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Inform 7 Released. Inform is a language used for creating interactive fiction, and is one of the most widely used languages for this task. After several years of effort, Graham Nelson has released a new version of Inform, and is seeking to create a new way of creating IF, with natural language instead of traditional programming code. [more inside]
posted by zabuni at 8:08 PM PST - 37 comments

SNES OC'd [more] (via)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 5:33 PM PST - 22 comments

"So I think we maybe have this sort of snobbish reputation. But we're just really honest, opinionated music fans." (via)
posted by bardic at 1:36 PM PST - 174 comments

RIAA sues family for illegal music file sharing. Wouldn't be new or noteworthy — if the family actually had a computer. Via.
posted by charmston at 11:45 AM PST - 39 comments

...Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone ... President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. ... Long, eyeopening article laying out what laws have been ignored and why. ...Bush has cast a cloud over 'the whole idea that there is a rule of law," because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid and which he thinks he can ignore. 'Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional," ...
posted by amberglow at 10:50 AM PST - 85 comments

This highlight reel of people playing the traditional Myanmar game of Chinlone is pretty amazing. Being a particularly ignorant westerner, I really had no idea of the grace & athleticism involved in the game.
posted by jonson at 9:42 AM PST - 22 comments

Stateline windfarm in Oregon/Washington is the largest windfarm in the world (300 MW). Denmark's Nysted windfarm is the world's largest off-shore windfarm (165 MW). Ireland plans to build a 520 MW off-shore windfarm, while the London Array would produce a massive 1000 MW and be a major feaure in the English Channel. Norway announced a 1,400 MW windfarm in 2005. The world's largest single wind turbine (5 MW).. the worlds largest solar farm (300 MW) planned for New Mexico would cover over 3,000 acres.
posted by stbalbach at 8:45 AM PST - 141 comments

Jimmy Jump. The guy who stormed the pitch and cheekily presented Thierry Henry with a Barcelona jersey during last week's Champion's League match versus Villareal has a website. Regardless of where you stand on pitch invaders, "there will be no way to remain indiferent in front of his universal cause of feeling implicated with what he does."

He's got a few videos, too.
posted by TheFarSeid at 1:02 AM PST - 11 comments

Steven Colbert (TruthyMan!) headlines the White House Correspondents Dinner -- and Bush is not amused. Will there be fallout? C-Span focused on Bush expression (lack of) during the slamming ... (link to story with video).
posted by Surfurrus at 12:05 AM PST - 378 comments

John Kenneth Galbraith, an influential and unorthodox economist, has died, at age 97.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:26 PM PST - 46 comments

What's worse than not having enough soldiers to fight your war? Not enough buglers to play "taps" at their funerals. Good thing the military has come up with a solution. It's the thought that counts, I guess.
posted by Balisong at 10:12 PM PST - 40 comments

Night Writer (embedded .mov). "The night writer extends the functionality of LED throwies by allowing a writer to catch a tag in lights. It’s cheap, easy to make and writes 12-inch glowing letters 25-feet in the air on any iron or steel surface." From the Graffitti Research Lab.
posted by zardoz at 10:11 PM PST - 21 comments

Paris to Kabul. They won't be the first, or the only to embark on such adventures, but Manu (photographer / technician) and Sophie (journalist) are on a great adventure from Paris to Kabul in a very small car.
posted by pwedza at 9:44 PM PST - 6 comments

In the study of mythology, folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, human hero or anthropomorphic animal who plays pranks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and norms of behaviour.

Tricksters come in all forms, from all cultures. Notable examples include Br'er Rabbit, Odysseus, Eshu, Raven, and Loki; most or all of whom you are likely familiar with.
posted by Eideteker at 9:11 PM PST - 30 comments

Exporting green and leafy water. Agricultural exports, including fresh fruit and vegetables, are an important source of income for many developing countries, but they also threaten the evironmental future of those same producers. "Irrigated agriculture accounts for 70% of the freshwater used globally", while only a part returns to the environment. It isn't just in Africa; in India and in North America, all over the globe, water supplies are being stretched to the point of near breaking. [more inside]
posted by jb at 5:51 PM PST - 12 comments

The Paradigm is the Enemy: A sobering but cogent account of the state of Peak Oil, what it's already led to (reported and ignored), and what is in store for us in the near future. The worst part is the political impossibility of addressing the problem constructively: that would require acknowledging the problem.
posted by LeisureGuy at 5:01 PM PST - 96 comments

Camille Paglia How should the humanities be taught, and how should scholars in the humanities be trained? These pivotal questions confront universities today amid signs of spreading agreement that the three-decade era of poststructuralism and postmodernism is over.
posted by vronsky at 4:04 PM PST - 72 comments

So I'm driving to Salina, KS in the middle of the night and I realize that in all that nothing, I can look out my windshield and I can see stars. Like, all the stars. And I think that it's a bummer that I don't know that much about what it is I'm looking at.
posted by pieoverdone at 2:48 PM PST - 41 comments

Drama is impossible today. I don't know of any. Drama used to be the belief in guilt, and in a higher order. This absolutely cruel didactic is impossible, unacceptable for us moderns. But melodrama has kept it. You are caged. In melodrama you have human, earthly prisons rather than godly creations. Every Greek tragedy ends with the chorus — "those are strange happenings. Those are the ways of the gods". And so it always is in melodrama.
His career as a film director lasted more than 40 years, but Douglas Sirk (1900-1987) is remembered for the melodramas he made for Universal in Hollywood between 1954 and 1959, his "divine wallow": Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), The Tarnished Angels (1958, William Faulkner considered it the best screen adaptation of one of his novels), Imitation of Life (1959) -- all considered for decades little more than a camp oddity. Now audiences are beginning to look deeper at the films of Douglas Sirk, at how, in megafan Todd Haynes' words, they are "almost spookily accurate about the emotional truths". Now, lucky Chicagoans can enjoy "Douglas Sirk at Universal", matinees at the Music Box. More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:56 AM PST - 14 comments

The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse. It is danced under blue skies to celebrate the quickening of the soil and under bare stars because it's springtime and with any luck the carbon dioxide will unfreeze again. It is danced innocently by raggedy-bearded young mathematicians to an inexpert accordion rendering of "Mrs Widgery's Lodger" and ruthlessly by such as the Ninja Morris Men of New Ankh, who can do strange and terrible things with a simple handkerchief and a bell.
(from page one of Terry Pratchett's "Reaper Man")
posted by nonane at 11:32 AM PST - 34 comments

Supertankers are so cool. Click previous sentence for more information.
posted by thirteenkiller at 9:43 AM PST - 42 comments

FBI Investigated 3,501 People Without Warrants Pardon my one link post. I had thought this must be taking place once it became public that NSA could spy on us without court approval. If NSA, then why not FBI? And so it came to pass....
posted by Postroad at 7:18 AM PST - 73 comments

Freedom of the seas World,s largest passenger liner, currently docked in Southampton UK, in prep for voyage to New York. Then a life of cruising the Carib. 15m wider than the QM2 Check out the flash tour.
posted by A189Nut at 3:06 AM PST - 56 comments

Texans reject Bush

Not since the Portland Trailblazers selected Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan has such a draft day blunder occurred. In today's 2006 NFL Draft, the Houston Texans are set to make NC State defensive end Mario Williams - not USC running back Reggie Bush - the top overall pick. Yes, we're talking about this Reggie Bush (YouTube).

Texans fans, prepare for 10 more seasons like the one you just had.
posted by b_thinky at 12:24 AM PST - 103 comments

CU police offer $50 bounty to identify maybe pot smokers.

"Every year on 4/20, students and residents gather on Farrand Field at CU Boulder to defy the authorities and smoke marijuana publicly. This year, the University of Boulder Police Department fought back by taking pictures of as many participants as possible. They have a website with photos up, offering an $50 reward to anyone who positively identifies someone who was photographed." via BoingBoing

Here are 3 local news stories about it: 1, 2, 3. I guess the police want to identify people even if they were not visalby commiting a crime, just so they can bring them in and apply pressure root out the real criminals.

Colorado is home to James Dobson's hyper right-wing Focus on the Family. But Denver and in the west of that state appear to be one of the largest marijuana usage areas in the country (scroll down a bit)

This area seems radically divided. When my family recently visited Colorado Springs we found it very right-wing but when we engaged a rubber boat trip through the Royal George all of our guides were hippie/eco/stoners.

Can anybody explain this in terms of the obvious factions?
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:03 AM PST - 93 comments

REST IN PEACE: EmoKid21Ohio & Emogirl Good riddance! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!
posted by loquacious at 11:55 PM PST - 51 comments

A new book collecting unpublished poems of Elizabeth Bishop offers us unpolished views of work in progress, by one of the 20th century's greatest literary perfectionists. But in doing so, it raises again "An issue as old as the printed word: Is work that a writer chose not to publish during her lifetime fair game after she dies?" [more inside]
posted by paulsc at 11:11 PM PST - 7 comments

Rosie O'Donnell - Flickr
posted by caddis at 8:05 PM PST - 28 comments

The verses no one dares to sing these days ... Till selfish gain No longer stain The banner of the free!
posted by hank at 7:52 PM PST - 38 comments

Rush Arrested! Or maybe not? Either way, he's got one of the best mug shots mug shots mug shots I've ever seen!
posted by underthehat at 6:34 PM PST - 91 comments

Mexico Poised to Allow Drugs for Personal Use -- Mexico’s Congress has approved a bill decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin for personal use. President Vicente Fox is expected to sign the bill.
posted by ericb at 5:54 PM PST - 45 comments

YouTube spending $1m per month, making $0 [less annoying version]
posted by reklaw at 5:41 PM PST - 45 comments

eggbaconchipsandbeans (via)
posted by bardic at 2:45 PM PST - 48 comments

Five Democratic House members arrested in today's Darfur rally. Another large protest in the capital is set for this Sunday. DCist.
posted by borkingchikapa at 2:28 PM PST - 57 comments

Following in the footsteps of Gipper followers -- The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project is on a mission to put the Gipper on the ten-spot and rename a road in every U.S. County after Ronald Reagan. Kenny Hill of AOL's gay blog Worth Repeating has his own mission: name a landmark in every state after Brokeback Mountain.
posted by chinese_fashion at 2:25 PM PST - 31 comments

The worst haircuts on MySpace, and the superheroes they resemble - round one, and round two.
posted by greycap at 1:57 PM PST - 67 comments

Air and water. Photographer and professional diver Emmanuel Donfut takes not-completely-underwater pictures. His latest series involves both fish and fishermen caught in the act, but he's been interested in other aquatic creatures, and alcoholic ones as well. More pics here, and more on the technique used here.
posted by elgilito at 12:15 PM PST - 10 comments

Born in 1938 and raised on a chicken farm on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado ... Dean Reed became the Red Elvis, a huge music and film star in the Eastern Bloc, truly an unlikely icon.. "For a lot of people like Michail Gorbashev he is the first rockstar they see in their life." There are great pictures at this site.
posted by OmieWise at 8:54 AM PST - 24 comments

Last.fm isn't just for humans. Matt Biddulph, a systems architect for the BBC, rigged a homemade plug-in for Last.fm (Previously on MeFi) that, over the course of a year, transmitted over 50,000 songs played on BBC 6Music to a Last.fm account named Sekrit. (Oh, and wondering what MetaFilter users listen to?) (via waxy)
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:25 AM PST - 32 comments

See country data plotted as 3d bars rising from the surface of Global-i, an interactive animated globe. For other map visualizations of county data, try Maplecroft Maps, Worldmapper, and Social Explorer's Census Data Maps. Worldprocessor has over 300 beautiful physical globes depicting different data sets. A variety of different map-based visualizations are also available at Radical Cartography. For an interesting mind-map visualization of relationships between countries, check out the WINDS relation browser, based on data from the CIA Factbook. Interesting non-map-based country data presentations include Gapminder and the Worldometers. [via information aesthetics]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:20 AM PST - 7 comments

"Welcome to the brave new world of high-tech political assassination, where back-stabbing blogs, scathing cartoon skits and slander served up online are the weapons of choice." (Warning: sound, Flash and video links.)
posted by Otis at 7:55 AM PST - 6 comments

Is George really planning to nuke Iran? Some physicists are worried and have written a letter to the president voicing their concerns. Others have gone one step further and made a flash animation.
posted by piscatorius at 7:49 AM PST - 76 comments

A duel between two artists. One artist supplies a squiggle, the other turns it into a drawing, incorporating the elements of the squiggle. Hence this becomes this and this becomes this. My favourite - before and after.
posted by primer_dimer at 7:05 AM PST - 23 comments

Lymphatic filariasis (or, more dramatically, "elephantiasis") is spread by mosquitoes. The mosquitoes transmit worms to your blood, the worms mate while you sleep, and their progeny travel to your lymph nodes to live a happy life. Unfortunately for you, the worms can get too big, allowing fluid to collect in your limbs or scrotum. Lucky for your neighbors, the disease can be controlled using salt. (China already did it).
posted by stemlot at 7:01 AM PST - 9 comments

The Ty-D-Bol Man looks pretty mellow today. When I was younger, my father - a pediatrician - would routinely clean out the medicine cabinet of old cold medicines, antibiotics, high potency barbiturates, illegal diet pills and other nostrums. Rather than throw them into the garbage "where someone might get their hands on them" he would flush them down the toilet (just like the poison control people recommend). Apparently in doing so he was making sure that everybody got them. Think the quantities are too small to make a difference? Not so, say Canadian fish, who seem capable of getting confused by the residue from birth control pills and changing gender. Don't worry too much about them, though. They're all on Prozac, so they're OK with it. [NB: see comments for .pdf version of first link]
posted by scblackman at 6:41 AM PST - 21 comments

Workplace health and safety dirty dozen (pdf) - profiles of companies that have demonstrated egregious disregard for worker safety. Today is Worker Memorial Day, commemorating workers who die on the job - an average of 16 per day. Workplace deaths are trending up, not down, which, according to an extensive report by the AFL-CIO, is the inevitable Toll of Neglect with this administration's rollback of worker protections. Confined Space offers a daily view of work safety issues in the U.S. for those who would like to learn more.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:16 AM PST - 13 comments

Do the Democrats need just one big idea, one that may sound familiar from Hillary Clinton's time as First Lady when she was hanging out with Amitai Etzioni, Michel Lerner and other advocates of "communitarianism". Or is this just not the right historical moment?
posted by twsf at 5:56 AM PST - 25 comments

"After our transparently bogus story and our impossibly shitty video appeared on the website... we received a flood of messages from big-shot bigfoot hunters who were dying to find out about [the] footage. Our plan was working." So, Penn and Teller faked the Sonoma bigfoot footage. But only the BFRO fell for it. Conveniently, they deleted the evidence of that. With so many sasquatch enthusiasts expressing doubt about the video when it was released, can our favorite Libertarian and mime really use it to prove that bigfoot is bullshit?
posted by kyleg at 9:34 PM PST - 68 comments

The Great Microsoft Blunder. Short but scathing article about how Microsoft has continually dropped with ball with Internet Explorer.
posted by zardoz at 9:21 PM PST - 66 comments

The victims of Australia's worst mass murder will be remembered today, on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy in Port Arthur in Tasmania. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79 at 8:31 PM PST - 21 comments

Battle of the blogger book clubs! Glenn Reynolds Drudge vs. Glenn Greenwald Kos (I think.) The winner gets* a copy of the current #1 book on Amazon.
posted by homunculus at 8:18 PM PST - 31 comments

Ever wonder how time zones work at the North and South Poles? (No, not this North Pole, the real one.)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 8:09 PM PST - 12 comments

The songs of the Pete Seeger Sessions presents an ultra-detailed listing of prior recordings of the songs included in Bruce Springsteen's excellent "We shall overcome" album, a majestic tribute to the American musical tradition, with some songs written over two centuries ago. The site lists more than 1,560 eariler recordings, by nearly as many artists, with some full-length audio clips included. Aft
posted by keepoutofreach at 7:32 PM PST - 32 comments

Show some spirit... holy spirit Christian Throwback Jerseys
posted by usedwigs at 3:10 PM PST - 44 comments

The Dot Eaters. A dauntingly comprehensive history of video games, beginning with proto-PONG and Spacewar!. If it's difficult to navigate through Captain O's prize matrix, use the handy timeline/scape (the dates don't work, so don't try). It's an interesting site, for sure, but if it doesn't pique your interest maybe the links page will, since it's the largest I've ever seen. In just minutes I found the First Church of Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros fanfiction (@), and a great Robotron shrine. Plus, this noise (wav).
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:46 PM PST - 16 comments

Two years after the Abu Ghraib scandal, new research shows that abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay has been widespread, and that the United States has taken only limited steps to investigate and punish implicated personnel. A briefing paper issued today, 'By the Numbers,' presents findings of the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project... the first comprehensive accounting of credible allegations of torture and abuse in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. The project has collected hundreds of allegations of detainee abuse and torture occurring since late 2001 – allegations implicating more than 600 U.S. military and civilian personnel and involving more than 460 detainees.

U.S.: More Than 600 Implicated in Detainee Abuse

See also Projected Iraq War Costs Soar, See also The Trillion Dolllar War.
posted by y2karl at 12:11 PM PST - 110 comments

Few things are more sacred to Canadians than the nation's medicare system. After years of health spending cutbacks by conservative politicians, debate rages over whether private providers should now be allowed to compete with the public system. In British Columbia, where the government is shovelling tax dollars into the 2010 Olympics, patients are being left to die in emergency rooms and long-term care facilities due to overcrowding and understaffing. Is it too late to save public health care? Should it be saved?
posted by 327.ca at 12:00 PM PST - 89 comments

The Endless Forest is a strange piece of software (that can be a screensaver), where you control a deer in a, well, endless forest. And so do a bunch of other online players. And you can interact all you like with them - with the minor caveat that deer can't talk.
posted by DataPacRat at 11:28 AM PST - 46 comments

The Ryungyong Hotel is a nearly 1,000 foot tall abandoned pyramid in the heart of Pyongyang that North Korea has officially tried to forget. [discussed previously here] The architecture magazine Domus had over 200 entries to a contest to repurpose the Ryungong, a similar project is also underway elsewhere on the web, though some architects think the effort is a bad idea. [For Domus, use:mefier/mefite]
posted by blahblahblah at 11:16 AM PST - 43 comments

Better Comix The concept behind this is to use comics from the same day and mix them, good ol cut and paste style, so that they become a tad more funny, depending on your sense of humor.
posted by jasonspaceman at 11:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Introducing Nintendo Wii The revolution is officially the Nintendo Wii: pronounced "we", as in 'to urinate'. If only we weren't coming to the end of april.
posted by 6am at 10:53 AM PST - 148 comments

Google Releases Sketchup for All. Google has released a free version of SketchUp (video and tutorials), quite possibly the coolest and most intuitive 3D authoring tool. An added bonus of SketchUp is it's integration into Google Earth. Google has also provided a 3D Warehouse for the posting of your models, which can be downloaded into either application (SketchUp for editing, Earth for displaying). Kind of gives you some insight into their plans for using Google Earth as an Automotive (Honda and Volkswagen) GPS service. (Sidenote: how long until this is seen as a threat to national security?)
posted by rzklkng at 10:52 AM PST - 35 comments

For those following the situation in Nepal (previously mentioned here, here, and here), the King has relented and reinstated parliament, though it's not clear whether the new Prime Minister has long for this world. The Maoists have declared a ceasefire, though they aren't happy about the development. Everything is still awaiting a constituent assembly...
posted by graymouser at 10:47 AM PST - 3 comments

Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics (via). Spontaneous cover magic from the great YLT.
posted by bardic at 10:34 AM PST - 12 comments

Re-Mission is a 3rd-person shooter designed for teens and young adults with cancer, developed by HopeLab and RealTime Associates. Players pilot a nanobot, Roxxi, through the body of a fictional cancer patient to destroy cancer cells and infections. The Re-Mission Outcomes Study enrolled 375 teens and young adults with cancer, randomized them to receive a computer with the game or without. Data from the study showed statistically significant improvements in cancer-related self-efficacy, social quality of life, cancer-specific knowledge, and adherence to prescribed medication regimens in patients who played Re-Mission. The game (and related online community) is free of charge to teens and young people living with cancer and will be available to others in May at a suggested donation of $20. (related)
posted by sarahnade at 10:33 AM PST - 13 comments

You are, of course, familiar with Kropilak's Garages, no? via the seemingly unavoidable BLDBLOG, who got it from we make money not art, who got it from the prevoiusly unknown to me regarde.
posted by signal at 10:22 AM PST - 7 comments

Chinese Pod. Learn Mandarin Chinese through a podcast.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 9:14 AM PST - 13 comments

The Illustrated London News :: an archive
posted by anastasiav at 8:58 AM PST - 4 comments

The Return of the Hawk-eye. The Hawks of MIT are back for a second season. Will Little Chirpy get some food? Will Preener finally reveal himself as the Mysterious Doctor Wing? Tune in now to find out! Previously.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:26 AM PST - 11 comments

Oxfordshire church photos. For all your Oxfordshire church photo needs.
posted by nthdegx at 7:55 AM PST - 17 comments

Adult Swim Fix. Streaming full-length Adult Swim episodes twenty-four hours a day online. Seven archival episodes will be available at all times, while premieres will continue to debut on Fridays, two days before they appear on-air.
posted by ND¢ at 7:16 AM PST - 24 comments

An unwelcome guest of spam. As thanks for his efforts against link spam, a guestbook spammer uses infotech writer Michael Pollitt's name in its autosubmissions, flooding his inbox with confirmation emails and soiling Google's search results for his name. A special word of gratitude goes out to Ev1Servers for his troubles.
posted by brownpau at 6:56 AM PST - 18 comments

Testicular Cancer and Testicular Self-Exam #1
Testicle Self-exam #2
Testicle Self-exam #3
posted by notmtwain at 4:28 AM PST - 47 comments

Jesus with Erection. In its March edition, the Insurgent (link down), an "alternative" student paper on the Eugene, Ore., campus printed 12 hand-drawn cartoons of Jesus as a response to rival paper the Commentator having published the controversial cartoons of Muhammad originally published in Europe that sparked Muslim riots worldwide. William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, called it "one of the most obscene assaults on Christianity I have ever seen." Hey now!
posted by three blind mice at 1:01 AM PST - 89 comments

This game sucks. Courtesy of the experimental gameplay project.
posted by boo_radley at 9:51 PM PST - 20 comments

Hands to Boag A love song about web standards with lyrics like, "Tonight I need your CSS, coding in the darkness. From now on no more tables nest; you will meet web standards"...
posted by londontube at 8:51 PM PST - 3 comments

Trekkergate escalates! Canadian blogger J. Kelly Nestruck puts out the call for pics of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, closet trekkie. (I wonder if Harper has has an autographed photo of William Shatner?)
posted by docgonzo at 8:16 PM PST - 28 comments

Mimetic rivalry on a planetary scale. Rene Girard is the author of several books developing the idea that human culture is based on sacrifice as the way out of mimetic, or imitative, violence between rivals. When one rival is successful in obtaining the love object, violence is precipitated, which falls on the head of certain scapegoats, of whom Jesus Christ is the archetype. The violence can be traced in literature.
posted by Tarn at 7:23 PM PST - 19 comments

Wes Anderson does a 2-minute commercial for American Express. (YouTube link). As you might expect from Wes Anderson, the results are "quirky" to say the least. Another bigshot director, M. Night Shayamalan, has made one as well. This certainly isn't the first time big companies have hired A-list directors. I wonder who's next?
posted by zardoz at 7:14 PM PST - 68 comments

“Smithy code” The secret lies in HBHG and DVC. According to news reports the Judge who recently ruled in the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case has included his own code in his high court ruling (PDF). At this time, no one seems to have decoded it all...
posted by tiamat at 6:06 PM PST - 38 comments

The BBC Programme Catalogue: an index of 946,614 radio and television broadcasts, dating back 75 years. (Via BB.)
posted by steef at 4:20 PM PST - 14 comments

OK - Lucas has pretty much ruined Star Wars for me. Still, lightsabers are freaking kewl with a capital K, and true to its title, this one is quite probably The Best Home Made Lightsaber Duel Ever. Man, I wish I was a Jedi!
posted by willnot at 3:22 PM PST - 97 comments

In the murky world of HYIP (high-yield investment programs), on the wrong side of the Internet tracks, Team Aaron and Shara were very well known. They had tens of thousands of fans, eager to know which programs were still paying 1-2% per day (or more!). Now their fans will have to resort to other sites to see who is still paying. Curiously, these programs only seem to take anonymous, non-disputable forms of e-payment, such as e-gold. Now, all that is left of them is their farewell website. Did they retire on all of the referral fees, as some suspect? It is impressive that such effort is dedicated to this snake oil, but the law of large numbers must make it work. Who can resist 1.5% an hour return on investment? Is this what has become of anonymous micropayments?
posted by Adamchik at 2:38 PM PST - 19 comments

Is the Bush administration really serious about NATO and UN protection to stop the Darfur genocide? "Is it only weak and incompetent, or is it two-faced?"

What can U.S. citizens do to help end this genocide? For starters, take to the streets: you can register for an April 30th demonstration on the Golden Gate Bridge & at the Presidio, or in Washington, DC. You can also ask your Rep. to sponsor House Resolution 723, a measure that urges the President to help deploy a NATO bridging force to the Darfur region.
posted by n_s_1 at 12:20 PM PST - 56 comments

Feminism causes rape. Or, maybe not.
posted by nofundy at 11:04 AM PST - 161 comments

Stock Spam Effectiveness Monitor Spam comes in, graphs come out. You are not buying stock based on spam, but surely someone must be, or else you wouldn't be flooded with more spam everyday. This tracks one user's inbox and the stocks spammed therein. A bit more analysis here and here
posted by mikepop at 11:02 AM PST - 11 comments

FINALLY, the HOWTO you've all been waiting for...
posted by spock at 10:54 AM PST - 27 comments

Flatulence free legumes or, a more to the point headline. Although I thought ABC news might be a bit more scientific in their phrasing. Nope.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:43 AM PST - 27 comments

Hey Metafilter, check out my breasts! (NSFW)
posted by jonson at 10:04 AM PST - 146 comments

Happy 50th birthday (bugmenot) to "the box that changed the world". (Video interview with the author, here.) On April 26, 1956, Malcolm McLean, a trucker from rural North Carolina, hired a crane to hoist 58 trailer-sized steel cargo boxes onto a refitted oil tanker. This modest experiment would profoundly alter international trade and the global economy, eventually creating the "biggest real-time datastreaming network in the world."
posted by soiled cowboy at 9:47 AM PST - 27 comments

Apple Computer 1984 Newsweek Advertising Insert :: a complete scan of Apple's 16-page advertising insert in Newsweek magazine, introducing the new and revolutionary Macintosh computer.
posted by anastasiav at 8:49 AM PST - 52 comments

Leo Burnett Ad Agency - A pretty cool site, and, says this rank amateur, the best implementation of Flash I've ever seen (and I hate Flash).
posted by loquax at 8:35 AM PST - 29 comments

Vittles and verse - two great tastes that taste great together. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the poetry of cookery. As an appetizer, Chris Tusa serves up a tasty bowl of gumbo; next comes the entree, Mark Strand's comforting pot roast. Meanwhile, Shanna Compton imagines herself as the food itself -- eager ingredients in the skilled hands of Jacques Pepin. If you'd prefer to dine out, Charles Simic presents the menu of Cafe Paradiso, while Don Winter, a former night manager at a Niles, Michigan Burger Chef, proffers a more downmarket culinary experience. Bon appetit! (Poemhunter.com previously on MeFi here. )
posted by GrammarMoses at 8:33 AM PST - 4 comments

From colorful Eugene, Oregon, comes the new independent film HIPPIES about a group of folks who have not given up their values or their vices, and set about saving the earth. Trailer here. (Note release date.)

Of course, the Oregon Country Fair is still going strong and weird
(minor muddy boobage in last link)
posted by Danf at 8:09 AM PST - 26 comments

The new DMCA: the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
posted by beth at 8:07 AM PST - 36 comments

I can't work out if iKarma is a well-intentioned stab at applying the power of social software to the world of business, or simply a well-intentioned scrape at the bottom of the Web 2.0 barrel.
posted by Jofus at 5:41 AM PST - 32 comments

Charles Babbage's Difference Engines. One built in 1853. A subsequent design completed in 1991. And again in Lego. Both designs recreated in Meccano parts. [more inside]
posted by slimepuppy at 3:15 AM PST - 11 comments

The Ninth Circuit (maligned by many as a hotbed of extreme liberal judicial activism, but defended by others PDF) issued its opinion in the case of Harper v. Poway Unified School District last week. Judge Stephen Reinhardt - who, to some people, embodies the alleged evils of the Ninth Circuit - issued the majority opinion, and Judge Alex Kozinski filed a strong dissent. The majority opinion held that a high school principal who ordered a student to remove his T-shirt that said "Homosexuality is Shameful" did not violate the student's First Amendment rights, reasoning that "limitations on speech" are permissible in cases where speech is "derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students' minority status such as race religion and sexual orientation," and the limitation is "narrow, and applied with sensitivity and for reasons that are consistent with the fundamental First Amendment mandate." [more inside]
posted by Pontius Pilate at 1:36 AM PST - 148 comments

Whitney Music Box [flash] from KrazyDad. You can read about and see examples of John Whitney's work on this extremely ugly website.
posted by tellurian at 11:55 PM PST - 5 comments

Let me tell you what we're gonna do. We're gonna put them handcuffs in front of ya. Cut you a little slack. But if you don't start operating, we're gonna put the mother fuckers behind your back, and I'm gonna take this slapjack and I'm gonna start working that head over, you understand? ...you sign this son of a bitch, or I'm gonna hit you again. Audio. .pdf transcript. Full Story.
posted by Kwantsar at 11:05 PM PST - 58 comments

It is an official language in this US State, and if somebody writes you a check in it while you're here, you better know your numbers. Although its usage fell after a sharp decrease in the native speakers' population and a later 'ban', (not really) in the late 19th century, it is now making a comeback. Wikipedia gets its name from the language. Sadly, though there are almost 4 million Wikipedia articles, a scant 27 of them are written in it. Of course, if you just need a dictionary, it's not hard to find.
posted by onalark at 10:32 PM PST - 20 comments

The Basiji of Iran.
posted by semmi at 10:07 PM PST - 21 comments

Easily mispronounced domain names. Like mp3shits.com. You'll have to cut and paste the links to see for yourself that someone (or better yet, a committee of people) actually thought a particular domain name was a good idea. Another example: whorepresents.com. The list is short, but through the mighty powers of Mefi members, it could be oh so much longer. via grūpthink.
posted by josephtate at 9:21 PM PST - 51 comments

You think your tattoo is nerdy? From Dinosaur Comics to Exploding Dog, these webcomic fans show their love in a permanent fashion. Hmm. I'm sure I have room for Choo-Choo Bear somewhere.
posted by frykitty at 9:11 PM PST - 34 comments

Unembedded, stunning images from independent photographers working in Iraq.
posted by piscatorius at 8:08 PM PST - 20 comments

What it costs to live well in the United States. According to Forbes, living well for a family of four in New York City requires an annual income of $483,800, compared to $189,923 in Wichita, Kansas. Of course, living well, according to the methodology, involves a vacation home, a BMW 325i and a Lexus RX 330, weekends at the Ritz, and almost no savings, so you might want to skip one of these things if you are a few bucks shy. Also worth noting, the most expensive ZIP codes and houses in the United States (and the world). Are you living well?
posted by blahblahblah at 7:43 PM PST - 83 comments

I've been grooving on some of the music of Persone a lot lately (some full-length mp3 samples here). They're one of the most noticeable Esperanto 'rokbandoj', though by all means not the only one. I'm fond of Jomo kaj Liberecanoj (sample in Spanish, Esperanto, and French) as well. Of course, Esperanto isn't the only constructed language with some music; there apparently is a CD in Klingon (you only hear samples), and some song translations and info about a CD here, and there is also a bit of recorded music in Elvish (scroll down to "Elvish Music"). But most of it seems to be in Esperanto.
posted by graymouser at 5:46 PM PST - 3 comments

Tony Snow On President Bush: ‘An Embarrassment,’ It seems clear now that we will have Snow In Late April as the Bush appointment to be the new press spokesman. Snow comes to the lawn of the White House all the way from Fox News, where he represented their view of Fair and balanced. So balanced in fact that he said things such as this: "“No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.” [9/30/05]. But that was then and this is now and so can we assume that suddenly Bush will be seen as a masterful leader of his nation?
posted by Postroad at 4:23 PM PST - 63 comments

We've talked about quantum computation a few times before, but how much do we really know? Metafilter, instruct thyself. Don't forget to learn some advanced probability and computational complexity (Scott Aaronson has more). Whoa, that's a lot o' learning, so let's so check out the much easier, and much cooler "sleeping puppy" experiment. I can only dream that will help break quantum mechanics' association with animal abuse. Then, there's the Free Will Theorem that just came out (some discussion on it) and another paper with a new look at an old problem. The latter describes another way of solving ye olde, super importanto Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox using the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics (lots of discussion running around). Whew. We don't need the crackpot ramblings of What the #$*! Do We Know? when we've got real physics to keep us up at night. So, who wants to become a physicist? (t'Hooft has some thoughts for those who want to go theoretical.)
posted by jmhodges at 4:09 PM PST - 26 comments

The Chernobyl Legacy
posted by rinkjustice at 3:54 PM PST - 17 comments

LabLit.com is about scientists, but not so much about science. In the most recent update is an interview with Daniel Glaser about his involvement behind the scenes of the BBC documentary Under Laboratory Conditions. Older articles on LabLit.com are about iPods in the lab, sex in the lab, basically anything besides science that still relates to lab life. "LabLit" is short for "lab literature", and the about page explains the connection between the two and the idea behind the site.
posted by easternblot at 3:53 PM PST - 6 comments

From estate tax to 'death tax' Public Citizen released a report [PDF link] today that "reveals how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the [U.S.] estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion." The rich get richer...
posted by tippiedog at 3:41 PM PST - 73 comments

Alexander Selkirk, born in 1676 in Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland, was the unruly seventh son of a cobbler. In 1703, having grown tired of life in his village, he was able to convince successful buccaneer William Dampier that he was the man to navigate Dampier’s next privateering expedition to South America. After a dispute with the young captain of the ship on which he served as sailing master, Selkirk was left behind on a small island 418 miles west of Valparaiso, Chile. Rescued four years later, he was the subject of several contemporary accounts of his ordeal, and likely served as one of Daniel Defoe's primary inspirations for Robinson Crusoe.
posted by killdevil at 2:40 PM PST - 10 comments

Arguing the ceremony is only for the families, newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has forbidden the media from attending today's arrival of the remains of four Canadian soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan. Mr. Harper has also declined to lower the flag on Parliament Hill to half-staff. Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, retired soldier and former lobbyist for various defense contracting firms, says his government is returning to the tradition of honouring dead soldiers on November 11, Remembrance Day. Meanwhile, residents of the northern aboriginal community of Kashechawan, plagued by flooding and drinking water problems, are being evacuated, after government promises to repair a dike went unfulfilled. God Bless Canada.
posted by docgonzo at 2:40 PM PST - 52 comments

A few songs about comic strips. Here is Edward Meeker performing "Oh Min!" (mp3 link), a song about Sidney Smith's "The Gumps". Barney Google also had a song or two (mp3 links). Little Orphan Annie is probably the most famous (Real Audio), aside from Popeye.
posted by interrobang at 1:23 PM PST - 12 comments

Bush Impeachment - The Illinois State Legislature is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell Utilizing a little known rule of the US House to bring Impeachment charges. California Becomes Second State to Introduce Bush Impeachment.
posted by digibri at 12:36 PM PST - 86 comments

I can't think for you. You'll have to decide. Whether the Birmingham Steeldogs have God on their side.
posted by Otis at 12:24 PM PST - 19 comments

Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day. It may not be the world's best ice cream (personal favs), it's also not the worst (universally reviled).
posted by ericbop at 11:25 AM PST - 161 comments

Where do your recycleables go? Minneapolis' Star Tribune has created a very interesting, informative, interactive feature, describing where your recycling goes after it is picked up from your curb. An educational way to spend your afternoon!
posted by santiagogo at 10:46 AM PST - 14 comments

In Praise of Loopholes, simply put, is a great story and an example of fine writing you can only find online. (From our own shadowkeeper).
posted by mathowie at 10:34 AM PST - 21 comments

FollowupFilter - After a two year hiatus (read: punishment ban), Gregg Easterbrook (founder of Beliefnet, Brookings scholar, ex of Slate & NFL.com) one of ESPN's most popular football writers returns, with no acknoledgment of where he went or why. Hopefully he'll keep his mouth shut about ABC and/or Disney related projects this time. As a side note, his two seasons worth of back articles are apparently not available, as they were purged (permanently?) when he was fired.
posted by jonson at 10:00 AM PST - 16 comments

The Way Things Go. (Google Video.) The incredible short by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. (Mentioned before (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) but here is the complete film!)
posted by limitedpie at 9:55 AM PST - 22 comments

Drunken idiot Shawn Seamus hopes an embarrassing video circulating on the Internet will lead to his big break in show business. Hey, it worked for this guy, right? Right?
posted by Dr-Baa at 9:49 AM PST - 19 comments

Dark Age Ahead. Jane Jacobs passes on.
posted by Chuckles at 9:35 AM PST - 49 comments

"Turn it off man, I don't want no problems." Democracy Now attempts to interview Katrina evacuees at a FEMA trailer park. FEMA's private security guards claim that the residents don't have 'the privilege' of being able to speak freely on FEMA property without a FEMA 'minder' present.
posted by empath at 8:38 AM PST - 64 comments

There are plenty of contests whose purpose is to pick out the best looking dog, or flowers or various other things. But what about the ugliest? These sites and contests bring you the ugliest cars, dogs, celebrities (YMMV), buildings in Ann Arbor, MI, and those bastions of cuteness, babies.
posted by darsh at 7:53 AM PST - 16 comments

Top Knots Weddings, no matter how grand, are comprised of many intimate, unforgettable moments, and wedding photographers have just one chance to capture them. The judges of this year's Top Knots competition felt that the work featured in this online gallery succeeded in preserving these moments in a creative and innovative way.
posted by ColdChef at 7:36 AM PST - 32 comments

"For years people laughed at me. But my dream reoccured so often that I was sure that one day the yellow gnomes would visit our planet with a very special message for us. Now I am not alone anymore." These yellow gnomes have apparently appeared all over NW Europe. Today a fresh batch was discovered in Abcoude, Netherlands (in Dutch). And yes, of course there is a forum. Art or crazy?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:04 AM PST - 26 comments

In the World of Warcraft, Serenity Now - a hardcore Player-verus-Player (PvP) guild - attacked an in-game memorial service held by another guild for a guild member who passed away in real life. They made a video of the exploit, apparently for recruitment purposes. In their wake they left many questions...
posted by bigmusic at 11:12 PM PST - 118 comments

For those of you suddenly obsessed with Iran and the atom. I wonder how that happened...
posted by panoptican at 9:07 PM PST - 13 comments

Save the Internet is a coalition trying to preserve net neutrality and stop Congress from ruining the internet by giving it to the telecommunications industry this Wednesday. (More links, previous discussion, via.)
posted by homunculus at 7:24 PM PST - 57 comments

Making any jokes or statements during the screening process may be grounds for both criminal and civil penalties.
posted by quonsar at 6:13 PM PST - 68 comments

The Desert One Debacle
posted by Kwantsar at 5:07 PM PST - 19 comments

Abraham Lincoln, duelist? Hamilton and Burr were not the only prominent duelists in US history. In the early morning hours of September 22, 1842, a young Abraham Lincoln crossed the Mississippi River at Alton, IL on his way to a small island where he would engage in mortal combat with a political adversary. Lincoln had used his sarcastic wit to write anonymous letters to the editor lampooning a political rival, James Shields. Some of his friends joined in and perhaps went a little too far, including suggestions of Shields' inadequacies with the ladies. One of these friends included Lincoln's future wife, Mary Todd. Shields demanded a duel and Lincoln defined the parameters of the duel - broadswords in a pit.
posted by caddis at 4:16 PM PST - 45 comments

Del Mar Community College in Corpus Christi has blocked all access to MySpace because it was 40% of all Internet usage. (Don't those students know about downloading bootleg MP3s?)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:15 PM PST - 58 comments

Chinlone!
posted by Witty at 3:47 PM PST - 18 comments

Crash. Tiny SMART-1, ESA's first lunar probe (also a compact spacecraft technology test bed), has been in lunar orbit since November 2004. Following the success of its primary and secondary missions, ESA now plans to crash SMART-1 into the moon, with a hard landing on the near side which may be visible from Earth. More stuff on ESA's little lunar trooper: SMART-1 lunar imagery, SMART-1 NASA Master Catalog entry, Planetary Society's SMART-1 category, and SMART-1 on Wikipedia.
posted by brownpau at 3:39 PM PST - 4 comments

"This right here beats everything I have ever seen." Michael Mendez, Danny Reeves, and "Master Rick" Sciara were arrested a month ago for castrating at least six men in their sadomasochistic dungeon in Waynesville, NC. Inside the house were found a tin of used instruments, an electric shock paddle, a Physician's Desk Reference, an invoice for lidocaine, and a pair of frozen human testicles.
posted by stemlot at 2:46 PM PST - 61 comments

Air France: Apparently abandoning any pretence that traveling economy in the back of an A330 is an enticing experience, they've launched this site which looks back at the days when women wore fur, men smoked pipes and air travel was glamorous. Quite a few nice little movie vignettes of life chez Air France from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s.
posted by marvin at 2:46 PM PST - 22 comments

i'm not trying to be anyone that I'm not, i'm just a middle class white boy trying to express myself... i'm hoping to get my big record contract... It's just a demo. (mpeg)
posted by sucka_mc at 12:40 PM PST - 62 comments

Perform the painless procedure* Affordable In-Home LASIK Surgery You Can Do Yourself!™
*This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA.
posted by jba at 12:28 PM PST - 20 comments

"Killing the Buddha is about finding a way to be religious when we're all so self-conscious and self-absorbed. Knowing more than ever about ourselves and the way the world works, we gain nothing through nostalgia for a time when belief was simple, and even less from insisting that now is such a time. Killing the Buddha will ask, How can we be religious without leaving part of ourselves at the church or temple door? How can we love God when we know it doesn't matter if we do? Call it God for the godless. Call it the search for a God we can believe in: A God that will not be an embarrassment in twelve-thousand years. A God we can talk about without qualifications." I particularly enjoyed The Temptation of Belief, by a Buddhist exploring evangelical Christianity, and My Holy Ghost People, by an unbelieving daughter in a praying-in-tongues family.
posted by heatherann at 12:26 PM PST - 21 comments

Talk to The Hand . They say you should always sing from the heart, but no one ever said anything about what do to with the hands. Enter Robert A. Wilson, N6TV, manualist extraordinaire. If you thought the Human Beatbox from Spearhead was great, wait until you see Robert perform the Theme from Hawai'i Five-O or for Classical music lovers, there's The Toreador Song, from Carmen and The William Tell Overture (Lone Ranger Theme).

Robert is no stranger to talking with his hands. He's also a ham radio operator, a hobby and public service which is not only celebrating 100 years of wireless voice communication, but also makes excellent use of another mode of communicating with the hands: Morse Code. As old and seemingly antiquated as it seems at first glance, Morse Code has been used to allow those with physical challenges communicate with those around them.
posted by jackspace at 12:00 PM PST - 21 comments

Boycotts : politics and corportate power Hispanic News on a call to boycott Kimberley Clark (Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, etc...) as the corporate member behind Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner "author/sponsor of HR 4437 which would turn 11 million undocumented immigrants into felons, punish anyone guilty of providing them assistance" and more. What's the real story here? Boycotts, are they still effective? How much of a link (symbolic or otherwise) is there between this legislation and the company? None? A little? A lot?
posted by dorcas at 11:31 AM PST - 43 comments

AdAge reports that Apple is adding ads to iTunes. The ads will only appear if you're listening to a podcast and not while listening to your own music, according to the article. I suspect this will be greeted with the same enthusiasm as was the mini store that was included with iTunes 6.
posted by vannsant at 11:26 AM PST - 61 comments

The Chinese Military is evidently big enough that they can now afford to bar chronic snorers from enlisting. Uh oh.
posted by borkingchikapa at 10:53 AM PST - 20 comments

Cameratruck. What do you get when you cross a pinhole camera with a truck? You get the world's largest mobile camera, and perhaps the only camera that is its own darkroom (at least on wheels!). The cameratruck is currently travelling Spain in a trip that will culminate in an exhibit at PHotoEspaña.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:51 AM PST - 15 comments

When artist Matthew Moore found out part of the family farm was to become a suburban subdivision, he did what any farmer/artist would do, and recreated the subdivision in crops to show what it would look like in the surrounding landscape.
posted by mathowie at 8:38 AM PST - 54 comments

Dangerous Men (embedded video, sound) A film started in the 70's/80's, finished in the 90's and unleased in 2005. Variety said, "Dangerous Men by John S. Rad will strike horror in the hearts of anyone." trailer (nsfw, mpeg)
posted by phirleh at 7:37 AM PST - 32 comments

Kaavya Viswanathan is a 19-year-old Harvard student whose first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, just cracked the New York Times bestseller list. The problem? The Harvard Crimson and SF Gate assert that the author plagiarized much of it from two books by Megan McCafferty. Of course, it's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before with young writers.
posted by mothershock at 6:59 AM PST - 221 comments

"Ça va faire une maudite poutine."
posted by docgonzo at 5:57 AM PST - 39 comments

It is estimated that due to an infected polio vaccine, 10 million to 30 million people in the United States from 1955 through early 1963 were inadvertently exposed to live Simian Virus #40, a pathogen linked to various cancers. If it happened before, maybe it happened again. Perhaps AIDS was just another accidental contamination originating in an American lab - this time a hepatitis vaccine gone wrong. Why assume conspiracy Dr Cantwell?
posted by missbossy at 1:32 AM PST - 72 comments

"If we start with the sheep then next it's the cows and horses."
posted by scblackman at 12:44 AM PST - 11 comments

The Last Frontier Theatre Conference, run by Prince William Sound Community College in Valdez, Alaska became, despite its remote location, one of the most important playwriting events in the world, in large part because of the perennial presence of Edward Albee. The conference attracted hundreds of playwrights and such luminaries as Arthur Miller, August Wilson, Lanford Wilson, Paula Vogel, Tony Kushner, A.R. Gurney, Robert Anderson, and Horton Foote, as well as actors including Paula Prentiss, Eva Marie Saint, Jean Stapleton, Chris Noth, and Laura Linney, all participating for no pay. But when conference co-founder JoAnn McDowell resigned from the college, although she claimed it was for personal family issues, many wondered if there was a different story behind it - because when she left, Edward Albee vowed he would never participate in Valdez again (pdf), as did several other playwrights including John Guare and Romulus Linney. But now McDowell has taken a job at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska, and she and Albee are starting the Great Plains Theatre Conference, which looks likely to become the Next Big Thing and could lure in such prominent theater folk as Terrence McNally, Arthur Kopit, actress Patricia Neal, and Metafilter’s own Astro Zombie.
posted by kyrademon at 11:23 PM PST - 11 comments

Bikini Science: Learn the proper verbiage and theory in discussing bikinii. A brief history and practice field trips.(nsfw)
posted by bigmusic at 9:58 PM PST - 16 comments

Version 2.1 of the Web is now available, featuring significant improvements over the older 2.0 version. The most significant upgrade is that there is now support for the server-side blink tag. Mad props to Jimbob
posted by signal at 8:46 PM PST - 28 comments

Look, a dancing skeleton!
posted by koenie at 7:01 PM PST - 36 comments

The 1970s Russian main street was filled with small, grimy stores stocked with ethnic food and kept by unfriendly laconic storekeepers. However, since then this "closed world, one full of sour looks, suspicion, and hopelessly outdated fashion" has disappeared. [more inside]
posted by gregb1007 at 6:37 PM PST - 15 comments

Deep throat. Warning: YouTube link, SFW. Not the adult film Deep throat, or the Watergate informant. More on the artist Claude Vonstroke here.
posted by vaportrail at 3:46 PM PST - 15 comments

$1,000 CDN ($880.80 US) reward for exposing anonymous blogger: A Prince Edward Island business owner wants to punish a person by breaking their anonymity. According to the CBC, the targets are PEI Liberal Party (peiliberal.blogspot.com) and The Guardian (theguardianpeca.blogspot.com). More info: Don't Sue
posted by boost ventilator at 3:09 PM PST - 13 comments

Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds, Charles McKay's 1841 classic work on mass hysteria and national crazes, still surprisingly readable and engaging. Among the classic examples in McKay's book are the South Sea Bubble, one of the earliest and largest financial bubbles, and the witch hunts of Europe (related: try the 1628 Witch Hunt simulation). Most people remember him best for his history of Tulipmania, the Dutch flower-speculation explosion of 1647 and 1648... except that it may not have been a delusion at all, but rather a rational response to changes in regulation.
posted by blahblahblah at 2:17 PM PST - 21 comments

A bunch of videos of the great sui generis French band Magma, including what appears to be a complete performance of Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh. Can't understand the lyrics? Try a Kobaian dictionary [cache].
posted by kenko at 12:06 PM PST - 10 comments

Columbine's Most Wanted Sure are a lot of people getting outed on the web these days.
posted by telstar at 12:02 PM PST - 111 comments

A Chicago teacher vents about the situation at his school on his blog and ends up angering the student body, fellow teachers, and parents.
posted by bubblesonx at 9:32 AM PST - 106 comments

What is the meaning of life? Answers range from pithy pseudo-psychological to the annoyingly flash based AND pseudo-psychological, the Christian, Muslim, and Sikh and other. Other people think they've figured it out, and their answer is different at least. Some people's answers just get strange and pseudo-scientific. And of course we can't forget Monty Python .
posted by sotonohito at 8:50 AM PST - 43 comments

Tatjana van Vark: Creative null-A polymaniac.
posted by loquacious at 8:49 AM PST - 14 comments

The meaning of life.
posted by bobbyelliott at 1:28 AM PST - 101 comments

Legio Patria Nostra
posted by pwedza at 11:57 PM PST - 38 comments

The Laws of Identity was a white paper written about a year ago by Kim Cameron, chief Identity and Access Architect for Microsoft. In it, he described a set of laws meant to govern the next generation of access control on the internet (also of note is his discussion about the failure of Passport). These ideas eventually evolved into Infocard, Microsoft's specific implementation of the laws, and a key software component of a larger identity metasystem that Microsoft proposes to introduce. The implications of this are very real, and quite sweeping in magnitude, as this infrastructure might one day be able to completely replace the current "login/password" type of access control system. [more inside]
posted by Drunken_munky at 11:57 PM PST - 36 comments

Ripples of Genocide. Journey through Eastern Congo with Angelina Jolie, commentary by John Prendergast, photos by Ed Parsons and Laura Engelbrecht.
posted by semmi at 10:01 PM PST - 13 comments

Graffiti by Nobumasa Takahashi. Some shots of him working.{teefed from artdorks}
posted by dobbs at 7:40 PM PST - 25 comments

The videos of Supercar are all awesome, each in their own way. (via antville)
posted by fungible at 4:36 PM PST - 36 comments

This is a stunning set of photographs by Robert Knoth, taken in the regions of Mayak, Semipalatinsk, Chernobyl, and Tomsk-7. [via]
posted by 327.ca at 3:29 PM PST - 35 comments

Cool (windows only) bit of software to allow those reading (with Windows pcs, wireless networks, itunes & a PSP) to stream their mp3 libraries over their wireless network to their PSP. I know this probably doesn't apply to too many people here, but hopefully those to whom it does find it useful.
posted by jonson at 2:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union Balaklava was one of the most secret towns in Russia. 10km south east of Sevastopol on the Black Sea Coast, this small town was the home to a Nuclear Submarine Base. via BLDBLOG
posted by signal at 2:05 PM PST - 20 comments

Gummy Sex via
posted by CunningLinguist at 1:55 PM PST - 18 comments

CIA warned White House -- no WMD programs in Iraq. A retired senior CIA official interviewed by 60 Minutes claims that the White House ignored intelligence from Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri in the run-up to the invasion. CIA Director George Tenet delivered the information to President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking officials in September 2002, according to the CIA official. A few days later the administration said it was no longer interested. "...we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.' " The interview airs on CBS, Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:19 PM PST - 57 comments

"This pizza would be a lot better if I had a mustache." And other stuff from BabyBirdComic.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:27 AM PST - 14 comments

All those in favor of a mandatory web labeling law, say "ay!"
posted by trinarian at 11:23 AM PST - 23 comments

Yesterday United Flight 735 from Chicago to Sacramento made an emergency landing in Denver when an unruly passenger tried to open the cabin door. (bugmenot/bugmenot) A member of the Flyertalk forum was on the flight, and provided a first hand account of the emergency.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:48 AM PST - 48 comments

How the GOP Lost Its Way. And they should be worried (pdf) about November, according to Charlie Cook. But don't underestimate the Democrats' propensity to blow it, says the Economist.
posted by js003 at 9:57 AM PST - 128 comments

The next next gen of video games. With the rise of digital distribution models for video games, and the rapid increase in development costs, Raph Koster has predicted an end to the big publishers, with a new system of online content aggregators. Others in the industry agree, but will this really be the end of large epic games?
posted by zabuni at 8:47 AM PST - 28 comments

Pixel noise identifies digital cameras. Every original digital picture is overlaid by a weak noise-like pattern of pixel-to-pixel non-uniformity. Although these patterns are invisible to the human eye, the unique reference pattern or "fingerprint" of any camera can be electronically extracted by analyzing a number of images taken by a single camera. Fridrich's lab analyzed 2,700 pictures taken by nine digital cameras and with 100 percent accuracy linked individual images with the camera that took them. [via Arstechnica]
posted by Termite at 8:42 AM PST - 24 comments

Island by Oliver Kunkel is a disturbing but also funny little video piece (NSFW).
posted by namagomi at 7:12 AM PST - 28 comments

At the end of this short film, you'll see a graphic illustration of Christopher Walken. If you can stomach zombie babies bursting forth from women's wombs. A short film by Paul Robertson. An artist who also made the music video for Architecture in Helsinki's Do the Whirlwind. [MPG : Alternate Link : Torrent]
posted by Colloquial Collision at 5:05 AM PST - 24 comments

England's literary crackhead rockstar.
posted by Tlogmer at 5:01 AM PST - 46 comments

The speeches of George Bush, reformed. What if Bush had a crisis of conscience and turned over a new leaf? These speeches, written by school children and read by an impersonator show a mystical world of what might be. via waxy. Hello, waxy!
posted by boo_radley at 12:40 AM PST - 34 comments

LOOK AT ME BEING SERIOUS (nsfw: language, video)
posted by loquacious at 11:16 PM PST - 48 comments

The Perry Bible Fellowship now has it's own website. Previously here on MeFi.
posted by lalochezia at 7:58 PM PST - 40 comments

Depression + Meth + Construction Equipment = The new record holder for most nails shot into a brain with the man surviving. Guy tries to kill himself with a nailgun, fails, later goes to the hospital complaining of a headache. The previous record was a guy in Japan that shot 9 nails into his own skull. USA! USA! USA! We're number #1! Also: A picture is worth a thousand words.
posted by mathowie at 7:48 PM PST - 68 comments

Eat less, live more - maybe.
posted by daksya at 7:40 PM PST - 14 comments

Wenyi Wang is being charged with threatening Chineese President Hu Jintao .... Apparently telling a world leader that their time is running out and that everything they do in this life will come back to them is a crime. She was arrested while disrupting Jintao's meeting with Bush at the White House.
posted by rdr at 6:56 PM PST - 55 comments

¡Ask a Mexican! is a recurring feature in the Orange County (CA) Weekly (archives) in which columnist Gustavo Arellano tackles questions from pochos and gabachos alike, about politics, cultural differences, and stereotypes. What started as a one-off joke has become one of the alt weekly's more popular columns (LA Times), complete with crude, foul-mouthed, politically incorrect ruminations on the origins of "the dirty Sanchez" and random slaps at Guatemalans. Why do Mexican men always wear cowboy hats? Because "[w]earing a sombrero here screams "POR FAVOR DEPORT ME." Why won't Mexicans tip? Actually they tip better, and "leave a little extra for a job well done—which includes how caliente the chica is."
posted by donpedro at 6:34 PM PST - 10 comments

Welcome to Microsoft's Mac Lab.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 4:10 PM PST - 26 comments

The Monks
Formed in the early '60s by American G.I.s stationed in Germany. After their discharge, the group settled in Germany to concentrate on finding a unique sound, and soon began to shave their hair into Monk's tonsures and appear in cassocks. One of the truely original bands of the 60's, The Monks are now often refered to as 'proto-punk'. The Monks experimented fervently, developing a unqiue sound, with heavy bass, repetitive but amelodic rhythms, nursery rhyme style, yet powerful vocals and a good helping of feedback. They recorded only one albumn, Black Monk Time, until their 1999 reunion.
Hear some tracks from the albumn (in realmedia), See and hear The Monks Live in Germany, Also, check out Monks - The Transatlantic Feedback, a documentary (with trailer, though there seems to be something wrong with it). [Trivia: the song I Hate You can be heard in the background in one scene in the bowling alley in The Big Lebowski]
posted by MetaMonkey at 3:44 PM PST - 23 comments

CIA Officer Fired for Leaking Classified Info to Media Newsfilter. The president, we are told, leaked via Libby a secret to the press. That is ok. The leak was telling the press that laws were being broken--FISA subverted--so that undermining national laws becomes a crime only when it is revealed? A CIA officer has been relieved of his duty after being caught leaking classified information to the media. Citing the Privacy Act, the CIA would not provide any details about the officer's identity or assignments.
posted by Postroad at 2:52 PM PST - 34 comments

Newsfilter: The situation is getting worse by the day in Southern Ontario, as a standoff with Native People has escalated rather dramatically in the last couple of days. A group of Native Canadians has been occupying a development site for more than 50 days, and yesterday, provincial police attempted to remove them, failed, and now rail lines are being occupied by Mohawks as a sympathy gesture, cutting off train travel between Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto.
posted by loquax at 12:50 PM PST - 46 comments

Big Bang for the MegaVerse? Palladium Books, publishers of the once wildly popular Rifts roleplaying game, may be going out of business. For a while things were looking up for the company, with a promising videogame and potential Jerry Bruckheimer movie in the works. Unfortunately, the game was slated for the now largely irrelevant Nokia N-Gage system and Bruckheimer's never been given a Rifts script he liked. Owner and president Kevin Siembieda, reeling from a 7 figure betrayal from within the ranks and deep in debt after sinking thousands of dollars of his own money into the company, turns to the internet for help.
posted by JaredSeth at 12:06 PM PST - 44 comments

Long live our noble queen.
posted by Mayor Curley at 11:55 AM PST - 55 comments

Born To Rot. Living people are often deeply disturbed by dead people. Particularly when those dead people have only recently died and are rotting. But what’s the big deal? Are rotting things intrinsically gross? Why does it disturb us so? Is decomposition helpful in attaining greater spirituality, or is it proof of a Godless universe? [many images linked NSFW]
posted by stinkycheese at 11:39 AM PST - 29 comments

Daily Mail Picnic. Friday Flash Fun.
posted by feelinglistless at 10:25 AM PST - 11 comments

"Getting There." MapQuest demystified from The New Yorker.
posted by stbalbach at 10:17 AM PST - 20 comments

Plush Safe He Think Fantastic cache of You Tube links including Basquiat at work, Borges, and Nam June Paik.
posted by vronsky at 10:10 AM PST - 18 comments

Orangutwang is a simple Flash game about a stretchy monkey (sadly, the monkey does not play banjo). Don't touch the spiders!
posted by whir at 9:42 AM PST - 21 comments

More map fun: The first world map of internet country codes. Large jpg here.
posted by hydrophonic at 8:57 AM PST - 17 comments

The Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography Maps, mappers, and the history of mapping, with slide shows, online exhibitions (e.g. The French Empire in North America, popular cartography), and journal articles. Part of the Newberry Library, Chicago.
posted by carter at 8:33 AM PST - 5 comments

The BBC reports that twenty years on "the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station is teeming with life." Lynx, eagle owl, wild boars, horses, wolves—even signs of bears which haven't been seen here in centuries. British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock (recently discussed here) speculates whether "small volumes of nuclear waste from power production should be stored in tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by greedy developers." Lovelock describes Chernobyl as "a nasty accident that took 45 lives." This article in the New Scientist claims that that the death toll may ultimately reach 60,000.
posted by 327.ca at 8:26 AM PST - 49 comments

Trek fans, geeks, meet your new leader!
Rick Berman is out, out, out. JJ Abrams, with Paramount's blessing, is taking over Star Trek for an eleventh journey to the big screen which will apparently have a "Kirk and Spock: The Early Years" flavor.
posted by WolfDaddy at 7:59 AM PST - 108 comments

Einstein TOR DVD is a mostly animated feature film from the early 1920s, long thought to be lost, featuring animation from the incredible Max Fleischer (who is responsible for the seriously cool Superman animated cartoons). For $15, looks like a must-have for animation buffs and science geeks.
posted by dbiedny at 4:31 AM PST - 17 comments

Newsfilter: Just because you're called "Cartoon Network" dosn't mean you have to show cartoons Look how well MTV has done since they stopped showing music. And what could be more fun then watching reruns of saved by the bell? Have they simply exhausted the supply of cheaply licensable cartoons? Seems like Comedy Central is already starting to abandon Comedy with "Mind of Mencia".
posted by delmoi at 2:02 AM PST - 99 comments

Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's was one of those songs that I grew up with. It had few words and was especially written for Audrey Hepburn's limited range, making it easy to sing along to. Unfortunately the version I'd most like to hear, by Morrisey, doesn't seem to be working at the moment. Highlights of those I've listened to so far are Kid Koala and Nan Vernon (Japanese).
posted by tellurian at 10:48 PM PST - 52 comments

With the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy realized it didn't need MAD numbers of Ohio class nuclear submarines loaded with multiple nuclear warhead Trident missiles. Although it has taken the Navy nearly 20 years to figure out something else to do with the excess boats, they've got it now. Welcome the USS Ohio (once SSBN 726, now SSGN 726) and the USS Florida (once SSBN 728, now SSGN 728) and their 308 (154 each) Tomahawk cruise missiles back to service. Or, not. [more inside]
posted by paulsc at 10:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Researchers have found that prolonged concentration on a difficult task actually switches off a person's self awareness. Fancy experiencing this sensation for yourself? That would be an oxymoron in existence. Just lay back and let the orgasm take hold.
posted by 0bvious at 7:16 PM PST - 30 comments

"The Father Daughter Purity Ball is a memorable ceremony for daughters to pledge commitments to purity and their fathers to pledge commitments to protect their girls." Do Purity Balls, an offshoot of the virginity pledge movement work? The research says they do postpone first intercourse but have no impact on STD rates (1, 2 - PDFs). Perhaps a discussion of, uh, protection should be added to the "Covenant of Purity and Protection" signed by the dancing dads.
posted by donovan at 6:10 PM PST - 110 comments

The Public Archives of Nova Scotia has some cool online exhibits. The original list of dead bodies recovered from the Titanic sinking caught my eye, they also have original log book pages from privateers, lighthouses, slavery and abolition, boats, boats, and more boats. [via]
posted by marxchivist at 5:29 PM PST - 11 comments

Is this the troll to end all trolls? It purports to be a list of "reichwingers" (sic) with their home addresses, but closer investigation shows that all the addresses given belong to car parts stores. So who was the intended target of this hoax? Left, right, or maybe everyone?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:23 PM PST - 80 comments

SewerHistory dot org has lots of information about sewers. It's really interesting.
posted by thirteenkiller at 4:41 PM PST - 16 comments

You know what? There ain't no doors outta Hell, babe. Before serial killer nurse Charles Cullen was sentenced to 11 life sentences in New Jersey, some of the families of his victims were allowed to read Victim Impact Statements (audio) (videos linked at left) in which they not only told the court about the effect of the murders on their lives, but also told Cullen what they thought of him. While state laws differ, Victim Impact Statements are often allowed to be considered in making sentencing decisions, and sometimes creep into the guilt phase of the trial. The trials of Terry Nichols, Scott Peterson, and Zacarias Moussaoui all included Impact Statements. Some have argued that Impact Statements are needed to properly assess harm and balance mitigating and humanizing evidence allowed on behalf of the defendant. Others call it nothing more than institutionalized revenge. Would you want the chance to say "Burn in Hell" to a person who harmed someone you cared about, or does such talk have no place in the courtroom?
posted by banishedimmortal at 4:32 PM PST - 50 comments

Though JAWS scared the bejezus out of almost everybody and spread around the notion that sharks are grizzly agents of mindless revenge (this link possibly NSFW), they are, in fact, quite vulnerable to human activities (this doesn't make the prospect of being eaten alive while swimming any less scary). NOAA has some good fact sheets to help dispel what unreasonable fears you may have of these much maligned creatures, and if that doesn't do it, maybe this'll help.
posted by Pecinpah at 2:32 PM PST - 20 comments

Rolling Stone One of America's foremost historians assesses George W. Bush with the cover story: The Worst President in History? Check out the respectful cover illustration.
posted by spock at 2:03 PM PST - 154 comments

Is Digg being censored? Accusations have been flying about, and posts about it on Digg itself have been getting huge numbers of votes while mysteriously staying off the front page...
posted by reklaw at 1:43 PM PST - 24 comments

Rollback. Media critic Jay Rosen rises above the McClellan/"shake-up" foofaraw to put several pieces of the puzzle together and show how the Bush administration has significantly altered the long-standing relationship of the press to the White House. (More from Rosen here.) Another piece that fits: Donald Rumsfeld's bold, frequent, and rarely-challenged assertions that the American press is being expertly "manipulated" by Al Qaeda "media committees" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
posted by digaman at 12:58 PM PST - 17 comments

MooTube: Along with activities like chomping grass, flicking flies, mooing and hanging out at the watering hole, the cow-cams capture such fun-loving antics as stealing snacks from the human production crew to roaming the fields in search of the best siesta spot. With spring in the air, alert viewers may catch a glimpse of cattle locking horns in the heat of pixilated romance. Press Release Here
posted by thisisdrew at 12:35 PM PST - 11 comments

Scott Crossfield, Pilot, Pioneer. (1921-2006) "In the days of the research airplane program, things were somewhat different than the bureaucracy that we find ourselves in today. For instance, there could be a day where I would do an X-1 launch early in the morning, fly the X-4 over lunch hour, and do a D-558-II launch in the afternoon."
posted by grabbingsand at 11:57 AM PST - 13 comments

Happen to have an XBox 360 wired controller? In The Pit is a PC-based audio-only stealth action game, in which you play a nasty creature living at the bottom of a pit, hunting down people who fall in. Strangely compelling. via The Experimental Gameplay Project
posted by signalnine at 10:14 AM PST - 32 comments

AirArabia is using cartoon characters on their website that have a remarkable resemblance to the "South ParK" kids.
posted by 445supermag at 7:49 AM PST - 35 comments

Currency Collages from CK Wilde of Artichoke Yink Press [via]
posted by peacay at 7:40 AM PST - 27 comments

Somewhere between theoretical constructs like finite automata and Turing machines and feature-rich programming languages like Perl and C++ lives a world of misfits. These so-called esoteric languages frequently employ obfuscation and fustian as central design goals; but that doesn't mean you can't do some neat (useless) things with them.
posted by Plutor at 7:33 AM PST - 38 comments

Need a bike? Want to avoid the fustian salespeople at the mainstream bike shop and don't want to spend a ridiculous amount to get one? Recycle-a-Bicycle in NYC or Bikes not Bombs in Boston can hook you up with a nice, stylish new (used) ride for a reasonable price. Have too many bikes? Donate 'em.
posted by splatta at 7:33 AM PST - 37 comments

Developing black and white film at home just got much cheaper. It's possible to develop film using tea, coffee, or even vitamin C. To avoid being called a fustian photography nerd, call it caffenol (or caffeinol, but not that caffeinol).
posted by nomad at 7:33 AM PST - 19 comments

The Gas Price Temperature Map is a neat little Javascript feature that tells you how screwed you are next time you fill up at the pump in the lower 48.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 7:31 AM PST - 54 comments

Yahoo has launched a sweet new airfare site. Not only does it do the expected fare comparison across several airlines, but it incorporates a highly-configurable, AJAX-based interface to let you filter results in real time. [via]
posted by mkultra at 7:30 AM PST - 28 comments

Nepal is known as the birthplace Buddha, however, it's also a place in which the ruling government has decided a "shoot to kill" policy is the best way to deal with anti-monarchy protesters.
posted by Guerilla at 10:23 PM PST - 20 comments

The Bush administration is busy preparing for a possible military conflict with China. "The most important strategic decision the United States will make in the next decade is not about Iraq, Iran or North Korea. It is about China. What will America's basic attitude be toward the rise of China? And similarly, the most important strategic decision that Beijing will make in the next decade is: how should it relate to the United States? Depending on whether the answer to these questions is 'cooperation' or 'confrontation', one can imagine two very different 21st centuries." The Bush administration's containment strategy for China may herald the next cold war. [via]
posted by kliuless at 10:01 PM PST - 78 comments

"You drowned 1,200 people! I rebuke you." Politics as usual? Yes, if you're from Louisiana. Is it hot where you are? Well, at least your federal government didn't trick you into living in your car in 100 degree weather because they won't give you the keys to your trailer. Oh, but try not to get sick, because even though New Orleans is almost back to its Pre-Katrina size (1 million out of 1.3 million), half of the hospital space is gone. Only six weeks until hurricane season! Woot!
posted by ColdChef at 9:16 PM PST - 37 comments

I am me and Rummy's he Iraq is free and we are all together See the world run when Dick shoots his gun, see how I lie
posted by growabrain at 9:05 PM PST - 41 comments

Sounds that must die. Yes, the amen break is listed.
posted by bigmusic at 8:59 PM PST - 40 comments

Gay and Muslim groups getting together in the UK? plans are to look at homophobia in the Muslim community and Islamophobia in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. The Muslim Council of Britain is also admitting that if you have nothing positive to say keep your mouth shut, which is a very good first step. Can two groups often on the receiving end of hatred work together ? “British Muslims welcome working with everyone including members of the Lesbian and Gay community against a common enemy, fascism.” I don't know if they have the likes of Michael Savage there (or the many many others), who rail against (and call for the death of) both Muslims and gays on the airwaves daily, but it seems hopeful, no?
posted by amberglow at 7:23 PM PST - 29 comments

The nature of science fiction poetry is the subject of vigorous debate even among its own practitioners. Nonetheless, it has its own annual awards, the Rhyslings. What wins? The first victor in 1978 was Gene Wolfe's The Computer Iterates the Greater Trumps, while Tim Pratt's Soul Searching was the most recent winner. Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, and Andrew Joron are generally considered the masters of the field. Many more poems here, as well as an in-depth bibliography, and, of course, the periodic table of science fiction haikus about the elements. Don't like science fiction? Cowboy poetry is also a thriving genre.
posted by blahblahblah at 6:38 PM PST - 17 comments

A new study suggests that, over the course of its lifetime, a Hummer H3 has a lower energy cost per mile than all currently offered hybrid vehicles.
posted by driveler at 4:26 PM PST - 91 comments

Like, try to understand where the emo kids are coming from.
posted by jonson at 4:01 PM PST - 70 comments

"The job is waiting--there is no other job to do. ... Daniel Webster in the middle of the nineteenth century refused the vice presidential nomination saying 'he did not propose to be buried until he was already dead,' and Theodore Roosevelt at the beginning of the twentieth century accepted it but said he was 'taking the veil' and considered going back to finish law school to occupy his spare time." The American Prospect investigates the workings of Cheney's Office of the Vice President and discusses its unprecedented power. A stark contrast with the traditional role of the vice president.
posted by russilwvong at 3:13 PM PST - 19 comments

"Americans using Internet to make Major Decisions." (Ahem) Where have we heard of anything like that?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:09 PM PST - 15 comments

JetBlue Airlines' Route map has a little trick up its sleeve. When the Flash Route Map loads - click on a city, then hold down your computer's SHIFT key and then type the letters P B J. You will be....surprised. I know I was.
posted by metaxa at 3:05 PM PST - 91 comments

The Purple Party
Why can’t we have a serious, innovative, truth-telling, pragmatic party without any of the baggage of the Democrats and Republicans?

Where to draw the line is mostly a matter of common sense. Public reminders to honor one’s parents and love one’s neighbor, and not to lie, steal, or commit adultery or murder? Fine. Genesis taught as science in public schools, and government cosmologists forced by their PR handlers to give a shout-out to creationism? No way. Kids who want to wear crucifixes or yarmulkes or head scarves to those same schools? Sure, why not? And so on.
posted by frogan at 2:29 PM PST - 36 comments

When the Mongols invaded Russia in the 13th century, legend has it that when they reached the northern city of Kitezh, the citizens, rather than defending themselves, "engaged in fervent praying, asking god for their redemption. On seeing this, the Mongols rushed to the attack, but then stopped. Suddenly, they saw countless fountains of water bursting from under the ground all around them. The attackers fell back and watched the town submerge into the lake." Ever since, Kitezh has provided Russians "a platform for imagining what their culture might have been like, had it not been stamped by authoritarian rule." And it gave Rimsky-Korsakov the plot of his opera the Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh. [More inside.]
posted by languagehat at 1:46 PM PST - 22 comments

Germano Facetti - who died recently - was art director at Penguin Books during the 1960s. He was responsible for some of the most striking book cover designs of the period. More here.
posted by greycap at 12:18 PM PST - 36 comments

Oeil Public Pictures of change and struggle from around the world.
posted by carter at 12:04 PM PST - 6 comments

British scientists discover men's decision making skills can be compromised by a beautiful woman. I suppose this isn't much of a surprise, since "The Cheerleader Effect" has been reported on before [NYT]. The study also showed that testosterone levels also played a part, the more testosterone, the more pronounced the effect was.
posted by SirOmega at 11:25 AM PST - 59 comments

Carcass Cutting Tools: three words you've been waiting to read. Here's three more: Pneumatic Bung Dropper (with action shot!) Still not satisfied? Try Automatic Carcass Splitter. Terrifying, and yet strangely arousing.
posted by Gamblor at 10:28 AM PST - 40 comments

Virtual Tresspassing is yet another Google maps mashup, but one of the minority (at least that I have found) that let you add markers of your own that are persistent and visible to others. Is it at all useful? Who cares, I was a cute kid and I don't have to risk PMITA prison like a common street tagger - I can be leet and from da streetz while remaining a pasty-faced geek.
posted by phearlez at 10:20 AM PST - 10 comments

Smash through blocks of ice with your fist. [Flash, stupid]
posted by Armitage Shanks at 9:30 AM PST - 31 comments

The 'Star Wars' Traveler: I'm not really a 'Star Wars' geek, so I had no idea that the Tatooine scenes were shot in Tunisia. Instead of repairing those units on the South Ridge, perhaps you feel the need to visit visit Obi Wan Kenobi? Maybe you need to jam to some space jazz at the Cantina (oota goota, Solo?)? Maybe you will see a krayt dragon skeleton in the Dune Sea. Just watch out for the sand crawlers.
posted by NoMich at 8:57 AM PST - 9 comments

How were you circumcised? A fascinating discussion of circumcision scar styles left by the different methods of circumcision. (NSFW, penis photos, slightly gruesome discussion of circumcision methods.)
posted by agropyron at 8:52 AM PST - 165 comments

The Campaign Gore Can't Lose. Al Gore makes the case for global warming. (Trailer) Even the hard-bitten conservatives at the National Review are impressed. Can Al Gore lead the way to a new environmental majority?
posted by empath at 8:19 AM PST - 201 comments

Whole Tree Shredding. This is not your average rotary mulcher. Watch the "SLASHBUSTER"® HD 480B chew through 10-14 inch diameter trees with ease. No auxiliary engine is necessary. Horsepower-for-horsepower this is the highest performance tree shredder available.
posted by Falconetti at 7:41 AM PST - 59 comments

When Anarchist Performance Art takes the guise of a humble Ice Cream Truck, I can't help but think that money spent funding the arts is money well spent.
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 7:41 AM PST - 17 comments

Scott McClellan resigns; Karl Rove sidelined. (NYT) The promised "shakeup" of the White House begins.
posted by mkultra at 7:10 AM PST - 124 comments

The scientific tradition in Africa. An interview with Thebe Medupe, a South African astronomer.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:58 AM PST - 5 comments

Evolution: A Web Companion. 'The expanding universe is both awesome and humbling. When looking closely at nature—whether through a telescope, microscope, or computer visualization of collected data—one cannot help being struck by the intricacies and complexities observed. The magnitude of the cosmos, the power of natural forces, and the extent of deep time, however, alert us to how small and transient we are...'
Related :- The Writings of Charles Darwin (previous thread); Talk Origins; Understanding Evolution.
posted by plep at 6:55 AM PST - 10 comments

Hide the kiddies, hide the wife. And this wasn't much better. Come to think of it, the Mets have always been associated with Major League cheese (although they did have one awesome song and video back during their 80's heyday). All right, gotta run. The Venga bus is coming...[warning: this post contains .ra files, embedded .mp3s, sucky music]
posted by ericbop at 6:35 AM PST - 7 comments

LiveJournal adopts banner ads. SixApart has broken a longstanding promise/agreed-upon principle (recently deleted) and is adding banner ads to the service, which will be visible to the general public and approximately 95% of their users. Last year's April Fool's joke suddenly not very amusing anymore. Is SixApart's bubble a bit overinflated?
posted by insomnia_lj at 6:31 AM PST - 129 comments

Britain's New Labour have very short memories!

They are trying to persuade people to vote for them by highlighting exactly how they got in to power themselves as being a fault in the Conservative Party
posted by catchmurray at 3:57 AM PST - 34 comments

The Vagina Institute [NSFW]. Everything you've ever wanted to know about vaginas.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:37 AM PST - 50 comments

Nes Micro To go along with your portable snes, playstation, and Atari 2600 of course. Want to do it yourself? buy the book. Lots more stuff on Ben Heckendorn's home page (how quaint!). (found all this googling for pictures of NES cartages)
posted by delmoi at 3:27 AM PST - 8 comments

The Lafayette studio has one of the oldest histories of any photographic business in the world. It was founded in Dublin in 1880. The photographs can be viewed at the Victoria & Albert Museum but this site really shows them off in much more detail.
posted by tellurian at 12:32 AM PST - 6 comments

FT Report Oh dear, I had high hopes that Skype would hold out. Still, I guess they are telling us. Can anyone find the list of banned words in the TOM client?
posted by priorpark17 at 12:27 AM PST - 22 comments

On January 1st, 2006, Bryan Harvey was murdered along with his wife and two young daughters in the basement of their Virginia home. Smoke issuing from the house was spotted by Johnny Hott, Harvey's bandmate in the terrific, late-80s duo House of Freaks. The fire was apparently started by the killers in an attempt to cover up the evidence. By all accounts the Harveys were a well-liked family whose loss has left a city stunned and saddened. Bryan once remarked, "I have a lot of faith in humans. I believe we're capable of incredibly beautiful things (as well as incredibly evil)." Unfortunately the truth of that statement has become readily apparent. (more inside)
posted by ktoad at 10:26 PM PST - 20 comments

DJ Assault is all up in your house. nsfw
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 9:23 PM PST - 25 comments

In 1889, Dolores Cannon "channeled" the spirit of Nostradamus. Among other things... A leader in the Middle East will launch a nuke that will overshoot its target and detonate in the Mediterranean Sea. A great and rich power will be subject to serious natural disasters, particularly earthquakes and flooding. And the presidents of the U.S. will abuse their power to an increasingly greater extent. Educated guessing? No! Even The Onion staffs some prophets.
posted by Nquire at 8:14 PM PST - 19 comments

Johnny Cash implores Big Bird, "Don't Take Your Ones To Town." R.E.M. explore the spectrum of muppet emotion with Furry Happy Monsters. All the way back in 1972, Stevie Wonder offers the superlatively funky 1-2-3. The Pointer Sisters teach an entire generation about surreal terror with the classic Pinball Number Count. Ray Charles sings The Alphabet Song, with an inexplicable assist from Patrick Stewart, David Robinson and Lambchop. And, of course, who could forget the time The Beetles came to Sesame Street?
posted by Simon! at 6:39 PM PST - 86 comments

Now that Tomkat has birthed their Tomkitten, at least two questions arise: 1) will Tom eat the placenta? and 2) will the child be retarded?
posted by billysumday at 6:07 PM PST - 86 comments

Moo & Oink, Chicago's most honestly named meat shoppe is having a jingle contest!
posted by fnerg at 4:26 PM PST - 16 comments

Hugo Chavez to Carlos the Jackal: "My doctor has told me that my spirit must nourish itself on danger to preserve my sanity, in the manner that God intended, with this stormy revolution to guide me in my great destiny.
posted by semmi at 12:37 PM PST - 59 comments

“My God, you know, did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy's head?” Rumsfeld “personally involved” in abuses at Guantanamo - according to a recently obtained (by Salon) army inspector general report which contains a sworn statement from a Lt. General
posted by Smedleyman at 11:53 AM PST - 101 comments

Well, this settles everything: Kirk Cameron debunks evolution.
posted by docgonzo at 11:08 AM PST - 310 comments

Equidistant Eats lets you find restaurants that are centrally located to two or three locations. Just enter at least two addresses and click "Submit." Street address, city and state are required. ZIP Code is optional.
posted by jonson at 8:47 AM PST - 15 comments

27: About, Conspiracy theories regarding, Photographs of, Weird Al and
posted by Plutor at 8:16 AM PST - 44 comments

StillFree. - Graffiti artist Marc Ecko tags Air Force One at andrews air force base.
posted by jba at 7:54 AM PST - 65 comments

In the US there are three major forms of manual communication ASL (American Sign Language, PSE (Pidgin Signed English or Contact), and SEE (Signing Exact English). Translating from English to any one of these is hard enough. That's not stopping this team from trying taking on the added challenge of a machine translation. I can't imagine them doing half as well as this man's efforts at live translating rap, switching between all three variants (video, with voice over).
posted by plinth at 7:06 AM PST - 9 comments

Star Wars Kid Finally Gets Settlement Claiming to have been unable to attend school on account of being more famous than the kid who played the real Anakin Skywalker, Ghyslain "Star Wars Kid" Raza (original thread) finally gets his cut off of the three kids responsible for making sure he'll never, ever get a date. Sadly, the situation got so bad Ghyslain "let himself go and no longer lifted weights to keep fit." So much for a sequel.
posted by TheFarSeid at 6:47 AM PST - 73 comments

Evolution timeline (Embedded .swf). This animated story of life since about 13,700,000,000 shows everything from the big bang to the formation of the earth and the development of bacteria and other organisms to the ascent of man and humans effect on the earth. Other work discussed one year ago yesterday, what an evolution! (The animation is pretty large, you may have to scroll your screen, or just open the .swf directly)
posted by pithy comment at 6:21 AM PST - 21 comments

One Solidier free but a second in jail for having a "very informed conscience". Interesting views on motivations later in the interview.
posted by doogyrev at 4:24 AM PST - 21 comments

The Birth of a Queer Nation. Determined to build a better world for future generations, the founding fathers and mothers set sail on 14 June 2004 in the Gayflower until they were washed ashore on the uninhabited Coral Islands. With the strains of Gloria Gaynor filling the tropical air, they hoisted the rainbow flag above the palm trees and white, sandy beaches. The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands was born.
posted by Falconetti at 1:03 AM PST - 55 comments

"In 1953, while working a hotel switchboard, a college graduate named Shea Zellweger began a journey of wonder and obsession that would eventually lead to the invention of a radically new notation for logic. From a basement in Ohio, guided literally by his dreams and his innate love of pattern, Zellweger developed an extraordinary visual system - called the “Logic Alphabet” - in which a group of specially designed letter-shapes can be manipulated like puzzles to reveal the geometrical patterns underpinning logic."
posted by vacapinta at 11:06 PM PST - 28 comments

Today in weird animals : An international group of scientists has described an animal that provides nutrition for its young by letting them peel off and eat its skin.
posted by Afroblanco at 10:31 PM PST - 30 comments

The Nata village blog - "A unique opportunity to witness the battle to control the spread of HIV/AIDS in an African village."
posted by Gyan at 9:26 PM PST - 4 comments

Atypyk seems to be two guys from France who change everyday things into stuff you want. From soap and Pez dispensers to art on dollar bills and interesting ideas.
posted by Zack_Replica at 9:23 PM PST - 6 comments

Nuking Mississippi. In 1964, the Atomic Energy Commission drilled a shaft into a salt dome near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and began the only test nuclear detonations in the eastern United States. Despite stories of radioactive frogs in the area, and locals remembering that the earth kicked up waves, the ground cracked, chimneys tumbled and the creeks turned black, officials insist that there are no lasting effects from the underground tests.
posted by gimonca at 8:59 PM PST - 38 comments

Sechtl-Vosecek. A collection of photographs taken over the last 150 years are in the process of being digitized. Check out the Sokol costume ball Šibřinky or take a trip from Bechyně to Tábor. Also available is a selection concentrating on Bukhara from the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection. And much, much, more.
posted by tellurian at 8:52 PM PST - 7 comments

Fantasy football leagues not your thing? Think stock market sims are too dry? Have you ever dreamed of having your own quality dogs to raise, feed, groom, train, breed, and show? Monday non-flash fun, requires sign-up.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 4:53 PM PST - 16 comments

The Library of Congress has competed its annual selection of 50 sound recordings for the 2005 National Recording Registry. Nominations are being accepted for 2006.
posted by stbalbach at 4:17 PM PST - 24 comments

The pleasure of finding things out. If you only watch one documentary on the subject of science this year, let is be this one. The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman is interviewed about a host of issues, such as [more inside].
posted by koenie at 3:22 PM PST - 46 comments

One red paperclip turns into a year's free rent on an a house in Phoenix, Arizona. Previously.
posted by cerebus19 at 1:43 PM PST - 41 comments

Not your older brother's Burger Time. Burger King is developing three XBox videogames starring its eponymous mascot. And not just any games: they'll be modeled after such titles as Halo, Mortal Kombat and Need for Speed. But, you know, with fast food. Confirmation of the plans came in the form of a lawsuit threatened against Kotaku, the blog that broke the story.
posted by me3dia at 1:25 PM PST - 31 comments

Segregation. Elimination. Two different accounts of bizarro things happening in USA schools. [via]
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 12:55 PM PST - 34 comments

Double Read This: Revolution! The Epsilon Rising seeks the BEST DRUMMER EVER! They should be 1)AWESOME; 2)TOTALLY INTO US; 3) ETHNIC (but if not, that's cool, man) 4) POT SMOKERS... At least they like Hawkwind.
posted by klangklangston at 12:46 PM PST - 62 comments

Wangari Maathai discusses saving the environment in Nigeria
and how religion influenced its destruction and subesquent efforts at saving it. A beautiful portrait of a beautiful determined woman doing her part to help save the planet.
posted by specialk420 at 12:34 PM PST - 4 comments

Small town girl killed by meth dealer. It was a story that we talked about before. A Meth dealer admitted to tying up a little girl in order to 'scare' her into silence about his lab. The girl died. There's only one problem though, it didn't happen, the confession was false, and DNA evidence linked another man to the crime, who has since been charged. According to Al Roker, though, Meth is still to blame, for causing 'hallucinations' and 'dementia' rather then police pressure to confess regardless of actual guilt.
posted by delmoi at 11:59 AM PST - 44 comments

Your portrait painted like a propaganda poster. Become a socialist hero... in just 4 easy steps. To start, pick a poster from among the selection. Two weeks later, your painting is ready. (via STaAatCK)
posted by Ljubljana at 11:30 AM PST - 71 comments

In honor of Sports Eye Safety Month, the worst martial arts sequence ever filmed. Starring Don Niam as Stingray. (warning : fake eye truama)
posted by ozomatli at 8:33 AM PST - 38 comments

creativehighschoolmusic.net is a website featuring the Brookline High School Jazz Band. It is designed to encourage collaborative, creative musicianship among students. It contains video and audio of performances and original compositions, as well as video of the Jazz Band's creative process, music lessons, and some podcasts.
posted by rxrfrx at 8:05 AM PST - 3 comments

Folkvine: A creative presentation of Florida folk artists and their work. The interface can be a little baroque, but there's some nifty stuff inside.
posted by Miko at 7:46 AM PST - 5 comments

Everything you thought you knew about stirring beverages, putting on Band-Aids, rolling up sleeves, removing carpet stains, de-scaling fish, and quieting crying babies is wrong or inefficient.
posted by reformedjerk at 7:26 AM PST - 31 comments

Video game studies? Yes, please. And I don't just mean in gaming schools. Critical perspectives have been developing as well. Metafilter is already wise to ludology,but what about its mother discipline, ergotics? Don't forget narrative and storytelling. Of course, if cultural studies, or education is your thing, that's covered too. Other programs focus on application and aesthetics. Perhaps MeFites are catching on?
posted by mrmojoflying at 5:43 AM PST - 15 comments

It's not over until the fat lady sings, and she's not due up till midnight. BBC Radio 3 has devoted its schedule to a week of Beethoven and a month of Bach. Now it's going for the endurance record: devoting a day to a complete performance of Wagner's Ring cycle: a rare thing for a work and composer more often discussed than listened to, and more often excerpted or parodied than heard in full. The website offers even more lavish augmentation this time, including live libretto translation and commentary.
posted by holgate at 5:13 AM PST - 11 comments

Blobbiemorph
posted by mothershock at 5:07 AM PST - 14 comments

What is a wikipedian? Every so often a Wikipedian comes to their senses, sees a problem with the way things are operating, and tries to do something about it. Tired of seeing articles carelessly deleted, censored, and then cherry picked as to what is "encyclopedic enough", several Wikipedia members formed "Wikipedians against censorship".
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:57 AM PST - 39 comments

Some people rap their way out of Osaka's slums. Others are forced. The lucky ones get to stay in their little blue houses for now, but how long will it be until another Rose Convention comes to town to spoil their fun?
posted by Jase_B at 1:03 AM PST - 16 comments

In the latest salvo of the marketing wars, London ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi has taken the unique step of creating a new pop band that combines all the manufactured charm of the Spice Girls with all the serious musical chops of a female version of N'Sync (or, for the Brits out there, a female version of "Take That"). The band has yet to have a name, but they will be available to directly promote whatever item corporate sponsors pay Saatchi to have them promote.
posted by jonson at 11:20 PM PST - 45 comments

Symphony No. 2 in C Minor,"Resurrection" ...Come with Uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited. google video
posted by hortense at 11:08 PM PST - 14 comments

A Feminist Gaming Manifesto. (And part 2 is here.) "So wait, you’re wondering, maybe, why don’t these crazy men-folk just do that? I think the answer is actually pretty straightforward. People who themselves feel marginalized can’t bear the thought that they could be in a position of power wherein they could hurt someone in the same way that they feel hurt. Who out there hasn’t felt terribly marginalized? What happens, then, is there’s this conflation of “you’re doing something that makes me feel excluded or hurt” with “you’re a bad, bad man like those people with the bitch shirts.” You can’t handle that thought, so you try desperately to prove that it’s not the case. Guilt, or fear that you might be guilty, never did anybody any good."
posted by Bryan Behrenshausen at 4:59 PM PST - 87 comments

This fellow links to Metafilter on his blog. Now we can return the favor.
posted by thirteenkiller at 4:48 PM PST - 211 comments

James Jesse Strang - The "King" of Beaver Island. On the twenty-seventh day of June, 1844, at five and a half o'clock in the afternoon, James J. Strang was in the Spirit, and the Angel of God came unto him and saluted. Although members of his Mormon breakaway sect mortally wounded the King for being too strict, his church and works live on.
posted by Falconetti at 4:33 PM PST - 11 comments

In time for the tail end of Easter - it's bunny lovin' time: Brokeback Mountain as performed by animated bunnies (and other movies, all flash), the odd world of the Watertown bunny lady, the marshmallow bunny survival test labs, and, of course, the history of the Playboy bunny. (All SFW, except for the bunny version of Reservoir Dogs)
posted by blahblahblah at 4:13 PM PST - 7 comments

My Favorite Wasteland. "Need more reasons to stay home? You could probably find them sitting in the row behind you. Many members of the contemporary movie audience, only marginally socialized, would have made a misanthrope of Gandhi... Grownups who do choose to remain at home with the remote--and I often count myself among them, not a TV enthusiast exactly, but certainly a sympathist--have no reason to apologize. TV can now teach Hollywood something about smarts." [via]
posted by digaman at 4:00 PM PST - 25 comments

the "Second Liberation of Baghdad" --coming soon, in which we act as "enforcers", providing "protection" --...American and Iraqi troops would move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, leaving behind Sweat teams — an acronym for “sewage, water, electricity and trash” — to improve living conditions by upgrading clinics, schools, rubbish collection, water and electricity supplies. Sunni insurgent strongholds are almost certain to be the first targets, although the Shi’ite militias such as the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric, and the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade would need to be contained. ... Will we be greeted with candy and flowers again as well?
posted by amberglow at 3:11 PM PST - 63 comments

What did kids do before the Internet? Well, some bought makeup magazines, grabbed their parents' Super-8 cameras, and made their own horror movies. Now that kids have the Internet? Well, more of the same (albeit with slightly less sophisticated monsters). (YouTube, Google Video).
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:09 PM PST - 3 comments

It's F'ing Dethklok! Also known as Death Klok Metacolpyse, this cartoon from the creator of Home Movies will debut 20 episodes on Cartoon Network in August. It's been called "Spinal Tap meets Scooby Doo meets Norway, and will feature guest appearances by metal superstars. It'll be months before the high decibel violence and comedy commences, meanwhile comedy and metal nerds can see this 82 second leak.
posted by Blingo at 1:38 PM PST - 23 comments

Along the Ottawa River, past the Peace Tower, is the Centre Block of Parliament—for cats. Started by Irene Desormeaux in the 1970s and taken care of by Rene Chartrand (who recently received the Humane Society of Canada's Heroes for Animals Award) since 1987, the 20-40 cats on the property have been one of the lesser-known parts of Parliament Hill. [via]
posted by Hot Like Your 12V Wire at 1:33 PM PST - 13 comments

Speak softly, don't argue and slow down' The reputation of the "Ugly American" abroad is not..... just some cruel stereotype, but - according to the American government itself - worryingly accurate. Now, the State Department has joined forces with American industry to plan an image make-over by issuing guides for Americans travelling overseas on how to behave.
posted by terrymiles at 12:59 PM PST - 95 comments

FOAM When foam tests go wrong.
posted by vronsky at 12:46 PM PST - 30 comments

Glad Påsk! Happy Easter, in Swedish, via old and unusual greeting cards, featuring lots of chicks and surprising numbers of roosters, amorous poultry pairs, and even frogs.
posted by afiler at 12:08 PM PST - 6 comments

Free Air Transport for Cancer Patients
The Corporate Angel Network puts cancer patients and half empty corporate jets together for travel to treatment centers for free. Win meets win.
posted by fenriq at 11:45 AM PST - 21 comments

Some badass eggs for this easter done in the Ukranian style called pysanky. More from last year and the year before. [via mefi projects]
posted by mathowie at 11:09 AM PST - 9 comments

The Wealth of Networks. Yochai Benkler is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. A few years ago he wrote one of the seminal papers on Commons-based production, Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm. Now he has a new book - The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. You can buy it, download it or add to it.
posted by scalefree at 8:19 AM PST - 6 comments

"Livin' with war everyday": Alicia Morgan was one of about 100 singers summoned Wednesday to a secret recording session in Los Angeles. "When the lyrics we were supposed to sing flashed on the giant screen," she writes on her blog, "a roar went up from the choir. I'm not going to give the whole thing away, but the first line of one of the songs was "Let's impeach the President for lyin'!" Get ready: Neil Young's got a new album coming.
posted by docgonzo at 7:26 AM PST - 184 comments

Before the Big Bang - way, way out of my depth, but I thought this comment was intriguing: "The paper as published, along with a longer follow up paper, looks to my untrained eye a nearly complete quantum gravitation theory, which is an exciting prospect in itself. However, as with all physical theories, we will await for experimental support before popping the cork." Here's some more on loop quantum gravity, spin networks, the big bang and ekpyrosis.
posted by kliuless at 7:25 AM PST - 18 comments

Screw Nike adverts. It's what they can do on the pitch that counts. Poetry without the bells and whistles. Some of the young names to look out for in this Summer's football World Cup in Germany: Manuel Fernandes (Portugal), Lionel Messi (Argentina), Sergio Ramos (Spain), Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal), Wayne Rooney (England).
posted by nthdegx at 3:26 AM PST - 34 comments

The Symphony OS. Microsoft may have tired something like this before, but it certainly doesn't look as pretty. This beta linux distro is sporting something called the Mezzo Desktop environment. Under its hood resides a http server and a Mozilla renderer which allows you to run any applications coded with HTML, Javascript and PERL. Think small "Web 2.0" applications on your own computer or more Dashboard widgets for tracking your FedEx packages. You might not get your extended family on to the alterative OS bandwagon, but a different conceptualization of the desktop never hurts. Instructions on how to get it running on Ubuntu are here.
posted by phyrewerx at 9:26 PM PST - 40 comments

Swine penis. Swine Penis. Swine penis. Penis whine. Penis wine. [a little nsfw]
posted by jessamyn at 9:06 PM PST - 49 comments

Togs or Undies Not the 100% typical or untypical view of New Zealand. (Previously Discussed) Trumpet isn't the only product to depict Aotearoa in advertising. Summer & Clothing Choices are a theme. As are blokes & beer. Sweet as bro. Politically correct not an issue !
posted by doogyrev at 7:04 PM PST - 12 comments

Virginia Woolf the cricketer, the beach belle posing in a stripy bathing suit or as the March Hare at an Alice in Wonderland-themed party.
For the first time, 1,000 photographs from Woolf's private album and that of her sister, Vanessa Bell, have been catalogued and published. More inside. (via litterae)
posted by matteo at 3:30 PM PST - 27 comments

men who have sex with dolls The women's magazine Marie Claire is just getting the news that some men prefer life-size, wife-size companionship over "women of style and substance." more here ( not safe for work)
posted by halekon at 1:36 PM PST - 161 comments

You know about numbers, right? Natural numbers, rational numbers, integers, real numbers, complex numbers, prime numbers, funny numbers, illegal numbers. Illegal numbers? Well, there’s the illegal numbers game. Apparently 69 is illegal in Virginia, among other places. But did you know about illegal prime numbers? My brain is getting number by the day. (via digg)
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:18 PM PST - 25 comments

A for Anarchy: Exploring and enjoying the anarchism that many think was lost in the movie version of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta.
posted by homunculus at 11:45 AM PST - 50 comments

You desire new music? How fortuitous! Look what your fellow mefites have been up to:

- The 23rd Century, addictive psychedelic pop from tcobretti (via Projects)
- Both Ends of a Gun, a shotgun-produced country album by Miko (via Projects)
- Congratulations to the Young Men of Nelson, creepy tortured music-toy electronica by nylon (via Projects)
- MAXX KLAXON, ass-bumping orwello-euro electropop by Artifice_Eternity (via Projects)
- Inter[mediate], an electronic EP by phylum sinter (via Projects)
- Vector Trio, atmospheric jazzers, and just one client of turtlegirl's Scully Sound production outfit (via Projects)
- Fractures EP, some lush electronic stuff by nthdegx (via Projects)
- The Earl Stoner Band, countrified tunes by xowie (via Projects)
- Red On Strike, XX-fronted punk rock by InfidelZombie (via Projects)
- The Scarring Party, foot-stomping old-timey tunes by drezdn (via Projects)
- Soplerflo Archives, sundry musical noises by soplerflo (via...wait for it...waaaaaait for iiiiit...Projects!)

Viva la Projects!
posted by cortex at 9:46 AM PST - 97 comments

Frog Review - Talking frogs review websites.
posted by carter at 9:26 AM PST - 18 comments

A Dramatic New Portrait of Leo Sayer "Leo Sayer is ebullient, passionate, and immensely talented. He is the ultimate people person, enthusiastically embracing life. A neighbour of his who is familiar with both my work and Leo's told me that Leo would be the perfect subject for a portrait. So I wrote and asked, it was as simple as that." Sadly, Tony Johansen's portrait of Leo Sayer didn't win this year's Archibald Prize. Then again, neither did this.
posted by Biblio at 8:55 AM PST - 19 comments

See the big dark Bosnian hill there? Slightly southwest of where the rivers meet. The one that looks like a pyramid. It's a pyramid! Explore Europe's first pyramid here. (via)
posted by thirteenkiller at 8:48 AM PST - 20 comments

The Angry Left: The Washington Post runs a front-page feature about (in)famous Daily Kos diarist, Mary Scott O'Connor.
posted by empath at 8:48 AM PST - 76 comments

Samurai Kittens - 99% fun and hilarity watching little martial-artsified kittens die in horrifying ways, 1% ad for IFC's Samurai 7, an anime about Akiro Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. I don't normally go for this stuff, but all ya gotta do is mash a few buttons, and even I got to see all 9 "Furtalities" and enter the drawing for a dvd box set. Check out the fake ads, I won't spoil them for ya.
posted by beth at 6:49 AM PST - 11 comments

Little girls gone bad... Guess who's catching up to boys when it comes to punching, kicking and biting?
posted by phoenixc at 2:48 AM PST - 25 comments

Futbol ! - As the World Cup fever heats up ... the Swiss heat up their campaign for the futbol widows' ... "Alternative Programme" (d/l the commercial ... purrrrrrrrrr)
posted by Surfurrus at 12:24 AM PST - 8 comments

October 20, 1991 - the Oakland Hills weathered a massive firestorm, destroying almost 2,500 homes and taking 25 lives. For many years, it remained the biggest urban disaster in US history.
posted by drstein at 9:24 PM PST - 28 comments

San Francisco on Tuesday became the first major U.S. city to pass a resolution acknowledging the threats posed by peak oil. The resolution cites an influential study commissioned by the U.S. Dept. of Energy, known as the Hirsch Report, and proponents delivered copies of the The Oil Age Poster to elected officials in the run up to the vote.
posted by stbalbach at 8:41 PM PST - 26 comments

Will algae defeat global warming? "Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly... The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40 percent less CO2... The algae is harvested daily and a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel".
posted by reklaw at 5:10 PM PST - 53 comments

Famed for its unusually cinematic look (for the time), Another World is a classic vector-based game from the early 90s created by Eric Chahi. A new version with updated (but not too updated) graphics was released for Windows XP today; you can download a demo here. (direct link to 22MB installer .exe)
posted by Armitage Shanks at 5:07 PM PST - 41 comments

Lisa Spodak has been raising money for breast cancer research by getting celebrities to pose with teddy bears. Here's some of her results.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:19 PM PST - 33 comments

The Tank Man (via Frontline). An iconic image of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
posted by bardic at 2:44 PM PST - 45 comments

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads Digital images, plus the occasional sound file, for the Bodleian's massive collection. In addition, Samuel Pepys was an enormously important collector, and the Early Modern Center at UCSB has digitized his collection--again, with some sound files. See also the Francis J. Child Ballads, taken from Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. (For previous MeFi sojourns in the wonderful world of ballads, see here, here, and here.)
posted by thomas j wise at 2:28 PM PST - 8 comments

The Lifelong Friendship Society produces some comfortably disjointed art/video/music/writing that is sometimes incredibly cheesy. (quicktime is pretty much required for all these links)
posted by bigmusic at 2:10 PM PST - 10 comments

Without surprise
The world might change to something quite different,
As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
Change as the kisses are changing without our thinking.
Charles Simic on Elizabeth Bishop's uncollected poems
posted by matteo at 12:24 PM PST - 17 comments

One piece of paper. "It was an experiment to see how long it could last. Draw a comic, rub it off, and draw another over the top. Once it had finished, a second experiment was started on another piece of paper. Current data - one piece of paper can survive an average of 65 cartoons being drawn on it" [via mefi projects]
posted by mathowie at 12:23 PM PST - 29 comments

Bible Dudes. I'm a Bible Scholar, a Scriptural caller, I got a lot of books but not a lot of dollar. Things from antiquity you know they be ravin', I throw around words like sitz-im-leben, A bazillion languages are cloggin' my head, All of my heroes have been a long time dead. Come on along now, all the Bibledudes' buddies, Cuz Yo! We gonna rap BIBLICAL STUDIES!
posted by ozomatli at 11:47 AM PST - 34 comments

Mitosis reversed. Incompletely, but still... Here's the Nature paper(PDF). Here's the video (direct link to QT). Oh, and we can print organs now. O brave new world! (via, via)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:06 AM PST - 19 comments

Hardy-Littlewood rules. Hardy's to-do lists are cool too, BTW.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:05 AM PST - 11 comments

The architecture of plant tissue. Very cool stained slides of various plant cells. [via Pruned]
posted by billysumday at 10:38 AM PST - 4 comments

I Love Egg! And individual Flash cartoons about eggs.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:34 AM PST - 13 comments

Sitting in an evidence vault for the past seven years, seen by almost no one, the nearly-four-hour self-produced videotape posing, boasting and bitching of the Columbine shooters may soon be released to the public. Some of the victims' families have supported its release while others have opposed it. Is this a case of "cops controlling the information flow" or is it protecting the public from potential copycats? We report. You deride.
posted by spock at 10:16 AM PST - 18 comments

Happy "Good" Friday, MetaFilter. Why not spend some time today contemplating your extreme fanatical beliefs? From the good people at MungBeing.
P.S. watch out for the falling eggs.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 10:02 AM PST - 19 comments

Six-String Masterpieces. Dean Guitars invites tattoo artists and musicians to decorate 50 Deans in a tribute to Dimebag Darrell. The results range from popstar kitsch to cronenbergian delight. Via Needled.
posted by frykitty at 9:31 AM PST - 15 comments

MyBillOfRights.org. Project to post a Bill of Rights monument in every state capitol of the U.S. Sounds like a retaliation to the posting of the 10 Commandments, right? Wrong. It's a rally to organize and unite all Americans who believe this country was founded on one amazing document, this we refer to constantly as the guidelines to our freedom.
posted by daq at 9:08 AM PST - 83 comments

An Easter Turducken . . . made of Peeps. This follows in a long line of MeFi Peeps posts and also offers something to do with a Cadbury Creame Egg other than bake a cake.
posted by donovan at 9:05 AM PST - 13 comments

Os Mutantes have reunited and will be playing the Pitchfork Media Festival this summer. Archival footage of the band discussed here.
posted by hydrophonic at 8:47 AM PST - 12 comments

Some interesting facts about domain names. The results of significant number crunching on 3.5GB of .com domain name records yield some intriguing stats - for example, did you know that every single permutation of three letter acronyms is already taken within the .com hierarchy? And that nearly 80% of four letter combinations (not actual words, but just random XSLA.com style gibberish) is reserved? 100% of the top 10,000 family names in America are also booked.
posted by jonson at 8:32 AM PST - 46 comments

Freefall is a smart and funny hard sci-fi comic about some aliens and robots and an anthropomorphic wolf. It's been going steadily since 1998. Wikipedia entry
posted by sonofsamiam at 8:32 AM PST - 13 comments

Remember the announcement for the BBC's Manchester Passion? The full list of songs and lineup were recently announced, rehearsals are over, tonight the procession through the city will be broadcast live on BBC Three - for now you can watch trailers and interviews with the cast (only for UK viewers/proxy users).
posted by funambulist at 8:17 AM PST - 13 comments

McGriddle Fan Fiction [via]
posted by rxrfrx at 5:37 AM PST - 15 comments

Spend 4:16 in trippy classic rock mash up video/music heaven. [Pardon the You Tube link]
posted by punkfloyd at 5:04 AM PST - 24 comments

A collection of NFB Vignettes that taught a generation of Canadians about archetypal norsemen, hydraulic treeshears, birling, how to speak French without having to learn it, and more!
(YouTubeorama)

(Vignettes previously discussed on MeFi in this Hinterland Who's Who FPP)
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:20 AM PST - 46 comments

Function Follows Form in Quantum Mechanics and Astronomy. The need for a NEW Black Hole. A Weblog.
posted by nthdegx at 2:21 AM PST - 22 comments

Get 'em while they're hot. Northwest Air Lines figures it's gotta pay the bills somehow, starts charging $15 for aisle and exit row seats.
posted by anjamu at 2:09 AM PST - 75 comments

"dayvan cowboy" - first video ever for the boards of canada directed by melissa olson from "campfire headphase" /and/ the upcoming ep "trans canada highway" which is launched on 06/06/06. video has sequences of previously discussed space giant leap.
posted by zenzizi at 6:44 PM PST - 39 comments

Faces of the Fallen is a browsable database of U.S. service members who've died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Created by Adrian Holovaty (chicagocrime.org, django), the site lets you browse by age, death date, home state and city, military branch or multiple search criteria. Each soldier gets his or her own page, as does each date, American city, age, military branch, etc. There's an RSS feed for recent casualties, a feed for each state and a feed for each military branch (also features Google Maps on several pages to highlight service members' hometowns). An amazing project that puts faces and stories behind the statistics we hear every day. [via mefi projects]
posted by mathowie at 6:07 PM PST - 49 comments

Wheeeeeeee! Na na na nah (warnings: embedded video, firefox, extreme retardity)
posted by loquacious at 6:06 PM PST - 25 comments

Rhapsody Distributes Their Music. So you're a blogger mentioning a song and wondering whether to link to iTunes or the Amazon album page? Link to Rhapsody: U.S. based listeners get to listen to 25 whole songs for free (per month).
posted by Firas at 5:52 PM PST - 30 comments

Searchable Ornithological Research Archive a site containing back issues of avian journals dating back to 1884. Some highlights: The landing forces of domestic pigeons, [pdf] an 1889 comparison of bird brains [pdf]
posted by Pink Fuzzy Bunny at 4:49 PM PST - 5 comments

The Great Failure of Wikipedia. Audio of a fascinating and at times hilarious 45-minute presentation by Jason Scott of textfiles.com on the politics and culture of Wikipedia, including tales of The Ninja, The Sex Offender and the Publisher, and the ongoing battle between the Inclusionists and the Deletionists. Will the Wikipedia become "an untenable Katamari-Damacy-like ball out of shit that rolls through the Internet"? (some language NSFW)
posted by Armitage Shanks at 4:21 PM PST - 102 comments

Stardates. Someone tries to rationalise something which the writers of Star Trek made up as they went along. Other approaches -- historical and mathematic. Really, I mean really?
posted by feelinglistless at 3:03 PM PST - 22 comments

Naked Melee Armageddon. You have roughly five seconds before the melee begins to load the screen with as many people as you can. When an alien and a human meet, they fight. They destroy each other with axes, explosions, ninja moves, electrocution, etc. No matter the outcome, both the winner and loser vanish. The only way to win is by outnumbering the enemy. [via]
posted by ND¢ at 1:25 PM PST - 27 comments

Sports Dignity (Or, rather, the lack thereof.) Alas, sometimes our athletes are just too caught up in the moment to realize what they're doing. Sometimes unfortunate things happen. Sometimes they suffer great pain. (Ugh.) ~NSFW~
posted by jdroth at 12:12 PM PST - 39 comments

The penis project. (NSFW) An art project by Sue Long. "At Long's house, penises are everywhere. Cluttering the bedroom floor, standing erect on bookshelves, sticking out of potted plants, sprinkled throughout her back yard. Everywhere you turn, a penis is staring at you." (via oink)
posted by madamjujujive at 10:27 AM PST - 67 comments

"To watch a black man on screen, being referred to as rabbi, or to see him partaking in a Seder meal and observing Passover really blurs the lines that divide blacks and Jews in this country." Warning Films/Nu-Lite Entertainment has announced the release of their new film, Color Of The Cross (trailer here). Expect more angry missives from the usual idiots.
posted by hypocritical ross at 9:44 AM PST - 26 comments

Latin America Turning Left? From the top: Lula da Silva*, Lopez Obrador, Nestor Kirchner, Hugo Chavez*, Alvaro Uribe, Michelle Bachelet*, Ollanta Humala, Alfredo Palacio, Oscar Berger, Leonel Fernandez, Oscar Arias, Tony Saca, Tabare Vazquez, Martín Torrijos, Evo Morales* Manuel Zelaya, Nicanor Duarte, Daniel Ortega, Rene Preval*.
posted by airguitar at 8:57 AM PST - 30 comments

It's Miller Time for SCIENCE: Survey Says: New Men are Evolving Adults, hate wine and shoes!
posted by Marnie at 8:31 AM PST - 53 comments

Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second. Using the formula provided, when the watermelon will hit the ground? Bellevue Community College President Jean Floten asked the Pluralism Steering Committee to take the lead on this, and to complete their task quickly.
posted by three blind mice at 7:43 AM PST - 213 comments

"He teaches the students to read the music from within themselves." The annual Pop Concert at Dondero High School was a beloved institution from 1971-2006. Under the direction of music instructor Rick Hartsoe, the A Capella Choir and student instrumentalists presented 20 popular songs per concert: "ten full choir pieces chosen for their harmonic and instrumental interest, and ten solos of the students' choosing." Pieces from the last ten years included such unconventional classics as Maroon 5's "This Love," System of a Down's "Chop Suey" and "Down In A Hole" by Alice In Chains. Also included were works by Stevie Wonder, Boston, Weezer, P.O.D., Norah Jones, The Doobie Brothers and many more. Every Pop Concert ended -- perhaps appropriately -- with "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" from Hair.

March 2006 saw the last Pop Concert performed at Dondero High. Mr. Hartsoe has announced his retirement. And due to consolidation with a neighboring school, Dondero High itself is closing at the end of this school year. Thankfully, eight of those Pop Concerts (from 1995 to 2005) are available as downloadable 2-CD sets from Comfortstand (previously mentioned). Yes, for free. Convinced yet? Basically, if you were blown away by the likes of The Langley Music School Project (previously mentioned), this might just be right up your musical alley.
posted by grabbingsand at 7:20 AM PST - 19 comments

I like (S+C) x (B+F)/T = V butts and I cannot lie.
posted by swift at 5:13 AM PST - 60 comments

Gregory Chaitin's Meta Math! The Quest For Omega
"Okay, what I was able to find, or construct, is a funny area of pure mathematics where things are true for no reason, they're true by accident... It's a place where God plays dice with mathematical truth. It consists of mathematical facts which are so delicately balanced between being true or false that we're never going to know, and so you might as well toss a coin." From Paradoxes of Randomness.
"In my opinion, Omega suggests that even though maths and physics are different, perhaps they are not as different as most people think. To put it bluntly, if the incompleteness phenomenon discovered by Gödel in 1931 is really serious — and I believe that Turing's work and my own work suggest that incompleteness is much more serious than people think — then perhaps mathematics should be pursued somewhat more in the spirit of experimental science rather than always demanding proofs for everything." From Omega and why maths has no Theory Of Everythings.
[previously, see also, via]
posted by MetaMonkey at 3:32 AM PST - 17 comments

We have flash drives. Three days after the Los Angeles Times broke the story of the US military secrets for sale at an Afghan bazaar, a reporter for the paper bought ($40) another computer drive sold openly outside the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan. The 1-gigabyte flash drive holds "what appears to be a trove of potentially sensitive American intelligence data, including the names, photographs and telephone numbers of Afghan spies informing on the Taliban and Al Qaeda, personal snapshots, Special Forces training manuals, records of direct action training missions in South America, along with numerous computer slide presentations and documents marked secret." Most documents are neither locked nor encrypted. But the good news is, some of them can't be opened without a password, and the Army is investigating anyway. (LAT BugMeNot)
posted by PenguinBukkake at 1:37 AM PST - 56 comments

"William Sloan Coffin, who died yesterday at 81, was among the foremost pacifists of his generation, and set the mold for the liberal activist preacher."

Coffin, the model for Doonesbury's Reverend Sloan, was a Freedom Rider, Yale chaplain, champion for social justice and one of the most respected leaders of the anti-Vietnam war movement.
posted by jessamyn at 11:12 PM PST - 30 comments

Mapping religion in America "Using 2000 Census information on a county-by-county basis, the maps focus on various aspects of religion." Fascinating maps from Geitner Simmons of the Omaha World-Herald. [via]
posted by LarryC at 9:56 PM PST - 60 comments

Take a card, any card, from the Anti-religious pack, or the insufferably cute Our lovers (kittens!) deck, or the utilitarian Cards that talk (Japanese, Korean and Chinese phrases) and many, many more.
posted by tellurian at 9:22 PM PST - 12 comments

Google Calendar has launched. It is compatible with yahoo, Outlook, and iCal and includes many other features.
posted by aburd at 9:03 PM PST - 88 comments

The ninja problem at one university has been quelled, thanks to the performance of your federal agents. Turns out, the perp was a costumed college student heading back from a church-related event. Think these guys will help him sue?
posted by SuperNova at 8:41 PM PST - 38 comments

Passport is the name of a recently-launched blog written by the editors of Foreign Policy magazine, covering the same wide range of topics as the magazine itself does. Updated frequently and around the clock, informal and personal — I don't know if it's just because it's new, but they're doing a great job, and if you're a world politics and news junkie like me, it's fantastic.
posted by blacklite at 8:35 PM PST - 9 comments

Answer to one of the most frequently unasked questions— What is Romo? Romo (Romantic Modernism) was an early '90s pop "movement" in England that Melody Maker claimed was going to save music, mostly from Oasis. How? Well, by reviving the true British spirit— Roxy Music, Manic Street Preachers (before one of 'em wandered off never seen again) and Duran Duran's wardrobe! Due to unfortunate timing issues (like that Melody Maker didn't wait for any of the bands to actually put out any music before declaring them saviors, and that they were 10 years too early to be Fischerspooner), Romo now only rates a two-word aside in All Music's entry on New Romantics. While Romo vaguely had a "sound," that of croony Morrissey-lite synthpop often, there were hidden gems like the crunchy spiky Plastic Fantastic. Indulge your curiosity about this overlooked musical "genre" here and here (warning— Second link NSF people with aesthetic visual sense).
posted by klangklangston at 7:40 PM PST - 33 comments

Titanic Two the Surface Trailer for the wonderful sequel to Bruckheimer's magnum opus Titanic. {via Videosift}
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 6:21 PM PST - 31 comments

US TV newsrooms churn out PR companies' spin as real news. Hats off to those broadcasters who turned the spin around to reflect the real truthiness.
Meanwhile while I didn't find similar PR company manipulation in UK TV news, there's certainly an element of government, or more accurately MoD, faking that compares well with the US's.
posted by NailsTheCat at 5:10 PM PST - 37 comments

Bioprinting. "Sitting in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was "printed", using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering."
posted by semmi at 4:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Dinner? No, a show. "For most of her adult life, Erika Sunnegardh was the epitome of a frustrated performer in New York City. Her artistic vocation was singing, but to make ends meet she endured the usual drudgery - waiting on tables in the Bronx where she lives and working as a tour guide...If Ms Sunnegardh, who is 40, awoke yesterday wondering if she was in the middle of a wonderful dream, who could blame her? On Saturday, the unimaginable had happened: she had sung the starring role in Beethoven's Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera." (via Waiter Rant)
posted by melissa may at 4:19 PM PST - 15 comments

Les Enfants Perdu de Tranquility Bay. (Google Video). Recently shown on Australian public TV, this French documentary explores a multi-billion dollar corporation that treats American teens like "faulty goods" sent back for repair. An octopus fishing incident is one of several heartbreaking episodes.
posted by johngoren at 3:28 PM PST - 36 comments

Dreams of Flying. Whimsical photographs by Jan Von Holleben.
posted by Robot Johnny at 3:25 PM PST - 27 comments

How are you celebrating Ibsen Year 2006? Reading Henrik Ibsen’s plays? His poems? What about his paintings? There’s always Peer Gynt: The Videogame.
posted by jrb223 at 2:49 PM PST - 12 comments

Mercury News D-12's Proof, shot dead at 32. Proof stayed close to give back what he owed - and paid with his life.
posted by archkim at 2:35 PM PST - 95 comments

Shocknife!
posted by Smedleyman at 2:22 PM PST - 49 comments

Debris. The terminus of ballistic arches. A photo-essay by Jonas Bendiksen of a different kind of space junk: Proton rocket stages peppering the Khazak countryside discarded from Baikonur Cosmodrome launches.
posted by trinarian at 1:08 PM PST - 17 comments

Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient. Oldie, but a goodie. All text, no pretty pictures.
posted by ontic at 11:38 AM PST - 108 comments

Ever thought about setttling down on a quiet farm? Possibly one in rural Wisconsin? How about one with a little history? Just because eBay pulled the auction doesn't mean it's not for sale. Great for the eccentric collector, I'd think. And there's a perfect band to play at the housewarming party.
posted by tula at 11:31 AM PST - 11 comments

Argentina On Two Steaks A Day The classic beginner's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon.
posted by rxrfrx at 11:29 AM PST - 78 comments

Steven Staley was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1991. A few days before his execution in February, he was granted a stay because he was found to be incompetent, a paranoid schizophrenic. Today, the judge has ordered that he be forced to take his medication so he can be legally put to death.
posted by Roger Dodger at 10:47 AM PST - 67 comments

A Powerful Lobby The Middle East scholar Martin Kramer takes on the various writers, sites, that proclaim that the American invasion of Iraq is but one more indication of the Jewish/Israeli Lobby influence in America. One of the nuttiest passages in "The Israel Lobby," the co-production of professors Stephen Walt (Harvard) and John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago), occurs in the very first footnote. (It's in the full version, on the website of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.)... and, in addtion addresses our involvement in Iraq, caused, claim some, by "Jewish/Israeli interests." [more]
posted by Postroad at 10:44 AM PST - 63 comments

Moonie Sushi? The Chicago Tribune reports on the Unification Church's control of True World Foods, a distributor that supplies the majority of sushi restaurants in the U.S. Also on their project list: The Washington Times, UPI, George W. Bush.
posted by Dukebloo at 10:24 AM PST - 26 comments

Kicking it to Title 26 Since April 7, tax law professor Jack Bogdanski has been posting up podcasts of the complete Internal Revenue code, with the exception of repealed provisions, one section at a time.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:38 AM PST - 9 comments

"This item has become very popular following the ban on use of scissors on aeroplanes." Relax, Officer, it's just a thread-cutter.
posted by serafinapekkala at 9:19 AM PST - 29 comments

Remember when US forces "found the weapons of mass destruction?" That announcement was made by President Bush on May 29, 2003 -- one day after this CIA Intelligence assessment was published. In the weeks following, reports emerged that disputed the CIA's findings. Now, three years later, the Washington Post says that the US Intelligence authorities already had "powerful evidence" that Bush's biological weapons claim was simply untrue.
posted by 327.ca at 9:13 AM PST - 67 comments

Inside the White House .... brought to you by Something Awful. Elaborate SA put-on, or so insane it must be true? I can't decide. DailyKos summary. [morey]
posted by dhartung at 9:02 AM PST - 92 comments

Airigami, the art of folding air in specially prepared latex containers includes the flying octopus, giant soccer players, and many others. [via growabrain]
posted by Armitage Shanks at 7:49 AM PST - 10 comments

The avuncular state - "A smarter, softer kind of paternalism is coming into style"
posted by Gyan at 7:41 AM PST - 9 comments

Uncle Sam Wants You (to color)! Many US government agencies have created coloring books for your pleasure, and Evergreen State has an index. Some of my favorites include Sea Turtles/No No Honu Kai, in English and Hawaiian; Celebrating Wildflowers, which has both line drawings and coloring guides; The Beagle Brigade (pdf); and, of course, Noxious Weeds are Everybody's Problem (pdf). (via Metachat)
posted by OmieWise at 7:37 AM PST - 7 comments

And you thought football itself was the universal language. The London chapter of the Goethe Institute jumps on the opportunity and offers a £35 crash course in German for the World Cup. Start out with these handy play scenario charts (pdf). Or, take the easy route and turn to AskMen for guidance.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:33 AM PST - 16 comments

Austria's AEIOU has bar-by-bar analyses of major classical works (of composers associated with Austria): audio, annotations, scores, and performance/score animations in various video formats, together with biographical essays on the composers. Some possible points of departure: 1, 2, 3.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:22 AM PST - 10 comments

She's Lost Control In one of the most bizarre posts I have ever read, Violet Blue weighs in on the Xenisucks.com debate and it's mention in the New York Times (Bugmenot). And then again after Dan Marshall (NYT) responds. But in a response to Violet Blue (about middle of the page), Matt Sharp (Xenisucks.com) says she has fabricated much of what she has attributed to him.
posted by gnash at 6:20 AM PST - 126 comments

In an article in the Guardian shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin announces that the Conservative Party has signed up to Labour's target to end child poverty in the UK by 2020. More about this story: Guardian leader, Labour Party response. Last month, the intermediate target of a 25% cut by April 2005 was missed, despite substantial progress. Perhaps the time is now right for this idea to be adopted over the pond?
posted by teleskiving at 5:52 AM PST - 12 comments

In 'Cartoon Wars', the latest (two part) episode of South Park, writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone parody the show that parodies everybody, Family Guy. The South Park episode features Cartman and Kyle at war over an imaginary episode of Family Guy that features a (censored) image of the Prophet Muhammed (QT preview here). But in writing their 'stinging satire' (some say of Family Guy itself, while others say it is a criticism of Islamofacism), have Trey and Matt ironically missed the fact that they themselves actually featured a non-censored image of the Prophet Muhammed in South Park almost five years ago?
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:26 AM PST - 121 comments

The Emperor gets a job. [Video, short commercial first] And don't forget previous Star Wars video-y goodness on MeFi.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:53 PM PST - 13 comments

Blood, guns, and plastic -- stop-motion style.
posted by crazymonk at 8:53 PM PST - 27 comments

Rudolf Vrba-RIP --he escaped from Auschwitz with another guy, Wetzler, in April 1944 and got to Slovakia and Hungary, telling the world of the atrocities in the Auschwitz Protocol. Some Hungarian community leaders, however (Hungary was the only country that hadn't had its Jewish population deported yet), were busy making deals with Eichmann for safe passage away. In any case, the result was that about 1,700 Hungarian Jewish leaders, with their families and friends, ended up in Switzerland, while almost half a million unsuspecting Hungarian Jews ended up dead in Auschwitz. Vrba's report first alerted the world (including the Vatican, Red Cross, and US and British authorities) to exactly what was going on, and helped prosecute some who were tried later. ...Knowing perfectly well that it was the secrecy surrounding their actions that allowed the Nazis to herd unsuspecting Jews and transport them like sheep to slaughter, Vrba and Wetzler — as soon as they got in touch with Jewish community representatives in their native Slovakia — compiled a detailed report. They wrote about Auschwitz and what awaited Hungarian Jews once they arrived: immediate death by gassing.
posted by amberglow at 8:50 PM PST - 17 comments

Robert Gregory Griffeth has deleted all of his galleries and in their place has posted these 12 enigmatic panels and a tracker (which, if accurate, tells me that there are a couple of hundred puzzled punters a day). [more inside]
posted by tellurian at 4:42 PM PST - 15 comments

Flashaholics are self-identified flashlight enthusiasts. The hobbyist community is big in Japan, and has a seedy underbelly as well.
posted by casconed at 3:43 PM PST - 23 comments

The Biliopegistic art. Athropodermic or otherwise you're bound to find something that suits your fancy. Or you could do it yourself. Or start a new career.
posted by Floydd at 2:02 PM PST - 9 comments

2006 Webby Award finallists announced. So, if your favorite home/welcome page My Yahoo or Wonderbra? Two nominations for Metacritic. Other Meta-related sites, not so much... Best of the web?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:17 PM PST - 36 comments

A guide to Japanese female exploitation films of the 70’s on DVD
posted by PenguinBukkake at 12:38 PM PST - 21 comments

The nuclear fuel cycle at the laboratory level has been completed. At this historic moment, with the blessings of God almighty and the efforts made by our scientists, I declare here that the laboratory-scale nuclear fuel cycle has been completed and young scientists produced enriched uranium needed to the degree for nuclear power plants. Industrial-scale enrichment of uranium will be the next important step which we can reach an agreement upon.
posted by three blind mice at 12:03 PM PST - 78 comments

Another great Google video. Before "Fear of Girls," the guys from Sleepy Eye, MN made a short film for a 48 hour film project called "Paper Hearts."
posted by a47danger at 11:16 AM PST - 17 comments

New York coke dealers like finance types like finance types like New York coke dealers. Not the best written piece of journalism, and at times sharing in the narcissitic delusions of the dealer, but a good look into "the game" -- even if they couldn't find a more cliche dealer (and a good way to throw in slight jabs at rap music, Washington Heights and GTA).
posted by geoff. at 11:15 AM PST - 30 comments

Finally, some pimping I can endorse. It started with cars, but the concept of "pimping" has quickly become passe. Until I saw this. Via Monkeyfilter
posted by kimdog at 9:38 AM PST - 60 comments

"It has always been a dream of mine to bring that loveable lawnmower-stealing rogue Gordon Bennet to the big screen, and I relish the challenge ahead."
Hot on the heels of videogame-to-movie adaptations such as Bloodrayne [+], Doom [+] and the forthcoming (and possibly even good) Silent Hill, the enterprising chaps behind arguably best-ever games review show (of a fairly dodgy bunch, admittedly) Consolevania and BBC Scotland's VideoGaiden have snapped up the film rights to legendary ruminant fan Jeff Minter's smash-hit game Hover Bovver. On the, erm, Commodore 64. From, uh... 1983.
posted by terpsichoria at 9:10 AM PST - 9 comments

AOOA (The Telephone) ...short, yet moody and evocative point-and-click puzzle. (If it's too short and leaves you wanting more, how about trying Magneto Syndrome? It's another short yet interesting sci-fi point-and-click/escape puzzle.) (note: flash)
posted by crunchland at 8:00 AM PST - 7 comments

Advice for weary, wandering Democrats Note to Democrats: "Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream." Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers. ..."
posted by Postroad at 7:20 AM PST - 86 comments

One-link post about blog post without additional explanatory text
posted by beth at 6:53 AM PST - 866 comments

Six Visions of the End: Fall Down Six Times, an essay by Ran Prieur, describes six possible scenarios for the near future: Worst Case ("Meanwhile computer technology keeps accelerating, leading by 2050 to an insane and nearly all-powerful artificial intelligence, which exterminates all life on Earth except a single human, who it keeps alive to torture for all eternity: you."), Ridiculous Best Case ("In 2016 Dean steps down and the new president is an anarchist who spends eight years peacefully dismantling the federal government and building local systems that make central control irrelevant and impossible."), Naive Sci-Fi Utopia ("Everyone can live forever, and have kids, and enjoy wide open spaces. No one is sure how this is possible, but it probably has something to do with the Mayan calendar or the word "quantum.""), and three others. Whether or not you agree with his vision, the exercise of imagining different futures is a useful one that might help us see a way through the multiple crises the Earth is going through. What does your apocalypse look like?
posted by spacewaitress at 6:37 AM PST - 70 comments

An advertising campaign in the UK warns men that they must seek a woman's consent before engaging in sex. The initiative is designed to combat the low conviction rate for rape but will it criminalise a generation of young men?
posted by bobbyelliott at 6:33 AM PST - 98 comments

Bored researchers conduct unappetizing study from a small sample that wasn't collected with even an allegation of neutrality. The conclusion? Winners sometimes use more drugs than their opponents. Did William Sessions and McGruff the Crime Dog lie to us? And is the Boston Globe even trying anymore?
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:12 AM PST - 15 comments

Can you prove it didn't happen? Best known for his work on Plan 9 from Outer Space, the Amazing Criswell had quite a career outside of his rare appearances in film. The spit-curled, stentorian psychic had a penchant for bizarre predictions, was the source for music by Mae West, and inspired some damned interesting writing.
posted by Astro Zombie at 5:48 AM PST - 13 comments

The hoboes' time has come. Inspired by John Hodgman's book "The Areas Of My Expertise," The 700 Hoboes Project gathers pictures of hoboes. Some are better than others.
posted by EarBucket at 4:48 AM PST - 17 comments

Laura Levine's works are themed around music, from her classic rock photos to her funky illustrations. Her children’s illustrated books about musical pioneers are delightful: Honky-Tonk Heroes & Hillbilly Angels is due out in May. Previously: Shake, Rattle & Roll and a collaboration with the B-52's, Wig! She also runs a curiosity shop in Phoenicia, NY. (via Internet Weekly)
posted by madamjujujive at 4:44 AM PST - 2 comments

Douglas Hofstadter says, "What troubles me is the notion that things that touch me at my deepest core -- pieces of music most of all, which I have always taken as direct soul-to-soul messages -- might be effectively produced by mechanisms thousands if not millions of times simpler than the intricate biological machinery that gives rise to a human soul.". That was prompted by his reception to the output of David Cope's project Experiments in Musical Intelligence.
posted by Gyan at 4:35 AM PST - 22 comments

The Guardian examines "nu snobbery" and the social acceptability among the British press and middle class of ridiculing the working class. The chav phenomenon has been discussed many times on MeFi, but if anything it has gotten more widespread, and as documented in the article, even spawned Chav Discos. Where will it all lead? Has Britain slipped completely back into class snobbery - in both directions - or did it never really go away?
posted by LondonYank at 4:11 AM PST - 90 comments

Hormone rock "Rock with the cock taken out and it's what a lot of women want to listen to right now"
posted by johnny7 at 12:14 AM PST - 62 comments

You can keep your Simon, Randy and Paula, I'll take Barbara Cook any day. Here is the Broadway legend's two hour master class (it's a REALTIME video from The New York Public Library) and it'll teach you more about singing, phrasing and music than every moment of American Idol combined. At least watch the first 20 minutes, you'll be amazed.
posted by adrober at 11:54 PM PST - 7 comments

UCLA Economist Ed Leamer reviews Thomas Friedman's "The world is flat." (.pdf) When the Journal of Economic Literature asked me to write a review of The World is Flat... I shipped it overnight by UPS to India to have the work done. (via)
posted by Kwantsar at 10:36 PM PST - 39 comments

Gender differences in literary taste - The Guardian (inter alia) has been reporting two English professors' studies of reading habits and feelings about books by gender. Others (newest to oldest): most revelatory books by reader gender (for men), (for women), author gender by reader gender. The methodology may not be unassailable but the findings are interesting and plausible. [viaduct vianochicken]
Sidenote: I did a little research following a comment on MR and reached a non-obvious conclusion: women hate Akira Kurosawa (check out those charts; for comparison). Theories welcome.
posted by grobstein at 10:28 PM PST - 36 comments

Let the fur fly. The New York Post's Page Six is the latest pillar of the 'Forth' Estate to take heavy damage from scandal. Like the Judy Miller fiasco of 2005, except with virtually zero ramifications upon things that actually matter, no one looks good here. The tawdry gist: Billionaire Sleaze-Bag set up Gossip Freelancer Sleaze-Bag -- who supposedly was offering to trade positive Page Six coverage for money. The Gossip Sleaze-Bag is probably screwed, but now the other wolves are going in for theirs and (seeing a chance to rally, somewhat, around their own) it's the Billionaire Sleaze-Bag that they'd most like to get a piece of. The part about this that makes it all a Robert-Downey-Jr-movie-waiting-to-happen is that the story broke on the eve of Page Six editor Richard Johnson's wedding. Ah, yes. That's the stuff.
posted by snortlebort at 9:47 PM PST - 12 comments

In Defense of French Dirigisme.
posted by semmi at 9:18 PM PST - 60 comments

Physician, kneel thyself and apologize for your mistakes. Words can hurt, and words can heal. Can the words "I'm sorry" keep you from being sued? It seems like it. People are talking about physicians being empowered to apologize, including the Indiana General Assembly, Ira Glass, Lucian Leape, and even the entire Hah-vahd hospital system. Does your doctor need a little practice? Make her/him watch the handy instructional video.
posted by scblackman at 8:45 PM PST - 13 comments

Meet Becca Stevens, Episcopal priest, Tennessean of the year, Nashvillian of the year, author, podcaster and wife of an equally cool husband. In addition to tending her flock and raising a family, the Rev. Becca runs Magdalene House, a residential program for women overcoming lives of addiction and prostitution that has an 87% success rate. Women in the program work at Thistle Farms, making all natural lotions, balms and bath products that put Mary Kaye to shame.
posted by Biblio at 8:04 PM PST - 8 comments

Firefighters.
posted by digaman at 6:59 PM PST - 50 comments

It should have been an easy out...

"If one picture is worth a thousand words, you have seen about a million words. But more than that, you have seen an absolutely bizarre finish to Game Six of the 1986 World Series." At the bottom of the 10th inning in Shay Stadium, with the Red Sox one out away from winning the World Series, the scoreboard flashed, "Congratulations Red Sox, 1986 World Series Champions!" Moments later, the Sox' Bill Buckner would let the ball go between his legs, allowing the Mets to win 6-5 and tie the series. Tonight, hours away from opening day at Fenway Park in Boston, take a moment to relive one of the most painful experiences in Sox history, Bucker and all, completely reenacted with Nintendo's old RBI Baseball.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:53 PM PST - 43 comments

...a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. ...Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait. By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. ... "Think how marginalized racists are," said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom. "If we don't address this now, it will only get worse." Should Christians be able to sue for the right to not tolerate or abide by anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies meant to apply to all? Should they still be able to get school activity funding?
posted by amberglow at 5:10 PM PST - 95 comments

AIGA: Inequality Matters
posted by ijoshua at 2:57 PM PST - 15 comments

"You are a donkey, Mr Danger" Hugo Chavez woos Bush.
posted by ruelle at 2:30 PM PST - 62 comments

There are lots of doctors who blog. Among them, two recent entries were particularly notable: a heavy one about a grieving 15 year old father and a light one about child cancer survivors.
posted by mathowie at 1:46 PM PST - 26 comments

TimesOnline Benjamin Cohen, the former teenaged dot.com millionaire, has run into a problem as he tries to make his next million: Google won't pay him for ads run on his website.
posted by archkim at 1:14 PM PST - 40 comments

Fun with Photoshop and Illustrator Incredibly detailed photo-realistic image of the Chicago Transit Authority's Damen Station [map]. Here's a similar photo. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 12:59 PM PST - 31 comments

Adidas earns the love of the masses once again, this time with racist shoes! The most offensive part of the design is taken from original work by Barry McGee. Yeah, maybe it's taken out of context (of, say, other work dealing with racism), or is it some kind of inevitable comic artist attraction to stereotypical imagery of the past? At any rate, those wily Asians at Giant Robot seem to like it, and his fans don't seem that offended.

Whether you love or hate that particularly inscrutable mascot, McGee is actually an experienced, prolific, and talented guy. (He was also married to artist Margaret Kilgallen until her death in 2001, and is now the single father of their daughter Asha.) McGee once said, "Sometimes a rock soaring through a plate of glass can be the most beautiful, compelling work of art I have ever seen". Oh, and p.s.--he's half-Chinese, you cry-babies ;-) More on the controversy: 1, 2, 3.
posted by ibeji at 12:59 PM PST - 48 comments

I am still alive. Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara sent these telegrams to friends throughout the 70s. He's most famous for his date paintings, in which he paints the day's date on canvas before midnight. His book series I Met is a 12 volume list of the people he met in the '60s and '70s. His ten volume One Million Years (Past and Future) comprises books with every one of 1,000,000 years (998,031 BC-1969 AD (past) and 1980-1,001,980 AD (future) listed. Reading One Million Years is a series of installations of readings from the books. One was placed in Trafalgar Square, and in a further wrinkle in time, this guy caught it with his pinhole camera. Here is a short essay about Kawara's existentialism, and here's a longer essay (Google cache) about Kawara's art's ontology. (PDF)
posted by OmieWise at 11:55 AM PST - 50 comments

A hate crime in Harlem? Some say it is, some say it isn't. Some are reminded of an incident at Howard Beach in 1986.
posted by anjamu at 11:50 AM PST - 46 comments

Bill McKibben reviews Armstrong and Moulitsas's book Crashing the Gate in the New York Review of Books. More importantly, Kos gets his own David Levine caricature.
posted by russilwvong at 10:30 AM PST - 14 comments

Though it makes the list of weird food, Passover means the week of the gefilte fish. Not particularly pretty in either preparation or final form, the dish appeared in written records as early as 1350, and its popularity has waxed and waned ever since. At least this year, there are no records of gefilte fish issuing prophecies, though there is a screensaver. With Easter and Passover on the way, are there any other dubious holiday food traditions out there?
posted by blahblahblah at 10:19 AM PST - 49 comments

Tom Chudleigh builds spherical suspended treehouses. [link to wmv at the top of the last one]
posted by Armitage Shanks at 10:10 AM PST - 19 comments

MusicTheory.net - Posted in a comment here, I thought I'd give it an FPP considering it may have just saved my butt on an exam. MusicTheory.net is an excellent, step-by-step resource for students, amateurs, and aesthetes of all levels. The site is flash, but provides not only lessons but training sessions and other resources as well (including a staff paper generator).

For those who would like some other resources, ilearnmusic.com has lessons, including a section on Music Theory 101 (with a few nice links, as well). Dolmetsch online offers extensive information, including a section demystifying guitar tabs for those of us who don't play. And, of course, the wikipedia has a fairly extensive list of external links in their article, including several journals for those more advanced theorists out there. [*]
posted by Eideteker at 10:06 AM PST - 13 comments

Murray Waas is the new Bob Woodward. An opposing view. Wuh-duh-yuh-bet most Americans will be much more interested in this story?
posted by spock at 9:52 AM PST - 28 comments

The Tzaddikim are 36 legendary saints for whose sake God does not destroy the world. Ancient writings of the Middle East claim that in every generation there exists a minimum number of beings upon whose merits the fate of the world rests. The number varies, but in Jewish legend 36 "Just" beings, or Tzaddikim, are considered to be the Foundation Stones of the World. Sometimes called the Tzadikim Nistarim or just the Lamed-Vav the hidden tzaddikim do their good deeds quietly. Their neighbors do not know who they are.  They are not saints; they are not holy people, they are not recognized or known even to themselves. They simply are what they are and in their very being, they somehow sustain the world. If, however, that minimum of truly saintly people does not exist, then the world itself will perish. Neil Gaiman quotes Death in thinking Emperor Joshua Norton was one.
posted by Smedleyman at 9:51 AM PST - 30 comments

Berlusconi going down? another leftist leader elected - another victim of bush policies or of his own hubris? (via war and piece)
posted by specialk420 at 9:43 AM PST - 61 comments

Mahler performances were rare in Vienna in those days because Mahler's city had already been contaminated by the acolytes of Adolf Hitler. By their reckoning, Mahler's music was loathsome — a product of "Jewish decadence." To put Mahler's music on the program was therefore a political act. It was to protest and deny the hateful faith that blazed across the border from Germany. That much I understood quite clearly, even as a boy.
The New Yorker's Alex Ross reprints Hans Fantel's New York Times 1989 essay on Bruno Walter's 1938 performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony -- the last performance of the Vienna Philharmonic before Hitler invaded Austria.
posted by matteo at 9:09 AM PST - 7 comments

Seeds of Imagination operates on the premise that talking (er, typing) to your plants encourages interesting growth. Try: sun, water, love, happy, fruit, etc. If a word is recognized, you will see it float up toward your plant. If not, it just disappears without a trace. You may also change the color of parts of the plant by typing in colors. (note: Flash, subtle ad)
posted by crunchland at 7:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Will it be a Prague Spring? Protestors in France have actually influenced their government as this morning Chirac scrapped the Youth Job Law. Will the immigration bill protestors in U.S. streets be able to equally influence the American government? With Latin America shifting to the left, and with Berlusconi probably shifting out, and if FitzEaster delivers a special basket, is it a sign of the tide turning? Is another Prague Spring in the making, or is a long, dark, Russian Winter more likely before the approaching apocalypse?
posted by Sir BoBoMonkey Pooflinger Esquire III at 7:26 AM PST - 86 comments

In Australia, the Easter weekend is bracketed by holidays on the Friday and the Monday (for those not gutted by the new workchoices legislation) while school is out for a mid semester break. The slowly cooling autumn weather makes it the most popular time of the year for camping. If you are venturing outdoors, check the local weather, do a little star gazing, pack your gear, and remember to be safe. Its a good time to sing around a fire and spend time with your loved ones. Enjoy the view, maybe tell some stories, and spare a thought for those camping up above.
posted by bystander at 4:03 AM PST - 13 comments

An interactive Shockwave-based look at Bach's Well-tempered Clavier. Go one level up and explore the entire coverage of Bach.
posted by Gyan at 2:26 AM PST - 14 comments

The Weekly Blurb - "Your dependable Hollywood quote whore." Probably by the same people who long ago brought us late, lamented Timmy Big Hands. And A Year At The Movies and Movie Megacheese. And, you know, something else.
posted by JHarris at 12:52 AM PST - 19 comments

wormspit.com -- all about hand-raising silkworms and processing their spit.
posted by casarkos at 11:19 PM PST - 14 comments

Tribe wanted. Help needed in tropical island paradise. (better like the Limeys/Poms) via
posted by johnny7 at 11:06 PM PST - 18 comments

Benjamin Krain, photojournalist. His series on Katrina captures both scale and detail. His portfolio includes work on Afghanistan, Cuba, Burning Man. His work on the Marshallese was previously on Mefi. (flash warning for the haters)
posted by madamjujujive at 10:26 PM PST - 10 comments

The Treesweater Tonight while I was out on a smoke break, I looked at the tree and thought, “Man, that is one sad tree. It looks cold and wet and pathetic. It needs a sweater!” Make your own
posted by arcticwoman at 5:56 PM PST - 39 comments

The Warriors of Oz "The Heroes of Oz as You've Never Seen Them!" You got that right. Three words: "Warrior Maiden Dorothy". Not Safe For Wizard Fans
The picture on the site doesn't do justice to all the excruciatingly awful detail, but if you get a Sunday dead tree newspaper, there's an ad in most coupon sections.
posted by wendell at 5:30 PM PST - 47 comments

On December 3rd, 2006 Canada's next Prime Minister will be decided by a few thousand delegates at the Liberal party convention in Montreal (join for ~$10). Don't believe me? In the last 110 years of Liberal party history only one leader has failed to become Prime Minister. No fewer than sixteen candidates met in Edmonton last week. On the surface the candidates are making nice.

Ignatieff: "None of us, none of us are going to run against each other. All of us are running against Stephen Harper's vision of Canada."

It is even said that Bob Rae and Ignatieff are life long close friends. That didn't stop the Ignatieff campaign co-chair.

David Peterson: "[Rae's] got some terrible burdens to overcome. One is his record and one is his loyalty."

Emphasis mine, and <more inside>
posted by Chuckles at 4:53 PM PST - 52 comments

London Bombings had nothing to do with Al Qaeda - The official Government report into the July 7th bombings in London has concluded that the attacks were carried out on "a shoestring budget" and "with no direct support from al Qaeda", according to an article published in The Observer on Sunday. They instead were organized through "terror sites" on the internet. This is apparently not good enough for the Conservative opposition. "I find that very hard to believe," said Tory homeland security spokesman Patrick Mercer. The lack of connection further reinforces ideas that Al Qaeda is nowhere near as widespread and organized as we are often led to believe.
posted by Acey at 4:31 PM PST - 45 comments

Get Smart! Can a few simple exercises really sharpen your mental acuity in 7 short days? According to this BBC program, yes.
posted by vronsky at 4:00 PM PST - 34 comments

Bardou (note: sound on intro) is a Belgian band founded by Jim Kline and Mariusz Radwanski combining medieval, baroque, folk, celtic and sea chanty in a beautiful sound. While strolling down the Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence this afternoon, I chanced upon these two musicians playing dulcet tones in a duet. As I drew closer, I saw the instruments were nothing I'd encountered before: a nyckelharpa and an arch guitar. The sound was quite appealing (.mpg video).
posted by darkstar at 2:04 PM PST - 10 comments

Bird flu update: "At this moment, birds that travel flyways in Asia, where most bird flu cases have been found, are mingling with birds that fly through North America." Officials in Kansas and Ohio warn it will arrive this fall, as those birds fly south for the winter on North American migration pathways. The Onion jokingly predicts the government's response.
posted by salvia at 1:46 PM PST - 23 comments

Nikki Craft : American Activist ; "I start by skinning Torrie..."
posted by mischief at 1:30 PM PST - 123 comments

Serious Organised Crime Agency? Or Thundercats?
posted by reklaw at 1:09 PM PST - 34 comments

A comprehensive list of early Christian writings gives a list of, links to the online full text of, and articles detailing some of the alternative Christian writings that were and weren't canonized. Of note include the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Justin Martyr, the Didache, the Acts of Thomas , the Gospel of Thomas (which many link with the "Q" from the two-source hypothesis, which attempts to answer the Synoptic problem), and some early apocalyptic writings. [mi]
posted by charmston at 11:49 AM PST - 16 comments

Dromedaries, centipedes, B-trains, Road Trains, and more. Where the continental U. S. has nurtured the "18-wheeler" as an iconic form, commercial trucks in other countries (or within certain states) have flourished in a wide variety of forms, adapting to regional industry, terrain, population, and laws. A 7-axle cement mixer in Nevada. Twin-steer short trucks in Europe. 42-wheelers in Michigan. More at Hank's Truck Pictures (GIS lists about 144,000 of them).
posted by kurumi at 11:47 AM PST - 15 comments

...Consider the stunning magnitude of the failure. Iraq has been the top priority for the world's only superpower for the past three years, and a central one for many regional and international powers. The United States, intent on keeping Iraq together, has spent more resources in that country than any state ever has spent on another in the history of the world... In this perspective, one central measure of success of the intervention in Iraq is this: Three years later, have the prospects of regional and global security increased or decreased? The answer should propel a debate that's bigger than Iraq.

Challenge Bigger than Iraq
See also Defeat or a Widening War -- or Both?
posted by y2karl at 11:19 AM PST - 60 comments

Thinking in C. A flash based C tutorial by Bruce Eckel intended as a foundation for C++ and Java.
posted by srboisvert at 10:30 AM PST - 7 comments

Even geeks need to reach out and touch someone. (so NSFW).
Found while browsing today, a site (mentioned once, in a comment, by its author here) dedicated to the other kind of technolust. For those times when you just cannot be physically close to the one you love/lust/hook-up-with. Or whatever it is you kids are doing these days, with your newfangled "Internet" and "Computers."

I think that, instead of trying to be witty about it, I'll let its content speak for itself.
posted by ChrisR at 9:44 AM PST - 26 comments

"I've been silent long enough... My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the results." Marine Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, the Pentagon's former top operations officer, becomes the latest military insider to raise his voice against the "zealots" who led the US into war in Iraq. He writes in Time magazine: "Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again... After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq--an unnecessary war." During the Vietnam war, such discontent among soldiers sparked a massive campaign of disobedience and peace activism (as well as, more darkly, fragging) within the ranks, as recounted in a new documentary called Sir! No Sir! Can it happen again? Ask the Soldiers for the Truth.
posted by digaman at 9:40 AM PST - 60 comments

Goat on a pole: Institute for the study of The Goat, The Pole, Their Relative Positions
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:37 AM PST - 19 comments

Bonobo's Bongos (note: Shockwave)
posted by crunchland at 5:38 AM PST - 19 comments

Pro-Life Nation. What happens when you completely criminalize abortion? Over the last eight years, El Salvador has found out.
posted by dgaicun at 10:59 PM PST - 255 comments

Disembodied, autonomous, human shadows. _{{via pruned}}
posted by signal at 8:50 PM PST - 12 comments

Hood ornaments: streamlined chrome from a bygone era in automotive design. From stylized trains to jet planes these tiny icons chronicle America's transition from the jazz age to the space race. Lots more here.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 8:38 PM PST - 13 comments

Cant decide on a new hairstyle? Luckily there are a variety of helpful sites that you can use to try out new looks! My girlfriend has decided on this look for me, what do you think?
posted by crunchywelch at 8:14 PM PST - 16 comments

Under Age Text? "Former senior public servant Nick Gill was sentenced to 14 days' jail, suspended on the rising of the court, and fined $3000 after being found guilty of having 66 stories, featuring mostly young boys, on his desktop computer." All text. There were no images to found. Australian fans of Harry Potter should probably rethink that slash masterpiece, and toss out their copies of Lolita and the latest VC Andrews novels.
posted by FunkyHelix at 5:27 PM PST - 76 comments

Milk Bath. Cat + water + flickr = the biggest, saddest cat eyes I have ever seen. Via.
posted by onlyconnect at 5:11 PM PST - 61 comments

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. In his State of the Union address on January 6, 1941 [mp3 of whole speech; Real audio links], President Franklin D. Roosevelt identified four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear (essays from the Carnegie Council's September 2005 Study Guide to the Four Freedoms). Roosevelt's speech inspired a series of paintings by Norman Rockwell. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:41 PM PST - 23 comments

For years, art critics were stumped by the inconsistencies in one of Norman Rockwell's most famous paintings for the Saturday Evening Post, Breaking Home Ties. The colors weren't as vibrant as his usual work, nor did the clothes hang correctly. Perhaps most telling, the expression of wistful longing on the face of the protagonist didn't feel right. Two weeks ago, the reasons why became clear. (more inside)
posted by jonson at 3:16 PM PST - 34 comments

"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she had to walk into mine." Casablanca tops the Writers Guild of America's inaugural list of the 101 Greatest Screenplays (full list pdf) of all time, as voted on by members of the guild. Rounding out the top five: Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather; Robert Towne's Chinatown; Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz's Citizen Kane; and Joseph Mankiewicz's All About Eve.
posted by soiled cowboy at 1:50 PM PST - 40 comments

Newsfilter: $1000 fine for linking? The law vs. vigilante justice vs. inadvertent legal ramifications of vigilante justice. [MI]
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 1:28 PM PST - 19 comments

Relive your roots at NESplayer.com. This site is a huge repository for all kinds of NES stuff - it has an extensive sprite gallery, a rather comprehensive list of all NES merchandise and accessories available through the years, NES ads from comics, shots and clips from Nintendo-based TV shows(no episodes- I know - but when was the last time you thought of Captain N or the Super Mario Bros. Super Show?). There are shrines, guides, interviews, this guy who paints NES scenes... in short too much to list here. Go now, be fruitless. It's Saturday.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Security expert (and personal hero) Bruce Schneier on the subject of movie plot threats : Sometimes it seems like the people in charge of homeland security spend too much time watching action movies. They defend against specific movie plots instead of against the broad threats of terrorism.

This month, Schneier announces a contest for readers of his blog and newsletter - submit the most unlikely, yet still plausible, terrorist attack scenarios you can come up with.

From the announcement : "The prize will be an autographed copy of Beyond Fear. And if I can swing it, a phone call with a real live movie producer."
posted by Afroblanco at 12:00 PM PST - 31 comments

The Iran Plans by Seymour Hersh.
posted by xowie at 9:58 AM PST - 210 comments

"You know the bad thing about it? You're matchin' up to him." Richard Lee McNair, who was serving a life sentence for the 1988 murder of a truck driver in North Dakota, escaped from a federal penitentiary by hiding in a postal van as it left the prison grounds. McNair convinced a police officer in the tiny community of Ball, Louisiana, that he wasn't the man they were looking for. The conversation between McNair and police officer Karl Bordelon was recorded by the video camera on the dashboard of Bordelon's patrol car.
posted by MotorNeuron at 6:31 AM PST - 44 comments

Thomas Dolby, 80's Pop Icon, '90s Tech Mogul, Alton Brown lookalike, Somnificationist and NOT the inventor of Dolby noise reduction is returning to live touring after a few hundred internet years away. He's performing solo with lots of cool gadgets (and blogging). And, perfectly timed for promotional purposes, he's joined the K-Fed Haters.
posted by wendell at 12:39 AM PST - 33 comments

"OK, Now I've seen Cynthia McKinney's new hairstyle. There is just no other way to say this. It's just hideous. She looks like ghetto trash. Get a braider over there ... quick!" Nobody with a modicum of self-respect would go around looking like that. (link to mp3 file) "I don't blame that cop for stopping her" because "it looked like a welfare drag queen was trying to sneak into the Longworth House Office Building." The six term representative from Dekalb Co. Georgia, "didn't stop at an officer's request last week, then turned around and hit him after he grabbed her when she passed a security checkpoint." McKinney described it as an unfortunate confrontation and then claimed she was the victim of racial profiling. A grand jury will decide.
posted by three blind mice at 12:24 AM PST - 81 comments

Wikibooks manuals and textbooks in wiki form, from the wikimedia foundation. Lots of language lessons. Some of the books leave lot to be desired though.
posted by delmoi at 10:30 PM PST - 16 comments

So, you want to play banjo? But not that bluegrass nonsense. You want to keep it real--play the old-timey clawhammer/frailing stuff. Then you will want to read Patrick Costello's "The How and Tao of Old Time Banjo," available for free (thanks Creative Commons) and of course download the podcast lessons. This is okay, too. Too hard? Start somewhere.
posted by imposster at 10:18 PM PST - 27 comments

Video: Diastat® AcuDial™ (diazepam rectal gel) C-IV
posted by LimePi at 10:06 PM PST - 44 comments

Incredible Machine 01 - clever Japanese Rube Goldberg type devices in action. Film clip, annoying soundtrack alert. (via digg)
posted by madamjujujive at 10:04 PM PST - 27 comments

Morrissey, famous animal rights activist, is following the example of Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton, jumping onto the bandwagon of using his celebrity status to influence politics the world over. On tonight's agenda: Seal clubbing for fun. Jesus Morrissey has cancelled his tour of Canada, in order to detract from national economy and punish Canada for its evil seal-hunting ways, comparing them to Nazis along the way.

His tour, however, still takes in the sights of Turkey, where even human rights are known to take the back foot. Furthermore, Turkey is a somewhat infamous site for animal rights abuses, and only passed its first law on the matter in 2001, under pressure from Gillian Anderson.
posted by jrengreen at 6:36 PM PST - 75 comments

One upping the bad guys
posted by Postroad at 4:35 PM PST - 63 comments

Today, April 7, is the 73rd anniversary of the end of Prohibition, marking the day in 1933 when FDR signed emergency legislation to allow the sale of beer (and reportedly had the first public delivery of beer sent to the White House). Breweries all over America are celebrating Brew Year's Eve. In other news, marijuana prohibition has continued in the US for almost 70 years. There's a Nevada initiative on the ballot this November to end it -- by allowing the legal cultivation and sale of marijuana.
posted by crazymonk at 3:37 PM PST - 59 comments

The terrorists in New Jersey have been captured. They're, uhm, like 15 years old. A fine example of how anti-terror laws like the Patriot Act can be subject to mission creep. (The "terrorists" at the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice in Pittsburgh seem to be still at large.)
posted by digaman at 2:44 PM PST - 59 comments

This video from the online New England Journal of Medicine of live parasitic worms scurrying around the inside of a patient's colon was not nearly as sexy as I thought it would be after reading the description. warning: link goes to nonsexy new england journal of medicine video of live parasitic worms scurrying around the inside of a patient's colon
posted by jonson at 2:42 PM PST - 58 comments

NY Post Go$$ip Writer 4 $ale! The New York Daily News is reporting that Jared Paul Stern, a prominent New York Post gossip writer, attempted to extort over $220,000 from a frequent target of the oh-so-classy Page Six column in exchange for "protection" against "inaccurate and unflattering items." If we can't trust our gossip columnists, who can we trust? (via Fark)
posted by UKnowForKids at 2:26 PM PST - 22 comments

Dear Matt, please implement this at once. It's way better than those other captchas. (via MeCha)
posted by dame at 2:01 PM PST - 60 comments

Old Time Radio. I was doing some research on the events leading up to the declaration of war in 1939, and found this page, which contains files of news reports (in English) on the Anchluss, as well as a chilling recording of live reportage on shortwave radio of Hitler's appearance at the Heldenplatz in Vienna (in English and German-- link goes direct to the .rm file). Other news pages on the site include the bulletin announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbour (which breaks into a football game), as well as Chamberlain's declaration of war, among others. Files play in Real or mp3. Previously mentioned on Metafilter is Radiolovers which offers downloads of various shows and which is free, unlike RUSC.com, which charges for a monthly subscription. Old Time Radio was also the subject of this thread from 2002, but the post was concerned the drama and comedy shows rather than the news pages from the site.
posted by jokeefe at 1:44 PM PST - 11 comments

"To all our sisters who have committed suicide or who have been institutionalized for their rebellion."
Throughout her career, but especially in her latest and most wrenching work— Sisters, Saints, & Sibyls, the 39-minute three-screen lamentation that is a duel memoir of her sister's suicide at the age of 19 and her own mortifications of the flesh and battles with addiction—the photographer Nan Goldin has been one of the great living suicides of recent art history... Charles Baxter wrote that novelist Malcolm Lowry captured "the way things radiate just before they turn to ash." At her best Goldin does this too.
posted by matteo at 1:42 PM PST - 10 comments

The 3rd Battle of New Orleans, a post-Katrina group weblog, visually debunks the notion that most of New Orleans is 10 feet below sea level and that not enough residents had flood insurance.
posted by turbodog at 12:08 PM PST - 53 comments

Robots, rockets, and rayguns, oh my!
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:23 AM PST - 11 comments

Cofer Black, Director of the CIA Counterterrorism center until May 2002 said before the 9/11 commission: “All I want to say is that there was ‘before’ 9/11 and ‘after’ 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off… ‘No Limits’ aggressive, relentless, worldwide pursuit of any terrorist who threatens us is the only way to go…” Since that time there have been allegations of abduction and indefinite detention in secret prisons abroad , abuse in prisons within the U.S. and the suppression of evidence of coercion overseas in confessions in U.S. courts. (Ahmed Omar Abu Ali prev. here). In addition to Amnesty Int’l, it’s getting the U.S. some UN attention as well.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:01 AM PST - 30 comments

The billionaire attorney. The King of Torts. Legendary Texas Lawyer. He is Joe Jamail. He is most famous for his record setting verdict in Texaco v. Pennzoil (which eventually made it to the US Supreme Court) in which Joe secured a $10.3 billion dollar judgment (though it is not known for sure, some speculate that Joe walked with $1 billion in attorney's fees in that case). In addition to being well known for his success, he is almost as legendary for his colorful demeanor. One such example was when he got reprimanded for his behavior in Paramount Communications Inc. v. QVC Network, Inc.. But to see him in action with your own eyes, we have video of classic Joe during a deposition he was giving. (via brainwidth).
posted by dios at 9:04 AM PST - 47 comments

Dr. James Burda has a gift. "I learned about my gift three years ago. While driving to a nearby city in order to do shopping my left foot started to hurt. Just for amusement, I made a guess as to the exact bone involved with the pain, told the bone to realign, and the pain went away almost instantly." For $60, you (or your pet) can undergo the same treatment from the comfort of your own home. Bear in mind that The Ohio State Chiropractic Board maintains that Burda is "delusional."
posted by Otis at 8:49 AM PST - 40 comments

5 year old girl forced to apologize for hugging classmate At issue is a hug Savannah said she got on the playground from a friend named Sophie. Savannah hugged Sophie back. The hugs resulted in Savannah having to write a letter, complete with teacher corrections, that read, "I touch Sophie because she touch me and I didn't like it because she was hugging me. I didn't like when she hugged me."
posted by bubblesonx at 7:36 AM PST - 166 comments

EFF Accuses AT&T of diverting internet traffic to NSA. "More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now." More details from the EFF.
posted by jikel_morten at 7:27 AM PST - 68 comments

What? From WFMU: "What happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room covered with speakers? Feedback. Lots of it." (might be NSFW)
posted by minkll at 12:46 AM PST - 91 comments

drifts ... move the red bubble with your mouse cursor. do not touch the purple bubbles! collect the green bubbles! touch the blue bubbles to turn green bubbles into points. you need at least three green bubbles to earn a point. collect more than 3 bubbles for bonus points! (note: flash)
posted by crunchland at 10:54 PM PST - 18 comments

Alan Waddell intends to walk every street in every suburb in Sydney. He has completed 192 suburbs so far. He is 91.
posted by tellurian at 10:52 PM PST - 13 comments

Dancing with demons - riveting underwater adventure about a close encounter with a giant, hungry Diablo Rojo. Also see filming the Humboldt squid. Past squid threads:1, 2, 3, and 4. Via Squidblog.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:26 PM PST - 16 comments

Principia Discordia: First Edition
posted by oissubke at 9:07 PM PST - 39 comments

A very expensive typo. For twelve hours on April 5, a business class fare on Alitalia from Toronto to Lanarca, Cyprus was $39 CAD instead of the usual $3900. Someone at farecompare.com with access to ATPCO airfare feeds found the error and posted the news to FlyerTalk, which started a stampede for tickets that lasted until the fare was belatedly corrected. Alitalia initially tried to cancel the already issued tickets, sparking debates debates over whether the obviously wrong fares should be honored. Alitalia eventually relented, and a lucky 500-2000 people (according to some guesses) will be flying to Cyprus for under $200 including taxes.
posted by komilnefopa at 8:33 PM PST - 41 comments

Who's your daddy? (NSFW) Electroclash Dj bennybenassi trumps his infamous video 'Satisfaction' with an ode to 70's/80's porn films. Makes you think it does not.
posted by jeremias at 7:21 PM PST - 45 comments

Phrases you'd really like to know before you go to France. Special bonus how to be an obnoxious lover in French.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:12 PM PST - 25 comments

Man tells President Bush that he should be ashamed of himself. Bushie has been touring the country talking to the people and the people have been talking back. Today he met with his toughest and most elequent angry citizen, one Mr. Harry Taylor who began with this salvo:

Q: You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question? (full transcript here)
posted by tsarfan at 5:24 PM PST - 105 comments

US Rolls out new Nuclear Program. Consolidate nuclear stores. Ok. Plan with "potential for new bomb designs". Whaaaaaa? (partially from here)
posted by phyrewerx at 5:07 PM PST - 37 comments

The Polaroid Photography Collective has a number of links to some great galleries. The multi-shot panoramas are especially nice. {some images may be nsfw}
posted by dobbs at 4:47 PM PST - 9 comments

"CabSpotting traces San Francisco's taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. This map hints at economic, social, and cultural trends that are otherwise invisible."
posted by vacapinta at 4:39 PM PST - 16 comments

"What do we call it: suicide or murder?" An interview with filmmaker Stanley Nelson about his new documentary, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. The documentary has some never-before-seen footage and features two Jonestown survivors. "I think by the end of the film you feel that it's kind of both at the same time." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:30 PM PST - 13 comments

Envision Toronto is a photo sharing/google maps thingy.
posted by transient at 4:16 PM PST - 12 comments

Gnostic Gospel of Judas, they say! Hot on the heels of Christ On Ice and the, er, "newly discovered" Gospel fragment, the news outlets are currently drooling all over National Geographic's recent conclusive dating and translation of surviving fragments of the Apocryphal Gospel of Judas, now dated to about 300 CE. The text is classically Gnostic, emphasizing a duality splitting Christ's "spiritual" and "fleshly" natures, as opposed to Christian orthodoxy's belief in the Incarnation. Looking beyond the wide-eyed "OMG THIS WILL REVOLUTIONIZE CHRISTIANITY AS WE KNOW IT" sensationalism, Internet Monk asks if a 300 year-old apocryphal biography of George Washington would be regarded as authentic were it discovered in 1970. James F. Robinson, an expert on ancient Egyptian texts, regards the Judas Gospel as mostly a dud, produced by Cainite Gnostics who took it upon themselves to "rehabilitate" villians of Bible mythos. Even if you don't believe in the account of Judas, there's no denying his contributions to the Christian narrative. Truly a historical icon.
posted by brownpau at 3:08 PM PST - 41 comments

Truth Markets. Invest in truthiness.
posted by I Love Tacos at 12:33 PM PST - 31 comments

Howe & Ser Moving Company has completed its latest job: moving a Spanish-American War cannon from the pits of Pasadena, CA to sunny Cambridge, MA. The cannon arrived with one addition: a giant Brass Rat, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology class ring. In the past, the cannon graced the front yard of Caltech and took a brief vacation to Harvey Mudd College.
Last year, students from Caltech attempted to start a hacking war with MIT, with little response. This small delivery has drastically changed the score. More pictures.
posted by breath at 11:41 AM PST - 37 comments

Government error in contemporary British history is the stuff of legend and when it comes to the 2012 Olympics can I be on my own in forecasting financial disaster? This morning's announcement that "little can be built until the site's 50 electric pylons are removed" in 2008 comes hot on the heels of an understated Olympics budget which, four days ago, is revealed to be 'short by £2bn.' I am v.fortunate to live in the UK and there is no doubt this government is v.good at bookkeeping; but grandstanding a world event? Not a chance. Discussed in these parts last year, Britain is not good at world class marketing or brand .. management; Britain is not good at capital projects, and Politicians, bureaucrats ... milking the Olympic Games, says London's mayor. I understand but two Olypics have seen modest profit and Britain badly needs Hollywood or Coca-Cola^® to make a success of this.
posted by Schroder at 10:49 AM PST - 28 comments

American businessman "stranded" in China. Now safe back in Seattle, Eugene Nelson could barely restrain his tears as he told his harrowing tale of accidently being put on a flight to "remote" Western China ("literally 200 miles south of the Mongolian border"!), "damn near fight[ing his] way out" of a brothel, and barely making his way back to civilization. While Eugene seems a bit unresourceful, his story does illustrate how difficult travel in China can be without Mandarin skills, despite the supposed prevalence of English speakers. Maybe someday his employer can hire one of the legions of students (and toddlers) now studying Mandarin. Or maybe they won't need to.
posted by banishedimmortal at 10:33 AM PST - 71 comments

Bush authorized Plame leak? According to Libby, "Libby, testified in 2003 that he provided reporter Judith Miller with information from a classified National Intelligence Estimate after being told by Cheney that Bush 'specifically had authorized' him to 'disclose certain information in the NIE.'" [via Drudge]
posted by trinarian at 9:18 AM PST - 221 comments

Antique Spectacles David Fleishman, M.D., a retired ophthalmologist, has compiled a rather extensive collection of information about spectacles and their importance in history. In addition to many examples of early spectacles and information about the spectacles worn by figures in history, there is a general history - Eyeglasses Through the Ages:[R]eading glasses are one of the most important inventions of the past 2000 years.... No one really knows about the early history of image magnification. In ancient times, someone noticed that convex-shaped glass magnified images. Sometime between the year 1000 and 1250 crude technology began to develop regarding reading stones (simple magnifiers). English Franciscan Friar Roger Bacon (1220 -1292), in his 1268 ‘Opus Majus’, noted that letters could be seen better and larger when viewed through less than half a sphere of glass. Bacon's experiments confirmed the principle of the convex (converging) lens, described by Alhazen (965-1038) Arabian mathematician, optician and astronomer at Cairo, and even earlier by the Greeks. (via the dead tree version of the WSJ)
posted by caddis at 9:13 AM PST - 18 comments

Pink Expenses is a fun little hack. Select from a list of racy services, get presented with a plausable looking receipt, then cut it out and submit it with your next corporate expense report. Hilarity ensues (or you get fired, which is still kind of funny).
posted by mathowie at 8:34 AM PST - 22 comments

These folks may do a prostitute’s taxes (nytimes), but who does a prostitute’s laundry? (more Sifl and Olly on YouTube)
posted by jrb223 at 8:25 AM PST - 17 comments

Hillman's Hyperlinked and Searchable Chambers' Book of Days
A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, Including Anecdote, Biography, & History, Curiosities of Literature and Oddities of Human Life and Character
posted by anastasiav at 8:10 AM PST - 5 comments

Miles Davis? Kanye West? The Beatles? Oh... you mean Muzak? Ike played it in the West Wing, NASA used it to soothe astronauts' anxiety. But it's not just your daddy's elevator music anymore.
posted by digaman at 6:32 AM PST - 44 comments

The Goats of West Point
”...though only about twenty years of age, had the appearance of being much older. He had a worn, weary, discontented look, not easily forgotten by those who were intimate with him.”
A new book tells the story of Sergeant Major Edgar Allan Poe, Battery H (.pdf), First Artillery Washout, West Point, Class of 1834. And of other famous cadets.
posted by matteo at 2:38 AM PST - 6 comments

Self Propelled Liquid Droplets : When a liquid drop is placed (.mov files) on a surface held at a temperature much higher than the liquid’s boiling point it hovers on its own vapor cushion, without wetting the surface.
posted by dhruva at 12:57 AM PST - 24 comments

Thirty Straight Years Of Flailing What do you do when your favorite musician releases a confessional, personal, heartfelt, shitty record? You forgive him, of course, because he's Mike Watt, bassist of America's greatest band: The Minutemen. If you never heard them, you missed it, and if you liked them, then maybe you you started a band yourself.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:20 AM PST - 52 comments

连环梦 ... (aka Kawa) "It might be an exit; It might be a trap; It might be just a dream." 连环梦 is a surreal point-and-click maze/puzzle from China, full of twists and unexpected turns. (note: flash)
posted by crunchland at 10:50 PM PST - 15 comments

Molvania banned from Eurovision contest...again. After failing in 2004 with his Elektronik – Supersonik (prev.) ZLAD! tried again with his darker I am the Anti-pope (video) which was rejected because "Satanism has no place at Eurovision." Zlad! responded, speaking backwards through a hooded translator, "In Molvania, this is one of our most loved children’s stories." You may also want to check out Hospital of the Hearts (video), the number one soap in Phaic Tan.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:04 PM PST - 37 comments

Celebrities eating.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:57 PM PST - 53 comments

Go team. I have been struggling with my outrage over this story (the details of what seems very likely to have happened and the terrible, horrible one offs comments that I've read about in response to it) for over a week now. It seems odd that no one has posted the story on MeFi, given its implications on class, race, race relations in an integrated southern city, elite educational institutions, frat boy mayhem (to an extreme), and when no means no and it doesn't matter who is saying it. One thing's for sure, this story keeps getting worse.
posted by psmealey at 7:22 PM PST - 151 comments

The University of Minnesota Human Rights Library is a treasure trove of resources about human rights and war crimes issues.
posted by mlis at 6:03 PM PST - 3 comments

rockpaperscissors is a nifty little place where you can scope out music from all over. The archive profiles all sorts of artists and provides free full-length samples to help you decide how to get your groove on.
posted by tentacle at 5:23 PM PST - 4 comments

There have been many knock offs of the Ichthys symbol. None of these symbols have caused as much controversy as the Darwin fish. Recently some scientists in Northern Canada have made a discovery that may eliminate some of that controversy, it’s called the Tiktaalik roseae.
posted by Mr_Zero at 4:05 PM PST - 43 comments

Jesus walked on the water ice. So sayeth... um... well, this guy at Florida State. Doron Nof has released a paper positing that when Jesus walked on the water in Galilee, he was actually walking on a patch of floating ice. What's interesting about science like this to me is that it both validates and invalidates scripture, since if Jesus was walking on ice... no miracle (although, it's a miracle he didn't slip and fall, har har har). But if Jesus was walking on ice, then at least he historically existed, which is still an open question at least in some quarters. In case you think you recognize Mr. Nof's name, you may be remembering his work explaining that the parting of the Red Sea was totally possible (flash video link).
posted by illovich at 3:37 PM PST - 105 comments

Did you ever wonder why putting food in the refrigerator does not preserve freshness as well as putting food in a pyramid - or even putting it in an egg? You will once you understand the power of fractals, golden eggs and PHI. Breathtaking psedoscientific insanity awaits you.
posted by boo_radley at 3:35 PM PST - 32 comments

Ever wonder what your favorite NBA player would look like photo shopped into a cheezy family portrait? Wonder no more. (via spofi)
posted by justgary at 3:16 PM PST - 22 comments

Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat their offenses. This reporter went out to discover just how hard it would be to anonymously file a complaint report. As it turns out, he was threatened, roughed up, and even intimidated by the suggestion that he would be shot. After reporter Mike Kirsch filed this story, the retaliation was swift and one would have thought, illegal.
posted by dejah420 at 1:33 PM PST - 67 comments

This is not sex. A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose.
posted by Ljubljana at 12:55 PM PST - 95 comments

"London Calling" sparks terror fear in cab driver. Newsfilter: "British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said Wednesday. Detectives halted the London-bound flight at Durham Tees Valley Airport in northern England and Harraj Mann, 24, was taken off. "The taxi driver had become worried on the way to the airport because Mann had been singing along to The Clash's 1979 anthem "London Calling," which features the lyrics "Now war is declared -- and battle come down" while other lines warn of a "meltdown expected." Also reported here, where we learn this is not the first Clash-related terror scare. Joe Strummer is looking down and laughing, not least because it wasn't terror song Spanish Bombs.
posted by magpie68 at 12:30 PM PST - 68 comments

The Uncanny Valley of the Portrait Dolls Wouldn't your daughter like a doll that looks just like her? Wouldn't your son love to pal around with his very own clone? You can get it done in paper, felt, cloth, plastic, bobblehead, porcelain or magnets! For schoolgirls, toddlers, babies (preemies too!) and even fetuses. Don't worry Mom and Dad, you can get them too!
posted by Biblio at 12:20 PM PST - 35 comments

A New Gospel Fragment Discovered Could the Da Vinci code be based on truth? Church scholars have denied claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, but ancient Egyptian papyri previously illlegible may unlock further insight on the relationship between Mary and Jesus.
posted by daHIFI at 11:50 AM PST - 44 comments

Garbage Day! I don't know where this is from or what it means. But I can't stop watching it.
posted by indiebass at 11:26 AM PST - 40 comments

iRider. Is it more than just an IE shell? Could it possibly be worth paying for? Can it really do anything that Firefox can't? Discuss.
posted by bingo at 10:18 AM PST - 49 comments

A Town Without Pity. Gene Pitney, the rather dashing rocker behind such hits as "Hello Mary Lou," "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance," and "Only Love Can Break A Heart," has passed away.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:11 AM PST - 31 comments

What separates GM from Honda? The development process. An interesting read about Honda's lean and mean development process, as compared to the bureaucratic nightmare that exists at General Motors. A fascinating read and good insight into one of the many reasons why the domestic automakers are getting spanked these days.
posted by tgrundke at 9:53 AM PST - 43 comments

Massachusetts is about to pass a "nearly" universal health care plan. It's an ambitious and innovative piece of public policy that mixes tax incentives to insure yourself if you can afford it to direct government subsidies to health care insurers to help cover the poor. Businesses will be fined if they are not going to cover their workers. It still does not cover escalating costs or malpractice wildness. And, it still will leave 5% uncovered. Nor, is it the plan specifically endorsed by Physicians for a National Health Plan (who favor a single payer system) or the AMA (who favor much greater reform of insurance providers). Still, it's a start from making us "the only industrialized nation in the world" to not, well you know.....
posted by narebuc at 9:32 AM PST - 71 comments

As we know,the internets are not short on herbal information. While looking for a way to un-numb my teeth, I came across a veritable cornucopia of herbal knowledge, complete with formulae. Step inside for an interesting essay...
posted by ashbury at 7:47 AM PST - 45 comments

Free Bob! Sign the petition and put an end to the outrage.
posted by debralee at 7:33 AM PST - 10 comments

Babies in prison. "The Prison Service provides special accommodation as the children "are not prisoners and have committed no offence"."
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 7:21 AM PST - 17 comments

Ballpark Blues. To make way for a new stadium and redevelopment, DC has been clearing out the underground bar and club scene in the Navy Yard area of southeast Washington. The first victim was Tracks, one of DC's first gay clubs and the epicenter of the nascent Goth scene in DC--closed in 1999 to make way for an office building. Now the rest of the neighborhood's gay clubs are being demolished to make way for the new stadium. And finally, Nation, home of Cubik(formerly Buzz), Velvet and Alchemy is closing to make way for another new office complex. DC nightlife will never be the same again.
posted by empath at 7:01 AM PST - 19 comments

Dual Boot, Officially. Now that the contest is over, it could be time for both sides of the Cola OS War to put aside their differences and shake hands ... though not without a little good-natured snark: "Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries." Oooooh ... burn.
posted by grabbingsand at 6:44 AM PST - 98 comments

Howdy États-Unis! Cyrille of Vingt Sur Vingt (French) has a new blog and he's talking to you, USians.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:33 AM PST - 20 comments

A video game "based on Bob Ross' creative, unique and easy to learn painting techniques and TV show properties" is coming to the next-generation Nintendo system.
posted by AloneOssifer at 6:23 AM PST - 31 comments

Meet punk, Don, Kawaii, Satan's Little Helper, and the incredibly colorful cast of characters that populate photographer Igor Siwanowicz's world. (via Mira y Calla)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:25 PM PST - 19 comments

Fabio Feminò has an enormous collection of science fiction magazines to share with us. AWESOME!
posted by tellurian at 10:53 PM PST - 5 comments

A reporter agonizes over reporting the truth, written by Vanessa Gezari who taught journalism in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
posted by mischief at 9:44 PM PST - 11 comments

Sexual Predators on the Internet: Today we heard testimony about sexual exploitation of children on the Internet during a Congressional hearing. Tonight a Homeland Security official is held for soliciting for a child on Internet.
posted by ericb at 9:04 PM PST - 85 comments

porn quotes! porn star kami andrews [NSFW duh] has collected her favorite quotes from porn stars. I think some are movie lines and some are from personal interraction. My favorite: "Your life story would be called When Bubble wrap isn't enough"
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 8:55 PM PST - 41 comments

Why Mommy is a Democrat — a self-published children's book by Jeremy Zilber (sample pages here.) Warm fuzziness, left-wing nuttiness, or squirrely propaganda?
posted by cenoxo at 8:08 PM PST - 44 comments

Linkology is a neat little graphic that shows how the top 50 blogs link to one another. Direct to the pdf.
posted by ChasFile at 7:56 PM PST - 20 comments

The Top Ten Weirdest Keyboards
posted by Falconetti at 7:43 PM PST - 24 comments

How Much Oil Has Iraq Been Exporting Since We Invaded? And how much revenue should be recorded? --Iraq’s oil exports hit another post-invasion low in December and January, according to the Oil & Gas Journal. How do they know? Good question: according to Reuters, production and exports have gone unmetered since the Coalition Provisional Authority took over the country following the 2003 invasion; until new meters are installed (in 1-2 more years), everybody’s just guessing. Our Government's Energy Information Administration has all sorts of statistics--anyone wanna figure out how they're derived regarding Iraq?
posted by amberglow at 6:43 PM PST - 22 comments

Mouse balls aren't the only testes that can heal. PrimeGen Biotech has announced just a few days later that they have discovered the same thing in human balls. That was quick.
posted by the giant pill at 4:49 PM PST - 20 comments

Mysterious Boom felt throughout Southern California this morning with no explanation. USGS claims there were no quakes, meteorologists claim nothing in the weather could have caused it, military bases are claiming that nothing they were doing would cause such a rumble, and air traffic controllers state that no supersonic flights were taking place in the area (no sonic boom). I was awoken by the shaking and the car alarms that followed. If it's none of the above, just what caused it?
posted by afx114 at 2:26 PM PST - 117 comments

Andrew Kissel, brother of murdered banker Robert Kissel was himself found murdered in the basement of his Greenwich, CT home yesterday. While the murder trial of Robert Kissel's wife, Nancy, provided a sordid look into the troubled life of an extremely rich Hong Kong expat investment banker, his wife, and her lover, the Andrew Kissel case has yet to unfold. Yet with a Andrew's criminal past, recent divorce, and speculation of a Mafia-style hit, this may turn out to be another interesting story of greed, abuse, and revenge.
posted by banishedimmortal at 1:56 PM PST - 9 comments

"In some cases, there really is no way to recover without nuking the systems from orbit." -- Mike Danseglio, program manager in the Security Solutions group at Microsoft
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:46 PM PST - 43 comments

Michael Jackson's Credit Card. In which a band of pranksters manage to successfully imitate the King of Pop for one night.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:24 PM PST - 22 comments

This 'How Geeky Are You?' quiz illustrates how geekdom today means something completely different from what it used to. Out with unwashed hair and actually programming, in with mindless purchase of consumer goods.
posted by splitpeasoup at 1:11 PM PST - 65 comments

The Languid Anger of Peterbilt Nixon, Episode 1: Road Trip (or Mob Hogs and the Twelve Ribs Miasma). A new series on Udargo.com
posted by eyeballkid at 1:09 PM PST - 5 comments

Whooops! While making a required filing to the state ethics commission, Ohio Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell finds Diebold shares in his stock portfolio that he now claims to have bought "accidentally." Yes, that Diebold -- the e-voting company whose chairman promised to "deliver the vote" to George Bush. And yes, that Blackwell, whose state helped deliver the White House to the GOP. Blackwell insists that the humble amount of Diebold stock was in one of those "blind trust" type of arrangements that worked out so rewardingly for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. [newsfilter via RawStory.]
posted by digaman at 11:32 AM PST - 107 comments

Silence in class. "University professors denounced for anti-Americanism; schoolteachers suspended for their politics; students encouraged to report on their tutors. Are US campuses in the grip of a witch-hunt of progressives, or is academic life just too liberal?" From today's Guardian.
posted by jokeefe at 10:51 AM PST - 188 comments

"Ten Favorite Offbeat Musicals" by Jonathan Rosenbaum
posted by matteo at 10:36 AM PST - 28 comments