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Amnesty International first reported in March that Egyptian authorities were conducting "virginity tests" on female protestors. Today, military authorities admitted that these tests took place and tried to defend the practice.
posted by reenum at 9:50 PM PST - 90 comments

Doom was a classic game, revolutionary in its time. And it took a high-end machine to run it, like a 486 running 25 MHz (ooh! aah!). Times have changed: it's been ported to Javascript, and it will run in your browser.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:45 PM PST - 47 comments

There are symbols from Asia. Wiccan symbols. Symbols from Freemasonry, Christianity, and Native Americans. Explore the Symbol Dictionary.
posted by zardoz at 7:54 PM PST - 26 comments

The Awl compiles a history of profanity at The New Yorker. Padgett Powell once said that the usage rules used to be so restrictive, he was forced to change "big-butt sheriff" to "big-bubba sheriff" in "The Winnowing of Mrs. Schuping" (1991; great story).
posted by maud at 7:14 PM PST - 11 comments

FILMAGE: The Story of DESCENDENTS / ALL is an upcoming feature-length documentary about pop-punk pioneers Descendents. The makers are looking for photos, video, and film of the band. The band's first album, 1982's Milo Goes To College, was an instant classic with songs like I'm Not A Loser. Various splits, reformations, and line-up changes followed. Their most reformation in 2010 included sets at Australia's No Sleep Till festival (full Sydney set at Moshcam). Classic Desendents: I'm The One. Merican. Hope.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:41 PM PST - 24 comments

Magic Headphones "DJ Fresh - Louder (Doctor P & Flux Pavilion Remix)" DUBSTEP, The dancers are ( in order) Marquese "nonstop" Scott/ Julius "iglide" Chisolm / Cyrus "glitch" Spencer . Videography by Jason Locklear
posted by MechEng at 6:32 PM PST - 34 comments

The Shredder Clock will start shredding anything you put in it, from homework to $100 dollar bills, unless it is manually shut off immediately. No snooze button, either.
posted by sweetkid at 6:20 PM PST - 59 comments

The Most Dangerous Place In The World On May 29, fearless Pakistani journalist and author Syed Saleem Shazad disappeared on the way to a TV interview concerning his story about al Qaeda infiltration into the Pakistani military. On May 30, his badly beaten body was found in a canal 150 km from his home in Islamabad. Shazad, Pakistan Bureau Chief for Asia Times Online, had written many provocative stories that brought him threats from Pakistan's ISI. Shazad's murder shows again why Pakistan is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists.
posted by rdone at 5:59 PM PST - 29 comments

DC to reboot entire universe. Will debut same-day digital distribution of 52 new #1 comics in September. [more inside]
posted by crossoverman at 4:11 PM PST - 383 comments

Anatomy of a Mashup - an amazing visualization of "Definitive Daft Punk."
posted by GuyZero at 3:32 PM PST - 21 comments

A robber is cornered in a dead-end alley: He turns to face the police officer pursuing him, ready to fight. He pauses. The officer’s left forearm is encased in ballistic nylon, and half a million volts arc menacingly between electrodes on his wrist. A green laser target lands on the robber’s chest. He puts his hands up; it’s a fight he can’t win. [more inside]
posted by dirtylittlecity at 3:18 PM PST - 127 comments

A Ukranian commercial about a man with squirrels for hands.
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:58 PM PST - 28 comments

Depixelating Pixel Art: "Naïve upsampling of pixel art images leads to unsatisfactory results. Our algorithm extracts a smooth, resolution-independent vector representation from the image which is suitable for high-resolution display devices." [more inside]
posted by Diskeater at 2:52 PM PST - 43 comments

One day I went to Lidl (slyt) - plus bonus Lidl vid
posted by sgt.serenity at 2:49 PM PST - 34 comments

Say, you wanna hear a sad song? Eddie Hinton was a guitar player, vocalist, and songwriter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Co-writer of one of the tenderest, sexiest hits of the late 60s, Dusty Springfield's Breakfast in Bed, Hinton was a key member of the world-famous Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section from 1967 to 1971 (turning down an invitation from Duane Allman to be a member of the Allman Brothers Band) who worked as a studio musician on albums by Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, the Staples Singers, and Toots Hibbert, but his early success was sidetracked by mental problems, booze, and drugs. [more inside]
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:40 PM PST - 22 comments

Iran has a conflicting relationship with the internet. On one side, a large portion of the population are online, and even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a well-publicized blog in 2006 (though it now seems to be offline). Then there was Iran's internet revolution in 2009, when there were country-wide internet censorship that was countered by use of web proxies. Later that same year, a company affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps purchased a majority share in the nation's telecommunications monopoly. The fact that IRGC was involved with a for-profit company was not news, as IRGC has long been involved in Iran's economy, but their role in communications was more troubling. The latest news causing a stir is a "halal" internet for Iran, "an internet that conforms to Islamic principles, to improve its communication and trade links with the world," according to a quote from head of economic affairs with the Iranian presidency, Ali Aqamohammadi. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:57 PM PST - 32 comments

Phallic Symbols at Denver International Airport. Many of the paintings and sculptures at DIA contain hidden images of paganism... On previous videos I have pointed out that this is actually the figure of a naked woman, and the crotch is formed by a bird form. But right opposite the woman is a penguin...
posted by KokuRyu at 1:55 PM PST - 113 comments

You've probably heard of Ed Hardy clothing, but did you know that there is also a full range of Ed Hardy beverages? [more inside]
posted by superquail at 1:17 PM PST - 97 comments

Ben Hecht, arguably one of the greatest screenwriters in Hollywood history, started his career in the (sometimes literally) cutthroat world of Jazz Age journalism at the Chicago Daily News. Throughout 1921 he wrote a series of remarkable vignettes collectively titled the Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago: stories of drifters, fops, and artists from Michigan Avenue to Chinatown, but most of all a fond portrait of the city itself. Collected in book form and gorgeously illustrated, the Thousand and One Afternoons are in the public domain and readily available online. Each story is four or five short pages in length, and goes great with coffee.
posted by theodolite at 12:29 PM PST - 10 comments

Medicine in the Americas is a digital library project that makes freely available original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to research hospitals of the 20th century. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 11:51 AM PST - 9 comments

Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada
Basic bitches wear that shit so I don't even bother [more inside]
posted by finite at 11:44 AM PST - 136 comments

In a shift from its earlier position, the World Health Organization has stated that cellphones "possibly carcinogenic." Full report (PDF).
posted by 4ster at 11:05 AM PST - 117 comments

4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community is a paper by researchers from MIT and the University of Southampton. The paper itself [PDF].
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:35 AM PST - 42 comments

If something sad happened to you or someone you know fill the cohitre ☺ you form. I will make you a postcard, scan it and put it here where we will all sign it (virtually) and cheer you up.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 10:04 AM PST - 12 comments

The Revolutionary New Birth Control Method for Men. Link NSFW. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:07 AM PST - 104 comments

Here is an article from the Asia Times. that discusses the fact that "a rumor is spreading virally throughout the Middle Kingdom that asserts that Austrian-born Hitler was raised by a family of Chinese expats living in Vienna." Apparently "as the rumor spreads throughout the Chinese social web, admiration for Hitler is growing stronger and stronger. Blog posts with titles like 'Why I like Hitler' are popping up every day, and an increasingly greater share of young Chinese are choosing to express their nationalism by voicing support for Hitler."
posted by rudhraigh at 8:29 AM PST - 137 comments

Editors of the journal Science have asked the co-authors of a 2009 paper that linked chronic fatigue syndrome to a retrovirus called XMRV to voluntarily retract the paper. Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and executive editor Monica Bradford cited concerns about the validity of the findings, saying other scientists hadn't been able to replicate them, among other reasons. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:08 AM PST - 61 comments

'The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.'
posted by stbalbach at 7:43 AM PST - 86 comments

In 1995, the NHL's Winnipeg Jets were officially sold to an investment group in Pheonix, Arizona, despite community outrage and a last minute fan rally. [more inside]
posted by WinnipegDragon at 6:53 AM PST - 133 comments

Origin of Supersupercut. Via MeFi's own waxpancake.
posted by cgc373 at 6:39 AM PST - 8 comments

With a coalition government and the recent turmoil over the voting system, sometimes British democracy feels like it's in a bit of a crisis. Thank goodness you can now vote on issues that really matter.
posted by Acheman at 6:08 AM PST - 25 comments

Huffduffer is like Instapaper, but for audio. You can create your a personalized podcast from audioclips you find on the Internet, but don't want to listen to right that second. [more inside]
posted by chunking express at 5:47 AM PST - 27 comments

The Borneo Blog - fascinating photographic journey from the late 1960s of life and culture in Kapit, Sarawak, Malaysia* via Mefi Projects. [slightly NSFW - some topless locals]
posted by peacay at 3:59 AM PST - 11 comments

Liberals and Conservatives still eat different things. [more inside]
posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 3:53 AM PST - 93 comments

Faiz for Dummies. Worth a read even if you don't know Urdu.
posted by bardophile at 1:20 AM PST - 21 comments

"From Papua New Guinea to Stoke-on-Trent, Prince Philip has left his mark around the world. As his 90th birthday looms, Hannah Ewan recalls the soundbites that could only have come from one man"
posted by vidur at 12:17 AM PST - 79 comments

Typography is about reading – and so are ebooks [via]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:52 PM PST - 63 comments

Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history, according to the latest estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA). After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record 30.6 Gigatonnes (Gt), a 5% jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 Gt. The likelihood of exceeeding 450 ppm CO2 and associated two degrees of warming has now receded greatly.
posted by wilful at 11:28 PM PST - 33 comments

Newstweek: fixing the facts. Newstweek is a device that injects fake news into unsecured wireless connections. More info at hackaday.
posted by loquacious at 11:02 PM PST - 26 comments

Welcome to Vegas Punk House. Don’t break shit! Frontman, Fat Mike, of the punk band NoFX recently opened a "Punk House" available for renting while staying in Vegas. Complete with a mini golf course, 3 bedrooms (one with six bunk beds), punk flyers all over the walls, beer vending machine, and a "paltry" museum, for $400 dollars per 3 day stay, you can maintain you're punk lifestyle, albeit in luxury. (VIDEO)
posted by Leisure_Muffin at 10:44 PM PST - 70 comments

I have seen the future of rock n roll + cinema and it is 4-minute mashups that span eras and genres and continents and cultures. Although it's hard to imagine any others can reach this level of awesome: Akira Kurosawa vs. Lucinda Williams. Drunken Angel vs. Drunken Angel. SLYT
posted by ecourbanist at 9:20 PM PST - 7 comments

Over the weekend, PBS' website was hacked by a group calling itself "The Lulz Boat", or "LulzSec". The PBS site displayed a story claiming that rapper Tupac Shakur was alive and well in New Zealand. (He's not). The hack was apparently over the Frontline program that aired last week, 'Wikisecrets', which Julian Assange called "hostile". This follows a separate, unrelated breach at Lockheed Martin, also publicized over the weekend. (Previously)
posted by IvoShandor at 8:04 PM PST - 58 comments

“I have to admit, I admired her style,” . . . “the most awesome robbery ever.” . . . “twisted, intellectually bright, dysfunctional individuals who outsmarted themselves” . . . "from threats to farce to violence" . . . "He smelled really good." . . . Slate and Longform.org team up to being you the tales of five remarkable bank heists.
posted by chaff at 7:16 PM PST - 20 comments

"Protesting members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church were met with an unlikely group of counter-protesters Monday at Arlington Cemetery...a branch of the Ku Klux Klan from Virginia called the Knights of the Southern Cross" [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 5:28 PM PST - 121 comments

Because the wedding was illegal and a secret . . it was well into the afternoon before the three girl brides . . . began to prepare themselves for their sacred vows. "Two of the brides, the sisters Radha and Gora, were 15 and 13, old enough to understand what was happening. The third, their niece Rajani, was 5. . . " Previously on MetaFilter. If you can read a pdf document, here is more from the International Center for Research on Women.
posted by bearwife at 3:13 PM PST - 50 comments

Start with the over-sized armor and bodybuilder physiques of the marines. When you aim a gun in Space Marine, the target reticle is huge, just like the target reticle in Gears of War. The guns are huge and they feature a chainsaw blade that can be used to slice enemies in half, execution style, similar to the “chainsaw bayonet” of the Gears soldiers... The blood spatters are also quite similar. The guns shoot in a similar fashion and the Space Marines wield a big giant hammer that resembles the blasting hammers not from Gears of War but from Microsoft’s other sci-fi franchise, Halo... The bad guys are the green Ork enemies from the Warhammer world, and they bear no resemblance to the enemies in Gears of War, except that they make loud grunts. Of course, their very name does bear resemblance to the “orcs” in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but we’ll ignore that for now. Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat, on how Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is a big rip off of Gears of War. That would be Warhammer 40k, the first rulebook for which was released in 1987, and Gears of War, the relentlessly brown X-Box game released in 2006 to an emo-tastic advertising campaign. Oops. Dean has since backed down and said that he was only talking about gameplay aspects (he wasn't) that are similar (not particularly). Previously he was forced to retract a bad review of Mass Effect when it emerged that he had no idea how to play it. Should videogame journalists be expected to vaguely know what they are talking about, or are we just petty and vindictive for expecting that? (via)
posted by Artw at 2:06 PM PST - 128 comments

Early 1940: British police listening for radio transmissions from German spies within the UK pick up weird signals, and pass them to Bletchley Park, the United Kingdom's main decryption establishment in WWII. The source of these German messages is an unknown machine, which the Brits dub Tunny (10 minute video with Tony Sale describing the Tunny). August 30, 1941: German operators send two very similar messages with the same key, providing insight into the encryption scheme. By January 1942, British cryptographers deduced the workings of the German code machines, sight unseen. The British were able to create their own Tunny emulators to decrypt messages sent by German High Command. After the war, these and other British code-breaking and emulating machines were demolished and/or recycled for parts and their blueprints destroyed, leaving a hole in the history of the British WWII code breaking. Efforts to rebuild the British Tunny emulator started in the 1990s, and quite recently a Tunny emulator replica was completed. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:55 PM PST - 12 comments

A kindergarten teacher in La Estanzuela, a neighborhood in Monterrey Mexico, sings with her students as gunfire can be heard outside. [more inside]
posted by CrazyLemonade at 12:43 PM PST - 94 comments

Artist Shawn Smith uses hand-cut wooden blocks and acrylic paint to transform images of nature into three-dimensional pixelated sculptures. [more inside]
posted by bayani at 12:07 PM PST - 9 comments

Colonel William B. Nolde, 43, Bronze Star and Legion of Merit medal recipient, was killed by an artillery shell near An Lộc on January 27, 1973 - 11 hours before the truce that ended the Vietnam War.
posted by Trurl at 11:45 AM PST - 10 comments

Artist Landon Meier crafts realistic latex masks of babies.
posted by logicpunk at 11:45 AM PST - 29 comments

The life and times of Harvey Updyke: [espn.com] Harvey Updyke talks about life, death and the trees at Toomer's Corner. "Harvey Updyke walks into the famous catfish place down in the swamp, takes off his crimson houndstooth baseball cap and asks, right off the bat, if I know where he could get some cheap tickets to next year's Alabama-Ole Miss game. Provided, he makes sure to point out later, he's not in prison."
posted by Fizz at 9:17 AM PST - 13 comments

Commodity Prices and Paradigm Shifts - "The real paradigm shift, or more like a paradigm drift, because it is slowly enveloping us, is that we are moving toward preferences and lifestyle where we will simply consume less. A lot less... [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:11 AM PST - 88 comments

Leslie Slape has been a professional storyteller for more than 20 years. This column will feature some of her favorite short folktales from around the world. Come on, snuggle up in the rocking chair, and get ready for a story. [more inside]
posted by infini at 8:53 AM PST - 8 comments

Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto (previously, previouslier, and previousliest) is cracking down on graffiti in Hogtown with a Graffiti Abatement Program. However, with small business owners facing steep fines for failing to remove graffiti, independent removal services charging handsomely to remove it (with power washers which can damage building facings and which also sweep aerosol paint residue into the sewers and Lake Ontario) and taggers being regularly presented with fresh canvasses to work on, which starts the cycle once again, the system seems insupportable. [more inside]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:30 AM PST - 97 comments

A boy playing with an otter. via
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 8:26 AM PST - 19 comments

"For five cents Coney Island will feed you, frighten you, cool you, toast you, flatter you, or destroy your inhibitions. And in this nickel empire boy meets girl." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:13 AM PST - 15 comments

"If a hen that appreciates Wagner and Rachmaninov can make me breakfast, she sounds like a pretty good companion to have around" - Toronto Standard reports on the pros and cons of a recent vote to determine if hens can be kept as pets.
posted by ameliaaah at 8:02 AM PST - 15 comments

Jim Tressel, one of the most successful college football coaches in history, has resigned as coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes. After several players were discovered to have traded Ohio State football memorabilia for tattoos (actions which represent NCAA violations), it was revealed that Tressel knew of the player's actions and attempted to conceal the information from investigators. Though Tressel often projected a squeaky clean, conservative image, detractors have often accused him of hypocrisy.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:58 AM PST - 43 comments

Electric Daisy Carnival Prompts Amber Alert For Missing Girl named Molly [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:24 AM PST - 84 comments

Katy & I. [Video] Jack Moore has an obsession with Katy Perry.
posted by nam3d at 5:25 AM PST - 24 comments

Jonathan Franzen's essay, excerpted from his commencement speech at Kenyon College says, among other things "To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology... is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes ... with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self." [more inside]
posted by dubold at 4:44 AM PST - 70 comments

The Doctor will buss a cap directly into yo' ass
posted by clarknova at 8:48 PM PST - 272 comments

"As recently as a year ago, there were many publishers, librarians, and scholars who thought that electronic publishing was just a passing fad." In 1996, the number theorist Andrew Odlyzko, a pioneer in the development of "experimental mathematics" via large-scale computation, wrote a article, prescient in many respects, about the effect the Internet would have on the economics of scholarly publication, and on commerce more generally.
posted by escabeche at 7:46 PM PST - 19 comments

IS TROPICAL - THE GREEKS: Official music video (Vimeo, 3.25); live action combined with animation for real comic-book violence. NSFW owing to boys being shot, blown up, shot, electrocuted, shot, slashed and then shot some more.
posted by bwg at 6:12 PM PST - 44 comments

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, we're all tired, things have been hard here in the States, hard for years and years and years. Perhaps we could use a new (but not really) anthem to bring some spirit back.
posted by tomswift at 6:08 PM PST - 24 comments

Rage Against The Machine - Killing In The Name Of - Previously On The Blue
posted by MechEng at 5:49 PM PST - 22 comments

The kids are all right.
posted by chronkite at 4:25 PM PST - 51 comments

Economic Collapse Explained in Three Minutes
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:14 PM PST - 25 comments

Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) was an early western photographer, notable for his views of San Francisco and Yosemite. Watkins made his images with a custom built "Mammoth" 18x22" glass plate camera. [more inside]
posted by starman at 3:24 PM PST - 7 comments

"When you're partners in an unconsummated marriage, there's a lot of anger. You find yourself saying things you would never say under normal circumstances. You see yourself becoming bitter and horrible to your husband. You tell him this is all his fault and that any normal man would be able to have penetrated you. You compare him to your ex-boyfriend and laugh at him." [more inside]
posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 2:29 PM PST - 140 comments

After over seven years, Stephen R. Donaldson, has stopped taking questions for his monumental and amazing Gradual Interview.

"After May 21, 2011, the Gradual Interview will no longer accept new questions or messages. I will continue to work my way through the questions which have already been accepted, but I can't do more. I'm too far behind on too many things, and the strain is affecting my concentration. Discontinuing the Gradual Interview is one of several things that I'm doing to simplify my life."

The Gradual Interview is a fully-searchable question and answer session with his readers that currently contains over 2600 exchanges on topics including minutiae about his novels, his writing process, and many other interesting subjects. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:27 PM PST - 12 comments

Your Life as Pornography.
posted by Memo at 12:23 PM PST - 66 comments

The most curious was on a chariot that carried the most singular music that can be imagined. It held a bear that played the organ; instead of pipes, there were sixteen cat heads each with its body confined; the tails were sticking out and were held to be played as the strings on a piano, if a key was pressed on the keyboard, the corresponding tail would be pulled hard, and it would produce each time a lamentable meow... the cats were arranged properly to produce a succession of notes from the octave… Sixteenth-century Europe, Jingle Cats, and the 2008 Housing Bubble: The Birth of Sampling [more inside]
posted by waterunderground at 11:53 AM PST - 20 comments

Canada's own Godspeed You! Black Emperor recently reunited and played five nights in three NYC venues. Thanks to GY!BE's kindness toward set recording and NYCTaper you can listen to the two sets at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple.
posted by griphus at 9:51 AM PST - 50 comments

The parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road by Herzog and de Meuron.
posted by puny human at 9:32 AM PST - 14 comments

Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert - "McLuhan prefigured the Internet era in a number of surprising ways. As he said in a March 1969 Playboy interview: 'The computer thus holds out the promise of a technologically engendered state of universal understanding and unity, a state of absorption in the Logos that could knit mankind into one family and create a perpetuity of harmony and peace' ... Wikipedia, along with other crowd-sourced resources, is wreaking a certain amount of McLuhanesque havoc on conventional notions of 'authority', 'authorship', and even 'knowledge' ... Knowledge is growing more broadly and immediately participatory and collaborative by the moment."
posted by kliuless at 9:09 AM PST - 90 comments

This is the story of one of the great lost experimental jazz/rock albums. But is it only a story?
posted by Trurl at 8:06 AM PST - 16 comments

The success of The Walking Dead, paradoxically, has left the network with an unusual dilemma. Like the executives of Mad Men’s Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, AMC is facing an existential question: How do I grow my business without sacrificing who I am? The Zombies at AMC’s Doorstep. TL;DR version: How AMC Explains the Brutal Economics of Cable Television
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:34 AM PST - 82 comments

Eugene Mirman has unleashed his absurdist wrath upon an unsuspecting telecom (Time Warner Cable) for their lack of customer service, taking out a paid advertisement in the New York Press to do so. This is not the first time (referenced here previously, the mp3s can be found here) this high school commencement speaker has used his bizarre powers to fight the (strange but) good fight against a telecom.
posted by dubitable at 3:46 AM PST - 48 comments

An updated Pledge of Allegiance [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:29 AM PST - 72 comments

Adam Kokesh served in Fallujah as a Marine, then got in hot water for appearing at an anti-war protest in uniform. This weekend, he was brutalized by US Park police for silently dancing at the Jefferson Memorial as part of a small flash mob. The event was captured on video, which is fascinating and surreal.
posted by eugenen at 11:17 PM PST - 239 comments

Dinosaur Battle Town: a short film by Eddie West
posted by brundlefly at 10:51 PM PST - 12 comments

The best word to describe it is probably “relentless,” in that it’s relentlessly cute, relentlessly happy, and relentlessly entertaining. In its own way, it reminds me of a movie like Singin’ In The Rain, in that both properties aim to overwhelm any cynicism directed at them via sheer and utter joyfulness. It seems like it should be easy to watch either property with an ironic sneer of detachment, but both utterly wear down all defenses. - The A.V. Club. My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (previously) is the curiously addictive cartoon accompaniment to the famous girl's toy line. It just finished it's first season, and all of the episodes can be seen on YouTube (start here) and this all encompassing torrent. While intended for girls 6 through 8, the show has spawned a surprising additional fan base of young-adult men. Calling themselves bronies, they have created a staggering amount of fan material (check the blog Equestra Daily, chan Ponychan, and image dump Ponibooru) and turned the ponies into a widely pervasive meme, all with the apparent blessing of Hasbro. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla at 10:18 PM PST - 131 comments

One of the best things you can do to increase your happiness is to move closer to where you work. [Previously]
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 8:29 PM PST - 159 comments

How Roxy Music built Avalon, the album. Producer Rhett Davies: “Bryan would lay down four or five scat vocals. We would spend quite a lot of time doing that, and we would actually comp the scat vocals as if they were final vocals with lyrics,” says Davies. “It might seem stupid that we were comping mumblings, but that is basically what we were doing. I think it gave Bryan a clue to the actual shape of the sound of the lyrics, be it an ‘e’ or an ‘o’ sound or whatever, so that they sounded right with the mood of the music. If you put the scat vocal tracks up and really listen to them next to the finished vocal, it wouldn't sound that much different than the finished vocal. He was using identical shapes! Over the months, he would work on the verses and choruses and slowly get ideas on what the song was about,” Davies continues. “He would come in and say, ‘I think I've got a first verse’ and he would try it. Then he might come in later and say, ‘I think I have a second verse,’ or ‘I think I've got a chorus.’ It was pieced together, along with the rest of the music, over the period.”
posted by Dragonness at 8:27 PM PST - 44 comments

The New Geopolitics of Food. [more inside]
posted by StrikeTheViol at 8:19 PM PST - 32 comments

New working paper by three economists estimates the psychological costs of war at between $1.5 and $2.7 billion. [more inside]
posted by scunning at 7:04 PM PST - 10 comments

At Norma's cafe in Farmers Branch Texas the results of the Primetime show "What would you do?" brings tears to the eyes of its actors [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 6:26 PM PST - 58 comments

Research Blogging is an aggregator for blog posts on peer-reviewed research. The posts are on various subjects, such as culinary trends in an extinct hominid , the distance and mass of Saggitarius A* and when chemists go to war
posted by Cloud King at 6:24 PM PST - 5 comments

Step Across the Border (previously, link now broken) "as long as I was playing in a band I didn't have to actually go out there and talk to girls and dance, I could just be on stage and watch everybody else doing it". The critically acclaimed music documentary on Fred Frith, written and directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel (amazon link). It is also available in 8 parts, on youtube. [more inside]
posted by idiopath at 5:46 PM PST - 11 comments

"The 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) has catalogued more than 43,000 galaxies within 380 million light-years from Earth. In this projection, the plane of the Milky Way runs horizontally across the center of the image. 2MRS is notable for extending closer to the Galactic plane than previous surveys - a region that's generally obscured by dust." Hires image.
posted by bwg at 5:38 PM PST - 10 comments

El Internet (sNSFW). [more inside]
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 3:48 PM PST - 34 comments

'In South Africa's black townships, being gay can be fatal.' 'South Africa has a liberal constitution promising equal rights for all.' 'In a society that is deeply religious, traditional and highly patriarchal, lesbians and gay men contradict the dominant view of African manhood.' 'Across Africa, gay people are threatened, humiliated, raped, beaten, killed, jailed, outed in front-page newspaper stories, condemned by preachers as un-Christian and by politicians and traditional leaders as un-African.' 'In South African townships there's a crime dubbed "corrective rape," rape to "cure" lesbians, and sometimes gay men and transsexuals. They are told they are being taught a lesson: how to be a real woman or man, survivors say.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 1:46 PM PST - 26 comments

World First BMX Triple Backflip [SLYT] World First BMX Triple Backflip - Jed Mildon May 28, 2011. Cojones? Just looking down that slope gives me vertigo.
posted by marienbad at 12:57 PM PST - 52 comments

Marc Ornstein - Freestyle Canoe . American Freestyle canoeing is the art of paddling a canoe on flat water with perfect control of its movements.
posted by exogenous at 12:29 PM PST - 37 comments

SLEBP: My ex Brother-in-Law's shit record collection. "You are bidding on a collection of 50 (approx) 12" singles and LPs of crap music. My sister found these in her attic last weekend, where they has been sat gathering dust for the last couple of decades. They used to belong to her ex-husband, who is one of the biggest arseholes ever to draw breath." A Saturday afternoon amusement.
posted by jokeefe at 12:12 PM PST - 82 comments

A trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2 featuring The Hand and Silver Samurai. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 11:17 AM PST - 57 comments

In the recent MIT symposium "Brains, Minds and Machines," Chomsky criticized the use of purely statistical methods to understand linguistic behavior. Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig responds. (via) [more inside]
posted by nangar at 10:57 AM PST - 95 comments

Risking it all in Pakistan – Pakistani truck drivers face death at every turn.
posted by atomicmedia at 10:02 AM PST - 17 comments

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has announced: NASA has ended operational planning activities for the Mars rover Spirit and transitioned the Mars Exploration Rover Project to a single-rover operation focused on Spirit's still-active twin, Opportunity. New Scientist has a quality obituary for the little Mars Rover that could.
posted by hippybear at 9:31 AM PST - 44 comments

Salman Khan: The Messiah of Math - "His free website, dubbed the Khan Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last month about 2 million students visited. MIT's OpenCourseWare site, by comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each month... [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:06 AM PST - 150 comments

The 2010-11 Champions League Finals. In two and a half hours, the biggest game in club football will commence (bbc text stream). The Champions League final is likely to be watched by 300 million viewers and features Manchester United (England's best team this year) against FC Barcelona, now sometimes claimed to be the best team of all time (although the Barca coach plays that down). Lineker thinks that Barca just have to 'turn up to win'. [more inside]
posted by jaduncan at 8:49 AM PST - 147 comments

Street interviews with Buffalo's freelance bottle collectors – the people who wander through the city to recycle our empties. [more inside]
posted by skoosh at 8:39 AM PST - 5 comments

"The Daily Rind” scheduling system: I have an inkling that it will work best for those with a particular creative disposition, while those whose thought-patterns are more regimented and linear may prefer more conventional scheduling methods. But if you’ve got a more fluid workstyle and struggle with finding rhythm and balance with the scheduling of your days, give the system a try
posted by Trurl at 8:02 AM PST - 10 comments

Here is a video of a budgie attempting to stand on a tennis ball.
posted by BeerFilter at 7:43 AM PST - 49 comments

The etymology of “swag”: from the Norwegian “svagga” to P. Diddy, a.k.a., Swag.
posted by Fizz at 7:26 AM PST - 29 comments

Spock in retirement, aka Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:23 AM PST - 13 comments

Lady Gaga takes tea with Mr Fry (full audio interview here). [via]
posted by nam3d at 7:14 AM PST - 66 comments

Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded consciousness in which I can envision what I'm writing as a film or a dream. I rarely invent at the typewriter but recall what I've experienced. --Celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates on the connection between writing and running.
posted by crackingdes at 6:50 AM PST - 11 comments

Psalty and COLBY, two singin' dancin' spiritual guides for kids. Presented by Everything is Terrible.
posted by Taft at 1:27 AM PST - 43 comments

Quentin Tarantino, Tilda Swinton and Marilyn Manson? Carl Sagan and the Dalai Lama? Awesome People Hanging out Together does what it says on the tin.
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 12:49 AM PST - 69 comments

SLYT: Either "Save The World" by Swedish House Mafia is one of the most incredibly moving music videos ever or I just have insanely weepy-with-joy PMS hormones right now. I link, you decide!
posted by Jacqueline at 11:02 PM PST - 79 comments

Vicious Cycles is a text adventure converted into HTML, and the results are pretty great. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla at 8:37 PM PST - 22 comments

Cold Steel is a company that produces and sells weapons to the mass market. This is a revealing promotional video focusing on its founder, Lynn Thompson, who describes the philosophy behind his business..
posted by codacorolla at 7:51 PM PST - 119 comments

Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011). [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:04 PM PST - 217 comments

War Pigs, live in Paris 1970. Slightly different lyrics, still heavier than the gods. [more inside]
posted by googly at 5:41 PM PST - 98 comments

Working on the railroad; 5.17 flash video that is strangely hypnotic.
posted by bwg at 5:00 PM PST - 37 comments

This past January Newsweek magazine deemed Grand Rapids, Michigan as one of the top 10 'dying cities' in the United States. Mayor George Heartwell refuted the 'dying city' label in letter [PDF] to Newsweek editor Tina Brown. The designation inspired the citizens of the city to raise $40,000 and pull together to create a lip-dub to Don McLean's 'American Pie.'
posted by ericb at 3:38 PM PST - 88 comments

An Ecuadoran court has issued a landmark $8bn judgement against Chevron Corporation. [more inside]
posted by clarknova at 3:34 PM PST - 34 comments

In a chilling development, six Italian scientists (and one government official) are facing manslaughter charges for failing to predict the April 6, 2009 earthquake that killed 309 people.
posted by Betelgeuse at 3:26 PM PST - 45 comments

A long time ago (1987) in a slightly parallel galaxy not so far away, an aspiring filmmaker named George Lucas teamed up with thespian Richard E. Grant to create the epic tale of a frustrated thespidroid trying to find fame on the desolate planet of Tatooine. Withnail and O is the result.
posted by Shepherd at 3:15 PM PST - 14 comments

Fox News keeping Sarah Palin on board despite Bus Tour Sarah Palin not running for President. [more inside]
posted by pjenks at 2:56 PM PST - 132 comments

Inside the Detainee Abuse Task Force
On 28 Jul 2004, the Detainee Abuse Task Force, was formed by USACIDC to investigate all allegations of Iraqi Detainee abuse involving Coalition Forces.
One of the special agents in charge describes the task force as under-resourced and hampered by a bureaucracy unable or unwilling to facilitate its investigations.
PBS and The Nation investigating journalist states “One thing that shocked me was that the ID/DATF agents that I interviewed said there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of allegations of detainee abuse and torture that likely didn’t reach them.”
In 2009 President Obama stated “Individuals who violated standards of behavior in these photos have been investigated and held accountable.” and concluded
"I ran for President because I believe that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together."
posted by adamvasco at 2:30 PM PST - 9 comments

The website of the late comedian Mitch Hedberg has been revamped and relaunched by his widow Lynn Shawcroft, with photos, videos, and selections from Mitch's notebooks. (via) (previously) (sadly)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 2:05 PM PST - 30 comments

Cats, where they do NOT belong.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:57 PM PST - 58 comments

With the help of Bill Gates, the World's efforts to eradicate polio (PDF) have over the last few years gained a great deal of new hope (TED) [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 1:18 PM PST - 65 comments

The most powerful presidential position in the world is having its election soon, and the incumbent has just been brought up before an ethics committee for investigation. The USA's best attempt at a candidate was shut out and couldn't even be nominated. The person who is supposed to be representing the US region has been found guilty of corruption several times. Could this result in a historic revote for the 2022 World Cup location? [more inside]
posted by babar at 1:01 PM PST - 28 comments

"The woman, 29, testified, she woke up naked except for a bra, in a puddle of vomit, and believing that she had been raped the night before by a police officer." An East Village video system "recorded two police officers as they arrived at the apartment building above the bar four times in four hours — once on official business, then sneaking back three more times in secret..." What Proof Does a Woman Have to Have? (NYT) [more inside]
posted by DarlingBri at 12:53 PM PST - 129 comments

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled today, in a 6-3 decision, that a person cannot give advance consent to sexual activity while unconscious. [more inside]
posted by greatgefilte at 12:44 PM PST - 100 comments

On May 23, 1861, Spotsylvania County, Virginia voted 1323 - 0 in favor of succession from the Union. Historian John Hennessy provides an explanation of how that vote came to be a perfect 100% in favor of succession. So people rebelling against "Northern tyranny" themselves used tyranny to rig a vote that was undoubtedly going to go overwhelmingly in their favor anyway?
posted by COD at 12:19 PM PST - 22 comments

Out Of This World: Science Fiction But Not As You Know It is an exhibition at the British Library exploring the origins of Science Fiction, running until September. China Mieville takes a look at the exhibition for the BBC. (Out Of This World postcards - images from the exhibition) [more inside]
posted by dng at 11:34 AM PST - 13 comments

Elizabeth Eckford. Paul Cole. Lt. Colonel Robert L. Stirm. Juan Romero. The unfamiliar names have one thing in common: because of a split second in time with a camera pointing towards them, they will always be remembered as “the person in that photograph.” This list includes 10 such individuals, and how a single picture can change some people’s lives. [NSFW for one photo]
posted by bayani at 11:29 AM PST - 24 comments

Vice President and Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey is remembered by "Nixonland" author Rick Perlstein in today's New York Times as "America's Forgotten Liberal" on this, the 100th anniversary of Humphrey's birth. A significant political figure in his own right as a champion of civil rights, a front-runner in the 1960 Democratic primaries and the Democratic nominee for president in 1968, Humphrey's political and personal humiliations at the hands of Lyndon Johnson hindered him at what should have been the very pinnacle of his career and the success of the 30-year liberal majority in Washington. A four-part series at MinnPost.com by writer Iric Nathanson (pt.1, pt.2, pt.3, pt.4) looks at his career. Humphrey died of cancer in 1978 while still serving in the Senate.
posted by briank at 10:57 AM PST - 28 comments

Insider trading laws do not apply to members of US Congress. And it shows, an academic study found members of House beat the market by 6% annually from 1985 to 2001, outperforming hedge funds, not to mention Raj Rajaratnam and Martha Stewart. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 10:46 AM PST - 51 comments

Paper Cuts. Paper-cut silhouettes of famous characters. Can you name them all? (Warning: Single page with a lot of inline images. One slightly NSFW.)
posted by kmz at 10:43 AM PST - 38 comments

Chicken Vanishes, Heartbreak Ensues: A front-yard chicken in Brooklyn is stolen, and a neighborhood rallies. (SLNYT)
posted by dirtdirt at 9:32 AM PST - 48 comments

Horse herpes outbreak forces rodeo queens to ride stick ponies.
posted by hermitosis at 8:51 AM PST - 90 comments

sweet dreams, small kitty (slytp).
posted by peachfuzz at 8:28 AM PST - 61 comments

On Wednesday, the House approved an amendment from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) that would prevent a federal healthcare education fund from being used for abortion or to provide for training for abortion procedures. [more inside]
posted by anya32 at 8:16 AM PST - 53 comments

Web artifact made of solid gold CELEBRITY LECTURES SERIES from Michigan State University. Ten years worth of lectures were posted in 1998. They are all still there-- awaiting your return. Edward Albee ,Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Pat Conroy, Jacques d'Amboise, E.L. Doctorow, Richard Ford, Carlos Fuentes, David Halberstam, Joseph Heller, John Irving, Judith Jamison, William Kennedy, Norman Mailer, David McCullough, Terry McMillan, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Jane Smiley, Susan Sontag, Amy Tan, Paul Theroux, John Updike,Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Derek Walcott, Garry Wills, August Wilson and Tom Wolfe. I listened to the Vonnegut lecture. Imagine-- a whole hour and a half (Well, I skipped the first 9 minutes of introductions.) with my favorite author wheezing and sputtering. How refreshing to hear him declaim in his own voice and reveal the happiest day of his life and his own favorite from among his works -"The Sirens of Titan".
posted by notmtwain at 7:51 AM PST - 8 comments

Some Polaroids belonging to Sean Young. [more inside]
posted by xod at 7:44 AM PST - 76 comments

FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate has what he describes as a "Waffle House" theory of emergency management to assess how bad a situation is after a disaster. "If the Waffle House is open and serving food and has got a full menu, then it's green," he said during an interview inside a FEMA mobile home parked outside a fire station in Joplin. "If the Waffle House is open but has a limited menu, it's yellow, and if the Waffle House isn't open, that's red." - FEMA Gets its Groove Back
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:23 AM PST - 93 comments

The Fiction Liberation Front: cyberpunk/slipstream/transreal author Lewis Shiner has released his collected writings under a Creative Commons license, including his award novels Frontera, Deserted Cities of the Heart, and Glimpses. Shiner may be best known for his inclusion in the seminal 1986 cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades, alongside the likes of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Rudy Rucker. A few years later he was pronouncing the movement dead.
posted by unmake at 7:18 AM PST - 27 comments

Why did William James Sidis - the reclusive boy genius fluent in Latin at 2, accepted to MIT at 8, conceptual physicist at 11 - spend so much time thinking about public transit transfers? [more inside]
posted by Apropos of Something at 7:14 AM PST - 24 comments

Vincent Price actor, gourmet and horror icon was born a 100 years ago today. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:08 AM PST - 38 comments

The Greatest LEGO Diorama in the Galaxy! Imperial Employee of the Month Jay Hoff has been hard at work building the greatest LEGO Diorama in this or any other Galaxy. An impressive, most impressive 37,000 pieces of LEGO (as well as, presumably, a scary amount of time and money), including 388 mini-figurines, went into this custom commemoration of the Emperor's arrival on the second Death Star. This great moment in Imperial history was made in 2011 for Science Discovery Day at Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa. It uses an Imperial Shuttle Kit with custom designed Death Star hangar. [Via Death Star PR]
posted by Fizz at 4:29 AM PST - 41 comments

The EU has just rolled out a new law requiring websites to request permission before installing any cookies in a user's web browser. In the UK, businesses have been given a one year deferral on implementation by the Information Commissioner's Office. The ICO have brought their own website into compliance with the law though, showing other websites the way forward. There's a notice at the top of the page requesting permission to set a cookie, as legally required. Click "continue" without agreeing
posted by crayz at 1:56 AM PST - 56 comments

Kaydara is a French-made Matrix fan film, released on the 21st of May 2011, which has been noted for the high quality of its special effects. The entire 55-minute film is now available to stream for free from its site. [more inside]
posted by chmmr at 1:35 AM PST - 10 comments

Literally Unbelievable is a blog dedicated to Facebook users who don't understand that The Onion is a satire news site.
posted by zardoz at 12:03 AM PST - 82 comments

Leonora Carrington, one of the few living links to the movement that counted Dali, Ernst, Tanguy, and Man Ray as its members, passed away Wednesday at the age of 94. Born in Britain, she earned her surrealist credentials primarily as a painter, but also as a novelist. Forced to flee Europe during WWII, she ended up in Mexico, where she championed another expat European female artist, Remedios Varo. Though both were overshadowed by the more flamboyant Frida Kahlo, all three were strongly influenced by the culture of Mexico, and took surrealism in a new, and decidedly feminine direction.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:48 PM PST - 15 comments

For Roger Ebert, it's a prayer that made him "more alert to the awe of existence." For Rober Koehler, it's a kitschy New Age con. For Richard Brody, it perfectly captures the essence of a generation by depicting a character thinking "back to the musings and fantasies of childhood, which are the product of a wondrous and fantastic view of science formed by popular-science books for children and by the commercial artists whose illustrations adorned them." For Stephanie Zacharek, it's "a gargantuan work of pretension." For Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, it's "a creation myth in the guise of a crypto-autobiography" that invents a universe of its own only to destroy it. For J. Hoberman, it's lifeless and dull, "essentially a religious work and, as such, may please the director's devotees, cultists, and apologists." It spent thirty years in development, three in editing and, yes, it contains dinosaurs. The Tree of Life, written and directed by famously reclusive Zoolander fan and "JD Salinger of American movies" Terrence Malick , won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Tomorrow, it comes out in the United States. [more inside]
posted by alexoscar at 10:50 PM PST - 64 comments

Reuben Heyday Margolin is an artist who designs kinetic sculptures. His most ambitious work to date is The Nebula, 11,000 pounds of moving sculpture suspended 140’ in the air. Wired has a short, navigable movie on its design, construction and installation. (30 secs of advertising beforehand). Margolin’s art has also been powered by the human body in modern dance. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:53 PM PST - 7 comments

Japan World Cup. It's in Japanese, but if you don't understand a word of what's going on here, but just click on random stuff until the race starts.
posted by empath at 9:39 PM PST - 30 comments

Dogs do drink like cats. Proved by Science!
posted by Trurl at 8:06 PM PST - 23 comments

She Died In Terrebonne is a hard-boiled noir webcomic by Kevin Church. The Rack, The Loneliest Astronauts and his other comics can be found at Agreeable Comics.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:35 PM PST - 9 comments

P.G. WODEHOUSE'S AMERICAN PSYCHO [more inside]
posted by subdee at 6:31 PM PST - 46 comments

In the wake of ever deeper budget cuts, public schools have begun charging students for basics, such as registering for honors or elective classes.
posted by reenum at 6:14 PM PST - 99 comments

French scientists have just published a paper entitled "Gliese 581d is the 1st discovered terrestrial-mass exoplanet in the habitable zone", claiming that their computer model suggests the exoplanet "will have a stable atmosphere and surface liquid water for a wide range of plausible cases." We've discovered a lot of exoplanets. And there are a lot of sites to help you keep track. Previously.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:12 PM PST - 46 comments

What do feral and free-roaming house cats do when they're out of sight? A two-year study offers a first look at the daily lives of these feline paupers and princes, whose territories overlap on the urban, suburban, rural and agricultural edges of many towns. [more inside]
posted by moody cow at 5:53 PM PST - 41 comments

Ever wonder what it'd be like to be carried around in a lion's mouth? Now through the wonders of technology (and a camera stealing big cat) you can experience it for yourself!
posted by quin at 5:40 PM PST - 14 comments

I was the first girl I knew to get breasts. I remember being in sixth grade and this horrible girl named Erica coming up to me before social studies and saying, “You don't have to stick out your chest like that,” and I almost cried. (I cried very easily as a child, and by “as a child” I mean “up until this morning.”) Because I wasn't actually sticking my chest out at all, it was just like that.
posted by roger ackroyd at 5:10 PM PST - 82 comments

What do you do if you're the lead singer of one of the biggest rock bands in the world releasing your second solo album? If you're Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, you record 16 songs, originals and covers, spanning a short 35 minutes... accompanying yourself with your ukulele. The entire album, Ukulele Songs, is available for a free First Listen now, thanks to NPR. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:02 PM PST - 48 comments

Edge interviews Ian Bogost about his abominable social game creation, Cow Clicker.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 4:33 PM PST - 8 comments

Student Protests Prayer at Graduation, Gets Divine Retribution Instead A high school atheist in Bastrop, Louisiana tried to stop prayer at his graduation by writing to his superintendent and threatening to bring in the ACLU. The superintendent complied, but the student's name was leaked, and soon he was harassed by fellow students and a former Teacher of the Year, and was kicked out of his house. [more inside]
posted by zooropa at 4:26 PM PST - 356 comments

Page One: Inside The New York Times is a brilliant new documentary from Andrew Rossi, director of Eat This New York and Le Cirque: A Table In Heaven. Starting in November 2009, Rossi spent a year filming the NYT Media desk: "I’d just arrive daily, go up to the third floor and ask what they’re working on today and can I follow you. At first many were shy, but over time I remained patient and waited for things to happen." [more inside]
posted by lantius at 3:45 PM PST - 11 comments

"Now is a better time to be a musician, or a fan of music, than any other time in all of human history." Last Friday, the NPR Planet Money podcast featured musician Jonathan Coulton, whose online success prompted one host to compare the man (or his brand) to the blanket-with-arms Snuggie, i.e. "we didn't know we wanted it, and then all of a sudden we did." Coulton responds with his own thoughts on new business models for musicians in the Internet/file-sharing age.
posted by mrgrimm at 3:29 PM PST - 48 comments

Hey You! What song are you listening to?
posted by the cuban at 2:52 PM PST - 102 comments

The Crossover on Display, a fascinating short New York Times video, featuring interviews with Pearl Washington, Dwayne Wade, and Allen Iverson describing one of the most electric moves in basketball.
posted by googly at 2:22 PM PST - 35 comments

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is the name of a new documentary series by Adam Curtis. The first episode, Love and Power [BBC iPlayer], draws connections between Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, an experiment by Pixar co-founder Loren Carpenter, the Californian Ideology of Silicon Valley in the 90s, Bill Clinton's presidency, and the persistence of the global capitalist hegemony in the face of continuing economic crisis. Curtis discusses his ideas in the Guardian.
posted by Acey at 2:07 PM PST - 78 comments

Back in 2005, the market for retail storage space in Hawaii was evaluated as "underserved ^[pdf]" and what the market wants, the market gets. The roll out of self storage facilities exploded; storage space in Hawaii doubled from 1.56 million square feet to 3.16 million square feet in 2010. The blocky, often featureless facilities sprang up quickly and would dominate entire city blocks, replacing dozens of retail locations at a time, to the extent that one might wonder: "Do people really have that much junk to store?" Apparently, not anymore^[1]. But as the economy struggled and demand fell, the price for storage space hit a point that made sense to some unlikely clients. Instead of just outsourcing the junk drawer, why not use a storage locker for band practice, or a toy store, or even a legal practice? The Secret Life of Storage Units. [more inside]
posted by krippledkonscious at 2:04 PM PST - 36 comments

Peter Thiel, co-founded PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, is granting $100,000 fellowships to not go to college, at least for a while. "We decided about 5 or 6 months ago to start up a program to try to identify 20 talented entrepreneurs, and give them a two year stipend to drop out of school, and to pursue their life's passions and see where that would go." The 20 Under 20 became 24 young people, the first group that the Thiel Foundation might save from the higher education bubble.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:04 PM PST - 66 comments

The "convowel" tag on Wordnik tracks consonant-vowel patterns in words. "bleeding", "pheasant", "shoeless", "trousers" — ccvvcvcc; "quiet", "naiad", "Sioux", "feuar" — cvvvc; "anglophile", "attractive", "impressure", "ingressive" — vcccvccvcv
posted by Rory Marinich at 1:01 PM PST - 41 comments

Boxoffice, an industry magazine for the movie theater business, has been posting back issues dating to 1925. Via Trailers From Hell.
posted by brundlefly at 12:31 PM PST - 11 comments

When you come up behind a group photograph being taken, where do your thoughts turn: to pure evil [some nsfw], or to the ties that bind us all together?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:03 PM PST - 21 comments

Back on November 23rd, TPMMuckraker ran an article titled “‘Eager Beaver’ FBI Agent’s Attempt To Flip Witness Exposed Feds’ Big Insider Trading Case.” That article (about a prematurely blown, ongoing investigation of allegations of insider trading centered on Goldman Sachs) was illustrated with a photograph of the New York Stock Exchange. Yesterday, TPM Media LLC (dba TPMMuckraker) received a cease and desist letter regarding that photo. [more inside]
posted by kipmanley at 11:27 AM PST - 49 comments

Last night, my brother, the real football fan, regailed me with stories of a bizarre double life that an English player seemed to be leading. Looks like someone beat me to collecting them all.
posted by LD Feral at 11:21 AM PST - 18 comments

She's an animator who loves poetry.
He's a poet who loves animation.
Their collaboration, along with the help of many other animators and poets,
has resulted in a storm of Motionpoems.
(More on vimeo & youtube.)
posted by carsonb at 10:47 AM PST - 3 comments

On the same morning that Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi struck down Wisconsin's infamous union-busting bill on the grounds that it violated the state's Open Meetings Law (PDF of decision, previously), Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed America's first state-level single-payer legislation into law. [more inside]
posted by gerryblog at 9:43 AM PST - 93 comments

Krista Hogan and Tatiana Hogan are craniopagus conjoined twins joined at the top, backs, and sides of their heads who are astonishing researchers single page (NYT) with their apparent extraordinary cognitive connection to each other. Since their parents decision not to separate them due to the extreme risks involved, researchers have hoped that they could teach us more about how the brain works, and now they are old enough to tell us about it.
posted by Blasdelb at 9:42 AM PST - 39 comments

Loom. (SLVimeo) (Youtube version) (Arachnophobes should definitely skip this one.) (Via)
posted by zarq at 9:37 AM PST - 14 comments

One day last year, while working on a biography of the publisher Scofield Thayer, I opened a folder of papers related to his magazine The Dial. The folder contained undated letters from the poet E.E. Cummings to Thayer, early versions of a couple Cummings’ poems and one poem by Cummings I couldn’t remember ever seeing before. It was called "(tonite" and, until I came across it, it was unknown.

James Dempsey discusses Scofield Thayer, E.E. Cummings, their relationship, and a heretofore unknown, unpublished poem.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:10 AM PST - 4 comments

Last night, in a 7-6 loss to the Florida Marlins, the San Francisco Giants suffered what could potentially be a devastating loss when their prized catcher, 24-year old Buster Posey, in an attempt to block the plate and prevent a run from scoring, injured his leg in a gruesome collision (somewhat graphic mlb.com video). Following the game, his agent is questioning MLB rules surrounding home plate collisions. Analysts across the game are (ESPN Insider, subscription required) also wondering...is it time for a change? Some historical context on collisions at home plate. It's also just recently been reported that Posey has broken his leg and torn ligaments, which is a shame for such a promising and exciting player.
posted by arm426 at 8:55 AM PST - 90 comments

The Root of Knowledge - "Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at 'Philosophy.' " (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:45 AM PST - 87 comments

VLT (Very Large Telescope) HD Timelapse Footage (8min SLYT)
posted by jermsplan at 8:10 AM PST - 28 comments

The most serious crisis facing the world today is the lack of Jamaican Reggae/Mento covers - The Jolly Boys try to redress the balance. [more inside]
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:47 AM PST - 7 comments

Coming Out: Audio, Photos, and Stories of Gay Teens (NYTimes) [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 7:35 AM PST - 14 comments

"Over the next five years more and more things will act on our behalf and encourage us to do things based on our actions. " How the Internet of Things will change the world.
posted by cashman at 7:34 AM PST - 56 comments

Think you love to crochet? I can guarantee you’re not a patch on Polish-born New York artist Agata Oleksiak, now known as Olek. Olek has covered everything in her apartment with its own custom-made crocheted sweater, and a installation of those items is on display at the Christopher Henry Gallery in Nolita until May 28. She’s also done people, bicycles, cars, windows in abandoned buildings, the bull on Wall Street, and pretty much anything else that would stay still long enough. She keeps track of her crocheting time by counting the number of movies she watches while making an item. I notice she uses variegated acrylic, which is the cheapest yarn on the market. I always wondered who was still buying that "ugly afghan" yarn.
posted by orange swan at 7:06 AM PST - 27 comments

Bob Ferry used Google Books to find old magazines that described mechanics, showed pictures and gave descriptions of a 1906 Oldsmobile Model B Runabout so he could build it 100 years later. Lots of pics and "how to" info at the article.
posted by dbooker at 6:22 AM PST - 10 comments

Publisher's Bindings Online, 1850-1930. A browesable searchable database of artistic book bindings. There are sections on artistic styles: Arts & Crafts, Japonisme, Poster Style. There are sections on specific authors and designers: Sarah Orne Jewett & Sarah Wyman Whitman, Lousia May Alcott, Lafcadio Hearn. There are historical galleries: Booker T. Washington, Women on Books, The Civil War in Fact and Fiction. There is much more. Previously.
posted by OmieWise at 5:48 AM PST - 4 comments

VOA reports arrest of Ratko Mladić Boris Tadić has confirmed the arrest of Ratko Mladić the commander who was the military commander of the massacre of Srebenica, the Siege of Sarajevo.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:35 AM PST - 41 comments

The McKinsey Global Institute has published "Internet Matters: The Net's sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity" [70 Page PDF or just the Summary]. "On average, the Internet contributes 3.4 percent to GDP in the 13 countries covered by the research an amount the size of Spain or Canada in terms of GDP, and growing at a faster rate than that of Brazil... For governments, investments in infrastructure, human capital, financial capital and business environment conditions will help strengthen their Internet supply domestic ecosystems." Found on Marginal Revolution where Tyler Cowen has a few interesting comments.
posted by Blake at 5:25 AM PST - 8 comments

Top 10 finalists in the 2011 Illusion of the Year Contest. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 4:41 AM PST - 29 comments

Jose Guerena, 26, was a Marine veteran and father of two. He served two tours in Iraq in 2003 and 2005. On May 5th, he was killed in his home by a SWAT team looking for narcotics [more inside]
posted by dubold at 3:35 AM PST - 449 comments

On May 16, 2011, after one scrubbed attempt, the space shuttle Endeavour set off on her final mission, STS-134. Shuttle commander Mark Kelly had this to say after receiving a "go" from the launch poll:

On this final flight of space shuttle Endeavour, we want to thank all the tens of thousands of dedicated employees that have put their hands on this incredible ship and dedicated their lives to the space shuttle program. As Americans, we Endeavour to build a better life than the generation before, and we Endeavour to be a united nation. In these efforts, we are often tested. This mission represents the power of teamwork, commitment, and exploration. It is in the DNA of our great country to reach for the stars and explore; we must not stop. To all the millions watching today, including our spouses, children, family, and friends, we thank you for your support.

You've seen launches before, but NASA has uploaded a whole slew of angles that will truly amaze: Witness 4.4 million pounds of shuttle, fuel, and rocket boosters "twang" a full 18 inches as the main engines ignite. 1.2 million pounds of thrust push against a locked down stack, waiting for the solid rocket boosters to ignite. (The SRBs bring the total to 7 million lbs of thrust, enough to break all that binds her to the pad.) OTV Camera 71, a fantastic, short close-up. UCS-15 (TV-21A) provides a dead-on, close up shot of the launch. The South Beach Tracker shot offers a fantastic view as well. From 3.1 miles away at the Press Site, note the ~11 second delay before the piercing sound of the SRBs hits. And just released today, fantastic footage from the solid rocket boosters, including their trip to splashdown in the Atlantic ocean from 30 miles up. And finally, the classic NASA view, with some great data overlays by Spacevidcast. [more inside]
posted by disillusioned at 2:23 AM PST - 40 comments

Supernova Sonata by Alex Parker From April, 2003 until August, 2006, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope watched four parts of the sky as often as possible. Armed with the largest digital camera in the known universe, CFHT monitored these four fields for a special type of supernova (called Type Ia) which are created by the thermonuclear detonation of one or more white-dwarf stars. Each supernova is assigned a note to be played: The volume of the note is determined by the distance to the supernova, with more distant supernova being quieter and fainter. The pitch of the note was determined by the supernova’s “stretch,” a property of how the supernova brightens and fades. Higher stretch values played higher notes. The pitches were drawn from a Phrygian dominant scale. The instrument the note was played on was determined by the properties of the galaxy which hosted each supernova. Supernovae hosted by massive galaxies are played with a stand-up bass, while supernovae hosted by less massive galaxies are played with a grand piano.
posted by ThenCameNow at 12:09 AM PST - 10 comments

After 25 years, and a huge buildup, the final episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show has aired.
posted by Artw at 11:03 PM PST - 107 comments

We all know Instructables, the crowd-sourced how-to site that brought us great tutorials like "Garbage Bag + Rice Cooker = Alcohol Still," and "Quick Sauerkraut with Caraway Seeds and a Baseball bat" - wait, what? Oh, you must be reading some of Tim Anderson's 200-plus Instructables. Tim's a curious fellow best known for co-founding 3-D printer manufacturer Z Corp (previous-Z) um, no, wait, maybe for writing the Heirloom Technology column in Make Magazine? No? Hmm, then what is he "best known for?" Well, there's a bunch of other stuff in here. . . . [more inside]
posted by richyoung at 10:48 PM PST - 13 comments

The unearthly countertenor of Alfred Deller, and the Deller Consort. "The most visible icon of the countertenor revival in the twentieth century was Alfred Deller, an English singer and champion of authentic early music performance. Deller initially called himself an "alto", but his collaborator Michael Tippett recommended the archaic term "countertenor" to describe his voice. In the 1950s and 60s, his group, the Deller Consort, was important in increasing audiences' awareness (and appreciation) of Renaissance and Baroque music. Deller was the first modern countertenor to achieve fame, and has had many prominent successors." And here in a 4 part interview "on the countertenor voice!" 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4
posted by puny human at 9:43 PM PST - 12 comments

In his latest interview, NYtimes bestselling author Seth Godin discusses how he got his start as an author, and the core beliefs behind his new publishing distribution method, the domino project.
posted by ziadbc at 8:53 PM PST - 21 comments

Ed Schultz, host of MSNBC's The Ed Show, has been suspended for one week without pay after calling right-wing radio host and Fox News staple Laura Ingraham a "talk slut" on his radio show yesterday. On tonight's episode, he apologized.
posted by jeremy b at 8:17 PM PST - 82 comments

This is not an attempt to tweet mindlessly the entire contents of Ulysses, word-for-word, 140 characters at a time. That would be dull and impossible. What is proposed here is a recasting or a reimagining of the reading experience of this novel, start to finish, within the confines of a day-long series of tweets from a global volunteer army of Joyce-sodden tweeps. (previously!)
posted by Trurl at 8:03 PM PST - 17 comments

Before his death, Mickey Mantle spoke to Sports Illustrated about the effect that alcoholism had on his life and career. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 6:11 PM PST - 25 comments

British food-writer and Sichuan cuisine expert Fuchsia Dunlop introduces cheese to a group of chefs from Shaoxing, China,"the Chinese headquarters of 'stinking and fermented' delicacies" for the first time. How does the Stilton fare against stinky tofu?
posted by peripathetic at 5:01 PM PST - 75 comments

The men of the early 20th-century motor press sometimes referred to the 13th circuit of an automobile racecourse as “the hoodoo lap,” not because more bad stuff happened then, but because they fervently wished it would. Coming at that point, a wreck would play nicely into the tabloid trope that superstitions are not to be flouted, and it would give a long car race some much-needed narrative cord. And so it was on May 30, 1911, as several dozen reporters leaned forward anxiously to watch the 40-car field for the first-ever Indianapolis 500-mile race power past the starting line for the 12th time and roar yet again into turn one.
posted by veedubya at 4:32 PM PST - 15 comments

Prison administrators in China have found a new use for forced prison labour: gold-farming operations, in which prisoners play multiplayer games for hours on end, handing over the gold they acquire to the guards, who sell it online for real money.
posted by acb at 2:00 PM PST - 85 comments

Last week the Texas House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill (House Bill 1937) prohibiting public servants from intrusively touching anyone seeking access to a public building or form of transportation. (TIME, Dallas News, Washington Times) The blogosphere touted the legislation as a move to criminalize TSA groping. Today, the bill was withdrawn from consideration by the state senate after a threat from the TSA and Department of Justice to "close down all the airports in Texas". Protesters are currently marching on the state capitol. [more inside]
posted by thescientificmethhead at 2:00 PM PST - 90 comments

An exhaustive guide to the sneakers worn by Jerry Seinfeld over the course of Seinfeld's 9-year run. [more inside]
posted by schmod at 1:45 PM PST - 37 comments

Acting Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal, in an extraordinary admission of misconduct, took to task one of his predecessors for hiding evidence and deceiving the Supreme Court. The misconduct took place 'in two of the major cases in its history: the World War II rulings that upheld the detention of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans.' 'Scholars and judges have denounced the World War II rulings as among the worst in the court's history, but neither the high court nor the Justice Department had formally admitted they were mistaken — until now. "It seemed obvious to me we had made a mistake. The duty of candor wasn't met," Katyal said.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 1:14 PM PST - 37 comments

Theta Music Trainer — Train your ear with fun music games. Sharpen your sense of pitch and tone. Unlock the hidden patterns in music. Strengthen your music theory skills.
posted by netbros at 12:48 PM PST - 13 comments

Once upon a time, Indiana Jones met Han Solo. Sort of. Wookieepedia article. Vanity Fair story. io9 story.
posted by kmz at 12:40 PM PST - 26 comments

What follows is a D.I.Y. cooking starter kit: small kitchen projects that any cook can tackle. What they all have in common is that they are simple, season-less and a clear improvement on the store-bought version. Includes: Chinese Chili-Scallion Oil, Chocolate-Hazelnut Paste, Corn Muffin Mix, Crème Fraîche, Cultured Butter, Fresh Cheese, Horseradish Beer, Mustard, Kimchi ,Maple Vinegar, Preserved Lemons, Tesa (Cold-Cured Pork Belly), Tomato Chili Jam, Vin d'Orange
posted by AceRock at 12:31 PM PST - 43 comments

50 years ago today, on May 25 1961, US President John F. Kennedy decided "...this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Eight years later the Apollo program fulfilled the task, leaving the world with a legacy that includes advances in computers and communciation, lessons in managing complex projects, technological innovations and new views of the Earth. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:13 PM PST - 76 comments

Atari Teenage Riot is the sound of punk, breakbeat and glitchy electronics, with a message behind the noise, something of the modern version of a riot set to music. The German group was briefly associated with the Phonogram record label back in 1993, but only long enough get a record deal with an unrecoupable advance, piss off the label, cut those ties and form their own new label: Digital Hardcore Recordings. From there, the group made three albums and about a dozen singles and EPs, toured the world, then went quiet in 2000. That is, until last year when the group reformed to tour, and the revised cast of characters recorded a new album, which is streaming online. Step inside for more history and noise. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:59 AM PST - 45 comments

Photographer Christopher Boffoli photographs daily life all out of proportion.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:09 AM PST - 24 comments

David Lynch's 2001 film Mulholland Drive is the subject of dozens of interpretive theories. Roger Ebert decided it was impossible to figure out. Part of the mystery of the movie comes from how it was initially planned as a television pilot for ABC; Lynch combined pilot footage with a newly-devised ending to make the film. That pilot's script. The entire 90-minute pilot. If you can't be bothered to watch the whole thing, individual scenes after the jump. [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:36 AM PST - 140 comments

30 years of Steve Bell, The Guardian's political cartoonist.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:08 AM PST - 14 comments

Have you always longed for a comprehensive list of the shit Kiwis are really into? No, neither have we. Here it is anyway. Kiwianarama
posted by midnightbarber at 7:59 AM PST - 23 comments

"Shackleton": The story Ernest Shackleton's Endurance voyage, told as a Twitter novel. Says author Peggy Nelson, "The fearless leader of the greatest anticlimax known to narrative, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) is today’s go-to superhero." You can follow the narrative on Twitter here. [more inside]
posted by flyingsquirrel at 7:55 AM PST - 30 comments

So far this year there have been 118 cases of measles reported in the United States. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 7:53 AM PST - 163 comments

On April 12th, prior to the Alabama outbreak and about 6 weeks before a tornado tore through the middle of mostly basement-less Joplin, MO, Colleen Bogener wrote a short editorial on the need for public storm shelters in Joplin. There was a short bit of discussion in response.
posted by spock at 7:49 AM PST - 71 comments

"In 1955 "Rock Around the Clock" went to the top of the charts and turned Bill Haley into the king of rock and roll. Twenty-five years later, he was holed up in a pool house in Harlingen, TX, drunk, lonely, paranoid, and dying. After three decades of silence, his widow and his children tell the story of his years in Texas and his sad final days." (Via)
posted by zarq at 7:32 AM PST - 34 comments

"Collections wrap bare objects with cultural identity." Smithsonian archivist turned assemblage artist Tracy Hicks finds the seam between two things I didn't think were related -- dispassionate taxonomy and artistic whims. You can catch Hicks' installation at the American Association of Museums conference showing his interpretation of the future of museums (if by "future" you mean a Lovecraftian dystopia.) [more inside]
posted by cross_impact at 7:31 AM PST - 1 comment

Weed like to welcome you , and other fun city slogans in a Google Map. (via Andrew Sullivan)
posted by dry white toast at 7:25 AM PST - 25 comments

Happier meals: four Toronto chefs reimagine the Big Mac combo. Behind the scenes.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:33 AM PST - 40 comments

The AV Club feature Gateways to Geekery is all about the best places to start on some of pop culture's most complex and nuanced artists and genres, including Randy Newman, The Who, Monty Python, steampunk, Sherlock Holmes and 90 others. [more inside]
posted by Apropos of Something at 6:16 AM PST - 41 comments

Milton Glaser on fear of failure "This is the way to professional accomplishment: You have to demonstrate that you know something unique that you can repeat over and over and over, until ultimately you lose interest in it. The consequence of specialization and success is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it doesn't aid in your development. The truth of the matter is that understanding development comes from failure." [more inside]
posted by heatherann at 5:49 AM PST - 30 comments

All the little angels rise up high. The 25 of May is a day to celebrate two giants of British sci fi/fantasy and humor--Sir Terry Pratchett and the late Douglas Adams. Long may their work endure. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:01 AM PST - 36 comments

A New Zealand truck driver who inflated "like a balloon" when he fell buttocks-first onto a compressed air nozzle is being described as lucky to be alive.
posted by three blind mice at 2:38 AM PST - 71 comments

The Busking Project: Tracking a path across the globe to interview, photograph, film, and discover the life and motivations of the world's street artists!
posted by bwg at 1:21 AM PST - 32 comments

Walking Home: stories from the desert to the Great Lakes. Laura Milkins is walking home. Home is Grand Rapids, Michigan. Laura lives in Tucson, Arizona. That's 2,000 miles (3,219 km), or about 4,473,976 steps. Right now she's in the shoulder of the road somewhere around Holbrook, Arizona. She has a pack on her back, a webcam streaming 24 hours strapped to a sun visor on her head, and hopefully, a place to stay tonight. You can follow her every step of the way, by watching live video broadcast from her hat. Or walk with her. [more inside]
posted by Tufa at 12:41 AM PST - 25 comments

Scott Rosenberg on the end of Salon's Table Talk. They're deleting 16 years of messages on June 10, with nothing indexed by Archive.org or anywhere else.
posted by Yakuman at 12:01 AM PST - 54 comments

Media outlets are declaring a winner in NY-26 as Democratic candidate Kathy Hochul has a 6% lead (with 91% reporting) over Republican Jane Corwin (previously) in Tuesday's special election. [more inside]
posted by ofthestrait at 10:16 PM PST - 74 comments

Ramon Glazov attacks David Foster Wallace, Hubert Selby Jr., Dave Eggers, William T. Vollmann, hipster irony, and modern druggie lit.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 10:14 PM PST - 151 comments

They began as a folk duo on the lower east side, doing irreverent versions of songs from the Harry Smith anthology. They became the backing band for The Fugs, had a brush with fame on the soundtrack to Easy Rider, briefly featured playwright Sam Shepard on drums, moved to Oregon and became the uber bar band. After carrying on for more than 40 years, they are still the most underrated band in history, The Holy Modal Rounders. [more inside]
posted by snofoam at 10:10 PM PST - 15 comments

Safe Ground is an organization of Sacramento's homeless population to claim a secure location in order to live decently. While resistance to tent cities (previously, 2, 3) has largely been due to political expediency (criminalizing homelessness is easier than ending it), a spot on Oprah brought media attention to the plight of the homeless and made it more difficult for police to bully them from place to place with the threat of jail. In response to this, Costa Mantis(of He Knows You're Alone fame [uncredited on the wiki]) started filming the personal stories of the homeless along the American River in Sacramento. This led to Searching for Safe Ground, a miniseries concerning the struggle of Sacramento's homeless for a place to exist. Incidentally, a federal jury ruled tonight that the city of Sacramento has been violating homeless people's constitutional rights by moving them from public property and confiscating their property. Stay tuned.
posted by Wyatt at 9:37 PM PST - 15 comments

In-sourcing the legal business: America's biggest law firms are "creating a second tier of workers, stripping pay and prestige from one of the most coveted jobs in the business world." [more inside]
posted by kanuck at 9:33 PM PST - 74 comments

FlashlightWorthy: handpicked book recommendations on hundreds of topics. Lists of books are easy to come by. Thoughtful lists of good books are harder to find. FlashlightWorthy does a fine job of mixing classic greats along with more obscure treasures. Plain vanilla lists (e.g. Best Cooking Books, 33 Best Books on Writing Fiction, Best Graphic Novels of 2009 and 2010) are well-represented but there's also quirkier and specialized fare like... [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:31 PM PST - 10 comments

There's really not much to find out on early '80s pop chanteuse, Henriette Coulouvrat. Not even a wiki. Just a long neglected web site. She's French, and she's dance and she's synth-pop, and seems to be remembered for these two songs, Rockin' On The Red Book and Paddy Field, along with several appearances on French tv.
posted by puny human at 8:50 PM PST - 5 comments

It wasn't like we were playing any kind of conventional music, it was outrageous, nasty, bad trip music... If ever there was a missing link in the history and development of British psychedelic music it is Rustic Hinge. [more inside]
posted by SomaSoda at 7:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Long before the Web, The Boston Globe had a “homepage” of sorts – its old storefront downtown. Taking advantage of its location in a heavily trafficked block of Newspaper Row, the young daily brought the news to Bostonians in a whole new way: handwritten signs.
posted by Trurl at 7:10 PM PST - 8 comments

UNOMORALEZ/IMG. UNOMORALEZ/LOOPS. Disturbing pixel art in a Hypercard-era style. (NSFW)
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:46 PM PST - 36 comments

"Remember, you’re the first little girl who’s ever made a game at TOJam. And everyone’s worried you’re going to run around screaming and making noise and wrecking things. […] If you’re very well behaved, then next year if another little girl wants to come and make a game, the TOJam people will say 'the little girl who made a game last year was SO wonderful, we’d LOVE to see more little girls making games.'" Ryan Creighton takes his five-year-old daughter Cassie to an indie game jam in Toronto, and together they make Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure.
posted by danb at 6:20 PM PST - 44 comments

Minecraft Universe
posted by empath at 6:20 PM PST - 35 comments

"It's completely unethical for doctors to force their patients to sign away their rights in order to get medical care." Ars Technica dissects doctor "privacy" agreements that seek to limit patients' ability to post online reviews by making them sign the copyright of any future reviews over to the doctor, in exchange for vague (and possibly illusory) extra privacy protection. Doctored Reviews offers info and tools for fighting "anti-review contracts," whose language comes primarily from an "anti-defamation protection program" sold by a company called Medical Justice. Sources quoted in the article express doubts that this kind of "privacy blackmail" would hold up in court, with some wondering if Medical Justice is actively deceiving doctors by selling them a product that won't work as advertised. [more inside]
posted by mediareport at 6:16 PM PST - 28 comments

Why You Hate Comic Sans
posted by ziadbc at 4:55 PM PST - 113 comments

Bob Dylan is 70 today.
posted by Xurando at 3:41 PM PST - 209 comments

Last year U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning allegedly provided thousands of secret U.S. documents to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. He allegedly leaked the secret cables — "along with a controversial video — in the hope of inciting 'worldwide discussion, debates and reforms.' In preparing for its new investigative report, WikiSecrets (airing tonight), PBS Frontline "obtained access" to his Facebook account. "Manning's Facebook postings are a vivid, if partial, portrait of his life in the military and of the political and social issues that he followed closely. They reflect his commitment to gay rights and defiance of the military's ban on openly gay or lesbian soldiers. They track the anguish in his personal life. And they conclude with an entry, put up in Manning’s name by his aunt, explaining his arrest with a link to a WikiLeaks website."
posted by ericb at 2:17 PM PST - 117 comments

How to make an Art-- a tutorial [with Addendum] by HennesyYoungman...via the amazing Victory Light blog [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:11 PM PST - 12 comments

Camp Cranky is a virtual sleepaway camp intended by its creators, actors Liane Balaban and Vanessa Matsui, to be a safe space for young girls to hear personal stories about first periods, learn about the biology of menstruation, read poems about periods (musician Leslie Feist and actress Emma Thompson each contribute), and learn about various menstrual products. Readers can also donate to Huru International, which sends menstrual supplies to girls in need in Kenya. Camp Cranky is the first phase in what will eventually be Crankytown [the name comes from a Feist poem], a site where women of all ages can discuss menstruation and menopause. The project is a part of the National Film Board and Studio XX's First Person Digital Program. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:44 PM PST - 39 comments

Make your Franklin is a site which accepts submissions of recreated 100 USD banknotes.
posted by gman at 12:48 PM PST - 32 comments

Bambi Rescued By the Jaws of Life! [SLYT] What do you do when you find a baby deer trapped underneath a pile of rocks? Call your local firefighters, who extract the poor creature using the largest power tool they could find—the Jaws of Life. Via Gizmodo
posted by Fizz at 12:12 PM PST - 41 comments

Vorsong Feng Shui Iceberg Energy Water
posted by alopez at 11:42 AM PST - 44 comments

Sonar is a cool music visualization. (SLYT)
posted by bardophile at 11:29 AM PST - 7 comments

Food should be delicious, cooking should be fun, and people should feel good about what they eat. This blog is all about making that happen!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:57 AM PST - 46 comments

It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course). Uncontroversially, he is not a “suspect” but the “decider” who gave the orders to invade Iraq -- that is, to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country and the national heritage, and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially, these crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden.

There is Much More to Say by Noam Chomsky.
posted by klue at 10:22 AM PST - 463 comments

The reclusive 104-year-old heiress has died, but the recent public fascination with her has led to an investigation into the handling of her money. You may remember last year's MeFi post dedicated to Huguette Clark. The hospital in which she lived for the past 22 years confirmed that she died Tuesday morning, just shy of her 105th birthday. The investigation of the people handling her fortune continues.
posted by lily_bart at 10:20 AM PST - 12 comments

Harold Camping refines his end of the world prediction. When the world didn't end this past Saturday at 6 pm Harold Camping went into seclusion for a bit to think about that. [more inside]
posted by Poet_Lariat at 10:01 AM PST - 201 comments

For the past year, director Stephen Soderbergh has been recording and sharing a list of the books that he has read, and films that he has watched. The writers at Flavorwire noted Soderbergh's decision to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark in black & white three times, and have compiled a list of color films that work better in monochrome. [more inside]
posted by schmod at 10:00 AM PST - 59 comments

Cities as Software is an article by Marcus Westbury about Renew Newcastle's low-budget, DIY model for renewing urban spaces. "...You need to start by rewriting – or hacking – the software to change not what the city is but how it behaves." [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 9:09 AM PST - 38 comments

I’d always dismissed the idea of human trafficking in the United States. I’m Indian, and when I went to Mumbai and saw children sold openly, I wondered, Why isn’t anything being done about it? But now I know—it’s no different here. I never would have believed it, but I’ve seen it.
posted by AceRock at 8:55 AM PST - 95 comments

Whites believe they are victims of racism more often than blacks. Researchers at Harvard Business School and Tufts University have published a study (PDF) that concludes that "many Whites believe ... the pendulum has now swung beyond equality in the direction of anti-White discrimination."
posted by desjardins at 8:45 AM PST - 257 comments

An oldie but a goodie: Don Reese, then of the San Diego Chargers, talks about his own problems with cocaine and the widespread drug use in the NFL at the time. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 8:23 AM PST - 9 comments

I Feel Better: A brief rotoscoped video for the song by the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit, in which a real-life HUD and an infinite number of parallel universes conspire to help our hero get motivated. [SLYT]
posted by jbickers at 7:39 AM PST - 19 comments

In 2009, Ctrl.Alt.Shift, the "youth initiative of Christian Aid," held a national competition in the UK for aspiring filmmakers aged 18 to 25. Their mission: create a short film treatment based around three key issues: "War + Peace," "Gender + Power" and "HIV + Stigma." The results were then screened to an audience at the 2009 Raindance Film Festival. The films: 1000 Voices, HIV: The Musical, Man Made, No Way Through and War School. (All YouTube links. Vimeo links and descriptions of each film are inside this post.) These films deal with adult subject matter and may be disturbing for some viewers. Some may also be nsfw. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:17 AM PST - 3 comments

Here's an awesome music video recently released by the band Goldfish, which includes a staggering number of video game references. [more inside]
posted by Ceniac at 6:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Starting from a proposal by vito_excalibur, the Back Up Project tries to intervene in sexual harassment at fan conferences. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 6:52 AM PST - 81 comments

The world's slowest Porsche. Johannes L. built a Porsche GT3 RS out of a recumbent bicycle, wood stripping, pvc, and tape. The Flickr set covering construction.
posted by OmieWise at 6:51 AM PST - 20 comments

Do you love beautifully crafted bike parts? Do you love your Nitto handlebars, stem, seatpost or racks? Enjoy this brief visit to the Nitto factory.
posted by rainperimeter at 12:08 AM PST - 36 comments

Et tu, Mr. Destructo? is a funny, insightful blog that covers everything from politics to film to sports and mystery novels.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 10:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Hey Beyonce, Guess What? You're a Liar. (SLYT) Angry young video blogger (vlogger?) Nineteen Percent calls out Beyonce's Run the World (Girls) for shallow girl-power lyrics. (via Feministing.)
posted by emjaybee at 8:10 PM PST - 147 comments

"Excuse me while I rock out to the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble and The Wangjaesan Light Music Band." The human face of communism. It's a Pyongyang thang.
posted by puny human at 7:56 PM PST - 26 comments

Only downsides I see are that the peppers are so small and the grueling stomach pain. The Trinidad Scorpion Butch T measures a record 1,463,700 Scoville Heat Units - about 7 times hotter than a habanero. (related)
posted by Trurl at 7:03 PM PST - 102 comments

Why America is the 'no vacation nation'. (CNN) -- Let's be blunt: If you like to take lots of vacation, the United States is not the place to work.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:26 PM PST - 329 comments

The Destruction of Economic Facts - "Renowned Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues that the financial crisis wasn't just about finance—it was about a staggering lack of knowledge" (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:23 PM PST - 35 comments

Dead Mary, Swart Cat, and many, many other posters from Ghanaian video clubs.
posted by theodolite at 2:22 PM PST - 13 comments

Apple says app developers are covered under license, Lodsys' patent infringement claims are invalid Macworld has more.
posted by device55 at 12:54 PM PST - 75 comments

Green With Envy is a new movie starring Amy Adams and Jason Segal...or is it? [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:18 PM PST - 92 comments

Microsoft Mathematics is a free Computer Algebra System (CAS) available from Microsoft. A CAS is a program that can solve purely symbolic mathematical equations. For example, the program can tell you that the derivative of 6x^2 + 12x is 12x + 12. The program has functions for calculus, statistics, linear algebra, and graphing. One interesting feature of the program is that in some cases it can show and describe the intermediate steps involved in solving an equation. Here’s a 16 page tutorial (in MS Word docx format) showing how to use the program. The program can be downloaded from the Microsoft download page. Thirty-two and sixty-four bit versions are available. The program only works on XP/Vista/Windows 7.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 11:35 AM PST - 56 comments

Film on Paper documents in detail a personal collection of some 1500 movie posters from the UK, US, and Japan.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:34 AM PST - 5 comments

Grand Prix - the Killer Years A BBC documentary on how rapidly evolving technology and an indifference to driver safety on the part of car designers and track owners caused ever-escalating casualties among the top-tier drivers of the '60s and '70s, and the efforts of the drivers to introduce modern safety standards and rules. The footage is in places exhilarating, capturing the beauty and the excitement of the sport at its best, and in others horrifying and tragic, the sport at its worst.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:29 AM PST - 63 comments

Conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. [more inside]
posted by Mister Fabulous at 11:15 AM PST - 209 comments

Du Tac au Tac was a 1970s French television programme which brought cartoonists together to create improvised jam drawings based on specific themes, building upon one another's illustrations. Some highlights: Neal Adams (Batman), Joe Kubert (Sgt. Rock), and Jean Giraud (Blueberry) open Pandora's Box and in another segment, create a bestiary and draw their favorite comic-book heroes. Jean Giraud and Hugo Pratt (Corto Maltese) create a 3-panel strip using four onomatopoeia provided by Jean Claude Forest (Barbarella) and Jije (Spirou and Fantasio). Goscinny and Uderzo (Asterix) play a game of equisite corpse with Greg (Achille Talon) and Davy (Olivier Rameau). [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:12 AM PST - 13 comments

"Challenge: Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a 'new classic,' like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years. Prize: $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012." Daniel Solis' Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge. [more inside]
posted by bayani at 10:45 AM PST - 60 comments

Joseph Brooks was a writer of commercial jingles in the 60's. He went on to write and direct the film You Light Up My Life in 1977; the film was a critical flop but a commercial success, and the title song went on to win an Oscar and become an adult contemporary standard. He later wrote the book and music for, and direct the stage musical In My Life (nyt), which flopped famously in 2005 amidst reactions of bewilderment. In 2009, he was indicted on charges(nyt) of luring at least 11 actresses across the country to his Manhattan apartment and raping them. He was found dead yesterday of a suicide while awaiting trial.
posted by mkultra at 10:32 AM PST - 30 comments

While pulling out of the American Embassy in Dublin this morning, Barack Obama's bullet-proof, missile-proof, nuclear launch-code enabled limo got stuck on an overly steep concrete incline.
posted by rudhraigh at 10:26 AM PST - 135 comments

While not being an outright example of a clash of civilizations in the Huntingtonian sense, elements of cultural misunderstanding and fears about the system-challenging tendencies of Iran do affect Western perceptions and influence Western behavior toward Iran. Furthermore, these kinds of reciprocal identity-based fears and projections of the other side’s presumed malevolent intentions tend to be mutually reinforcing. The risk is that they eventually become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Iran and the West - Regional Interests and Global Controversies [PDF]. [more inside]
posted by klue at 10:05 AM PST - 4 comments

The details are hazy, but somewhere outside of Toronto in the winter of 2004, on a stretch of highway near the U.S. border, a computer onboard a large bus spontaneously combusted. Some point the finger at the driver, others blame a faulty battery. Whatever the cause, Themselves and the Notwist were stranded. Gigs were cancelled. Meals were skipped. Shady motels were booked in below-freezing weather. It was the fifth breakdown of the tour, and despite those frustrations, a minor language barrier and the unfamiliar terrain, a cross-continental brotherhood was forged. Seven years later, the megagroup 13 & God have two albums, a live CD and and an EP as proof of that fateful tour. Join Doseone for a track-by-track commentary of their new album, and listen to the album, streaming on Soundcloud.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:29 AM PST - 12 comments

There is an inspiring mural on the back of the Micro Center building in Cambridge, MA. It commemorates the freeway revolt against the proposed I-695 Inner Belt. There are usually cars parked in front of it, but some have managed to get good photos.
posted by smammy at 8:45 AM PST - 51 comments

Hollywood shuns intelligent entertainment. The games industry doesn't. Guess who's winning?
posted by Artw at 6:36 AM PST - 254 comments

Joplin, Missouri was hit by a tornado on Sunday evening, leaving at least 89 people dead and an estimated 2,000 buildings destroyed, as much as 30 percent of the town.
posted by crackingdes at 6:34 AM PST - 217 comments

A rare black lion tamarin at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust gave birth by c-section last month (via). The c-section was necessary because, though tamarins usually give birth to twins, this mother had only a single baby that was too big to deliver naturally (adult tamarins weigh about 600 grams). [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:09 AM PST - 6 comments

"It's harder than you think to write a sentence that doesn't say anything." The quest to find and understand the author of In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women. "Includes full-length album (by Robert Ashley) and PDF of Wolgamot's magnum opus." (Via)
posted by zarq at 5:40 AM PST - 28 comments

An Open Letter to Writers of Open Letters: To those who feel compelled to address the world from Facebook, Twitter, and email chains, TEDDY WAYNE has a message: No one is listening, least of all Luther Vandross. [TheMorningNews.org]
posted by Fizz at 5:31 AM PST - 37 comments

The Doctor Who theme, Adam Savage of Mythbusters, and tesla coils! (SLYT) ... just a part of this weekend's S.F. Bay Area Maker Faire.
posted by markkraft at 5:11 AM PST - 28 comments

In 2009, Jon Gosselin was offered $365,000 for interviews: how reality stars, celebrity parents and rehab workers make money selling gossip to celebrity websites and TV shows.
posted by Georgina at 3:45 AM PST - 37 comments

How Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes Failed At Setting Up A Strong Republican Candidate for 2012: The circus Roger Ailes created at Fox News made his network $900 million last year. But it may have lost him something more important: the next election. A lengthy (7 page) New York Magazine article. Single page link.
posted by hippybear at 9:37 PM PST - 127 comments

The Sydney bookseller and Labor left-wing activist Bob Gould has died at the age of 74. His massive bookstore, Gould's Books, is a Sydney landmark. A massive archive of his political writings can be found online.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:45 PM PST - 35 comments

Nuns + Cock
posted by puny human at 7:45 PM PST - 26 comments

Obstetricians and gynecologists are meeting the increased demand for cosmetic vaginal surgery (NSFW)
posted by reenum at 5:27 PM PST - 141 comments

Holy Turtle!
posted by Bag Man at 5:11 PM PST - 40 comments

Ethan Law Roue Cyr performs a solo dance with a hula hoop. This is beautiful, a little astonishing, and more than a little moving. I didn't look away once. [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:45 PM PST - 37 comments

Today the Washington Post released its annual High School Challenge Index, which ranks DC-area public high schools. But in a twist this year, they have also expanded their rankings nationally to more than 1900 public high schools. [more inside]
posted by Ike_Arumba at 3:14 PM PST - 69 comments

Further proof that China is indeed the up and coming (sorry, I couldn't resist the childish pun) new global economic force. Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that this may turn up at one of my local adult toy stores?
posted by janetplanet at 3:11 PM PST - 45 comments

Parents Kathy Witterick and David Stocker welcomed their third baby into the world this year, but they won't tell anyone whether Storm is a boy or a girl. “We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share,” says Witterick Storm's brothers, Jazz and Kio are also encouraged to wear their hair however they wish, and pick out clothing they like. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:55 PM PST - 333 comments

"Beat the Devil" went straight from box office flop to cult classic and has been called the first camp movie, although Bogart, who sank his own money into it, said, "Only phonies like it." It's a movie that was made up on the spot; Huston tore up the original screenplay on the first day of filming, flew the young Truman Capote to Ravallo, Italy, to crank out new scenes against a daily deadline and allowed his supporting stars, especially Robert Morley and Peter Lorre, to create dialogue for their own characters. (Capote spoke daily by telephone with his pet raven, and one day when the raven refused to answer he flew to Rome to console it, further delaying the production.) - Roger Ebert's Great Movies
posted by Trurl at 1:51 PM PST - 21 comments

Work Sharing - "Work-sharing schemes, in many different forms, are becoming the norm in Holland and Denmark, and have made inroads in France and Germany. The key element in any such approach is to separate work from income. [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:49 PM PST - 25 comments

The last hand-written newspaper in the world - A brief film about The Musalman, which has been penned in Urdu calligraphy every day since 1927. via CreativeRoots [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive at 1:11 PM PST - 15 comments

wow, high level play from both players here, really close. the cookie chains were knit tight, like yarn in a yoshi sweater. on the sweater, yoshi is eating a cookie. absent-mindedness or perhaps careful alteration of the "Yoshi Eats Cookie Sweater" pattern makes yoshi take on a more pensive expression, looking at the viewer with a pensiveness that reflects the lives of the men lost in gycl06, like a puddle of water in a battlefield, opaque with blood and mud, its glory hours long passed. A video, with commentary, of the Yoshi Cookie Eastern Conference Finals. SLYT.
posted by codacorolla at 11:08 AM PST - 41 comments

They might not teach you how to be an alligator trapper who works barefoot in Florida, but The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Becoming an Outdoors Woman program is patterned after a similar one that began in Wisconsin, and Becoming an Outdoors Woman programs are available across the U.S. and Canada. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 10:44 AM PST - 11 comments

After making the rounds on the film festival circuit, the short comedy "Successful Alcoholics," starring T.J. Miller ("Cloverfield," "Yogi Bear") and Lizzy Caplan ("Party Down," "True Blood") is available to watch in full on Funny or Die.
posted by amro at 10:16 AM PST - 38 comments

"Trenchant satire" = poop jokes. J. Robert Lennon at Ward Six presents the Literary Blurb Translation Guide.
posted by escabeche at 8:51 AM PST - 55 comments

While theaters with weak and incorrect bulbs have long been the bane of movie fans, the rise of 3D projectors have added a new wrinkle. Many chain theaters (at least in the Boston area) are leaving on the 3D lenses for 2D movies, which can make it "as much as 85 percent darker than a properly projected film".
posted by FreezBoy at 8:38 AM PST - 70 comments

Twitter and unnamed Twitterers sued by anonymous man. These are the six tweets referred to.
Some are fighting for the right to gossip as Judges and MPs clash on gagging orders and a showdown between the law and common sense is brewing.
Its not all about sports personalities with way too much cash.
As Imogen Thomas says: Yet again my name and reputation have been trashed while the man I had a relationship with is able to hide.
List of known gagging orders. ( google spreadsheet and Previously 1; 2 ).
posted by adamvasco at 4:35 AM PST - 96 comments

Ten Commencement Speakers You Wish You'd Had
posted by netbros at 11:59 PM PST - 67 comments

Improv has never been as good as this. Jonathan Winters on the Jack Parr Show. and, on Johnny Carson. and, with Dean Martin and, with David Letterman and Robin Williams and, roasting Ronald Reagan and, with Steve Allen
posted by tomswift at 9:59 PM PST - 28 comments

False May 21, 2011 Doomsday prophet Harold Camping "deserts" devastated followers, church offers solace (PHOTOS) Doomsday prophet Harold Camping, who predicted that the End of the World would come on May 21, 2011, has gone missing ever since it became increasingly clear that his prediction is going to fail, even as local churches willingly stepped in to provide counseling and help to Camping's devastated followers.
posted by Leisure_Muffin at 9:46 PM PST - 619 comments

Overlooked '90s Indie Pop: The Cat's Miaow, whose single sentence wiki describes them as... "an indie pop band formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1992." And Madison Electric, a band from Ann Arbor that played one show in a church basement before going their separate ways.
posted by puny human at 7:15 PM PST - 26 comments

Hambuster: when your lunch goes berserk. Vimeo; Warning, funny, violent, and gory as Hell, so maybe NSFW. Also available in 3D. [more inside]
posted by bwg at 5:54 PM PST - 18 comments

Earlier this week, the Republicans in the Minnesota House of Representatives asked Bradlee Dean to give the morning prayer. [more inside]
posted by jiawen at 1:47 PM PST - 79 comments

Jon Ronson - How to spot a psychopath
posted by Artw at 1:35 PM PST - 148 comments

Warfare: An advancing front - "The US is engaged in increasingly sophisticated warfare, fusing intelligence services and military specialists" [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:23 PM PST - 18 comments

S. Victor Whitmill is suing Warner Brothers Entertainment for copyright infringement for using the design of a tattoo he created for Mike Tyson on a characters face in Hangover II. There is precedent for this action.
posted by Xurando at 10:17 AM PST - 50 comments

A famously fast, robust, command-driven text processor/file manager that publishers... relied on throughout the '80s and some do even now, [XyWrite] is an unrivaled writer's tool.
posted by Trurl at 9:50 AM PST - 65 comments

Through purchasing Viagra, herbal remedies, and replica watches, computer scientists explain how modern spam works. The spam business model consists of three components: advertising, click support (i.e., delivering the customer to an actual website), and realization (i.e., receiving payment and delivering the product to the customer). Different firms located across the globe carry out the various tasks. For example, the website domains are registered in Russia, the credit card payments are handled by banks in Azerbaijan, and the pills are sent from manufacturers in India. The spam business infrastructure appears to be organized around a small number of affiliate programs that coordinate the activities among the different firms. Click Trajectories: End-to-End Analysis of the Spam Value Chain (A 16 page PDF). [via]
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:42 AM PST - 30 comments

Welcome to Pyongyang
posted by empath at 8:32 AM PST - 62 comments

The story begins in 1879. Cheval, then 43 years old, had been working as a rural mail carrier in the southeast of France for 12 years. Because his daily routine involved walking about 20 miles (32km), mostly in solitude, he did a lot of daydreaming. One day (perhaps while his mind was elsewhere), he tripped over a small limestone rock. He picked up that stone and over the next 33 years went on to build his dream, Le Palais Idéal, an amazing fantasy palace. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 8:13 AM PST - 18 comments

“certain styles of research were suggested to be prone to ‘groupthink, reduced creativity and the possibility of less-rigorous reviewing processes.’ Edward Wegman is a professor at George Mason and a distinguished statistician with a long career, a former winner of the ASA's Founders Award. In 2006 he testified before Congress on climate science, sharply criticizing the statistical methodology of Michael Mann's "hockey stick graph," which showed a sharp increase in global temperature in the last part of the 20th century. One section of Wegman's testimony concerned "social network analysis," and suggested that Mann's tightly-knit network of co-authors might have led to insufficiently aggressive peer review. USA Today reports that Wegman's testimony contained a substantial quantity of plagiarized material, and the peer-reviewed article derived from the testimony has been retracted by the journal that published it. John Mashey has compiled an obsessively thorough catalogue of the plagiarized text. (large .pdf.) [more inside]
posted by escabeche at 7:56 AM PST - 26 comments

Filtering out porn algorithmically takes audio into consideration. "Comedy shows with laughter were also sometimes mistaken for pornography, as the loud audience cheers and cries share similar spectral characteristics to sexual sounds."
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:42 AM PST - 18 comments

Notes of a Screenwriter, Mad as Hell - The New York times on Paddy Chayefsky's notes for his screenplay of Network. I don't have to tell you things are bad...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:49 AM PST - 30 comments

Jon Boxerman is fascinated with the geological phenomena known as tafoni. (NSFTrypophobes)
posted by Casimir at 11:39 PM PST - 31 comments

A bridge builder, a student of how societies hold together; an advocate of dialogue. Standing against polarized and simplistic styles of thought. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor is Canada's best known and most widely read contemporary thinker. In books like Sources of the Self and A Secular Age, he has attempted to define the unique character of the modern age. He maps the fault-lines in our modern identity, and points to both the pitfalls and the promise of our condition. Learn about his life, history, upbringing, and... ideas. Now available, CBC IDEAS in five one-hour parts: the malaise of modernity (this special program has the same title as the 1991 Massey Lecture of the same name, but is not the same [MP3's, get them now, they will go away, and then you can only stream them]). One, Two, Three, Four, Five. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 11:15 PM PST - 4 comments

Scientific Illustration is a Tumblr blog devoted to... well... scientific illustration.
posted by brundlefly at 9:18 PM PST - 14 comments

Armageddon, final Orbit [more inside]
posted by Mblue at 7:57 PM PST - 151 comments

The cast and writers and crew of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip recently all joined twitter and began tweeting about their lives and the live comedy sketch show they all create each week. The catch is, Studio 60 is the fictional creation of Aaron Sorkin and was the subject of a failed weekly drama from five years ago, and nobody knows who is performing this remarkable charade.
posted by hippybear at 7:52 PM PST - 38 comments

It's that time of year again... The 2011 One-Page Dungeon Contest has announced winners[15mb pdf] in 15 categories ranging from the more traditional "Best Investigation"[pdf] to "Best Use of Teleporters."[pdf] (previously.) [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 5:55 PM PST - 16 comments

Mari-Kari Fun and somewhat gorey 8 (short) part animated tale of twins, one living, the other.... not so much. Starring the voice of Shannen Doherty [more inside]
posted by Redhush at 5:26 PM PST - 1 comment

An unfinished Donald Duck comic story, designed and roughed out with story complete, by Don Rosa! Written to promote the grand opening of Disney's MGM theme park, for one reason or another they dropped it before it could be completed. It's interesting because, in the comic book universe, Donald Duck isn't a movie star, but Mickey Mouse is -- so the duck seeks out his autograph. It even makes an explicit reference to a certain other duck....
posted by JHarris at 5:10 PM PST - 17 comments

Time for some Texas twang and honky tonk blues from Austin's own, Mike Runnels: Dream Girl :: Last Date
posted by puny human at 5:09 PM PST - 3 comments

Rock and Rap has had a sometimes fun, sometimes interesting, sometimes possibly regrettable relationship over the years. Artists like Kid Cudi and Lupe Fiasco continue to blur the line by releasing post-punk/electroclash/whatever style music (complete with fake British accent), learning to play the guitar, and announcing that rap is boring. [more inside]
posted by Huck500 at 2:24 PM PST - 54 comments

Mansour Bahrami - Tennis Greatest Entertainer
posted by MechEng at 2:04 PM PST - 17 comments

Infinity Blade is an iOS game available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It is typically seen as a send-up of the classic game Punch-Out!! mashed up with roleplaying game conventions such as experience points and character-modifying equipment. Its defining trait is that it relies upon new game+ to advance your character (actually your character's family/bloodline) and the story. J. Nicholas Geist over at Kill Screen has written a review to match the game.
posted by curious nu at 1:45 PM PST - 43 comments

Paula Deen's recipe for English peas. Read the recipe. Then read the comments.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:18 PM PST - 227 comments

Following on from an epic Star Trek: The Original Series rewatch (previously) and their Star Trek movie marathon, tor.com are now watching each episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in turn. So far they have reached The Last Outpost, in which a terrifying new adversary was introduced as a replacement for Klingons as Star Trek universe bad guys: The Ferengi.
posted by Artw at 1:18 PM PST - 55 comments

Made in America: small businesses buck the offshoring trend - "For US manufacturing to make sense, factories must make extensive use of automation. That's getting easier, given that the cost of robots with comparable capabilities has decreased precipitously in the past two decades." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:11 AM PST - 52 comments

"Macho Man" Randy Savage passed away today at the age of 58, when he was struck with a heart attack while driving. [more inside]
posted by FatherDagon at 10:26 AM PST - 170 comments

No central organization; social media networking; multi-city protests against the status quo. Protests now banned.
Not North Africa or the Middle East but Spain which has banned Protests ahead of Sunday's local elections.
For the first time, Spain's civil society bypassed the established channels to mount its own public protest against the country's political class.
El Pais calls it Spain's Icelandic Revolt. Blogger South of Watford was in Puerta del Sol.
posted by adamvasco at 10:14 AM PST - 45 comments

Hotkeys! Hotkeys! Get yer hotkeys! Steaming hot and ready for your Windows, Macs and Linuxeses! Even more for Macs! We've got some for your Microsofts and Open Offices! For yer Adobes and Gimps! Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera! And for the baker's dozen, DOS Shortcuts and a lot more shortcuts that also work for modern Windows systems.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:45 AM PST - 30 comments

In 1992, comic book titan Stan Lee produced and hosted an interview/chalk talk-type video series featuring some of the biggest names of the day and all-time greats: Todd McFarlane! Rob Liefeld! Sergio Aragones! Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis! John Romita and John Romita! Will Eisner! Bob Kane! Whilce Portacio! Jim Lee! Be amazed as Todd, Rob, Whilce, and Jim create a comic book! Be astounded as Rob and Todd, ably assisted by Smilin' Stan, create a comic book character right before your eyes!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:36 AM PST - 21 comments

A-month-behind-the-times-filter: Tubecrush is a website that lets people upload pictures of attractive men they've seen on the Tube (i.e., the London Underground, for the benefit of nonUKians), along with varying degrees of lechery. It came to wider attention the middle of last month when the Evening Standard ran a fairly lighthearted fluff piece on it, but there are some who believe that this is at least slightly unkosher not only for its instrusiveness, but also because they suggest its reception has been somewhat smoother than would be the case if it encouraged taking similar pictures of women on the tube. Others offer the thought that ogling different genders is given different contexts by societal attitudes to gender, and that, therefore, its all a bit more OK than it seems. Others still prefer to examine it through the lens of art history.
posted by Dim Siawns at 9:30 AM PST - 103 comments

As the Japanese government and TEPCO struggle to bring the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant under control, a group of pensioners has decided to put their lives at risk to save younger people from radiation.
posted by Blasdelb at 9:28 AM PST - 19 comments

Political shifts mustn’t threaten Canada’s unity, vision. An opinion piece by (the much loved and/or hated)Preston Manning about the recent Canadian election, and how it will affect Quebec's relationship with the rest of Canada.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:24 AM PST - 29 comments

Walt Disney Co. has filed an application to trademark the name "Seal Team 6", the Navy Seal team that killed OBL in Pakistan earlier in May. [more inside]
posted by jeanmari at 9:11 AM PST - 66 comments

George Takei's response to Tennessee's "Don't say gay" bill George Takei gives gay folk an out in Tennessee. Don't say gay, say Takei. A humorous look at a crazy piece of legislation to make it illegal to talk about homosexuality in school.
posted by Kokopuff at 8:20 AM PST - 72 comments

On one level America reCycled is simply the journal of two brothers riding recycled bicycles across the United States and meeting people. Lots of them. On another level it is a Homeric tale of an American adventure. It has been a long time since I have seen web content of this quality. The writing is superb, the videos so compelling you can't look away and the perspective gained is invaluable. I am positive this has been posted here before, but it certainly deserves a bump.
posted by dbooker at 7:22 AM PST - 10 comments

Janet Mock is an editor at People.com, a blogger, and co-hosts the The Missing Piece podcast.
She is also a transgender woman. [more inside]
posted by chara at 7:05 AM PST - 12 comments

According to recent studies, arguing on the internet is now the second most popular leisure activity in the world, just below shopping and just above sex. But how many of those who spend half their lives debating God versus Atheism or Climate Change on a message board or blog really know how to win those arguments? Now, for the first time, anonymous internet guru Noseybonk reveals the ploys, tactics and strategems of Blogmanship: the art of winning arguments on the internet without really knowing what you are talking about. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:57 AM PST - 67 comments

Pictures of homemade flood levees , built to protect homes in areas flooding from the swelling Mississippi.
posted by gjc at 6:36 AM PST - 55 comments

"You want how to make a million in the studio business? Start with two million." Abbey Road is safe, but with Olympic, Townhouse, The Hit Factory and Eden all overtaken in recent years by the developments in digital recording, what's to be done with all that history?"A museum? A doctor's surgery? A Wedding venue? Flats? Or chop them into little pieces and sell them to your fans? (video in Spanish, scroll down for English text)
posted by RegMcF at 6:29 AM PST - 46 comments

The Unexplained (subtitled Mysteries of Mind, Space, & Time) was a popular partwork magazine that came out in the UK in the early 80s. It explored various Fortean phenomenal like UFOs, ghosts and spontaneous human combustion but also scientific 'mysteries' such as black holes. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:28 AM PST - 6 comments

"Robert Montgomery works in a poetic and melancholic post-situationist tradition. He makes billboard pieces, recycled sunlight pieces and drawings." This one's my favorite but I like others too. Here are a few more examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
posted by Kattullus at 6:27 AM PST - 14 comments

Gov. Scott Walker wants to stop defending hospital visitation rights for same sex couples. His rationale is a 2006 law passed banning same sex marriage or similar arrangements. The visitation law was passed in 2009.
posted by pickinganameismuchharderthanihadanticipated at 6:20 AM PST - 114 comments

Cool paintings of birds by Maurizio Bongiovanni [embedded good music], an Italian-Chinese artist included in the sumptuous art blog ArtOdyssey, which is really worth exploring. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 6:16 AM PST - 3 comments

A mother talks with the man who murdered her son, for Storycorps. [more inside]
posted by empath at 5:37 AM PST - 17 comments

"I saw [EPO] in his refrigerator...I saw him inject it more than one time like we all did, like I did many, many times." Ex-professional cyclist Tyler Hamilton, a former teammate of Lance Armstrong, has accused the seven time Tour de France winner of using performance enhancing drugs such as EPO and testosterone during several of his Tour wins. Hamilton made the allegations during an interview with "60 Minutes" which will be shown this Sunday. Hamilton rode with Armstrong on the US Postal Service team from 1998 until 2001 and was himself banned for eight years in 2009 for taking testosterone. Armstrong is already the subject of a federal grand jury investigation into alleged doping conspiracies and financial irregularities. A year ago Floyd Landis, after finally coming clean about his his own drug use, accused Armstrong of systematic drug abuse. Armstrong, who recently retired from professional cycling, has always denied these claims.
posted by joannemullen at 4:50 AM PST - 93 comments

Biblioklept's list of bookstore compulsions, which I am sure you understand, like suggesting books to strangers, or buying books you'll never read.
posted by pleasebekind at 4:11 AM PST - 49 comments

How to Build Your Own Gaming PC, a marginally helpful and irreverent guide.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 4:04 AM PST - 72 comments

The World Beard and Moustache Championships 2011 were just held in Norway. [more inside]
posted by monkey!knife!fight! at 1:43 AM PST - 28 comments

Croatian software developer and amateur image processor Gordan Ugarković takes images from NASA's unmanned space probes released to the Planetary Data System, splices them together and tweaks the colors, sometimes combining higher resolution black and white images with color images, sometimes recreating what the object would look like in natural color (ie, in visible wavelengths, from images taken in multiple wavelengths), sometimes heightening the contrast to bring out detail. (via) [more inside]
posted by nangar at 1:07 AM PST - 7 comments

Footage of cute laughing babies, slowed down. Hyek hyek hyuh hyuh hyuhhh!! Haw haw haw haw haaaaw.... heh... Ohhhh hah hah hah... whoooh!
posted by not_on_display at 11:20 PM PST - 15 comments

The north Chicago house featured in the movie Home Alone is for sale. Asking price? 2.4 million dollars.
posted by zardoz at 9:46 PM PST - 31 comments

Video of the first woman in a human powered helicopter piloting the University of Maryland Gamera Helicopter. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 8:59 PM PST - 66 comments

Like the death of Mark Twain, the demise of the printed book is greatly exaggerated, although the latest news from Amazon – which announced that it is selling more ebooks in America than print books for the first time – might suggest the nails are being readied for the coffin. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:12 PM PST - 137 comments

Jeff Jones, comic book artist, science fiction and fantasy artist, and former member of The Studio, died today of emphysema and bronchitis. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist at 6:38 PM PST - 31 comments

Bob Dylan turns 70 next Tuesday. Why not start the party early by listening to 2ser's annual Bob Dylan Birthday Marathon on Saturday? It's streaming online from 7pm, Sydney time. Dylan has recently denied that China censored his shows, an allegation levelled against him by Maureen Dowd but opposed by Sean Wilentz.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:37 PM PST - 28 comments

Erik Weihenmayer is a gay -- excuse me, I mean blind -- climber, mountaineer and author who counts the Seven Summits and the Nose of El Capitan among his accomplishments. Erik's recent efforts have been assisted by the Brainport, an experimental device that allows him to sense visual information via his tongue.
posted by Manjusri at 6:24 PM PST - 11 comments

Halló humans on the Inter-net. My name is Iceland. I am an island, full of mountains and glaciers and hot water and sheep and many nice Icelandic people, who like to make music, and who are sometimes cold. (Maybe you have seen me on your tele-visions, or your Inter-net.) I have heard that many humans use the Inter-net to make friends, and to talk about themselves. I decided to do this, too.
                      Iceland wants to be your friend. [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 5:17 PM PST - 57 comments

You could spend $600 or more for the dvd set, or you could just watch the first half (3 hrs) of the documentary mini-series here for free. Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood. Where It All Began :: Art's Promised Land :: The Unchained Camera
posted by puny human at 4:50 PM PST - 8 comments

The Self Image Film (If Mirrors Could Speak) [SLYT]
posted by Fizz at 4:47 PM PST - 11 comments

He told me his gorilla suit had been taken by his landlady in Pensacola, Florida because he could not pay his back rent. She kept his trunk with all his possessions as well. So his movie days were over...

A brief, thoughtful recollection of the last days of the elusive Emil Van Horn, who, with pioneers like Charles Gemora, Ray "Crash" Corrigan, Steve Calvert, George Barrows, Janos Prohaska, and Bob Burns, established the golden age of Hollywood gorilla men.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 4:36 PM PST - 7 comments

“Is the repo industry something on which to base a game show?” [SLAwl]
posted by kipmanley at 4:29 PM PST - 39 comments

Recognize Immigrant Credentials is a series of Canadian PSAs that are at once funny and heart-breaking.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:02 PM PST - 60 comments

The CBC has launched an interactive web documentary with tonnes of videos that takes users inside Shatila refugee camp (pop. 12,000) in Beirut, where Palestinians have now lived for more than 60 years.
posted by gman at 3:37 PM PST - 15 comments

Just your classic corporation-meets-social-good, corporation-funds-social-good, corporation-dumps-social-good story. Cable giant Comcast meets ReelGrrls, a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting young women in becoming filmmakers. Comcast funds ReelGrrls. Comcast buys NBC, giving their cable network (presumably cheaper) access to NBC's vast back catalog of content. FCC approves the union. FCC head Meredith Attwell Baker leaves and becomes head of Comcast. ReelGrrls tweets about her career move. Comcast yanks funding for ReelGrrls. ReelGrrls says, "OMG, you broke up with me over a tweet?" (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by gusandrews at 3:14 PM PST - 24 comments

"Welcome! We are two big fans of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. We are also fans of food. What, then, would be more natural than to combine them into one fabulous blog?" The authors of The Inn At The Crossroads cook their way through the book series that starts with A Game of Thrones [previously on Metafilter: the HBO adaptation] and post the sometimes intricate and often tasty-looking results. Recipes are included. [Via Anger Burger] [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:53 PM PST - 32 comments

"Harold Camping, 89-year-old leader of the ministry Family Radio Worldwide, has predicted that a five-month destruction of humanity will commence Saturday with a Rapture, in which believers will ascend to heaven. 'Whereas this five-month period will be an enormous horror story for those who have not been raptured, it will be a time of great joy and wonder for those who are raptured,' according to the Family Radio website. Camping uses a mathematical formula linked to prophecies in the Bible. He once predicted Sept. 6, 1994 as Judgment Day, but that math didn't quite work out. This time around, Camping's organization took out an ad in Reader's Digest, stating: 'The Bible guarantees the end of the world will begin with Judgment Day May 21, 2011.'"* [more inside]
posted by ericb at 1:43 PM PST - 436 comments

Leafsnap is a free field guide for iPhone (Android coming soon) that uses the phone's camera and some biometric processing to identify trees by the shape of their leaves. Development was financed by the National Science Foundation (NYT article), and includes research by Columbia University, University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution.
posted by swift at 1:36 PM PST - 44 comments

Kim Newman discusses the novels that inspired Anno Dracula, his epic pop-culture mashup of all things vampire, set in a Victorian London ruled by Dracula. Newman's long fascination with Dracula led to two more novels in the setting and several short stories, several of which can be found online.
posted by Artw at 12:20 PM PST - 36 comments

"Do you think that if you were falling in space ... that you'd slow down after a while, or go faster and faster?" ... "Faster and faster... until after a while you wouldn't feel anything ... and then your body would just burst into fire. And the angels wouldn't help you, cause they've all gone away ..." - A WITCH HOUSE AND OKKVLT GUIDE TO TWIN▲▲PEAKS (Vol. II) (Witch House previously; Mater Suspiria Vision recently) [more inside]
posted by mrgrimm at 12:07 PM PST - 23 comments

From 1967 to 1976, the American Basketball Association delivered wild, raw, above-the-rim hoops that few ever saw (lacking TV broadcasts). They introduced the 3-point shot and slam-dunk contests (along with a red, white and blue ball, short shorts and big afros), brought pro ball to the American South, and launched the careers of Connie (the Hawk) Hawkins, Bob Costas, George Gervin, Fly Williams, David Thompson and a guy named Julius Erving. You know, Doctor J. [more inside]
posted by msalt at 11:55 AM PST - 16 comments

Unusually for a spring season, gasoline prices have been steadily climbing in the US since the beginning of 2011, and have surpassed $4/gallon in many US states, largely due to political instability in many oil-producing African and Middle-Eastern nations. "Not so fast," says the Department of Energy. Although the price of crude oil has climbed steadily throughout the year, the price of gasoline has climbed much faster -- a disparity known as the crack spread, which has remained at its highest level in 32 months, even in light of a sharp decline in the price of crude oil at the beginning of the month. The DoE speculates that although crude oil is cheap and plentiful enough, the 2011 Misssissippi River Floods are currently more to blame for $4 gas than the uprisings in the Middle East.
posted by schmod at 11:41 AM PST - 123 comments

Bert (from Sesame Street) interviews Andy Samberg. [SYTL]
posted by k8t at 10:55 AM PST - 39 comments

Slate magazine has posted an excerpt from Brooke Gladstone's "The Influencing Machine." It's a reflection on the media done in quasi-comic book form and illustrated by Josh Neufeld. The fairly beefy excerpt is an interesting discussion on the concept, and the history of the concept, of Objectivity.
posted by Trochanter at 10:46 AM PST - 7 comments

The Smithsonian's forthcoming National Museum of African American History and Culture won't open until 2015, but it has already made a number of important acquisitions, including most recently, the Parliament-Funkadelic Mothership.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:36 AM PST - 30 comments

Looks like FOX News called it -- UK neuroscientists now suggest that the brains of Apple devotees are stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that the brains of religious people are stimulated by religious imagery.
posted by hermitosis at 10:23 AM PST - 157 comments

-Only an 'energy internet' can ward off disaster
-We must electrify the transport sector [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:11 AM PST - 56 comments

Born into War. In 1863, a 3 yr old John J. Pershing was pinned to the floor by his mother to protect him from confederate raiders. In 1886, he left West Point for the western frontier, having been elected class president four years in a row. In 1890 he was present at the Wounded Knee Massacre. In 1898 he fought with Buffalo Soldiers in Cuba, commanding a black cavalry regiment at San Juan Hill. From 1898 to 1901 he was fighting Philippine insurgents. In 1905 he served as an observer in the Russo-Japanese War, arguably the first "modern" war. In 1906 Teddy Roosevelt promoted him to Brigadier General, skipping over 862 senior officers. In 1916 he was hunting Poncho Villa in Mexico. In 1917, Pershing was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Entire American Expeditionary Force of WW1, in which he built an army almost from scratch, organizing, training, and supplying an inexperienced force that eventually numbered two million. 1919 saw Pershing promoted to the highest U.S. Army rank in history, "General of the Armies", a position held previously by George Washington. Pershing lived to see Allied Victory before his death in 1948.
posted by thisisdrew at 8:54 AM PST - 41 comments

The red-crested tree rat (Santamartamys rufodorsalis), not seen in over a hundred years, made an unexpected, nonchalant appearance at the El Dorado Bird Reserve in Colombia a couple of weeks ago. Witnesses are unavailable for comment, being too busy with squeals of "Awwwwwww" to respond to questions. Press release here; high-res photos heEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
posted by Gator at 8:25 AM PST - 25 comments

Clemson Baseball vs. Davidson Rain Delay Antics Moose hunting? Curling? Bowling? How this university's baseball team entertained during a rain delay. (SLYTHilarity)
posted by jillithd at 7:42 AM PST - 19 comments

Andy Warhol always plays a prominent role in the twice-yearly contemporary sales in New York, but this season his work saw a phenomenal turnover of $181m, almost a third of the week's total proceeds at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury. The Economist on The wizards of the Warhol market. Watch for yourself: In the Saleroom: Andy Warhol's Self-Portrait, 1963-1964.
posted by R. Mutt at 7:39 AM PST - 14 comments

"Sometimes less," he says cheerfully. "Sometimes I get two hours. Someone comes over at three, we have a cup of tea, chew the cud for a bit, go: 'All right, shall we write a song?' And by six, they've gone home and we've done it. Chasing Pavements, that took two or three hours." The life of today's pro songwriter.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:46 AM PST - 55 comments

Steven Wittens uses WebKit to rethink the UNIX terminal [via]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:12 AM PST - 204 comments

What is a library? What do librarians do? Librarians from the 2011 ALIA conference in Sydney respond - and their answers can be surprising.
posted by divabat at 11:28 PM PST - 24 comments

In-N-Out vs. Five Guys vs. Shake Shack: a careful comparison of three hamburger heavyweights. (Previously.)
posted by rewil at 10:11 PM PST - 254 comments

Stunning photographs of the cattle farmers of Sudan | African ceremonies | Faces of Africa | video: African Ceremonies | Thirty years ago American-born Carol Beckwith and Australian Angela Fisher met in Kenya and began a relationship with the African continent that would profoundly alter and shape their lives. Their journeys would take them over 270,000 miles, through remote corners of 40 countries, and to more than 150 African cultures. | About the photographers (opens with sound to the video) [all links slightly nsfw in a NatGeo kind of way] [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:16 PM PST - 27 comments

It begins: “Thank you for coming to see our play. Please know that everything in ‘The Normal Heart’ happened. There were and are real people who lived and spoke and died, and are presented here as best I could.” The letter goes on to name some of the people on whom he based his characters (the central figure, Ned Weeks, is based on himself) and describe what became of them. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:08 PM PST - 53 comments

"Reading a novel of punishing difficulty and length is a version of climbing Everest for people who prefer not to leave the house. And people who climb Everest don’t howl with exhilaration at the summit because the mountain was a good or a well made or an interesting mountain per se, but because they’re overawed at themselves for having done such a fantastically difficult thing." Mark O'Connell writes about how he overcame his fear of reading very long novels.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:05 PM PST - 83 comments

DID I MENTION I LIKE TO DANCE. LEMME SMANG IT. SEX SYRUP. (some language nsfw; Voice Q&A with Flynt Flossy)
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:16 PM PST - 34 comments

The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Most quotes are from the "making of" documentary from 2001, now on YouTube in four pieces: 1, 2, 3, 4 (also see featurette). The cast reunited on Today show earlier this week. [via]
posted by jessamyn at 7:14 PM PST - 74 comments

Montreal-born actor William Shatner, 80, sings the National Anthem of Canada to show his appreciation for getting a Lifetime Achievement Award from Canada's Governor General, the greatest honour given to artists in the country (and yeah, in fact it comes with some cash).
posted by TheGoodBlood at 6:44 PM PST - 65 comments

Richard Weston is not only a professor of architecture at Cardiff University. He is now a fashion designer. Being interviewed by Vogue. Beautiful Weston silk scarves printed with scans of minerals, fossils and stones are now on sale at London's historic department store Liberty. [more inside]
posted by likeso at 6:28 PM PST - 5 comments

We all know beloved fantasy author Terry Pratchett has a sword, but did you know he has his own Coat of Arms?
posted by The Whelk at 5:53 PM PST - 89 comments

At the core of Kiss Me Deadly are speed and violence. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 5:10 PM PST - 22 comments

Outspoken Danish Film Director Lars Von Trier, famous for making films in which women have a really hard time, plugged his new film Melancholia at Cannes in somewhat controversial fashion. [more inside]
posted by joannemullen at 5:07 PM PST - 139 comments

The discovery indicates there are many more free-floating Jupiter-mass planets that can't be seen. The team estimates there are about twice as many of them as stars. In addition, these worlds are thought to be at least as common as planets that orbit stars. This would add up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone.
posted by anigbrowl at 5:03 PM PST - 52 comments

Full size radio controlled superhero! via Geeks are Sexy
posted by cosmac at 5:01 PM PST - 8 comments

John Hodgman's letter to his second child. [more inside]
posted by benito.strauss at 4:42 PM PST - 21 comments

Enter the Dragon: [SLVimeo] A short documentary that explores the Dungeons and Dragons subculture.
posted by Fizz at 4:33 PM PST - 22 comments

“Does anyone have confirmation that Osama was watching The IT Crowd in these home movies? Amazing if true. Don't know how to feel.” —@Glinner [more inside]
posted by kipmanley at 4:28 PM PST - 33 comments

Men who drink the most coffee have a 60% lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer. 'Even drinking one to three cups of coffee per day was associated with a 30% lower risk of lethal prostate cancer.' But is that down to perhaps coffee drinkers having healthier habits? No: 'Coffee drinkers were more likely to smoke and less likely to exercise, behaviors that may increase advanced prostate cancer risk. These and other lifestyle factors were controlled for in the study and coffee still was associated with a lower risk.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 4:22 PM PST - 57 comments

Long exposure photos of airline traffic - like the mapping of flights with GPS, except more glowing. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:33 PM PST - 21 comments

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Matters Blog issues advice on Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse. Preppers, unite! (Single-link zombie preparedness awareness campaign. That is all.)
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:32 PM PST - 34 comments

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency. Trading at eight dollars this week—and being used to pay for everything from freelance programming jobs to magic mushrooms—it has been described as “the most dangerous open-source project ever created” and “an unambiguous challenge to the government monopoly on the power to print money.” Estimated at over 20 petaFLOPS the Bitcoin network is currently the fastest virtual supercomputer in the world. [more inside]
posted by howlingmonkey at 2:23 PM PST - 247 comments

It's just a dead old tree trunk ...that's been floating around Crater Lake for at least a hundred years.
posted by moonmilk at 2:19 PM PST - 59 comments

Oz Workshop recreates the worlds of Hayao Miyazaki in MINECRAFT GHIBLI WORLD. Download the map free.
posted by Avenger50 at 1:08 PM PST - 24 comments

Like most game companies, Square Enix records every significant activity that occurs in their online environments. Jim Blackhurst took a database of "terminal impact events" in Just Cause 2 and mapped each of the 11 million player deaths to to the geography of the game to create a haunting visualization.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 12:48 PM PST - 27 comments

A young woman writes about her breast reduction.
posted by reenum at 12:29 PM PST - 97 comments

After 14 years, a movie and 17 seasons Stargate has left our screens forever- falling ratings dooming it's latest incarnation, Stargate: Universe, just as the series was finding it's feet. But what would have happned had the series continued? (contains spoilers for show you probably didn't watch)
posted by Artw at 11:52 AM PST - 180 comments

That time has come again, the magical time of the century when the, somewhat creepy, bugs we know as the cicada appear. [more inside]
posted by RolandOfEld at 10:56 AM PST - 104 comments

A song/video made using Google Translate has become one of the most popular YouTube clips in Taiwan this month. (previously) (via)
posted by nasreddin at 10:06 AM PST - 11 comments

"[H]e goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe." As expected, Philip Roth (bibliography) won the Man Booker International Prize today. Perhaps not unexpectedly, one of the judges quit rather than award it to him. Was she so wrong? Should they give Roth the Nobel Prize already?
posted by mrgrimm at 10:02 AM PST - 140 comments

Charles Barkley on homophobia in sports It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say: ‘Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.’ First of all, quit telling me what I think. I’d rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can’t play.”
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:57 AM PST - 83 comments

The atmosphere above Japan was observed by NASA to heat up rapidly several days before the Great Earthquake, probably caused by stresses in the fault releasing massive amounts of radon. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 9:49 AM PST - 30 comments

On Thursday, the final judgement in the Microsoft antitrust case expires. The case was filed in 1998 and was so far reaching that the DOJ set up a website to coordinate efforts. Microsoft is still appealing the judgement in the European Union antitrust case.
posted by agatha_magatha at 9:19 AM PST - 39 comments

Anger, Politics and the Wisdom of Uncertainty - "If there's somebody or even some institution to blame, it turns out people are much more likely to get angry... anger tends to inspire individuals to engage in more political activities than they would otherwise... Without someone to blame, respondents mostly just grow fearful and anxious... A particular danger of anger seems to be closed-mindedness. Research finds that when citizens get angry, they close themselves off to alternative views and redouble their sense of conviction in their existing views. Fear and anxiety, on the other hand, seem to promote openness to alternative viewpoints and a willingness to compromise." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:06 AM PST - 18 comments

"You didn’t put a bullet through Bin Laden but I’m proud of you. You’re a bust-ass kid." Justin Halpern's dad reacts to the cancellation of $#*! My Dad Says.
posted by jbickers at 8:45 AM PST - 42 comments

Christophe Huet and other talented artists at the Asile studio in Paris produce amazingly lifelike and realistic CGI and photomanipulated creations. (Flash and audio, but the music, also created by Huet, is lovely.) Some images NSFW.
posted by Gator at 8:21 AM PST - 6 comments

Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations presents videos, at times stunning and informative, of in-class science. [more inside]
posted by jjray at 8:13 AM PST - 8 comments

Seasonal ingredient map of the U.S. by month and state, with links to descriptions and recipes.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:06 AM PST - 37 comments

"It was your words, Jim, that were a call to arms for the rest of us." The story behind an iconic photo of the civil rights movement.
posted by pjern at 7:00 AM PST - 35 comments

The Cosby Sweater Project is a blog by Kelly Tucker where she draws/paints a single piece of clothing (usually the eponymous sweater) from every episode of The Cosby Show in chronological order. Some favorites: s1e4, s1e5, s1e16, s1e18, s2e1, s2e6. Finally, a short interview with Bill Cosby about sweaters.
posted by Kattullus at 5:57 AM PST - 31 comments

Abbey Road has a webcam, you normally don't have to wait long to see someone taking a version of that photo. (previous)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:37 AM PST - 72 comments

David Mamet, playwright and screenwriter has completed his migration to the right of the political spectrum. The Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson writes about it in "Converting Mamet."
posted by Trochanter at 11:09 PM PST - 144 comments

Kid tells his 81 year old Dad that The Twitter is a search engine. [more inside]
posted by orthogonality at 10:09 PM PST - 121 comments

The Legacy of Malcolm X: Why his vision lives on in Barack Obama is an affecting essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:23 PM PST - 57 comments

"In 2006, Mr. Snow had Stage 3 melanoma, a disease usually found in people three decades older." A short New York Times piece on a young couple going through the end of a cancer diagnosis. Make sure you watch the video in the multimedia column.
posted by Corduroy at 7:15 PM PST - 25 comments

Thundercats Are Go, for a reboot of the 1985 series to begin airing this July.
posted by schmod at 6:42 PM PST - 85 comments

“If you display information the right way, anybody can be an analyst,” Tufte once told me. “Anybody can be an investigator.” - The Washington Monthly interviews informaticist Edward Tufte [via]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:53 PM PST - 43 comments

The National Endowment for the Arts' new Arts in Media Guidelines now include video games as an art form eligible for federal grants. [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 3:13 PM PST - 41 comments

Yet another movie theater trailer marriage proposal. This time with live reaction shot so you can watch her watch as you watch!
posted by hippybear at 3:12 PM PST - 154 comments

Just before the Toronto G20, Byron Sonne was arrested on a wide range of charges (previously). Nearly eleven months later, he has been granted bail. [more inside]
posted by flipper at 2:57 PM PST - 39 comments

Unabomber Auction. [more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:20 PM PST - 37 comments

From Earth to the Solar System (FETTSS) is a collection of images curated by NASA that portray an attempt to understand the origin and evolution of the solar system, by looking to the skies and investigating extreme situations on earth, like high-altitude lakes and an acidic river. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:10 PM PST - 4 comments

In 1995, experts predicted what watching sports would be like in the future. One prediction: "...a Seattle Times reporter imagined a day in the not-too-distant future when a fan who got home late during a Seattle SuperSonic game could digitally fast-forward through the recorded action until he caught up with the real-time telecast."
posted by JFunk2800 at 2:09 PM PST - 19 comments

The Flaming Lips have released their latest $150 gummy skull. Oh, and it comes with a 4-song USB disk embedded in the cranium.
posted by boo_radley at 1:45 PM PST - 64 comments

Alexander Payne's 1999's movie Election originally had a much more awkward and true to source material ending that was shot and then discarded after testing poorly. It remained a rumor until someone found a VHS copy at a Farmer's Market in Wilmington, DE for $5
posted by The Whelk at 12:40 PM PST - 69 comments

How “secure” do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?

Supreme Court OKs More Warrantless Searches [more inside]
posted by AceRock at 12:37 PM PST - 270 comments

"The Killer," Harmon Killebrew, a slugger for the Minnesota Twins (formerly Washington Senators) has died today at 74. [more inside]
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 12:21 PM PST - 33 comments

I Knew It Was You: Before his tragically early death from lung cancer at the age of 42, John Cazale acted in only five films -- The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part Two, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter -- and each was nominated for Best Picture. Yet today most people don't even know his name. I KNEW IT WAS YOU is a fresh tour through his movies which helped define a generation. With Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Francis Ford Coppola, Sydney Lumet and Steve Buscemi. (documentary, 39mins)
posted by puny human at 12:13 PM PST - 25 comments

2012 Presidential Candidates - Comparing the 2012 Presidential Candidates on the issues with profile, issue and trivia comparisons. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:43 AM PST - 137 comments

The Lost Type Co-op is a collaboration between Tyler Galpin and Riley Cran. It was founded with the intention of providing unique and quality fonts based on a pay-what-you-want model. All designers get 100% of the donations their font receives.
posted by netbros at 11:21 AM PST - 13 comments

The entirety of Brad Neely's unauthorized redubbing of the first Harry Potter movie, Wizard People, Dear Reader, is available in its entirety on Youtube (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 & 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35). Surreal, excessive, goofy, and at times oddly poetic, it tells the story of "Harry, the near-perfect new god", and his sidekicks Ronny the Bear and the Wretched Harmony (who has "complex on top of complex"), as they explore the world of wizardry while avoiding the cruel she-professor Snake and the dreaded vampire tattoo-maker Valmart. If you'd like to read along, a full script is available here. "Well, bless my nippers! Bless them all day long." (Previously, but the last post required you to burn WPDR to CD and play it along with the movie; now the entire thing is streaming online)
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:15 AM PST - 106 comments

After 45 years, $2.5 billion, and one legendary reunion, Jerry Lewis has announced that this year's Labor Day Telethon to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association will be his last. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 9:01 AM PST - 84 comments

The Higher Education (Debt) Bubble - "[H]igh and increasing college costs mean students need to take out more loans, more loans mean more securities lenders can package and sell, more selling means lenders can offer more loans with the capital they raise, which means colleges can continue to raise costs. The result is over $800 billion in outstanding student debt, over 30 percent of it securitized, and the federal government directly or indirectly on the hook for almost all of it. If this sounds familiar, it probably should... [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:00 AM PST - 184 comments

Marvel.com now has many animated series (all episodes, in their entirety) available to view online at their website including The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Superheroes, X-Men, The Animated Series, X-Men Evolution, Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, and Spider-Man (1967) (Full list inside) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:56 AM PST - 34 comments

This week, Rockstar Games released L. A. Noire, a video game that's--perhaps not unusual for a Rockstar game--getting stellar reviews. One review, and one reviewer in particular, though stands out. Carolyn Petit, a new member of the staff at GameSpot, made her video game review debut yesterday. Carolyn is transgender. Note: if you're not a GameSpot member, you'll have to do an age check on the video [more inside]
posted by PapaLobo at 8:13 AM PST - 115 comments

24in60 The last 24 hours in 60-second, unbiased news bites.
posted by jack_mo at 8:08 AM PST - 12 comments

An E-Reader for Dickens: Designing a 19th-Century Kindle.
posted by Fizz at 7:02 AM PST - 28 comments

Fresh on the heels of Lockheed Martin's delivery of the first production F-35 to the USAF, you might be wondering how much it actually costs. It depends on who you ask. Blackfive takes a crack at it, prompting a rather snippy response from Bill Sweetman over at Ares. Throw in additional commentary and a rebuttal, and head down the rabbit hole into the wonderful world of defense acquisition.
posted by kjars at 6:58 AM PST - 94 comments

Breathing Books — A collection of beautiful photos on all things bookish.
posted by Toekneesan at 6:04 AM PST - 13 comments

Planking (lie flat, face down, in an unusual location, get someone to take your photo) is a meme that started in Australia (or possibly England). It has just claimed its first death.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:02 AM PST - 116 comments

Boot linux in your browser (here's how/why). Works on Firefox 4 and Chrome 11 on Linux/Windows/Mac.
posted by azarbayejani at 1:08 AM PST - 112 comments

[NSFW: swear words galore] Hecklers, the bane of many a performance. Here you can watch a documentary about Hecklers [ part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 ] and other critics. Someone at the beginning of that "Heckler" movie says something like, "A show was never made better because of a heckler." If only all of the banter was as funny as when Matt Walsh was heckled at SXSW. More often, it's like how Kyle Kinane states right off the bat during his act: "Every trainwreck needs a fuckin’ caboose; let’s get it over with," before he launches into a semi-drunken 9-minute conversation/shoutfest. But every once in a while, you get the perfect "point, counterpoint" moment. Let's see how different stand-up comedians react when the social contract of audience/performer is broken. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 10:57 PM PST - 94 comments

"I wanted to do a movie that would give the people that took LSD at that time the hallucinations that you get with that drug, but without hallucinating. I did not want LSD to be taken, I wanted to fabricate the drug's effect." - Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune (previously) is to be the subject of a new documentary.
posted by Artw at 10:49 PM PST - 32 comments

The popular WB/CW superhero soap Smallville has chronicled the life of Clark Kent for 10 years. Comic bloggers Chris Sims and David Uzumeri have celebrated by recapping the last season in a storm of magnificent snark.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:19 PM PST - 71 comments

Will Bridesmaids save the chick flick? Director Paul Fieg fretted about the opening, but Bridesmaids came in second place opening weekend. It has buzz and critical praise. But is it feminist? Does it matter? Is it total crap anyway? Does Roger Ebert like it? [more inside]
posted by jenlovesponies at 8:01 PM PST - 112 comments

As a part of their new open access policy, Yale is releasing their vast digital images collection for free. Although it will take years to upload everything, the online collection is starting with 250,000 images. A sampling includes original Mozart manuscripts, maps from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and John Trumbull's iconic Declaration of Independence. [more inside]
posted by thebestsophist at 7:08 PM PST - 15 comments

The Amazon Used Deals Finder [more inside]
posted by jtron at 7:06 PM PST - 49 comments

The town on the wrong side of America's drug war. An article on the Brownsville, Texas neighborhood cut off by the border fence. Via Crooked Timber
posted by serazin at 6:51 PM PST - 26 comments

excerpt from blush, a dance film that came out a few years ago but I've never seen posted here, by wim vandekeybus/ultima vez
posted by ameliaaah at 6:10 PM PST - 6 comments

Interactive map of US foreign aid by the Center for American Progress: "explore where U.S. foreign aid dollars are spent and how these countries rank in terms of basic indicators such as political rights and civil liberties, corruption, and overall development." [more inside]
posted by moody cow at 5:34 PM PST - 19 comments

Christopher Hitchens reviews the letters of Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish-born German political radical, intellectual, and author.
posted by beisny at 4:39 PM PST - 37 comments

A Call for Change. In an eloquent and thoughtful letter on the Tegan and Sara website, Sara Quin asks "When will misogynistic and homophobic ranting and raving result in meaningful repercussions in the entertainment industry?" Tyler the Creator, the object of her ire, responds on his twitter feed in characteristic fashion.
posted by joannemullen at 4:31 PM PST - 143 comments

"The handover to a new president and premier has generated plenty of speculation in the press, about who the leaders are and what is will all mean, but sometimes it’s useful to go back and fill in the very basics, since China has a unique and in some ways quite confusing political system." A Primer on China's Leadership Transition. [via]
posted by spiderskull at 3:51 PM PST - 5 comments

Building on the popularity of their previous "Harry S Plinkett" movie reviews, Red Letter Media's Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman have been working on a second line of film mockery: Half In The Bag [more inside]
posted by clarknova at 3:00 PM PST - 15 comments

Famous physicist Stephen Hawking calls the notion of heaven a "fairy story" in an interview with The Guardian newspaper published today. He made the comment in response to a question about his fears of death.

"'I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,' he told the newspaper. 'I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people who are afraid of the dark.'"*

[more inside]
posted by ericb at 2:27 PM PST - 483 comments

Louis C.K. has what most artists dream of: total creative control over his show.
posted by reenum at 2:21 PM PST - 42 comments

In such a world maximalism and encyclopedism, erudite puzzle solving, simply feel like more of the same, and the last thing we need is more of the same. We need less, much less: we don't need fiction that cultivates the general noise in a slightly more erudite way but still plays by the same rules; we need fiction that strips its way down to our nerves and fibers, simulations that are willing to cut enough of our context away to let us step outside of our own increasingly simulated experience and to see it afresh, from without.
—Brian Evenson, "Doing Without," an essay in The Collagist
(could also be titled "How a mistake in the digital conversion of a Cory Doctorow novel [see difference between print and electronic version] made me think about the meaning of innovative literature") [more inside]
posted by jng at 2:20 PM PST - 10 comments

"I felt comforted by the fact that like everyone I've reconnected with on Facebook, he'd gotten fat, and by the banality of his listed interests like "Bob Marley" and "Scrubs." He was a monster in my memory, but on Facebook, he was just a man. I called him."
posted by black rainbows at 2:14 PM PST - 139 comments

Interesting details about the tunnel dug for the recent escape of 500 Taliban.
posted by maiamaia at 1:57 PM PST - 11 comments

"They’re dekotora ('decoration trucks') and they are 'driving' me crazy with ideas." [more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:56 PM PST - 10 comments

"I will win this battle if I have to kill every last white bitch in high heels around here.” Roseanne Barr discusses, among other things, Charlie Sheen, working on TV, addiction and fame.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:23 PM PST - 137 comments

Stealth social marketing: CBC’s Spark radio show and podcast interviews a social marketer who describes the lengths to which advertisers will go to make you believe the “friends” who mention a product really are your friends. Includes everything from use of regional slang to hiring a stripper. (Bonus points for the segment’s Deep Throat–style concealment of the identity of the source.) Spark blog with Flash audio player; direct MP3 download. [more inside]
posted by joeclark at 1:13 PM PST - 17 comments

Where The Streets Have Your Name: find streets, places, and things that have your name, as mapped by the folks at OpenStreetMap. While the view starts out in the US, it covers anything mapped with OSM, so pan around the world to find more results. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:08 PM PST - 29 comments

Elfinspell is a garishly painted trunk stuffed with rare old books. You can browse the collection by timeline or by Muse.
posted by Iridic at 12:57 PM PST - 6 comments

Over 100 full episodes of the Marlin Perkins-hosted television show Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (previously) are now available on YouTube. That is all.
posted by cog_nate at 12:02 PM PST - 52 comments

The Emoticon: An Origin of the Species?
posted by troubadour at 11:09 AM PST - 33 comments

Kyle Munkittrick, a program director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and a grad student at NYU, writes an interesting essay on understanding Pixar's movies through relationships between the human and non-human characters -- and perhaps shaping how an entire generation sees life and reality.
posted by bayani at 10:20 AM PST - 26 comments

Universal Horror: history of the early horror films made by Universal Studios such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, King Kong, The Mummy and many more. Directed by Kevin Brownlow. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh. 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 :: 7
posted by puny human at 10:14 AM PST - 13 comments

Chester Brown's autobiographical works such as I Never Liked You (1.3 MB PDF) placed #38 on The Comics Journal's list of the 100 Best Comics of the 20th Century. In his new graphic novel, Paying For It, he "calmly lays out the facts of how he became not only a willing participant in but also a vocal proponent of one of the world's most hot-button topics--prostitution".
posted by Trurl at 9:00 AM PST - 46 comments

With the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act being argued in lower courts, it's probably also worth looking at Vermont's adoption of single-payer health care: "On May 26, Gov. Peter Shumlin of Vermont is expected to sign legislation that will create universal coverage in the state—eventually. Vermont will use subsidies from the Affordable Care Act to help create a Canada-style system. And its system, or so the theory goes, will become so popular and cheap that the rest of America will want to copy it." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:55 AM PST - 51 comments

"Librarians that are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario." Though not everything a library collects is a scannable book or document. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 8:30 AM PST - 61 comments

Flottille by Etienne Cliquet. Exquisite moving origami powered by the capillary action of the paper.
posted by Plutor at 8:12 AM PST - 17 comments

Language Log lists all their previous articles about prescriptivism vs. descriptivism (or at least a lot of them), plus a link to Geoffrey Pullum's Ideology, Power, and Linguistic Theory [pdf].
posted by nangar at 8:03 AM PST - 29 comments

24 year old Olympic marathon champion Sammy Wanjiru died yesterday in Nyahururu, Kenya after "falling" from a balcony. Sammy set a world record for the half marathon of 58:53 in the United Arab Emirates in 2007, only to best it again two months later in the Netherlands, with a 58:35. He won five marathons, setting an Olympic record of 2:06:32 in 2008, and a personal best of 2:05:10 in London in 2009. He might be best remembered for his dramatic win in Chicago in 2010. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:49 AM PST - 28 comments

The Secret Sharer: Is Thomas Drake an Enemy of the State? [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:39 AM PST - 25 comments

Artist Debbie Grossman starts with Russell Lee's Depression-era photographs of Pie Town, New Mexico, and then Photoshops the men into women. (via) [more inside]
posted by you're a kitty! at 7:27 AM PST - 55 comments

It's not uncommon for celebrities to get a cartoon. Billionaire Warren Buffett now joins their ranks with Secret Millionaire's Club, a cartoon about Warren Buffet giving a group of kids advice on investing, business and life. [more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:51 AM PST - 28 comments

If you watched TV in the 1970s, you might know Marlene Clark as Janet Lawson on Sanford and Son. If Bruce Lee is more your bag, she might look familiar due to her role as John Saxon's secretary in Enter the Dragon, while Hammer Horror fans would recognize her from her appearance in The Beast Must Die. However, her portrayal of Ganja Meda in the Bunuel-meets-blaxploitation classic Ganja & Hess made her an enigmatic figure in 1970s cinema. Temple of Schlock recently tracked her down to find out what became of her.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:42 AM PST - 19 comments

Wendy MacNaughton's Meanwhile Illustrated Documentary Series has so far covered San Francisco dog walkers, Farmers' Market Farmers, Mission Bar Tenders etc. This week she captures the essence of libraries in Meanwhile, The San Francisco Library
posted by honey-barbara at 5:03 AM PST - 15 comments

The five stages of Star Wars fandom grief. [Slate.com]
posted by Fizz at 4:03 AM PST - 156 comments

Kids know that the best toys are the ones you make from stuff that's lying around. Arvind Gupta's been doing this for three decades. Take a look at his Turbine bottle cap, Helicopter foam cup, Drinking straw flute, The CD hovercraft, Magic Paper Fan, Funny Fountain, Drinking Straw Centrifuge Pump, Climbing Butterfly. Or check out the rest of his 1000 videos(!). Go to his website and discover an armload of books and pamphlets describing more toys (some of them classic) along with science experiments, math activities and stories. A sample: The amazing Touching Slate, a drawing toy for blind children. Hands On - Science Sense, Hands On - Ideas and activities, Toy Joy, Little Science, The Toy Bag, Toy Treasures. Little Toys , Finally you can hear Arvind in person at TED.com giving career advice, showing off a dozen toy examples, demonstrating the structure of methane; telling a Large Hadron Collider joke and finishing with the wonderful "Captain's hat" story. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 10:09 PM PST - 30 comments

Philippe Faraut , realist sculptor, has a couple of interesting videos on Youtube ... one shows the effects of the aging process, another shows the effects of meth, and a third shows the effects of insanity. [more inside]
posted by crunchland at 10:03 PM PST - 12 comments

100 years of world cuisine is a statistical exploration of military conflict that is both artistic and disturbing.
posted by anigbrowl at 9:51 PM PST - 26 comments

“Watching the video I thought that it was wise of Major League Baseball to combine this sort of sentimental moment with mass speculative litigation. It kept brand values strong. I felt strangely grateful that I could have a moment to remember that afternoon. Surprised by the evidence of both copyright violation and father-daughter affection.” —Paul Ford, “Nanolaw with Daughter” [more inside]
posted by kipmanley at 9:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Chris Worth did a tour of the real-life locations that that appeared in Fallout: New Vegas and compared them with their videogame counterparts. He explains more about the project in a newspaper interview.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:39 PM PST - 63 comments

On Story is a new series which takes a look at the creative process of filmmaking through the eyes of some of the entertainment industry's most prolific writers, directors and producers. Each episode will also showcase short films from the region's most promising filmmakers.
posted by dobbs at 6:39 PM PST - 1 comment

Why Would Heavenly Father Do That? After 20 years as a married Mormon living the plan of happiness, a gay man comes out to his family and his church, and blogs about it, with special attention to the question of "Mormon beards": "Why do gay Mormon men keep marrying Mormon women?" Holly Welker, a straight Mormon woman formerly engaged to a gay Mormon man, calls for an end to beards.
posted by escabeche at 6:37 PM PST - 102 comments

Health ministers from the World Health Organization's (WHO's) 193 member states will meet this week to debate when to destroy the two last known remaining stocks of the virus that causes smallpox. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 5:54 PM PST - 32 comments

Broadband Internet: An Information Superhighway to Sex Crime? [.pdf] (Leuven et al. 2011) is a German/Norwegian study that attempts to answer the question Does internet use trigger sex crime? [more inside]
posted by wilful at 5:24 PM PST - 54 comments

The Video Game Name Generator!
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:22 PM PST - 74 comments

After being involved with the N.B.A for 40 years, Phoenix Suns President and CEO reveals that he is gay. [more inside]
posted by arveale at 4:59 PM PST - 65 comments

Produced by a pair of Vaudeville comedians just as the Vaudville era was era was coming to a close, the musical revue Hellzapoppin' became a runaway smash hit, and for a time, was the longest running show on Broadway. It was a crazy quilt of frequently updated comedy and musical bits stitched together, featuring risque humor, fourth-wall breaking audience participation, skits abandoned halfway through, dwarfs, pigeons, clowns and Adolph Hitler with a Yiddish accent. [more inside]
posted by empath at 4:37 PM PST - 20 comments

Judd Apatow got into an e-mail argument with the creator of That 70s Show back in 2002
posted by The Whelk at 3:56 PM PST - 110 comments

Flawed Typefaces. Paul Shaw, author of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System and a writer with a sharp eye even by typography standards, dissects the one or two characters in each of nearly two dozen fonts that stick out like a sore serif. (Yes, the Gill Sans numeral 1 is in there.)
posted by joeclark at 11:53 AM PST - 57 comments

Goblin Camp is akin to a simpler Dwarf Fortress with a mouse-driven interface.
posted by Zarkonnen at 9:42 AM PST - 39 comments

Photographs of China from Zhang Xiao.
posted by puny human at 9:07 AM PST - 5 comments

Lisa Eldridge, make-up artist and blogger met up with the historian Madeleine Marsh to discuss the history of cosmetics, which is also a history of women, society, and culture. The resulting videos are just fascinating, Part 1: Victorian Era to 1930s & Part 1: 1940s to 1970s.
(via Beauty is a sleeping cat)
posted by Fence at 8:53 AM PST - 10 comments

Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:44 AM PST - 52 comments

The last gasp of the arcade. Several months ago, two of the last major arcades on the west coast and east coast, Chinatown Fair in New York and Arcade Infinity in Los Angeles, shut down. [more inside]
posted by zabuni at 8:23 AM PST - 71 comments

DetroitTechno.org presents a documentary (1 2 3) about the history and politics of techno with a focus on the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, now called Movement, from its inception in 2000 until the most recent one in 2010. [more inside]
posted by gman at 8:04 AM PST - 25 comments

Ira Cohen passed away a couple of weeks ago aged 76 (NYT obit )
He was a friend and collaborator with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin and authored the Hashish Cookbook. He made several short films including The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda.
In Kathmandu in 1979 Ira Cohen photographed the Tibetan Buddhist cremation of his friend Angus MacLise, poet and original drummer with The Velvet Underground.
He has been described as an "electronic multimedia shaman" .
His photographs range from a psycadelically distorted Hendix to Joujouka musicians; whom he described in his book Gnaoua
Ira was also a poet who had several volumes published.
An interview.
posted by adamvasco at 3:39 AM PST - 6 comments

The Guardian has a new series of webchats with various people in the publishing industry starting with literary agent Karolina Sutton. Also various writers are asked: Can you teach creative writing?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:25 AM PST - 17 comments

David Warner, on being Hamlet at the age of 23 in 1966, has played at least three different species in the Star Trek universe. Notably, as Chancellor Gorkon in Strek Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But another Shakespearean actor, playing General Chang, was more apparent in that movie. Of course there is far more Shakespeare in the Star Trek Universe.
posted by Binliner at 1:39 AM PST - 27 comments

A Word Clock is a clock that tells the time using English words
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:50 AM PST - 38 comments

The opening of the Morganza spillway on May 14 by the U.S. Corps of Engineers is not only a tacit admission of the severity of the river control problems the spring 2011 flood of the Mississippi River is creating, but also one of the last remaining measures the Corps has for protecting the Old River Control Structure, which has prevented the Mississippi from naturally diverting its main channel through the shorter, steeper Atchafalaya River channel, since construction of the control structure in the late 1960's. If the Old River Control Structure fails (as it nearly did in the 1973 floods), or the river overwhelms other nearby levees north or south of the Morganza spillway/ORCS, the main channel of the Mississippi could suddenly shift westward by about 100 miles, bypassing New Orleans and the current lower delta, with severe long term effects for the U.S. economy. [more inside]
posted by paulsc at 11:35 PM PST - 148 comments

"I Am Your Grandma." (Time-capsule SLYT)
posted by hermitosis at 9:41 PM PST - 53 comments

Uncontrolled laughter: 20 best 'corpsing' videos | Corpsing is a British theatrical slang term used to describe when an actor breaks character during a scene by laughing or by causing another cast member to laugh. | The Art Of Corpsing 1 and 2. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 9:27 PM PST - 46 comments

Who is Reflex Responses Management Consultancy LLC? Only "the Premier Security Consultant and Training supplier for the United Arab Emirates," of course. Frequently referred to as R2, the company specializes in nuclear facility security, special-forces operations, revolt quelling, cybersecurity, and (somehow) protecting the U.A.E from Iran with one battalion of foreign mercenaries. Oh, and it's led by Erik Prince, formerly of Blackwater (now Xe). [more inside]
posted by postel's law at 8:54 PM PST - 19 comments

Music artists have long talked about trying to get into the game, getting pestered by those trying to get into the game, and unceremoniously falling out of the game. Want to get your music heard by the industry? Violator's Chris Lighty has an answer. Pleaselistentomydemo.com.
posted by cashman at 8:14 PM PST - 16 comments

I’m sitting aboard Caesar’s Chariot, Led Zeppelin’s customized Boeing 707 jet. Appropriately named after the conquering emperor who was ultimately doomed by an addiction to his own glory, this flying fortress now carries onboard an invading modern-day musical force. Steven Rosen's account of the 1977 North American tour.
posted by Trurl at 7:35 PM PST - 22 comments

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF and likely French Presidential Candidate, was arrested in New York for sexual assualt today. The Port Authority of New York removed Strauss-Kahn from the first class cabin of an Air France flight ten minutes before it departed for Paris and handed him over to the NYPD, whose Special Victims Unit is handling the case, for questioning. He is expected to be arraigned later tonight. [more inside]
posted by strangely stunted trees at 7:19 PM PST - 137 comments

A discussion on BBC Radio 4 of Robert Burton's 17th-century compendium The Anatomy Of Melancholy. Examining the medical, literary, political, and religious influences of this enormous work, as well as how it contributed to those same fields over its many years of revisions and continuing popularity. Not exactly thorough (how could it be?) but an interesting listen.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:47 PM PST - 26 comments

As reported by Dan Carden - Court: No right to resist illegal cop entry into home In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry. David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system. [more inside]
posted by rough ashlar at 2:41 PM PST - 111 comments

The Surprisingly Undetestable Birth of TGI Friday's In 1965, a young Manhattanite just “looking to meet girls” added some sawdust, fake Tiffany lamps and a coat of blue blue paint to the $5000 bar that became, nearly immediately, NY's first and most popular singles bar, and eventually, the progenitor of one of the US's most popular restaurants.
posted by Plemer at 1:57 PM PST - 58 comments

The Lazarus File. "In 1986, a young nurse named Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in Los Angeles. Police pinned down no suspects, and the case gradually went cold. It took 23 years—and revolutionary breakthroughs in forensic science­—before LAPD detectives could finally assemble the pieces of the puzzle. When they did, they found themselves facing one of the unlikeliest murder suspects in the city’s history." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:03 PM PST - 60 comments

Canadian Independent Radio. CBC Radio 3 has over 25,000 uploaded artists, broadcasting on satellite and streaming on the web. The programming mix is "100 per cent Canadian music on both platforms" with exceptions for collaborations. Previously here and here.
posted by Brian B. at 12:01 PM PST - 12 comments

"I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:08 AM PST - 40 comments

Reconsidering Fukuyama - "In 2004 he became the first of the card-carrying neocons to break ranks and oppose the Iraq War; in 2006 he published a comprehensive history and critique of the neoconservative movement; in 2009 he skewered the economics profession at length in his journal The American Interest; earlier this year, he dedicated an issue to a series of essays exploring the emerging American plutocracy... that through their greed they somehow benefit society... He was not being glib: Much of his new book, The Origins of Political Order, is devoted to documenting the struggles of premodern states to draw up sustainable tax codes. Long before modernity and the spread of democracy, societies that failed to effectively tax their citizenry were the first to shrivel... [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:32 AM PST - 33 comments

Cat and Owl are Friends ( SLYT )
posted by The Owls at 8:21 AM PST - 46 comments

Cats in Tanks. [SLVimeo] Watch what happens when cats commandeer tanks.
posted by Fizz at 5:26 AM PST - 28 comments

Jimmy Fallon commemorates Bob Marley Week on his show by welcoming six artists to perform their favorite Marley song. Performances include Lauryn Hill singing the lovely, lesser-known "Chances Are" and a slightly manic "Could You Be Loved". Via
posted by beisny at 5:12 AM PST - 21 comments

You can learn a fair bit about a person by asking them what they'd attempt to save if their house was on fire. [more inside]
posted by gman at 5:09 AM PST - 175 comments

Today's Guardian Review is a science fiction special [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:01 AM PST - 88 comments

As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today—by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska. Had she stayed true to her record, she might have pointed her party in a very different direction.
posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 1:27 AM PST - 79 comments

Northern Fur Seal release (slyt thatisall)
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:07 AM PST - 12 comments

PBS's excellent weekly news magazine, Need to Know, explains why European broadband speeds are racing ahead of the USA. Britain now has 400 broadband suppliers with service available for as little as $6/month. Bonus: Harvard's Berkman Center reports on broadband supply trends around the world.
posted by anigbrowl at 11:08 PM PST - 53 comments

Original designs for the Thoth Tarot deck, painted by Lady Frieda Harris for Aleister Crowley, are are now for sale. [more inside]
posted by hermitosis at 9:31 PM PST - 59 comments

12 maps of the recent federal election in Canada. See also this large PDF map posted by Elections Canada.
posted by stp123 at 7:44 PM PST - 46 comments

The most famous Steinberger design is the L-series instrument... made entirely of the Steinberger Blend, a proprietary graphite and carbon fiber mix in two pieces: the main body and a faceplate. It had no headstock for tuning, tuning instead at a redesigned tailpiece using micrometer-style tuners and special strings with a ball at both ends.
posted by Trurl at 7:29 PM PST - 43 comments

Kiss me you fool!
posted by puny human at 7:19 PM PST - 14 comments

If you have had sex in Florida in the last week, technically, you broke the law. Due to some unfortunate wording, Florida's new bestiality law technically outlawed sex between two animals.

"An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices; providing an effective date."
posted by Leisure_Muffin at 6:00 PM PST - 87 comments

It is 2007, and R.P. Salazar is living in Waco, Texas. His email username is rpsalazar. One day an email arrives addressed to another rpsalazar, meant for someone with the same initials and surname but a slightly different email address. He sends it along to the right person, an R.P. Salazar living in Bangkok. Before clicking Send he adds a p.s.: "How's the weather in Bangkok?" Before the end of 2007, Ruben Salazar and Rachel Salazar are married. Storycorps and NPR report the whole story. (The text is good, but the audio is even better. Click "Listen to the Story.")
posted by mark7570 at 5:55 PM PST - 21 comments

Reality 86'd. A documentary by David Markey of the last Black Flag tour in 1986. Besides the Flag (Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, Cel Revulta, and Anthony Martinez), the tour lineup also included Painted Willie and Gone, which featured two future members of the Rollins Band. Rollins mentioned the documentary on Twitter--actually, his second-ever tweet.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:49 PM PST - 5 comments

Why do hippies still exist in America? ChristWire investigates.
(Previously: Hipsters!)
posted by dunkadunc at 4:47 PM PST - 134 comments

“Happy” was the theme we were given by the organizers for this year's F5 Re:Play Fest, held in April in NYC, to create this edition's pieces, probably the hardest thing to convey in any artistic expression. After a good deal of introspection, and teaming up with awesome motion graphics artist Gerardo del Hierro, we decided that happy wasn't happy for Physalia unless pliers, microchips and a bit of soldering were involved, and with this idea we resolved to create the happiest machine Physalia has built to date. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 4:38 PM PST - 7 comments

The Sheriff of Wall Street (and more)
posted by vidur at 4:27 PM PST - 3 comments

Christopher Soghoian, who exposed the latest Facebook PR move, is now filing an FTC complaint (pdf) against Dropbox on the grounds that they gained unfair competitive advantage by lying about how files are encrypted and who has access to them. Dropbox explains how safe your files are.
posted by swift at 4:19 PM PST - 42 comments

10 short, experimental, animated films by Osamu Tezuka, godfather of anime: Jumping, Memory, Push, Broken Down Film, Mermaid, Drop, Story of a Street Corner, Genesis, Muramasa, Self Portrait. Tezuka is best known in the West for creating Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and the mangas Buddha, Phoenix and Black Jack. Here is an interview where Tezuka talks about his shorter, experimental films.
posted by Kattullus at 3:32 PM PST - 11 comments

"I realized that I was one of those extremely rare individuals who was a former POW of the drug war, and who got out and had the opportunity to share his story with the world." "It kind of makes an activist out of you when 3 helicopters land in your backyard and guys jump out with guns and destroy your place before your very eyes." Exile Nation is a documentary [complete film] [trailer] and an ongoing memoir, a work of “spiritual journalism”, and eventually "a documentary archive of interviews and testimonies […] revealing the far-ranging consequences of the War on Drugs to the American Criminal Justice System." [more inside]
posted by nTeleKy at 2:57 PM PST - 10 comments

Top 50 Worst Video Game Voices brought to life by some guy's face. Collected by Audio Atrocities. Previously 1 2.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:47 PM PST - 75 comments

In a recent paper published in Nature Hansen et al. show the efficacy of their unusual vaccine strategy against SIV_MAC239 in rhesus macaques. While the goal is not necessarily to produce a human vaccine against HIV using this exact strategy, this paper is now reigniting the debate over the progression of HIV infections and the mechanism(s) by which the virus skirts the human immune system.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:05 PM PST - 4 comments

It's been a long week, so how about some videos of sea lions being lazy?
posted by quin at 1:37 PM PST - 16 comments

Exquisitely Corrupt Charles Hugh Smith's predictions on the housing bubble, from almost five years ago, are proving accurate. Previously.
posted by mmrtnt at 12:12 PM PST - 56 comments

Big Becky has broken through. [more inside]
posted by sardonyx at 11:54 AM PST - 58 comments

Dressage by Clémence Faivre
posted by Lanark at 11:19 AM PST - 34 comments

"It's...it's across the entire horizon." Inside a sandstorm in the Sahara. "It seems like they've been transported to Mars."
posted by cashman at 10:30 AM PST - 23 comments

On May 7th, Robert Krulwich (of WNYC's RadioLab and accompanying NPR blog Krulwich Wonders) gave the commencement speech to Berkeley Journalism School’s Class of 2011 on the future of journalism. (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:03 AM PST - 22 comments

Construction paper artist Jen Stark and composer/party starter Dan Deacon have combined their disciplines to make a video for you. They call it Surprise Believer. [more inside]
posted by Homeskillet Freshy Fresh at 9:58 AM PST - 14 comments

"Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors. " Between rumors that pharmaceutical companies have no interest in this discovery because it can't be patented and quacks jumping on the bandwagon to sell home made DCA to hopeful cancer patients for self medication, things are not exactly going the way Dr. Michelakis would have probably hoped.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:57 AM PST - 33 comments

For only the second time since their breakup in 1985, the three surviving members of Pink Floyd shared a stage last night in London. Video, with the amazing reveal around 0:52. [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 9:15 AM PST - 116 comments

Sean Power had his laptop stolen five days ago. Last night, while in Canada, preyproject tracking software alerted him to his laptop's location and he put out a call on Twitter for help in getting it back. Twitter user @neilreese and a Girl in a Purple Sarong jumped into action. Here's the chronological summary of Tweets and events, as well as Nick Reese's account of a wild night in which justice was served.
posted by donovan at 9:11 AM PST - 72 comments

The TSA has performed a "modified pat-down" of an 8 month old baby. [more inside]
posted by notion at 8:51 AM PST - 107 comments

Some Final Thoughts on the Death of Osama bin Laden Although not typically a fan of a lot of Michael Moore's work, I think he has some cogent thoughts concerning recent world events and the U.S. in particular. [more inside]
posted by PepperMax at 8:37 AM PST - 184 comments

Do doctors violate the 2nd Amendment when they ask their patients if they own guns? May the government force doctors to stop asking that without violating the 1st Amendment?
posted by steambadger at 8:25 AM PST - 151 comments

"God is totally down with sexpionage, at least according to the Zomet Institute, an organization dedicated to interpreting Jewish law for modern living" -- on the Mossad's precursor to Russia’s femme fatale spy Anna Chapman.
posted by maud at 7:03 AM PST - 26 comments

Here's to the crazy ones - a decade of Mac OS X reviews.
posted by veedubya at 6:55 AM PST - 21 comments

Is Sappho's so called "Ode to Anactoria" the first literary reference to limerence? Coined in a book by psychology professor Dorothy Tennov in 1979 and soon covered by Time Magazine, limerence involves "intrusive thinking about the object of your passionate desire". Is it just a fancy term for callow infatuation or the unrequited love behind many great novels and young suicides? Whatever its reality, or corrosive effect, Tennov believed that central to limerence is "the desire for limerence itself".
posted by joannemullen at 6:07 AM PST - 34 comments

What really ails Italy?
posted by beisny at 5:05 AM PST - 25 comments

British "super-injunctions" goes one step further: "A High Court judge has issued an injunction which bans publication of information on Twitter and Facebook." [more inside]
posted by iviken at 4:51 AM PST - 29 comments

Dozens of concerned citizens will march on London this weekend to protest high taxation and government debt. Sound familiar? The rally is the first sign of what The Guardian terms "a radical Tea Party-style mass movement" in the UK. Organisers The Taxpayers' Alliance have previously been linked to the US-based Freedom Works.
posted by londonmark at 4:41 AM PST - 48 comments

Holy mama, a new clade. (via)
posted by Meatbomb at 3:57 AM PST - 22 comments

This is the tale of Captain Jack Sparrow (SLYT) Featuring Michael Bolton and The Lonely Island
posted by seanyboy at 2:54 AM PST - 44 comments

"This is the retaliation for the killing of Osama bin Laden" - At least 70 Killed at military training centre in North-West Pakistan. Pakistan Taliban claim responsibility.
posted by numberstation at 2:04 AM PST - 26 comments

This recording (mp3 excerpt) is an "unauthorized experiment" that was made in the year 2058 C.D.S. (Carbon Dating System), a "blue verbal data feed" sent backwards in time to "retro A.D." by Decker, T. L. (pdf transcript) (via @GreatDismal) [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 12:31 AM PST - 36 comments

WoW... For the rest of us... WTF?! A flash side scroller featuring Freud, Marx and more, done beautifully in the style of World of Warcraft. [more inside]
posted by Samizdata at 12:21 AM PST - 8 comments

Friday Flash Fun-frustration! In the form of "Checkpoint", a fast paced platform game similar to N, featuring wall-jumping, spikey things, and a narrator who doesn't appear to like you very much. [more inside]
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 9:41 PM PST - 10 comments

For tired parents everywhere, the not-even-released yet Go the F**k to Sleep, is a already a best seller on Amazon.com, probably due to its viral release on the Internet. You can find the pdf if you use your Google-Fu and definitely worth the search. I've ordered my copy.
posted by tamitang at 9:22 PM PST - 75 comments

How to define digital humanities? "the humanities done digitallys"? Should we expand the definition of the field to include, as I've heard it said several times, "every medievalist with a Web site"? Undoubtedly not. Yeah, not. Rather, The particular contribution of the digital humanities, however, lies in its exploration of the difference that the digital can make to the kinds of work that we do, as well as to the ways that we communicate with one another. [more inside]
posted by Mngo at 9:22 PM PST - 38 comments

Compiling the Absurd Box Scores from Space Jam. Courtesy of The Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective.
The Monstars, behind a vicious defense and a quick-strike transition offense featuring the unprecedented 3-point-line dunk, seize early control and take a 66-18 lead going into the half. Pound (Barkley) and Bupkus (Ewing) are dominant. Things look grim for Jordan, Bugs Bunny and crew.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 9:20 PM PST - 14 comments

A string of electrical transformers exploding in Fort Worth, TX. [more inside]
posted by loquacious at 8:52 PM PST - 45 comments

Machete Maidens Unleashed! is a documentary about Filipino exploitation films of the 70s and 80s. It features interviews with Roger Corman, Joe Dante, John Landis, Sid Haig, Eddie Romero and is directed by Mark Hartley, who also directed the Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood. The film was started by Andrew Leavold and grew out of his as-yet-unfinished 'Search For Weng Weng', about the midget James Bond of the Philippines who starred in For Your Height Only and Impossible Kid (and inspired the Weng Weng Rap). You can follow Andrew's adventures through the world of Filipino filmmaking on his blog, Bamboo Gods and Bionic Boys. Several Filipino genre films are available online, including TNT Jackson (NSFW).
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:05 PM PST - 11 comments

Frederik and Gerrit Braun, energetic twin brothers with no shortage of dreams, have just finished construction of the world’s largest model airport. With 40,000 lights, 15,000 figurines, 500 cars, 10,000 trees, 50 trains, 1000 wagons, 100 signals, 200 switches, 300 buildings and 40 planes, Knuffingen Airport is both a wonder to behold as well as a technological tour de force. The best part of Knuffingen is that it’s alive. Forty planes and 90 vehicles move about autonomously.
posted by Trurl at 7:01 PM PST - 24 comments

John McCain to Bush apologists: Stop lying about Bin Laden and torture
posted by SueDenim at 6:49 PM PST - 72 comments

ro.me A new Google Chrome experiment showcasing WebGL.
posted by ryoshu at 6:48 PM PST - 25 comments

Ben Greenman’s Museum of Silly Charts.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 6:22 PM PST - 14 comments

TEPCO officials confirmed that the Reactor No. 1 at Fukushima suffered a full meltdown What has been alluded to for weeks has been confirmed today. High levels of cesium has been found in the water and soil of japan and reports that from 60 to 70 percent of the radiation the Chernobyl disaster have been released. The Australian Broadcasting Company news service is reporting that reactor number three continues to leak dangerous levels of radioactivity in to surrounding seawater.
posted by Poet_Lariat at 5:52 PM PST - 177 comments

New, From Mike Huckabee! Give Your Kids An Exciting Way To Learn The Facts About American History! This fascinating, original series of animated videos features the Time Travel Academy kids, a group of friends who create an incredible time machine that whisks them back in time to experience history in the making! Many of our schools and teachers today haven't found ways to make history for kids fun. Instead, they’re teaching with political bias that distorts facts for the sake of political correctness. As a result, our national pride and patriotism are in jeopardy. - Mike Huckabee, Co-founder Sample video: Learn Our History: the Reagan Revolution [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 4:08 PM PST - 111 comments

"This Imperial dOvewalker COOs his way into a Big Surprise. Parveen says let him have it with the dOveton Launcher 3000! He won't know what hit him after attacking my planet." Just another tale from the The Pakistani Starfleet Explorers. Via boingboing.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:22 PM PST - 16 comments

"If you have basically heard no music, and then you're told to create music, what will it sound like?" Jon Ronson talks to The Shaggs - the girl group from the 1960s who were home schooled and practised for hours every day in their basement.
posted by ameliaaah at 12:56 PM PST - 216 comments

An NIH clinical trial has shown that early treatment of HIV with antiretroviral drugs reduces the odds of the virus being transmitted to an uninfected sexual partner by 96%, with only one new HIV case recorded out of the 1,763 couples participating in the trial.
posted by schmod at 12:34 PM PST - 29 comments

Doomsday reloaded. In 1986 the BBC launched an ambitious project to record a snapshot of everyday life across the UK for future generations. A million volunteers took part, and now you can search and view the million photos and written entries.
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar at 12:12 PM PST - 21 comments

"With regard to the idea of whether or not you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies... It means you believe in slavery." Senator Rand Paul weighs in on the notion of human rights at a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday, equating the right to health care, as well as the right to water and food, as tantamount to a belief in slavery.
posted by Rykey at 11:55 AM PST - 218 comments

Of all of Wayne Dorrington's delightful art, Hansel and Greedo may be the jinkiest.
posted by mikoroshi at 11:39 AM PST - 6 comments

The First Four (Harry Potter) Books: Illustrated by Lucy Knisley [Previously] Contains Spoilers
posted by Fizz at 11:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Many of the photos of classic pin-up Bettie Page were taken by the photographer Paula Klaw, who helped to run the photo shop and men's magazine business owned by her brother Irving. Chuck Keefe (blog), an artist, had several photographs of Klaw's autographed by her, and eventually by Bettie herself. An interesting look at part of the story of two of pin-up's most notorious women....
posted by theartandsound at 10:39 AM PST - 13 comments

Drama on the top floor. A pair of redtailed hawks nested on the window of the NYU’s Bobst Library, outside the office of President John Sexton. (Previously.) The New York Times set up a hawk cam to observe the hatching process. Instead they’ve got a soap opera on their hands, with miraculous births, life and death drama, bungling bureaucracies, and a comments section on the warpath, with some New Yorkers demanding the Governor get involved to mount a rescue mission of the injured mother hawk. As of 12:49 EST, hawk catchers were standing by on the 12th floor to determine whether to attempt to remove and rehabilitate the hawk at the Bronx Zoo (previously), a course which could mean the death of her chick. (Consolidated post with most updates is here, if you want to catch up.) [more inside]
posted by Diablevert at 10:34 AM PST - 31 comments

Why Does the FTC Mandate that Bloggers Disclose Freebies & Samples When Print Writers/Editors Don't Have To? Racked.com Asks an FTC Lawyer. Last year, Ann Taylor was investigated for offering giftcards to bloggers they failed to disclosed (the investigation was closed without enforcement).
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:22 AM PST - 41 comments

There’s a new indie film in the works about nerd culture and coming to terms with the hipster cooption of the sacred cow of Dungeons & Dragons : Zero Charisma. This is brought to you by two folks Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews who’s prior work includes the cinematography and film editing of Best Worst Movie (previously)
posted by Nanukthedog at 10:19 AM PST - 159 comments

Last Friday, USA Today reported that two people from PR firm Burson-Marsteller had been contacting various news outlets and bloggers, pushing a story about how Google's "Social Circle" gmail feature violates users' privacy. The pitch was made on behalf of an unnamed client that The Daily Beast now confirms was Facebook. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:56 AM PST - 103 comments

Bartolo Colon, now of the New York Yankees, underwent a controversial stem-cell treatment in the Dominican Republic to regain his old form.
posted by reenum at 9:53 AM PST - 23 comments

In Europe, bail-out and immigration fears have led to the rise of nationalism and xenophobia, a crisis that now threatens the EU itself. Right-wing euroskeptic parties and politicians have gained in power, such as the True Finns, they can roughly be seen as "Europe's Tea Parties". Greece is talking about dropping the Euro currency (due to Finnish demands), other PIGS could be next. Denmark has introduced custom checks at its borders again, seeking to stop the flow of intra euro traffic, while France and Italy have raised the possibility of reintroducing their own border controls.
posted by stbalbach at 9:47 AM PST - 49 comments

Ants are one of the most abundant groups on earth, but, curiously, not a lot of things eat them. Yes, there are anteaters (who also eat a lot of termites), and some lizards specialize on ants, but the little critters are full of noxious chemicals and pheromones that put them way down on the list of predators’ preferred foodstuffs. Because of this, many other insects and arthropods have evolved to mimic ants, taking advantage of the aversion of predators to anything antlike. These mimics are called myrmecomorphs, and they’re the subject of a really nice eponymous feature in this week’s Current Biology.

[via]
posted by AceRock at 9:25 AM PST - 22 comments

Much better, IMHO, than the Beloit list. 40 Things That Will Make You Feel Old (via Buzzfeed)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:25 AM PST - 214 comments

"Genevieve has told us what happened. A group of White supremacists attacked John, then Al stepped into to protect John." Live history on Twitter, via Twhistory.org. Currently broadcasting, The Freedom Riders. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 8:56 AM PST - 8 comments

Osborne to target workers' rights with review of employment law "Workers are set to receive less protection against redundancy, dismissal and workplace discrimination as the Chancellor George Osborne tears up sections of employment law so businesses can dispose of their staff more easily." More Here (Times.co. uk - no sub required (at least, not in the uk), and Here.
posted by marienbad at 8:17 AM PST - 34 comments

Why a mobile phone ring may make bees buzz off: Insects infuriated by handset signals Signals from mobile phones could be partly to blame for the mysterious deaths of honeybees, new research shows. In the first experiment of its kind, a bee expert placed a mobile phone underneath a hive and then carefully monitored the reaction of the workers. Download the full report here: Mobile phone-induced honeybee worker piping.
posted by Blake at 7:25 AM PST - 33 comments

As you may know, Japan's prime minister Naoto Kan announced two days ago that plans for new nuclear power plants in Japan are to be scrapped (NYT). Meanwhile, a landmark study from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says renewable energy can power the world (Guardian - article includes many related links). Here's a summary of the IPCC Special Report.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:54 AM PST - 118 comments

Whose side is Pakistan's ISI really on?
posted by Artw at 5:44 AM PST - 44 comments

Alabama's Browns Ferry Plant nuclear plant has received red finding from the NRC for an emergency coolant valve failure that wasn't detected for over a year. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 5:11 AM PST - 34 comments

Horace Freeland Judson died last Friday at the age of 80. Though his greatest achievement was The Eighth Day of Creation, a detailed account of modern breakthroughs in molecular biology, he was more famously the haplass TIME reporter harranged at length by Bob Dylan in Don't Look Back.
posted by joannemullen at 5:02 AM PST - 25 comments

-A parable for the world economy
-The economics of a parable, explained
-The Mauritius Miracle
posted by kliuless at 4:56 AM PST - 9 comments

Eraserhead is on YouTube. It's OK! 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
posted by flabdablet at 1:01 AM PST - 109 comments

The International Academy of Astronautics is holding the Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids May 9-12, 2011. in Bucharest, Romania [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor at 12:08 AM PST - 13 comments

Instant Cinema is a comprehensive platform for experimental film, video and computer art, making the best audio-visual work of artists of all generations available to a worldwide audience. Not a tonne in the archive just yet--it's still in rough beta--but still some nice viewing. For instance: Balance Study, or Trying.
posted by dobbs at 10:52 PM PST - 5 comments

jscott brings us a tale of the early days of the Playstation.
posted by JHarris at 9:53 PM PST - 66 comments

Ghar Aaya Mera Pardesi + Tere Bina Aag Yeh Chandni: Dream sequence from the 1951 Hindi film, Awara. "The film, generally considered one of Kapoor's finest, is notable for its darkly surreal sets... and for its remarkable dream sequence, which echoes this architecture in an evocation of heaven and hell. Despite its ultimate vindication of patriarchy and capitalism, the film became an enormous hit in the U.S.S.R. and, thanks to Chairman Mao’s reputed fondness for it, in China (to this day, millions of middle-aged Chinese can hum its title song)." You can view the other musical numbers from the film here.
posted by puny human at 8:07 PM PST - 9 comments

After 249 episodes on a wide variety of ingredients and other cooking related topics, Alton Brown ended Good Eats last week (save for 3 unaired one hour specials). The show leaves behind many unaddressed recipes that were to be in "another show." [more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:14 PM PST - 135 comments

So it turns out that the United States Postal Service has lost $2.2 billion in the first quarter of 2011 with estimated losses of $7 billon by September. Despite shedding over 130,000 jobs in the past three years and promises from the Postal Worker's Union to not demand any raises in the near future, some doubt that the USPS has a future in America. Does the future have a P.O. Box? Google sure thinks so.
posted by Avenger at 6:59 PM PST - 170 comments

It’s about time people started rendering unto Liquid Sky. Its long lipstick trace is smudged through much of indie cinema. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 6:58 PM PST - 69 comments

Coal cares! "Puff-Puff™ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself." [more inside]
posted by cmoj at 5:43 PM PST - 22 comments

Rhodes' Scholar, Canadian Constitutional lawyer, eminent statesman, former Saskatchewan Premier and gentleman Allan Blakeney has died. [more inside]
posted by Neiltupper at 3:15 PM PST - 22 comments

Samoa has seized headlines by moving the International Date Line--leaping forward a day and confusing readers in the process. [more inside]
posted by -->NMN.80.418 at 2:46 PM PST - 50 comments

A new report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicates that 1.3 billion tons, or nearly one-third of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted. The full report is available here (Warning: PDF).
posted by epsilon at 2:43 PM PST - 30 comments

The People vs. Goldman Sachs. Matt Taibbi's latest magnum opus (previous coverage) lays out the full case for federal prosecutions against the Vampire Squid according to Sen. Carl Levin's Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. [Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse 650 page pdf].
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:22 PM PST - 174 comments

"Even beyond the philosophical wonder of passively sampling our outside environment in a shared, meaningful fashion is the ridiculous sensitivity of our senses." [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 2:10 PM PST - 27 comments

In December 2010, a Koch Industries press release spoof (Scribd; alt: screencap) was posted on a website that mimicked the appearance of the official site for Koch Industries. The press release stated that Koch would no longer support research and advocacy initiatives that denied or questioned the human role in climate change. The press release was quickly identified as a hoax, and both the fake press release and site disappeared quickly, yet the Koch company pursued the identities of those behind the stunt, going as far as to file a lawsuit to expose the anonymous pranksters as part of a larger lawsuit. This past Monday, the lawsuit was thrown out of court in Utah, with the judge citing that parody is not commercial speech, and thus a First Amendment issue. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:41 PM PST - 40 comments