she's teaching you important beauty tips, teaching us home decor and cleanliness, or dazzling us with her music, it's true that her forte lies in discussing the everyday. (NSFW, cursing) [more inside]
posted by flibbertigibbet at 5:59 PM PST - 27 comments

"Event Horizon¹ is meant to encourage viewers to 'reassess their environment and their position in it,' as [Antony] Gormley puts it, due to the sculptures' interruption of their usual surroundings—London,² in its first installation in 2007, and now New York.³ 'There's very little art in these things,' said Gormley of his figures, which he also refers to as 'three-dimensional shadows' and 'indexes.' The sculptures are but copies of his body at a particular time,⁴ in various poses. Where the 'art' is, then, is in what happens when viewers engage with the figures. 'When you then insert these still industrial fossils into the stream of daily life and real context⁵ they can begin to be active in the same way that a chemical catalyst ... causes a transformation,' Gormley said. 'I would like to think that's what happening here.'⁶ [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco at 5:06 PM PST - 20 comments

People afflicted with Williams syndroms are known for their "elfin" appearance, the ease with which they approach and socialize with stranger, and their near-normal language skills. Recent research on children with the rare neurodevelopmental disorder suggests they share another trait: They do not form racial stereotypes. Via.
posted by Bukvoed at 4:54 PM PST - 50 comments

The Great Empire of China has a fantastic archive of traditional, classical and even modern Chinese music excerpts and several full musical suites, including some pieces from Chinese opera. National Geographic has a short breakdown on regional variations in traditional music in China. Chinese opera is very different than Western opera. Here are some great pictures of singers. [more inside]
posted by winna at 4:49 PM PST - 7 comments

The Hitler Downfall Parody Thing has, of course, been done on Metafilter, and done, and done. But it's still happening (with interesting permutations), and it's still funny. So much so that the BBC's Finlo Rohrer has been compelled to investigate. [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 4:07 PM PST - 66 comments

It will look cynical indeed if Washington once again tries to paint itself as a champion of democratic values in the Central Asian region. 'Evidently, there has been a massive breakdown in US diplomacy in Central Asia. Things were going rather well lately until this setback. For the first time it seemed Washington had succeeded in the Great Game by getting a grip on the Kyrgyz regime, though the achievement involved a cold-blooded jettisoning of all norms of democracy, human rights and rule of law that the US commonly champions. By all accounts, Washington just bought up the Bakiyev family lock stock and barrel, overlooking its controversial record of misuse of office.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 4:07 PM PST - 9 comments

How much do music artsts earn online? A rather attractive yet sobering infographic showing how many units an artiste has to shift physically or online to earn the US monthly minimum wage.
posted by peterkins at 3:29 PM PST - 83 comments

Big Banks Draw Big Profits From Microloans to Poor Drawn by the prospect of hefty profits from even the smallest of loans, a raft of banks and financial institutions now dominate the field, with some charging interest rates of 100 percent or more from their impoverished customers. (SLNYT -- use Bugmenot or register with fake information) [more inside]
posted by Forktine at 2:46 PM PST - 24 comments

Maybe it was V, or maybe something clicked when Travolta and Cage did Face/Off, but at some point some people became fixated on women shedding their skin (horrible site design warning) to reveal other women, aliens/monsters, men, robots, or sometimes just to create masks, suits or shells (mostly NSFW, all creepy as hell).
posted by swimming naked when the tide goes out at 1:46 PM PST - 62 comments

Scoops Callahan grills sundry sports stars about flapper girls, butter and egg men, and Lindy Hopping all night long. Bee's knees or bronx cheer? (SLYT)
posted by sallybrown at 12:51 PM PST - 7 comments

19.20.21. is a planned five-year project to understand the effects of the rising global population of humanity becoming increasingly urbanized: 19 cities in the world with 20 million people in the 21st century. The Flash-based introduction includes historical trends and geographic factors.
posted by jjray at 12:14 PM PST - 10 comments

Shedworking is a daily updated guide for people who work in garden offices and other shedlike atmospheres. There is also a book on the subject. [more inside]
posted by cubby at 12:09 PM PST - 23 comments

The Sunday Magazine - Every Friday, David Friedman (of Ironic Sans) posts the most interesting articles from the New York Times Sunday Magazine from 100 years ago that weekend. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi at 11:54 AM PST - 12 comments

Solargraphy.com's purpose is to find out how different the paths of the Sun are around the world. The project has invited anyone to take part and fill in gaps on the map of solargraphs.
posted by vostok at 11:51 AM PST - 12 comments

Tonight on Frontline, Obama's Deal, about how the insurance lobby shaped healthcare legislation. [more inside]
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 11:36 AM PST - 76 comments

"Whybin TBWA Australia and The Sydney International Food Festival cooked up a clever way to promote last year’s fest — they used iconic foods from the participating countries to recreate their flags. From the green-white-red of basil-spaghetti-tomatoes to the orange-white-green of tikka masala-rice-saag, the results are both appetizing and a little reminiscent of middle-school geography class. Which brings us to our challenge: Can you correctly identify these 12 culinary flags?" [more inside]
posted by timory at 11:13 AM PST - 12 comments

The American Family Association has come up with a novel idea to restore patriotism to America's shores: repatriate Muslims back to their home countries.
posted by reenum at 11:13 AM PST - 127 comments

Wikipedia can be a time sink for sure, but often it's difficult to find the most bizarre, creepy, or disturbing articles. Thankfully, someone with lots of time on their hands has made a jaw-droppingly comprehensive list of creepy pages on Wikipedia (the list is in the second post on that page). [Previously]
posted by Frobenius Twist at 10:59 AM PST - 56 comments

Johnny Depp reads letters he received from Hunter S. Thompson while filming "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
posted by WhoseVoice at 9:47 AM PST - 20 comments

During the 80s comics king Jack Kirby, co-creator of the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men and Captain America, became disillusioned with the industry and left to work for animation company , sketching out dozens of characters, work that has been largely unseen... until now.
posted by Artw at 9:35 AM PST - 42 comments

All of the Photoshop Typography tutorials you will ever need. And if that simply isn't good enough. Here are the 100 best Photoshop tutorials of 2009.
posted by jadayne at 9:00 AM PST - 15 comments

The New York Times covers a 'new celebrity trend', Unshaven Women, Free Spirits or Unkempt?
posted by zarq at 8:54 AM PST - 256 comments

Japan - The Strange Country, a short infographic film by Kenichi Tanaka. [JP version]
posted by d1rge at 8:37 AM PST - 24 comments

Single Link NYT Post: A Tax-Form For The Marginally Employed.
posted by The Whelk at 7:42 AM PST - 23 comments

A web debate on cursing in private, public and online , part of a series of multiple perspective posts on the NYT called Room for Debate, has several experts, including Georgetown U. Professor and author of You just don't understand, Deborah Tanner, yet no one mentions George Carlin and his take on the seven words you can't say. Some claim we've always cursed, while others claim we curse on the web about as much as we do in real life and there is data people, on average, swear .3% to .7% of the time and frequency per person has more to do with personality than class.
posted by Berkun at 7:02 AM PST - 115 comments

Werner Herzog's cave art documentary takes 3D into the depths: "Herzog has apparently been given permission to film inside the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave, a site in the Ardèche department of southern France that contains the earliest known cave paintings, dating back at least 30,000 years. Even more intriguingly, Herzog is planning to shoot much of the film in 3D." [more inside]
posted by The Mouthchew at 6:05 AM PST - 28 comments

shadow art by Kumi Yamashita
posted by various at 5:34 AM PST - 8 comments

"Have I taken things from it for my films? I wish! They don't make 'em like that any more. I would love to, but I don't think people would buy that kind of 50s melodrama. There are sequences that are intimate, one-room scenes, but then there are beautiful crescendos, like the one at the end - he can deliver that too. Minnelli's sensibilities were perfect for it - the sensitivity and the bravado. It hits all the notes." Richard Linklater talks about Vincente Minnelli's great widescreen Technicolor melodrama Some Came Running in The Observer's "The film that changed my life" column. An often overlooked film, especially in the Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin "canon."
posted by saltykmurks at 11:03 PM PST - 14 comments

"When we found out Bobby Jay was gay, we was terrified we'd lose our beautiful home." Because having a gay child can be very expensive.
posted by hippybear at 10:59 PM PST - 76 comments

New York Magazine has crunched the numbers, Park Slope has taken the title of most livable neighborhood of New York. [more inside]
posted by minkll at 10:46 PM PST - 82 comments

A Heavy's 2fort Adventure . A Team Fortress 2 Choose-your-own-adventure SLYT thing.
posted by juv3nal at 9:18 PM PST - 13 comments

Sarantos Studios acting demo tapes...261 of them. (via Dangerous Minds)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:29 PM PST - 34 comments

MAPfrappe - a simple Google Maps mashup that lets you compare landmark sizes by outlining a part of the world and overlaying it on another. Iraq vs. Texas; Greenland vs. India; Tiananmen Square vs. Red Square; Devils Tower vs. White House.
posted by Paragon at 7:06 PM PST - 37 comments

"Seventy two specimens of castes in India". This illustrated manuscript made in southern India in 1837 consists of 72 full-colour hand-painted images of men and women of the various castes and religious and ethnic groups found in Madura, India at that time. Search or browse (recommended) all the images, in very good resolution, from Yale's Beinecke Library. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 6:35 PM PST - 13 comments

In a 1999 grade school performance of The Wiz, eleven year-old Jazmine Sullivan (whose 2008 hit song "Bust Your Windows" was memorably featured on Glee) sent her classmates over the rainbow.
posted by hermitosis at 6:14 PM PST - 32 comments

Yahoo is releasing a new service: Firehose, a real-time, searchable index of social content aggregated from around the web. Accessible via YQL, Yahoo’s SQL-like query language, the Firehose will gather data from status updates, user ratings and reviews, comment threads, Google Buzz, Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, YouTube, Last.fm and a range of other sites and apps. [via] [more inside]
posted by netbros at 5:16 PM PST - 34 comments

'New employees at World Relief have to prove they are Christians'.. 'They sign a statement of Christian faith and must get a letter of recommendation from their minister before being hired. At most workplaces, that would be illegal. But religious nonprofits, even those that get government grants, get special exemptions. They can hire and fire employees based on their religion or sexual orientation — something other employers can't do.' 'Nationwide, World Relief receives about two-thirds of its $50 million budget from state and federal governments.' Those 'who disagree with the exemptions had hoped President Barack Obama would support the cause. In 2008, as a candidate, Obama promised to overturn the Bush rules.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 3:49 PM PST - 104 comments

“Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers." And also, according to an Italian bishop, the culprits behind the Catholic Church's sex scandals. [more inside]
posted by LittleMissCranky at 3:32 PM PST - 263 comments

The Jónsi and Alex (Recipe) Show: join Jónsi Birgisson (frontman of Sigur Rós), Alex Somers and their very loud blender to make raw food recipes. They made three videos from their Good Heart recipe book, for Macadamia Monster Mash, Raw Strawberry Pie, and Nammi Nammi. If coconut, almonds, dates and agave (heavily featured in their three recipes) aren't your thing, enjoy a couple dreamy videos from the couple's album Riceboy Sleeps: All the Big Trees and Daníell in the Sea. See also: Sometimes I Get Scared (a distortion-heavy non-album track), and Jónsi and Alex talk about their album, with parts of the tracks in the background. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:12 PM PST - 7 comments

The Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. The Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded since 1917, "honoring excellence in journalism and the arts". This year's Prizes are no different, going to a variety of journalistic and artistic endeavours which have stood out for their excellence in the past year. The New York Times summarises the winners. [more inside]
posted by WalterMitty at 1:11 PM PST - 62 comments

Opened yesterday, the Philadelphia Zoo's Lego-made exhibit, called ''Creatures of Habitat: A Gazillion-Piece Animal Adventure," features the work of world-renowned Lego artist Sean Kenney. According to Kenney, the 34 animals he created for the zoo took him over one year to complete--the largest project he's undertaken. Included in the exhibit are sculptures of endangered birds, frogs, tamarins, and a polar bear made with 95,000 Lego pieces.
posted by alynnk at 1:03 PM PST - 6 comments

Often ignored when critics talk about the history of electronic dance music - "booty music" has long played an important role. Raw, bass-heavy, hyper-sexualized, its the exact opposite of the androgynous, slick techno and house that gets most of the attention. (all links NSFW, probably) [more inside]
posted by empath at 1:00 PM PST - 52 comments

The Story He Was Offered $16,000 Not to Tell: A young quant, fresh from MIT, joins the world of international business consulting, is duly scandalized, and returns from the mountaintop to tell of the terrors beheld. Via Reddit.
posted by darth_tedious at 12:46 PM PST - 92 comments

Super Furry Animals live at the Highline Ballroom, NYC, 9.11.2009. (Previously)
posted by Crane Shot at 12:32 PM PST - 10 comments

"'Fucking huge,' said McLaren. He told us what sort of a film he had in mind. His ideas didn't involve a plot or a story line. As I recall, his only concern was that it star the Sex Pistols. Russ proposed 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' meets 'A Hard Day's Night.'" Roger Ebert reflects on the Sex Pistols film that never came to be, "I wrote one scene which I particularly liked, involving Johnny Rotten encountering a storefront Church of Scientography, and being persuaded to be "clocked" on something called an H-Meter. This was a device hooked to a steering wheel and an accelerator, which somehow..."
posted by geoff. at 11:41 AM PST - 25 comments

Disabled traveler Rachel D. took a harrowing flight with United recently. Despite their stated policy, she was told repeatedly that "It's not in our contract to assist passengers with their luggage and we reserve the right to refuse assistance to anyone." This is not the first time United has had a problem with disabled people. (For reference, the federal Air Carrier Access Act that prohibits discrimination towards disabled passencers.)
posted by restless_nomad at 11:35 AM PST - 101 comments

Though most were betting on the former Tonight Show host to end up with a show on FOX, Conan O'Brien has confirmed today that he will do a late night show for cable network TBS at 11pm, starting in November. There was no word on the status of the masturbating bear.
posted by kyleg at 10:55 AM PST - 68 comments

'It's time to let you hear the song which earned me a juvenile restraining order' : Andrew WK, famous for being a) a one-hit wonder party-rock meathead b) a Baudrilladian enterprise undertaken 'in the spirit of commerce' to deliver one-hit wonder party rock, reveals the song he wrote for a crush when 17.
posted by mippy at 10:26 AM PST - 42 comments

Earth Day is soon approaching. Ecofoot has put together a "quiz" to determine your ecological footprint.
posted by deacon_blues at 9:56 AM PST - 60 comments

Theory: If someone posts a video that has any behaviour even remotely unusual it will become viral, remixed, twisted and parodied to the point of absurdity.  New evidence continues to amass. [more inside]
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:59 AM PST - 26 comments

The 8th meeting of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement member countries is now underway. PublicACTA has issued the Wellington Declaration in response, which is available for signing online. Also, Michael Geist discusses ACTA and what it might mean for the future of intellectual property, in the following interview with Radio New Zealand and TVO's Search Engine (mp3)
posted by acro at 8:53 AM PST - 8 comments

Palm is up for sale. Brief history and influence of this award winning maker of handheld devices. Does it have a future? [more inside]
posted by infini at 8:18 AM PST - 88 comments

William Gibson has been taking questions on his long-dormant blog since March 31st and continued until today. Some favorites, Gibson talking about: how writing is hard, that he started watching The Wire because of the shipping containers, George Bush's raincoat and his first attempt at fiction.
posted by Kattullus at 8:02 AM PST - 21 comments

Hallucinogens have been making a comeback to the research table. [more inside]
posted by cmoj at 7:57 AM PST - 71 comments

You know that guy cortex? He has lots of ideas. (F'rexample, the WTF LOL flier has a little life of its own now.)
posted by cgc373 at 6:23 AM PST - 62 comments

"What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street" - "Looting Main Street" Matt Taibbi takes an in-depth look into how finance, deregulation, corruption, synthetic rate swaps, and greed decimated Birmingham, AL. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 6:15 AM PST - 42 comments

Clash of the Bearded Ones. New York Magazine's neighborhoods issue covers some of the social dynamics in play during last December's clash over the Bedford Avenue bike lane. One man is trying to bridge the gap with an unkosher bike shop. "The Hasidim will soon be biking all over Williamsburg. My prediction is that in two years every Hasid without hemorrhoids will be commuting via bicycle in the warmer months." Baruch Herzfeld is loaning bicycles to Williamsburg's Satmar Hasidim.
posted by availablelight at 5:29 AM PST - 44 comments

American soldiers wounded in the Pacific War recuperate in New Zealand (and check out the women). American Marines mop up in Guadalcanal. US Marine baseball players put on an exhibition game for New Zealanders, to everyone's apparent bemusement. WWII propaganda films made by the New Zealand Film Unit, curated and digitized by Archives New Zealand. [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 5:27 AM PST - 6 comments

John McLaughlin plays "Cherokee" backed up by the Carson-era Tonight Show Band (SLYT guitar porn) [more inside]
posted by bardic at 2:30 AM PST - 32 comments

The once-segregationist National Review recently ran an all-white "symposium" on the problems of black America, titled Really a racial recession? (subtitle: "Discrimination is an insufficient explanation for black unemployment"). Meanwhile, racist NR contributor John Derbyshire, at the invitation of University of Pennsylvania Black Law Students Association, delivered the following address on Why the Government Should and Can Not Make Us Equal. [more inside]
posted by moorooka at 12:47 AM PST - 201 comments

Ukulele. And Hula Hoop. (SLYT)
posted by RegMcF at 12:41 AM PST - 4 comments

Jerry Woodfill was an engineer with a mission control console at NASA when Apollo 13 became critically endangered by a blown oxygen tank. He shared his views on how the crew survived with Universe Today in a series of posts: 13 Things that Saved Apollo 13 written by Nancy Atkinson. [more inside]
posted by jjray at 11:02 PM PST - 10 comments

Will post-conversion done badly kill 3D movies? Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks thinks it might. Or as Michael Bay puts it "You can’t just shit out a 3D movie".
posted by Artw at 9:58 PM PST - 78 comments

Want to dump your significant other, but also want to humiliate him or her publicly? Look no further.
posted by emilyd22222 at 9:36 PM PST - 53 comments

Paul Simon, small peoples, gotta make ya smile "everybody dance...you can dance with me!"
posted by HuronBob at 8:30 PM PST - 16 comments

Max Gadney works at the BBC in London, but he also creates graphics and infographics for WWII Magazine in the US. (Flickr Photostream).
posted by zarq at 7:10 PM PST - 11 comments

"Crazy as it sounds, over the next several weeks I’m going to try to do something close to that. I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it." Mathematics in the pages of the New York Times! [more inside]
posted by storybored at 6:57 PM PST - 21 comments

You and your loved ones are invited to survive the next earth devastating catastrophe, terrorist or nuclear attack at the Vivos underground shelter network. The 132 spaces in Barstow CA are going like hotcakes, but there are 19 other facilities planned. Check out the facilities and even the menu. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 5:52 PM PST - 70 comments

“So toss away stuff you don't need in the end; but keep what's important, and know who's your friend...” Phish, live at the Rockpalast, Wartesaal, Cologne, February 16th, 1997: Set One Beauty of my Dreams, Split Open and Melt, Bouncing Around the Room, Crosseyed and Painless, Guelah Papyrus, Ginseng Sullivan, Tweezer, part 1 / part 2, Waste, Cavern, Chalkdust Torture Set Two Sample in a Jar, Cars Trucks Buses, Free, Sparkle, Simple -> When the Circus Comes to Town, Swept Away -> Steep -> David Bowie, part 1 / part 2, Loving Cup, Tweezer Reprise Encore Theme from the Bottom, Johnny B Goode One of the greatest shows Phish have ever played, captured live on video. [Mouseover for notes.] [more inside]
posted by koeselitz at 5:31 PM PST - 104 comments

FARD is nice little animated short about a man who comes into possession of an object which shines an new light on his reality. It's in French and there are no subtitles, but the dialogue is minimal and the story is easy to follow. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 5:08 PM PST - 17 comments

Jennifer Springman has been doing oil paintings of women with almost doll like features. Just wanted to share my favorite piece as well.
posted by b2walton at 4:40 PM PST - 25 comments

'GOP hopes to go from Party of No to Party of Choice.' 'Speaker after speaker at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference rallied the faithful with stinging denunciations of Obama and the Democratic majorities controlling the Senate and House of Representatives.' Palin. Gingrich. Ron Paul. Steele. And many more. 'They know how to say no to President Barack Obama. Now, can Republicans get the rest of the country to say yes to them?' 'Obama's approval ratings remain near or below 50 percent, a dangerous position for the party in power. Also, Americans may be souring on the Democratic brand little more than a year after electing a Democratic president and adding to the Democratic majorities in Congress. A new USA Today-Gallup Poll shows that just 41 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, the lowest in the nearly two decades Gallup's asked the question. By contrast, 42 percent had a favorable opinion of Republicans.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:45 PM PST - 117 comments

29 Semi-Productive Things I Do Online When I'm Trying to Avoid Real Work
posted by MechEng at 11:45 AM PST - 42 comments

The New Orleans blogosphere and twitterverse have been abuzz about HBO's Treme, which premieres tonight. Today's edition of the local paper features an open letter to New Orleanians from director David Simon. [more inside]
posted by muffuletta at 11:43 AM PST - 53 comments

Harry Potter and Hermione's Stalker , Harry Potter and the Magic of Puberty. (NSFW-ish)
posted by empath at 11:03 AM PST - 36 comments

Is My Thesis Hot or Not?
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:40 AM PST - 25 comments

What if our economy was not built on competition? Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom talks about her work on cooperation in economics. [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:41 AM PST - 32 comments

David Gelernter, professor of computer science, painter, neoconservative columnist, and unabomber victim, on rethinking the internet. The structure called a cyberstream or lifestream is better suited to the Internet than a conventional website because it shows information-in-motion, a rushing flow of fresh information instead of a stagnant pool.
posted by DZack at 8:32 AM PST - 20 comments

Top 10 Biggest and Best Jumps Ever Does what it says on the tin [slyt]
posted by mathowie at 6:50 AM PST - 71 comments

uzbl is a free and open source minimalistic web browser designed for simplicity and adherence to the Unix philosophy.
posted by vostok at 5:59 AM PST - 27 comments

Adam and Eve. Bigamist. Betty Boop. Charlie Chaplin. Execution. More. (via)
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:30 AM PST - 15 comments

Octopus versus Sea Lion
posted by Artw at 9:52 PM PST - 46 comments

Dixie Carter, probably best known for her role as the fearlessly opinionated Southern belle Julia Sugarbaker on Designing Women, has died. She was 70 years old.
posted by booksherpa at 9:05 PM PST - 52 comments

Born Of Hope is a 71 minute fan-made prequel film available for online viewing. In the spirit of The Hunt For Gollum (previously), it fleshes out the Lord Of The Rings universe written about by J.R.R. Tolkien and depicted in the Peter Jackson films. The story here is that of the meeting of Aragorn's parents and his birth and early childhood, many decades before the events involving Frodo and the Fellowship.
posted by hippybear at 8:02 PM PST - 36 comments

Do you have SRED? Sleep related eating disorder. There is help.
posted by Xurando at 7:16 PM PST - 29 comments

Beaker's Ballad SLYT Muppet Post... one minute and 17 seconds of your time. It's been a rough day... this might help...
posted by HuronBob at 6:56 PM PST - 26 comments

The other day someone asked me "who's the most deeply grooving and truly exciting electric guitar player you've heard lately?" and I said "this guy".
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:45 PM PST - 82 comments

Touchless Automatic Wonder is a web-based series of photographs by Lewis Koch, emphasizing found text.
posted by klangklangston at 5:34 PM PST - 6 comments

Quix is the everything-bookmarklet. Opening it creates a text box to put in commands, which range from url shorteners to whois checks. A lot of useful commands are available by default, and you can make your own using quix syntax.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 4:28 PM PST - 22 comments

Previously discussed search engine Cuil has a reputation for absurd search results. Now the Cuil team is building on their success with cpedia, the new automated encyclopedia. [more inside]
posted by JDHarper at 3:48 PM PST - 61 comments

You may not recognize the difference between Sophophora melanogaster and the common fruit fly. That's because there isn't. The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature is proposing a name change from Drosophila melanogaster on scientific grounds, but it's ruffling the antennae of some scientists.
posted by jjray at 3:47 PM PST - 31 comments

Hey children of the 90s! Remember back when all you had to worry about was corruption by Pokemon and Harry Potter? [DLYT?]
posted by mccarty.tim at 3:24 PM PST - 33 comments

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ejected cabinet minister Helena Guergis from the Tory caucus following allegations of impropriety. The RCMP is investigating claims that her husband, former MP Rahim Jaffer, was conducting his private business through her office. In her resignation letter, she calls the rumours "baseless allegations and unfounded assertions." [more inside]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:50 PM PST - 52 comments

Gülnur Özdağlar makes some amazing bowls and other artwork out of a surprising material... [more inside]
posted by klausness at 1:27 PM PST - 12 comments

Infographics — 2010's Animated GIF
posted by defenestration at 1:09 PM PST - 48 comments

Granite State of Mind - an ode to New Hampshire by SuperSecretProject, copping the blueprint from Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind
posted by not_on_display at 1:09 PM PST - 16 comments

HEALTH - "We Are Water". Directed by Eric Wareheim. NSFW. [more inside]
posted by threetoed at 12:42 PM PST - 50 comments

Earthworms are social animals after all, and now they're communicating. Time to run for the hills!
posted by Juicy Avenger at 12:11 PM PST - 27 comments

Jerry's Deli (starts at 1:02) by Tom Palazzolo, 1976. A short documentary on deli owner Jerry Meyers, who's been screaming abuse at his loyal customers for 30 years. (Clipstream/Java video. Click on lower right corner of the video to enlarge. Or here's a Youtube with out-of-synch audio.) [more inside]
posted by hydrophonic at 11:58 AM PST - 7 comments

Copyright turns 300: An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, also known as the Statute of Anne, became law on April 10, 1710.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:18 AM PST - 19 comments

Floods and mudslides in Rio de Janeiro have killed over 250 people, mostly in favelas, poverty-stricken shanty-towns built on hillsides above major cities. [more inside]
posted by xowie at 10:58 AM PST - 14 comments

Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906), considered “the greatest painter of India,” “the father of modern Indian art,” and a “prince among painters and a painter among princes.” Varma became renowned both for his portraiture and his paintings of Indian mythology. The painter's life and times played a major role in the shaping of the women he painted and controversy over the way he painted them. Varma's images have not just survived, but due to his vision of making them accessible to the common man, they have thrived over a century and influence movies, television, the world's most expensive sari, theatre and everyday calender art.
posted by infini at 10:02 AM PST - 7 comments

So we're stuck in a position where we know too little to commit to atheism and we know too much to commit to religion. That put me somewhere in the middle. I don't prefer the term agnostic because agnosticism is often used as a weak term that means I'm not sure if the guy with the beard on the cloud exists or doesn't exist. So I call myself a possibilian. [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 9:16 AM PST - 228 comments

Happy Caturday! How about some Advanced Cat Yodeling? [more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:12 AM PST - 18 comments

A 34 year old man took some pills from his roommate, thinking they were Valium®. Turns out they were diabetes medication; the patient is now comatose and having seizures because his blood sugar is so low. A grandparent called because she gave her grandson his heart medication approximately 90 minutes too soon. He is supposed to get it every 12 hours.A caller ate a sandwich with lunchmeat and only after eating it, realized the meat expired 7 months ago.A mom called because she accidentally gave her 2 year old 5ml of liquid methadone, having mistaken it for ibuprofen suspension.
All this in a day in the life of the Illinois Poison Center [more inside]
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 2:47 AM PST - 164 comments

The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 130 others, including a huge proportion of the elite of Polish politics, have died in a plane crash. [more inside]
posted by Busy Old Fool at 2:37 AM PST - 152 comments

Poverty is an abstraction, even for the poor. But the symptoms of collective impoverishment are all about us. Broken highways, bankrupt cities, collapsing bridges, failed schools, the unemployed, the underpaid, and the uninsured: all suggest a collective failure of will. These shortcomings are so endemic that we no longer know how to talk about what is wrong, much less set about repairing it. And yet something is seriously amiss.

Historian Tony Judt, dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, makes a passionate call for a new New Left. [Previously]
posted by Sonny Jim at 1:59 AM PST - 59 comments

Most North Americans slept through the morning of January 13, 2010 as near-Earth object (NEO) 2010 AL30 silently moved across the night sky. Most of the time small asteroids zip past Earth harmlessly. We may not meet the goal of detecting and tracking potentially hazardous near-Earth objects . (Previously)
posted by twoleftfeet at 12:51 AM PST - 27 comments

Naked Zorki Standard [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 11:09 PM PST - 14 comments

Canada was another country before it was born. In the fire of the battle of Vimy Ridge, people who were born in Canada, or who came to Canada, came together, as Canadians, in one of the defining battles of the the First World War. This is the 93rd anniversary of the greatest unifying event in Canadian history.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 11:04 PM PST - 32 comments

This site is dedicated to the Fujipet (フジペット) camera [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:01 PM PST - 5 comments

Tell 'em why you mad, son! Unkut rails on why Nicki Minaj is a terrible rapper, how Gorilla Zoe is an example of premature rap ejaculation and why Wiz Khalifa will never get big, no matter how many times he changes his style.
posted by cashman at 9:51 PM PST - 15 comments

Nothing succeeds like failure. [H]istory shows that breakthroughs often spring not from carefully laid plans, but from mischance or even sheer, ridiculous accidents. A stovetop spill heralded vulcanized rubber; the potency of uranium was revealed when a rock was left in a drawer among photographic plates. And great research seldom follows an unswerving path. At RCA in Princeton in the 1950s, David Sarnoff exhorted his team to invent a flat television that could hang on a wall. “There were an enormous number of failures,” says Princeton historian of science Michael Gordin — and instead of TVs, the world got the Seiko digital watch in 1973.
posted by caddis at 9:15 PM PST - 38 comments

Neil deGrasse Tyson : What NASA Means to America's Future. NdGT eloquently, passionately explains the essential importance that the nation have a strong education system driven by a national vision that excites children. He argues for the importance of NASA in capturing the imagination of American children, leading them to excel in the sciences — back in the day. SLYT. [more inside]
posted by five fresh fish at 7:00 PM PST - 67 comments

International Gymnast Magazine reports the passing of trampoline inventor George Nissen, whose brainchild trained World War II pilots, transformed into an Olympic sport, and became a pop culture fixture.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 5:14 PM PST - 27 comments

It's April 9th! Appomattox Day! The day R.E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia. Ending the Civil War! Jon Stewart wants to call it Union Victory Month. I'm content with a day. So as Floydd suggests raise a glass of usquebaugh! [more inside]
posted by Max Power at 4:37 PM PST - 67 comments

A 1999 Texas electricity deregulation statute included, almost as an afterthought, a requirement that the state develop 2,000 megawatts of wind power by 2009. This past February, wind generators delivered a record 6,242 megawatts of power to Texas population centers -- 22 percent of all the electricity consumed in the Texas grid. Could their model transform the nation's utility sector?, Or will it be derailed by special interests and politics? [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:26 PM PST - 68 comments

Want to learn how to play piano but can't read sheet music? Synthesia or previously known as Piano Hero. Synthesia FAQ
posted by MechEng at 12:13 PM PST - 45 comments

The Alabama Museum of Wonder. Butch Anthony has a word – a word which he concocted himself. A word which he designed to precisely describe his unique personal style of art and artistic discovery. That word is “intertwangleism.” [more inside]
posted by fixedgear at 12:05 PM PST - 12 comments

Xkcd's hell, the flash game.
posted by Artw at 11:10 AM PST - 83 comments

A Tale of Two Films. Bertrand Tavernier's In The Electric Mist nee Dans la brume électrique [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:59 AM PST - 6 comments

After sending strong signals by hiring just one clerk, Justice Stevens has officially announced his retirement. The retirement, which follows a very distinguished and lengthy tenure, is effective the end of the current U.S. Supreme Court term. President Obama now has his second chance to nominate to fill a vacancy left by a member of the Court's liberal wing. Among the most frequently mentioned possible candidates are Judge Diane Wood, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Judge Merrick Garland, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. [more inside]
posted by bearwife at 10:08 AM PST - 242 comments

Hevisaurus are a Finnish kid-friendly, all-dinosaur power metal group.
posted by zamboni at 9:45 AM PST - 40 comments

"George W. Bush Knew Guantanamo Prisoners Were Innocent." In a signed declaration filed as part of a pending lawsuit on behalf of former Guantanamo Bay detainees and obtained by The Times, Lawrence Wilkerson, a high ranking aide to former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell, makes the stunning claim that: "George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror." (via)
posted by saulgoodman at 9:13 AM PST - 101 comments

Pigs in Space appeared in over 30 Muppet Show episodes and spoofed contemporary science fiction television series. Most of them are now on YouTube or other video streaming sites. Links inside. [more inside]
posted by cog_nate at 8:38 AM PST - 52 comments

Lets say you're the first human ever to make alien contact... (via)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:26 AM PST - 98 comments

The Cat With Hands, a short film not to be watched alone after dark with a cat on your lap.
posted by desjardins at 7:22 AM PST - 26 comments

Does the immediacy of the internet tend to make people more bad-tempered and ill-mannered than they would have been otherwise? Theodore Dalrymple seems to think so, but is comment moderation the answer? (via) [more inside]
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:01 AM PST - 50 comments

Visual Aesthetics in Early Computing (1950-80) - a little look back at plotters and light pens and flow charts, which I found a bit nostalgic. You can watch Lapis, Permutations and Arabesque on YouTube.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:43 AM PST - 22 comments

‘I no longer wish to parent this child’ – part of the note attached to 7 year old Artem Saveliev sent back to Russia yesterday by his American adoptee mother Torry Hansen who claims she was misled by the Russian Authorities as to the boys mental stability. 'A seven-year-old boy arrived at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on April 8 in the morning. The skinny boy had no luggage with him – he was only holding a letter in his hands.' according to the Russian Media, though other sources suggest a Russian Tour guide was located on the internet and paid $200 to collect Artem from the Airport and take him to the Russian Authorities. The Kremlin's child rights comissioner Pavel Astakhov and Russian Media in general are coming down very hard on the American mother and painting this as cruelty rather than tragedy.
posted by numberstation at 5:30 AM PST - 202 comments

It's official, post-rock giants Godspeed You! Black Emperor were only mostly dead, and will curate and play at the next All Tommorow's Parties, then on for a European and US tour.
posted by vivelame at 5:30 AM PST - 35 comments

Building a Green Economy, Paul Krugman on the economics of Climate change.
posted by afu at 4:24 AM PST - 9 comments

Nutriset, producer of Plumpy'nut (a widely distributed ready-to-use therapeutic food), is under attack from two American companies for their patent. [more inside]
posted by tweemy at 1:16 AM PST - 38 comments

On August 8, 1997, the audience of Late Night with Conan O'Brien was made up entirely of eight-year-old children. The episode in five parts: one, two, three, four and five. Andy Richter remembers on This American Life (starting at 50 minutes). [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 9:29 PM PST - 30 comments

No man dares sit on this Nigerian throne: In Kumbwada, a curse has assured that only women will reign, locals say. And so far, the current queen pronounces, it has worked out better this way. Welcome to "the genteel court of Queen Hajiya Haidzatu Ahmed," where "an ancient curse keeps males off the throne." (via) [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 6:31 PM PST - 24 comments

How to build an outdoor pizza oven for around $20.
posted by mudpuppie at 4:44 PM PST - 83 comments

Philadelphia is going to decriminalize Marijuana. Or maybe they aren't. Well, the police aren't going to stop arresting people. “We’re not going to stop locking people up,” said Lt. Frank Vanore. “We’re going to stop people for it. . . . Our officers are trained to do that,” Vanore said. “Whether or not they make it through the charging process, that’s up to the D.A. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:56 PM PST - 85 comments

Controlled avalanche explosions: Right way and wrong way.
posted by Xurando at 3:37 PM PST - 20 comments

Carlsberg brewery employees are on strike to protest new rules that limit on the job beer drinking to lunch time.
posted by nestor_makhno at 3:27 PM PST - 62 comments

iPad, one week later. Ars Technica gave it a very through review. ifixit tore it apart and Will It Blend? threw it in a Blendtec. Adam C. Engst said in a column at TidBITS: "The hardware is so understated [...] the fact that you’re using an iPad falls away. You’re using the app, whatever it may be, and while you’re doing so, the iPad is that app." An Apple event today announced an iPhone OS update that brings a lot of what was missing so far (multitasking!) while also screwing over a Adobe by changing the developer license agreement. 300,000 sold. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla at 3:12 PM PST - 799 comments

"Look! At all the data! That you and I are a part of!" Devo would like you to participate in a quick market study. Previously.
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:40 PM PST - 26 comments

Meet three new species of Loricifera, the first multicellular forms of life found that can live entirely without oxygen (figures and full article, PDF). [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:31 PM PST - 29 comments

"So I called my dad over and about five metres away he started swearing, and I was like 'what did I do wrong?' and he's like, 'nothing, nothing - you found a hominid'."

The remarkable remains of two ancient human-like creatures (hominids) have been found in South Africa. Some researchers dispute that the fossils are of an unknown human species, but others say they may help fill a key gap in the fossil record of human evolution. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:10 PM PST - 26 comments

With newly released video, Rachel Maddow shows that the Fox News/Breitbart/James O'Keefe takedown of ACORN in California was fraudulent. For example, coverage depicted ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera as eager to participate in a pedophile prostitution ring suggested by O'Keefe's character. In fact Vera had reported O'Keefe to police. Nevertheless, Vera was fired, and months later ACORN was dissolved. (Previously: 1, 2, 3)
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:09 PM PST - 56 comments

Still Wrapped In Plastic: 'Twin Peaks' Turns 20 Back in the summer of 1989, I was invited to a sneak preview of a TV pilot. I didn't know anything about it, but the moment I heard its opening theme music, I got shivers that didn't go away. This was TV the way I dreamed it could be — funny, menacing, mysterious. In fact, it was so weird and wonderful that, as I walked from the theater, I remember saying, "Too bad no network will ever put it on the air." [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 1:07 PM PST - 87 comments

“But I decided on the Mona Lisa, which was the smallest painting and the easiest to transport.” “So there was no chance,” asked the court, “that you decided on it because it was the most valuable painting?” - From Vanity Fair, the twisting, engaging story of how the Mona Lisa was stolen in broad daylight in 1911. (via)
posted by The Whelk at 12:54 PM PST - 13 comments

Bongi is a South African surgeon working, as he puts it, "in the notorious province of Mpumalanga." He blogs regularly about the devastating effect of recent political changes on the skill level of the local medical system, as well as the struggles of trying to practice medicine under a system so badly decaying that its infrastructure is collapsing. Sometimes his posts ring with a dark humor, sometimes with wise and intelligent advice. But it's his bleakly frank portrayals of the terrible state of daily South African life that are the most haunting for me.
posted by KathrynT at 12:19 PM PST - 12 comments

Hundreds of haiku about Glenn Beck. Some done by people you may know.
posted by gman at 12:14 PM PST - 40 comments

Zero budget. One apartment. Two roommates. An East Village thriller, Apt. 1B. Episodes 2, 3, 4, 5
posted by lackutrol at 12:11 PM PST - 4 comments

Shut Up and Ride. A short video about breaking up.
posted by msalt at 12:05 PM PST - 3 comments

A new album from The Fall is slated to be released by Domino April 26th. [more inside]
posted by kittensofthenight at 12:02 PM PST - 16 comments